US News Best Cruises Rankings

If one is looking at the "Best buy in the way of cruise line for what one spends and receives on the ship" then that is a totally different way to evaluate than say "most affordable".

Not anymore, but for a number of years we cruised quite a bit on Regent ships. Their charges were very reasonable then, in fact we paid just slightly more than we would have on an equivalent cruise on either Princess or HAL, however we received a lot more in the way of a quality cruise, cuisine, booze, service, extras, you name it, for the money we spent on Regent. I know though, for some of my budget minded friends, Regent was too much for them even then.

For instance, say someone pays $15,00 for a shot of 75 year old scotch, while someone else pays $8,00 for low rated house scotch, those paying $15,00 might contend they got the best deal for the money as compared to $8.00 from the bottle off the back bar. I really believe it is not practical to try to analyze a cruise or line using someone else's judgment of the "best buy for the money". I'm not certain if this even makes any sense, maybe bad example.

By the way, today that doesn't hold true for Regent anymore, you pay for what you get with them now, so comparing commensurate cruises we pay from one half to one third of Regent charges now on Princess.

So many different sources rate cruises and they often come up with different results. It is frustrating to say the least if you are relying on the results.

Some of the ratings really surprised me as well.

They rated "Best for the money" not the least expensive. I can see how Celebrity is the best for the money. For what you pay on Celebrity you do get a more and nicer then other lines that charge that amount. For least expensive per night it would be Carnival and NCL.

I wasn’t very impressed with their evaluation consistency. In one category they appear to rate value (cheap) as number one consideration, in another they rank a number of luxury cruise lines high, but make no mention of the extreme costs. Since we have cruised in most of these areas of the world on both a luxury line and average mass markets lines, most of this makes little sense to me. Be wary.

Check the other thread on this. They used Cruiseline.com traveler ratings for 50% on its rankings so I guess you could say they rating was cause of us ... kind of sort of.

I suppose we would be wise to check more options once we know when and where we want to cruise. Our first Princess cruise was only $225 (total) more than a comparable Carnival cruise and it was on the newest Princess ship (which is why we wanted to book it in the first place). I do think Carnival is still the "biggest bang for the buck"... but maybe some more research is in my future.

I, too, am surprised that Carnival isn't #1 for budget friendly. That's why we cruise them so frequently.

I am also surprised I don't see Princess on the top 3 for any. I've not personally cruised Princess, but I've heard good things. We have a friend who's about to take his 48th cruise with them.

If you subtract all the "included" packages, the price is comparable to Princess -- about 25% higher than Carnival (a totally made up percentage, just rough figuring in my head).

In return, you get a calmer passenger base, upscale furnishings and fancier bars.

As far as budget friendly, I would rate Carnival number 1, Royal Caribbean number 2 and Celebrity and Princess a close match for number 3 (I have no knowledge of HAL or NCL or other lines, so they are not included in my own ratings).

Does Celebrity include more without charges than Carnival does ? I know that we hear a lot about nickels and dimes.