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Vexorg

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About Me

  • Location
    Greensboro NC
  • Favorite Cruise Line(s)
    Princess
  • Favorite Cruise Destination Or Port of Call
    ABC Islands

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Cool Cruiser (2/15)

  1. I usually email rather than call my CVP, but when I've done that I usually have a response within 24 hours.
  2. I've received and taken a move-over offer before on a Royal Princess cruise in December 2019. We had an interior on a 5 night California coast cruise booked, ended up getting moved to a 7 night Mexican Riviera cruise in January (just weeks before the COVID shutdown) with a balcony cabin, all our cruise fare in refundable OBC and airline change fees paid. To top it all off, when I told my parents about the deal they booked the one we ended up on too. Best cruise deal I've ever had.
  3. We had nightly turn down service on our recent Sapphire Princess cruise. We had a very good cabin steward on that one.
  4. A couple of years back my wife and I were on a sailing that turned out to be overbooked, and got a move over offer to move to another sailing entirely. We got our entire cruise fare (minus taxes and fees) as refundable OBC and an upgrade from an interior cabin on a 5 day sailing to a balcony cabin on a 7 day. They also provided an allowance (I believe $300) to cover airline change fees. It was a pretty good deal, all things considered.
  5. We do MDR breakfasts several times a cruise to avoid the crowds in the buffet, but pretty much always on disembarkation day. I think we only did MDR lunch twice this time around, but had dinner in the MDR all but one night (when we weren't feeling all that great and went to the buffet.) We mostly ate dinners in the Savoy dining room, and service was generally very good there. Breakfast and lunch are only offered in the International dining room, so we got to know the staff in there pretty well too. I also noted that disembarkation was handled rather efficiently this time around, and our luggage tags (we deliberately chose a later disembarkation group since our flight wasn't until almost 2pm) were called about an hour before the scheduled meeting time. We decided to just chill out in the platinum/elite lounge for a while anyway before disembarking since it seemed like a much better option than sitting around LAX. With the facial recognition we didn't even need to show passports going through customs (My wife and I have Global Entry, but I don't know if that had anything to do with it or not.) On previous cruises I've found it's quite common for disembarkation to be running behind schedule so it was a bit unusual to see it so far ahead.
  6. I booked our excursion while on board on our recent cruise, but I saw that immediately following the charge on my folio for the excursion there was an OBC added for 10% of the purchase price. Note that this only appears to apply to the guests on the excursion who are elite. My wife is platinum and only my excursion purchase showed the discount.
  7. Back home this evening, and our first order of business after arriving at home was to find a ladder and get one of our cats out of a tree she had gotten herself stuck in (she hadn't been there too long fortunately.) I'll probably have some thoughts to summarize a bit later on, but overall we quite enjoyed the cruise in spite of the hiccups. I feel that Princess made good on the AC issues in the room, so I'll leave it at that. It was a bit of a bummer to miss out on our Puerto Vallarta excursion though. For Halloween, I decided to stir up a bit of confusion on the ship and dressed up as a Princess chef. While in the process of cleaning the closet in our old house while moving, I happened to find the chef's jacket that I got from the Ultimate Ship's Tour many years ago, and a plan was hatched... Finding a chef's hat and neckerchief online, I decided for Halloween I'd try going to the dining room dressed up as a chef. Many of the waiters and other staff commented on my costume, and we were even paid a visit by Ravi, the ship's executive chef, who talked with us at our table for a few minutes and made us a bit of a special meal. The Halloween party in Club Fusion was probably the most well attended event I've ever seen in that venue. I think even the cruise staff was surprised at how many people were participating.
  8. This is an interior cabin on Aloha Deck a bit behind the midship stairs (I'm guessing any HVAC issues are going to be regional rather than tied to specific cabins.) I think it's better today, but it was extremely hot inside the cabin last night and I sweated through my shirt even sleeping with no blankets. As for steaks in the MDR, it seems the app blocks out certain locations for ordering (including the MDR and the specialty dining venues) but I'm guessing you could get a Crown Grill meal in the MDR if you asked your waiter the night before. There's enough steaks on the regular MDR menu anyway that I'm not sure you would need to (my prime rib portion yesterday was huge, far more than I could eat) but I could see ordering Sabatini's if nothing on the regular menu looked good.
