Interesting new direction

I'm to the point where we're booking destinations, and ships we have not been on.

I have this asanine goal of sailing every ship in RCI's fleet :Facepalm: while only having 3 weeks of vacation a year. lmao

Booked PRIMA for 1/24. This is a new class of ship entirely...Seems like they're selling it NOT as a mega ship at all.. Aside from the experience of being on a new ship to begin with, we were really interested in this approach anyway, as an offset to the growing list of "stuff" the bean counters have done away with...and I suspect there's even more creative deletions to come. Interested to read your review, or at least a commentary in here.

I've done both classes of ship (mega and mid-sized) and love both for different reasons. I feel like, when choosing a cruise, one needs to take into account the ports they want to visit. Some may not be able to handle the larger ships, such as any cruises sailing to Panama. It should be interesting to see how this works.

I certainly like the concept. I much prefer sailing with a smaller number of people. Hope this catches on and other cruise lines like It. Thanks so much for sharing!!

The Prima is slightly smaller than the Breakaway (142,500 grt vs. 145,655) but carries 3,099 passengers compared to Breakaway's 3,959. Should be interesting to see. I'll be on the Prima's transatlantic next month and will report back. Especially in this Covid age, the extra space per passenger has to be working in NCL's favor.

I'm sure this should appeal to experienced cruisers like Kantwait2crooze who lamented in a previous thread that the NCL ships were now too large, and still felt overcrowded. They could win back or capture some of us who are starting to feel like the newer ships lack intimacy. No to mention that getting around on those monsters is starting to feel akin to walking through huge airport terminals.

Their rational of being able to stop at smaller, out of the way ports appeals to me. There are a lot of places I'd like to see that are off the beaten path and subsequently off of a lot of peoples radar.

Also, sticking to longer sailings should eliminate a high percentage of the younger, more boisterous crowd as well as family's with small children, simply because the longer sailings will be financially out of reach for a lot of them.

Personally, I believe this concept will succeed as long as they can keep competitive price points with the other majors offering the same length sailings. Otherwise their market share will be eroded by the behemoths (CCL, RCL, and MSC). Time will tell.

This isnt a bad direction to go in.

Ive been on the Mega Ships (Oasis Class) 5 times. while its a great experience, as any cruise is, we had a far better experience on Royal Caribbean's small ships.