For this post, I set out to discover which cruise lines are the best in the world. A seemingly impossible task, but let’s just try anyway.
I also ranked each cruise line based on its consumer reviews, its star ratings on the web, and its editorial ranking. When I say editorial ranking, I mean its ranking in various magazines, news articles, and trusted sources on the internet, by real people, as much as possible.
I compared similar but not identical trips to get an estimate of how much the same trip might cost across cruise lines. Often I used a 7-8 day trip to Alaska and compared the prices of those itineraries against each other. But if I couldn’t find that, I tried to get the next best thing. So take my results with a grain of salt.
Top rated cruise lines:
- Celebrity Cruises
- Princess Cruises
- Holland America Line
- Virgin Voyages
- Royal Caribbean International
- Viking
- Norwegian Cruise Line
Recall that the above list is based on reviews, star ratings, etc.
Now, let’s take that same list of top-ranked cruise lines, and compare the cost of an all-inclusive cruise to Alaska for approximately 8 days, not including travel insurance, airfare, hotel, or car rentals.
7-8 day Alaska trip or similar total estimate for 2 people per 1 cabin:
Prices range greatly depending on the season you are traveling in, or if a sale is on, so I didn’t use exact dollar amounts. I didn’t find any of the cruises on the list to be budget, or absolute luxury pricing. So I included the following scale:
$$$$ = luxury
$$$ = upscale
$$ = moderate
- Celebrity Cruises $$$
- Princess Cruises $$
- Holland America $$
- Virgin Voyages $$
- Royal Caribbean International $$
- Viking Ocean Cruises/Viking River Cruises $$$$
- Norwegian Cruise Line $$
As you can see, the cost across cruise lines varies, regardless of the ranking based on reviews, star ratings, etc. So either the rankings don’t truly correlate to quality, or there are simply some great deals to be found if you choose a lower-priced cruise that nonetheless is highly-rated.