RCCL comparable to Dream class?

[mevelandry]

Other question: is there anything BETTER than DCL for the same kind of prices (2015-2016 prices)?

 

[tidefan]

Hello yes meant RCL sorry changed it

Why they say re princess?

I just get the impression princess is more "stuffy" and not much for children

Notice radiance and explorer do Alaska

Explorer just been updated ?

We've done 4 Princess cruises and had a great time on all of them. Didn't feel stuffy at all. The vibe is more relaxed, but there is a lot to do (and the pizza was fantastic!). We really enjoyed it. No slides or rock walls, but lots of activities going on at all times. Their ships are beautiful. Very teak and brass. I found that it had kind of a "Jimmy Buffett" vibe to it.

I want to like RCCL, but we tried the Serenade out of NOLA a couple years ago to try it out and our whole family agreed it was our least favorite cruise by far (for a number of reasons). We tried Carnival last year and were all very pleasantly surprised. For the money, it's hard to beat.

All that said, Princess really knows Alaska, especially if you add some of their lodges/rail trips in with the cruise.

 

[sunburnin]

We were just on the Freedom for spring break and really enjoyed it. We've also been on the Magic twice and Fantasy twice. Size wise, the Freedom is bigger than the fantasy and the open promenade inside the ship really makes it feel large. We had a Jr Suite since we needed room for our daughter's wheelchair without the need for a full accessible room and it was a lot bigger than the family sized stateroom on the Fantasy. The balcony was huge; regular chairs and 2 loungers plus a table. We rebooked for Oasis next spring and it was cheaper to book 2 rooms than the Jr Suite with the sale they were running at the time. Keep that in mind. There are no perks for the Jr Suite in terms of concierge or anything; just room size. It's basically 1.5 rooms. Next year we'll get 2 rooms for less than that 1.5. Go figure. We probably won't do spring breaks with DCL anymore since it was half the cost on the Freedom. However, we'll still do DCL for the right itineraries - such as the 11 day southern next year.

Overall our assessment was if we could take Disney's shows and dining service and move it to the Freedom, it would be the perfect combo. The pools were so much better than the Fantasy as were the activities for our kids 11 and 13. It also felt a bit more relaxed since the ship wasn't 95% families with young kids. The diversity of ages, honeymooners, kids, teens, etc. spreads out the passengers throughout the ship instead of everyone being on the same general schedule.