Royal Caribbean and Carnival keep building larger cruise ships.
That’s because the very nature of cruising, at least the family-friendly level of cruising has changed. The ships are now the destinations and as much as people care about where they’re going, they acknowledge that the ships is also a destination.
Some people love the intimacy of older, smaller, cruise ships. They do have a certain charm as the smaller size makes it easier to get to know not just your fellow passengers, but also members of the crew.
All smaller ships are older, at least the ones in the Royal Caribbean and Carnival fleets, as both cruise line have followed a bigger is better model for decades.
Royal Caribbean has said it will build a new class of smaller ships, but won’t share any dates for what is known as the “Discovery Class.” Carnival has made it clear that it has no plans to build smaller ships, but it does plan to try to keep the existing ones in good working condition.
Come Cruise With Me Executive Editor Dan Kline and PostCard Travel Planning co-owner Dennis Post talked about the merits of big versus small ships (an vice versa) from Norwegian’s Great Stirrupe Cay.
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How to pick between big and small Royal Caribbean, Carnival ships (2:09)
When should you book a large ship versus a smaller one?
Transcript:
Dan Kline: Hello, cruisers. I am Dan Kline, executive editor of Come Cruise With Me. That is comecruisewith.com.
We’re at Great Stirrup Cay, but behind us is Perfect Day at Coco Cay. I don’t know if you can make it out. There are two ships there.
One of them is the largest cruise ship in the world, and next to me is Dennis Post. Dennis is the co-owner of Postcard Travel Planning, and Dennis, I’m sure you get questions from people all the time. Should I take a big ship, or should I take a small ship?
How do you figure out that answer?
Dennis Post: So we try to qualify people when people call us to go on their travel. If you want a little bit more quiet, relaxing, don’t want all the thrills, then we go with some of the older ships or smaller ones.
Less people, but Icon, being the world’s largest cruise ship, oddly enough, plenty of room, and it does not feel like there’s 7,000 people on there.
Kline: Plenty of quiet spaces. Central Park is always quiet. I think the other big factor is price.
So if you’re an adult, and you don’t need all the bells and whistles, Icon has a water park, and ice skating, and Flowrider, and everything you can imagine. I don’t use most of those things.
If you go on some of the older ships, I’m going to be on Freedom of the Seas, which has many of those bells and whistles, but any of the Freedom or Voyager class, we were just on Voyager of the Seas.
Voyager doesn’t have a lot of that, but it had plenty of bars, it had plenty of music, restaurants were good, didn’t have as many restaurants, but the price, if you’re paying, is much, much smaller.
Dennis, any last advice, big or small?
Post: So just, we’ll qualify you, and like Dan said, price, it means a lot to some people. Spend it on the ship, or keep it in your pocket and use it for buying souvenirs and doing some excursions.
Kline: I will say to the people who are like, I never want to be in a big ship, there’s 10 billion people there. You can be crowded on a small ship. On the big ships, there’s always someplace else to go, and yeah, I don’t love certain things about Icon.
The adult pool is too small, but if you’re on Oasis class ships, with the exception, weirdly enough, of Harmony, which does not have an adult pool, the adult pool areas are perfectly open, perfectly big. There’s always space, even though there’s 7,000 people there. There’s always going to be a quiet space on the ship.
We’re at Great Stirrup Cay. I am Dan Kline. He is Dennis Post.
Come cruise with us soon.
