Princess Cruises Voyager class ships: exciting news for the brand, bad news for cruisers?

Princess Cruises has announced an order for three new Voyager class ships, each carrying roughly 4,700 guests and set to become the largest vessels the line has ever built. On paper, it is a bold, confident move for a brand with a fiercely loyal following.

But for many cruisers who fell in love with Princess precisely because it wasn’t like the other megaship lines, the news lands with a uncomfortable edge – because the evidence from Princess’s newest, biggest ships already suggests that when it comes to the passenger experience, size and quality are pulling in very different directions.

Voyager class – Princess goes properly mega

Princess has signed a deal with Fincantieri for three Voyager class ships, each around 183,000 gross tons and carrying roughly 4,700 guests. They will be the largest ships the line has ever built, arriving in 2035, 2038 and 2039 and powered primarily by LNG, just like the current Sphere class flagships, Sun Princess and Star Princess.

Princess is very keen to stress that Voyager class will “build on” the design of Sun and Star rather than rip everything up. The official line is that the outer decks, staterooms and Piazza are being “reimagined” using extensive guest and travel agent research to evolve the things people already love while introducing new concepts and partnerships.

On paper, it sounds like a thoughtful evolution. In reality, it raises an obvious question: if the homework has really been done, why are so many of the brand’s newest, biggest ships among the most divisive with guests?

When bigger stopped feeling better

Sun Princess and Star Princess were supposed to herald a new era for the brand – 4,300‑guest ships with dramatic glass domes, multi‑level piazzas and more dining and entertainment than ever before. And to be fair, plenty of reviewers comment on how beautiful these ships are, how impressive the Dome can be on sea days, and how much choice there is if you want to eat and drink your way around the decks.

But buried just under the glossy marketing, a different story keeps appearing in the reviews: these ships feel too big for their own good. Guests talk about cramped public areas, undersized theatres, endless queues and a nagging sense that the design has been driven by the need to cram in more cabins rather than to make life pleasant for the people inside them.

In other words: the problem is not just that Sun and Star are large. It is that they feel large, and not in a good way.

Sun Princess – very crowded and boy do you feel it

Take Sun Princess. One Cruise Critic review of a Western Mediterranean sailing describes a “very understaffed and confusing ship”, with 21 decks of mostly cabins and limited public spaces. The same review delivers the killer line: “The ship holds 4,250 people, and boy you feel it!” – and it is far from the only one saying it.

Common complaints include:

• Narrow corridors and pinch‑points where it is hard to move without bumping into other guests.
• An atrium and bars that look stunning in photos but are simply too small for the numbers when events are held there.
• A theatre that seats roughly 800–1,000 people on a ship with well over 4,000 guests, forcing people to arrive 30–45 minutes early if they actually want to sit down for a show.
• A buffet likened to a “crazy zoo” – confusing layout, slow‑moving queues and a struggle to find a table once you finally have a plate in your hand.

Video reviews echo the theme: Sun Princess may be shiny and new, but she is also one of the most crowded‑feeling ships some experienced cruisers have ever sailed, even when compared with much larger vessels from other brands. That is a design problem, not just a numbers problem.

Star Princess – more passengers, same staffing

Star Princess, the second Sphere class ship, carries a similar number of guests on the same basic platform. Early reviews are a mixed bag: some people genuinely enjoy the variety of venues and describe an attractive, modern ship; others come away wondering what happened to the Princess they used to love.

One long‑time cruiser on Cruise Critic calls Star “a watered‑down version of the Princess I once loved” and spells out why. According to that review, this “newer, larger class of ship is staffed at the same levels of smaller Royal class ships” – only now there are more passengers and more venues, so “things tend to bog down” and the crew, although friendly, appear “clearly overwhelmed”.

The pattern will sound familiar to anyone who has sailed Sun Princess:

• Slower restaurant and bar service than on older Princess ships.
• Crowded popular venues, especially at peak times.
• A feeling that unless you pay for Sanctuary‑type spaces or top‑tier packages, you are getting a thinner, more transactional version of the Princess experience.

So while the Sphere class has its fans, the most consistent “con” on both ships is simple: size. Not just the raw numbers, but the way that size has been deployed – more cabins, more chargeable venues, not enough space and staff where everyone actually wants to be.

The old ladies of the fleet still have fans

Now flip to the other end of the fleet. Grand Princess, launched in 1998 and taking around 2,600 guests, is the oldest Princess ship still in service. Cruise Critic’s editor review notes that food and service are “considerably above average”, praising the quality of buffet items, tasty main dining room dishes and consistently pleasant, efficient crew. Yes, the ship shows her age – creaky doors, dated bathrooms, scuffed corridors – but guests still rate their overall experience highly, especially on classic West Coast itineraries.

Island Princess, a 2003 Coral‑class ship carrying about 2,200 passengers, is described in another editor review as a “comfortable ship” that will not intimidate new cruisers, with staff who are “pleasant and willing to help”, good food, plenty of entertainment and strong kids’ programmes. Reviews frequently mention the more intimate, relaxed atmosphere of a smaller ship and the sense that you are on a classic cruise rather than in a floating resort.

Side note: Island Princess is hands-down our favourite ship – we love her.