  9. Well, our plans for Puerto Vallarta were a bust. Our stateroom was so hot last night that my wife got a really bad migraine and we were unable to go on our planned tour. We were moved to another room in the early morning which seems to not be as hot, but I'm still not sure if they are going to try to fix the issue in our original room or move us into the other one. Instead, my wife stayed in bed pretty much all day, and all I did was make a trip to Walmart for medicine.
  10. Thought I'd add a couple more notes on Loreto: Out of all the ports on this itinerary this is the one I'd recommend having some pesos on hand for. Most places don't take cards, and although you could probably get by with USD having some Pesos made things much easier for us. Loreto isn't as much of a tourist town as Cabo or even La Paz, so more things are going to be in pesos. Also be aware that sidewalks in Loreto can be very uneven, especially if you get outside of the main tourist corridor. You will want to watch your step wherever you go.
  11. Loreto was a very nice stop, I'd gladly come here again. Very walkable, friendly, and aside from a couple of people near the tender dock selling tours no pressure. My wife and I ended up seeing the City Hall (my wife was seriously interested in buying one of the paintings on display but there's no way it would fit in our luggage and I'm not sure if we could work past the language barrier to get it shipped home) and the cathedral, then had lunch at a Mexican restaurant called Orlando's near the City Hall followed by paletas next door. You can tell Loreto doesn't get many ships in port because they really made it feel like a party for the passengers coming ashore. It was also neat to watch the preparations for the upcoming Dia de los Muertos in the Town Square.
  12. The people we are sitting next to in the MDR (the "private tables" for two aren't really all that private, but we've ended up in the same place In Savoy with the same companions for the last couple of nights) opted to do Corumel beach, and made it sound really great. I'll definitely have to consider that the next time we are on this itinerary. The activity schedule is a little thin tonight, so I'll probably do the logo trivia in the Explorers Lounge and call it a night. No big plans for Loreto (going to try a restaurant the other diners recommended and then just wander in town) but we have a big horseback ride excursion planned for Puerto Vallarta.
  13. Today we found La Paz much more to our liking. No pushy vendors, and generally a much more laid back atmosphere than the giant tourist trap that is Cabo. Getting to and from town was a fairly easy bus ride, and we actually found some decent prices on souvenirs (I recommend the alley behind the Sears store for some much less touristy prices.)
  14. I have to say that Cabo isn't high on my list of favorite cruise ports after this visit. Way too many pushy people trying to sell you things or get you to take tours. My wife and I did massages at the Sand Bar on Medano Beach (those were nice) but afterwards we tried to hang out on the beach for a bit and got mobbed by people trying to sell things, which completely ruined the experience. The first time we went to Cabo we did a Princess tour that pretty much took up the entire time we were in port so we missed a lot of that, but this time we did it on our own and it was impossible to go anywhere without a dozen people trying to sell trinkets or tours. Even while we were in a pedicab and actively moving people were still reaching in and trying to sell us stuff. Looking forward to Loreto mostly because the chance of this nonsense seems much lower there. That said, still enjoying the cruise and the ship, but we're thinking the ABC Islands might be a better fit for us next time around.
  15. Apologies if I piggyback onto this thread, but I'm on board now and thought I'd post some initial impressions: So far I'm really impressed with the crew. I know many are relatively new and inexperienced, but they have gone out of their way to be helpful, and so far our room steward in particular (we are in an interior cabin on Aloha Deck) has been excellent. The food so far has also been quite good, and aside from some issues with our room safe (some digits on the keypad don't work) I haven't seen any issues that would suggest the ship had been sitting for the better part of two years. Looking forward to the next ten days of a badly needed vacation after several stressful months of preparing to sell our house, selling it and moving out (in fact it was just a week ago that we drove the moving truck to our temporary home while we find the next one) and looking forward to another cruise on what is easily my favorite ship in the Princess fleet. There was one minor hiccup shortly after boarding when the ship lost shore power, causing the lights in the International Dining Room to go out. The captain made an announcement about 20 minutes later explaining what was going on, and aside from one or two entrees being unavailable I didn't see any effects beyond the lights going out.
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