I used to prefer Celebrity 10+ years ago because everything was a higher class... the passengers, the service, the food.
It has been converging with a Royal Caribbean service levels. When we went on a Med cruise two years ago the only thing different than Royal was the ship was smaller. All those higher class differentiators were gone.
Sounds like my sister, who had always sailed Celebrity and said it was wonderful. We two couples went on Princess in 2013, and she raved about the entertainment and the people, but still preferred Celebrity overall because of food, passengers, service, etc.
Then we four did the Celebrity in 2017 (my first time on Celebrity), and she said it had declined in every way since her last time — in about 2005, I guess.
Also, we returned home with kick-ass respiratory infections, one even turning to serious pneumonia. Never got sick in any way on 15 Princess cruises.
We’re all doing Panama Canal on Princess in February.
I forgot to add that the bright spot in our Celebrity cruise was that Media Research Center was on that cruise. Met Brent Bozell, Steve Moore, sat next to Alan West at a meeting. Met some other attendees — interesting people. So the whole cruise didn’t suck.