Caribbean Princess, launched in 2004 and commonly sailing from Port Canaveral, is hardly cutting‑edge either, but she still manages an average member score of 3.8 out of 5 across almost 3,000 Cruise Critic reviews, with service sitting around 4.0. Recent write‑ups describe her as “old, but gold”, praising the friendly crew, relaxed feel and decent food even while acknowledging dated cabins and a ship that is starting to show its age.

Older, smaller vessels like Grand Princess, Island Princess and Caribbean Princess all sit solidly in the “well‑reviewed and still very much liked” camp – proof that age and size are not the enemy when the atmosphere and service are right.

Size isn’t just a ship problem – it’s a destinations problem

There is another consequence of the relentless march towards bigger ships that rarely gets the attention it deserves: the larger a vessel, the fewer places it can actually go. Grand Princess, Caribbean Princess and Island Princess can squeeze into smaller, more characterful ports that would turn away a 183,000-ton Voyager class ship without a second glance. Destinations like Greenland’s remote fjord towns, the intimate harbours of the Scottish islands, the tight historic quays of smaller Mediterranean ports and the shallow-water anchorages that make certain Caribbean islands special are simply off the table for megaships of this scale.

Princess has long prided itself on offering compelling, destination-rich itineraries – it is, after all, a line that built much of its reputation on Alaska and the Mediterranean. But as the fleet shifts towards ever-larger hardware, those itineraries will inevitably consolidate around the handful of ports with the infrastructure to handle them: big, busy terminals designed for throughput rather than atmosphere.

In chasing scale, Princess risks not just a noisier ship – but a blander map.

Size as a complaint, not a selling point

Put all of that together and one theme keeps surfacing. On the biggest, newest ships, “size” itself is one of the main things people complain about; on the smallest and oldest, it is often part of the charm.

On Sun Princess, guests talk about squeezed public areas, undersized theatres and bars, and a layout that forces thousands of people through spaces that were never designed for that kind of footfall. On Star Princess, reviewers explicitly link the bigger platform to unchanged staffing levels and slower, more strained service.

Meanwhile, on Grand, Island and Caribbean Princess, many of the warmest reviews highlight that the ships feel “just the right size” – big enough to have options, small enough that you can find a seat, recognise crew and feel part of a ship‑wide community rather than anonymous in a crowd.

Voyager class – evolution or more of the same?

This is the context into which Voyager class sails. Princess says it is “leveraging extensive customer and agent research” to design these new 4,700‑passenger ships, reworking deck plans, stateroom layouts and the central Piazza. What it has not yet done, at least publicly, is address the very specific criticisms that keep appearing for Sun and Star:

• Public spaces that are too small for the number of people on board.
• Theatres that cannot seat a realistic proportion of guests.
• Pool decks and family areas that feel overrun at peak times.
• Staffing levels that feel more suited to the previous generation of ships than to these new giants.

Voyager class will be bigger again than the Sphere ships – roughly 183,000 GT versus around 178,000, with about 400 more guests at double occupancy. Unless Princess uses that extra tonnage to create more usable space per passenger and invests properly in crew, it is hard to see how the core experience for an ordinary balcony cabin improves. The risk is that you simply get Sun/Star 2.0 – more cabins, more speciality venues, the same bottlenecks where it actually matters.

Princess Cruises Voyager class – trading soul for scale?

Underneath the design diagrams and LNG talk, there is a bigger question about what kind of line Princess wants to be. For years, its niche in the Carnival Corporation family was pretty clear: a step up from the fun‑ship chaos of Carnival, more relaxed and grown‑up than Royal Caribbean’s theme‑park approach (looking at you Icon of the Seas), but less stuffy than the ultra‑premium brands.

The affection many cruisers still have for ships like Grand Princess, Island Princess and Caribbean Princess comes from that space in the middle – classic itineraries, human‑scale decks, and a service culture that made you feel looked after rather than processed.

With Sun, Star and the new Princess Cruises Voyager class ships, the company is edging towards something different: large, highly efficient platforms where the included experience can feel crowded and basic, while the “real” quality of life lives behind paywalls – Sanctuary suites, paid sun decks, speciality dining and packages layered on top of the fare.

If that continues, it is not hard to imagine Princess becoming exactly what many loyalists fear: essentially Carnival with a more tasteful colour palette and a sea witch painted on the bow. The branding stays; the sense of being on a slightly more refined, slightly calmer ship quietly drains away.

Where the Princess Cruises Voyager class ships leaves cruisers

As a business, Princess Cruises Voyager class ships make perfect sense – big ships, good economies of scale, plenty of cabins to sell and onboard revenue to chase. For cruisers who fell in love with the line on Grand, Caribbean or Island Princess, it is much less reassuring.

The reviews of Sun and Star already show what happens when capacity runs ahead of public space and staffing: long queues, crowded venues and a creeping feeling that something important has been traded away in the pursuit of bigger hardware. Unless Princess is willing to use Voyager class to reverse that trend – more space per guest, not less; more visible crew, not fewer – the worry is that it will simply lock in a future of beautiful but over‑full megaships.

And at that point, Princess may indeed find itself in danger of shedding the quietly excellent service and atmosphere that made it special, and waking up one day to realise it has become exactly what it never wanted to be – MSC, with sea witch branding.

As for us, we’re steering clear of the Sphere-class ships – and their Voyager-class sisters too.

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