We TESTED SMALL Ships Vs. BIG Ships: Don't Believe These Common MYTHS!

[@CruisingKat]

What are your thoughts on this? Do you prefer bigger or smaller ships for your cruise? 🛳

[@jacquelyns9709]

When I first started cruising, a large ship had under a thousand passengers. Stabilizers were just being introduced. Ship's photographers took photos as we came down the gangway behind a life preserver. No artificial backgrounds everywhere. Real life backdrops.

[@CruisingKat]

Yes, that was a different style of cruising than the mega-ships that they are putting out now. Interestingly, when we went on Grandeur of the Seas last month, the one word that kept coming up in our minds was "Vintage". There were a number of things that just made you think of the way how cruises used to be. It does have over 2 thousands passengers but still nowhere near the big ones like Icon.

[@davidtavakoli5858]

Great video, as usual. We just got back from our cruise on Icon of the Seas. We were concerned that it was going to feel crowded with 7000 cruisers - complete opposite. We found so many lovely, quiet areas to relax and enjoy ourselves. Complete opposite from the recent cruise to Hawaii on HAL's Koningsdam, which is less than half the size. We couldn't find a place to relax anywhere without being surrounded by people! Not to mention the low ceilings and small venues. We're sailing on Adventure of the Seas next and I'm curious to see how that compares to Icon and Koningsdam.

[@CruisingKat]

Thank you so much! And yes, we found the same thing over and over again. We felt a lot less crowded on the larger ships. Many people think that there are just crowds everywhere but many people prefer to chill in their cabins or on their balconies instead of going to public areas. I filmed most the clips for this video on sea days when the ships had all the passengers on them and there were plenty of relaxing places.

[@rhondalyn100]

I love mid size ships, like Virgin offers. It feels cozy and intimate but the fun it there if you want to seek it. I don't care for amusement park type ships. I am enjoying your channel, by the way. Keep up the great work! 🙂

[@CruisingKat]

Thank you so much! We like the mid size ships too. They are a great middle ground between these two extremes.

[@dwill123]

I prefer small, ‘Older’ ships. Specifically, the ones with the wrap around Prominade deck. The wrap around Prominade decks (found more on the older ships) are going the way of the ‘DoDo’. There spots on those ships provided a unique opportunity to grab a deck chair and enjoy the sounds of the water going by. Now all you get are up close views of the emergency rescue boats.

[@CruisingKat]

I know we need those boats, but I agree, they are an eye sore, lol. I haven't personally been on any ships that didn't have the rescue boats on the wrap around deck but it sounds nice! I'd rather enjoy the ocean views without a constant reminder of how to abandon the ship 😂

[@dwill123]

@@CruisingKat Keep an eye open for Princess Cruises ships - Discovery Princess, Ruby Princess, Emerald Princess, Grand Princess, Diamond Princess, Sapphire Princess, Caribbean Princess, Emerald Princess. Also if you can find them there are a few Royal Caribbean ships still out there.

[@CruisingKat]

Our very first cruise was actually on Diamond Princess. It was almost 20 years ago and we loved it! It got us hooked on cruising 😁

[@jlawrence0181]

@@CruisingKat Most of the HAL non-Pinnacle Class ships have life boats above the Promenade decks.

[@AndrewB..]

Great video as always Kat, we unfortunately had to cancel our cruise for next year, but having your videos keeps me entertained and hopeful that eventually we'll be able to do a cruise and make it stick!

[@CruisingKat]

Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that, Andrew! I know, for me, looking forward to a cruise is one of those happy thoughts that really helps during boring office days. 😊 I hope you'll be able to cruise again soon!

[@charlesschroeder4062]

I've recently cruised on Radiance OTS to Alaska and Jewel OTS to Canada. Both trips were great! CN trip we traveled with my mother in law and her friend (at 82), so the size was perfect. - Also recently went on the Wonder OTS and Odyssey OTS with our teen to 20's kids. Great choices for them and us to Caribbean and Rome/Greece. - I'm glad there are still options to match the travelers. So think about who is going and choose an itinerary and ship. When you are on the ship of your choice go with the flow rather than making comparisons during the trip. All of the ships are better than a day at work and household chores.

[@CruisingKat]

I absolutely agree. We choose our ships based on the type of trip we want to have. Not only there is no "one-size-fits-all", there is no "one-size-fits-one" 😂

[@susantwining2879]

We have just done our first cruise on a small ship while a couple of people we tried to avoid we had a wonderful time

[@CruisingKat]

Awesome! Welcome to the cruising club 😊. It's really the best type of vacation out there.

[@robertshaver1612]

Good summary. Thank you. Just completed 21 day repositioning cruise on NCL Encore. Agree - Lot of activities. Overall, good service. Did not feel crowded. However… No educational lectures. Poor crowd management of excursions and disembarkation. Second tier entertainment.

[@CruisingKat]

Encore is a nice size ship for a longer cruise. Entertainment is one of the reasons why we prefer Royal Caribbean over the other mainstream cruise lines. They really do it a lot better. I know that a lot of people don’t care to go to shows so it wouldn’t matter. For us, we compare what we would pay to go to a show on land and we get our money’s worth in entertainment alone, lol… well, and food, of course! 😂

[@Michael-rx6ji]

In this case, bigger is better for us. Been in a couple older small ships and was looking forward to the end of the cruise due to boredom.

[@CruisingKat]

I'm with you on that one. For a 3-4 day, a small size ship is fine, but we would be bored if it was a week-long cruise.

[@jimbo23mattingly]

My concern with smaller ships would be rough seas

[@CruisingKat]

@@jimbo23mattingly yes, you can definitely feel rough seas so much more on smaller ships! We’ve been caught up on a few storms on our cruises in the last 20 years and there was a HUGE difference in how much the ship was affected based on its size. I wish I had thought of adding it as another point to this video. 😁 Thank you for adding the comment!

[@mikesyck2624]

We did Ovation of the Seas in Alaska in July, the food was just ok in the MDR. I was looking forward to the prime rib because on Harmony it was almost the size of my plate and cooked perfectly. The "prime rib" as they called it was awful it was a thin over cooked piece of "meat" that didn't resemble prime rib

[@CruisingKat]

Oh, that's interesting. We always get prime rib on the first night in the "Welcome Aboard" menu. It's usually been pretty standard across the fleet. But we also usually sail in the Caribbean where they probably have different suppliers than Alaskan cruises. That may have made the difference. Hope you enjoyed your cruise! We sailed in Alaska on Explorer, which was an older ship. Alaska was amazing, but I'd love to cruise there again on Ovation since it's a lot newer and nicer ship.

[@MB-uy5kh]

I can’t say that I prefer any particular size over others. I have been on RC’s Allure & Harmony, mid size ships like Celebrity Edge, Apex and Beyond, and small ships like Regent, Azamara and Oceania. Each had their own personality and I have enjoyed all of them. Family cruises we do on Royal, cruises with friends I do on Celebrity or other lines depending on budget.

[@CruisingKat]

Yep, that's about how we do it. For family or friends group cruises, we go on larger ships to have more things for everybody to do. For a quiet getaway, a smaller ship works great.

[@krickenthekraken8844]

There is no doubt I want every option I can have because I want to explore every nook and cranny so the big ships are my thing. I’m booked on icon in February. But I’m also going on the new Margaritaville next week. In general, I love the big ships, but, I went on Norwegian encore last year and it was a horrible experience because it was probably overbooked. There was over 4000 passengers, and there was long lines for everything. I felt like a sardine the whole time ship, but it was hard to do anything.

[@CruisingKat]

@@krickenthekraken8844 if you like big ships, you’ll love Icon! So much to do there. Margaritaville… you’ll go through the whole ship in the first day, lol. Hopefully you’ll have a better experience than we did on it, but we were on the inaugural cruise and the ship just wasn’t ready yet. I have a couple of videos on my channel about it showing the issues we encountered. But I do like the Margaritaville brand so I’m hoping they’ll continue to improve. Let me know know how it goes!

[@jlawrence0181]

I think that every ship has to be evaluated on its own. The largest HAL ships are a lot tighter than its older ships as they try to crowd more venues on. And when you get ships with limited included food options like Celebrity, meal time in the buffet is impossible.

[@CruisingKat]

Very true! This definitely differs between cruise lines.

[@benjaminsmith2287]

None of the ships you showed were small IMO. There were just large ships vs. gigantic ones. Service and intimacy has more to do with how well the staff is trained and the design of the ship vs. the size. Space in venues has to do with how well the ship is designed for designated spaces vs. size. It's all about design and crew training, not size. What is about size is how long it takes to disembark the ship. That is slower on larger ships with more passengers and sometimes tendering is slower as well. But there are no general rules about crowding on large ships vs. gigantic ones. IMO, if you get better service on a large newer ship it is because it is newer, not larger. The best crews are often sent to the newest class while the older classes, especially the oldest class, can sometimes get the trainees. That's the only reason why you get better service on the newer ones. When those ships that are "older" now were new, they had the best service. I remember when a lot of them were new in the 1990s, 2000s and such.

[@CruisingKat]

I agree with all your points. For the smaller ships, I used Grandeur of the Seas, which we just sailed on specifically because it was the smallest and oldest ship in Royal Caribbean fleet. But, of course, there are smaller ships on luxury cruise lines that are half that size. We haven't sailed on them but I would expect everything to be much better on them. The oldest ship we sailed on was Monarch Of The Seas about 20 years ago. That was our first cruise and we thought it was huge! 😂 At the time it launched, it was considered a large ship.

[@jacquelyns9709]

An issue you did not address is leaving the ship on port days. Maybe there's no myth involved. But my concern is how long it takes to get off the ship during the 1st hour or so.

[@CruisingKat]

Good point. I'm sure this may differ from sailing to sailing and to be fully transparent, we're not the earliest risers so we are usually not the first ones in line when the gangway opens. We usually leave the ship an hour or so after it opens and at that time, there was not much difference between any size ship we sailed on. One of the most impressive things we've seen is how they handle passenger flow on Icon Of The Seas. We expected bottlenecks and crowds everywhere. But they completely restructured the approach to the gangway. Instead of taking elevators down and arriving at a crowded hallway, they had escalators from the promenade deck going down 2 levels and straight out of the ship exit door. We literally didn't pause once to get off the ship on Icon. The worst exit we've ever had was disembarking on Margaritaville at Sea Islander on the last day. That was pure mayhem! But that was probably more due to the cruise line's inexperience vs. the ship size.

[@jacquelyns9709]

@CruisingKat I wasn't aware Icon had escalators. That leads to another question, however. How do walker and wheelchair users disembark? I use a rollator walker, and in a pinch, I can manage going up on an escalator, but I can't go down one.

[@CruisingKat]

@ They do have elevators for anybody that needs them. But they direct majority of the passengers through the series of escalators, which was the fastest disembarkation that we experienced at destination ports.

[@jlawrence0181]

Good point. What do you do when the you have seven hours in port but the steerage class cannot get off the ship for 90 minutes (NCL)

[@CruisingKat]

@@jlawrence0181 I haven’t experienced that yet but we usually don’t plan a full day excursions in our port stops. We leave a buffer before and after any plans so we don’t have stress early in the morning or when coming back to the ship.

[@gerardkuniongina2227]

bigger like icon in star can you do a youtube vider at star of the seas r

[@CruisingKat]

@@gerardkuniongina2227 That class ship is amazing! We’ll be on the second sailing of Star of the Seas when it comes out next year and I’ll be definitely making videos about it. Meanwhile, we were on the first sailing of Icon and I have a few videos about it. Here is the Icon playlist link - kzbin.info/aero/PL-OTQE08zFKjhYrSRMZ7cIkMXr2Z0eD1A&si=Fxu2LHX26_sll7Xb

[@francescabaca1722]

Buenas tardes desde Barcelona, España. Me gusta mas los barcos tamaño mediano/pequeño, pero con buen entretenimiento, tipo Celebrity o, los grandes, pero en áreas restringuidas. Ya no viajo con niños y ya no me gusta el jaleo , jajaja. Me estaré haciendo mayor😮😮

[@CruisingKat]

I agree! Medium size ships with good entertainment are our top choice too when we cruise by ourselves without any family or kids in the group. 🙂

[@jeremywhite92]

The Entertainment is better on big ships. So if the shows are important to you, consider big ships.

[@CruisingKat]

Absolutely! The Wizard of Oz on Icon of the Seas is as good as a high priced show on land. And it's included in the fare!

[@deepshotone]

I perfer larger ship. More things to do

[@CruisingKat]

We've been moving towards more cruises on large ships for the same reason.

[@jacquelyns9709]

Is it fair to compare the youngest large ships with the mostly older small ships.? Why didn"t you compare the several years old large ships with the small ships?

[@CruisingKat]

Very good question, Jacquelyn. We also sailed on Harmony of the Seas this summer, which is the same size as Utopia, so it's still in the class of second largest ships in the world, but this ship is 20 years old. It still had all the same qualities as the newest ships for the points I was comparing. I purposefully didn't compare the newness or conditions of the ship because that doesn't really have anything to do with the size.

[@jacquelyns9709]

@CruisingKat Thanks for your clarification. While you didn't give dates, you did give names of the youngest ships over and over. Mentioning the older larger ships as well would have conveyed the message better, in my opinion.

[@CruisingKat]

@ Thank you for the feedback. It’s very helpful! 😊

[@Ivehadenuff]

Big ships are ruining cruising because they bombard small ports with a ridiculous amount of people. I see huge tour groups that take up the entire sidewalks that prevent others from passing. Big ships are obnoxious. I also have had to endure loud music from another ship that made me have to leave my balcony. So rude to believe that you are entitled to blast music that people not on the ship have to hear. Also, the bigger the ship, the more likely to have problem passengers.

[@CruisingKat]

I agree. Several big ships in a port can definitely make it a lot more crowded. When we're in some ports with a lot of ships, we often just stay on the ship to avoid all that.