Paula_MacFan

This doesn't help your problem but my Princess CVP told me last year that Princess no longer has a dedicated shore excursion department.

Because it's a dreary Saturday afternoon where I live, I decided to use the time to re-price our upcoming Alaska trip. We are doing a 15 day Alaska cruisetour the last week of May and the first week of June 2024. To book the exact same trip with airfare and excursions right now would cost us $5,928 more than what we paid. It really does pay to book early and plan ahead 🙂

I get it -- some people go on several cruises a year and for us it's usually two. Also I can't say they NEVER have salads at IC -- we don't sit there 24/7 -- but I didn't see any on our January cruise and remember commenting to hubby about it. They used to have a shrimp salad that I haven't seem in a really long time. You can report back with your findings next month 🙂

Yeah as I said we enjoyed salads in the past too but on our 2023 & 2024 cruises we haven't seen any. I don't disagree they were available back in 2022 😀

The Island does unique itineraries so if you want to go to those places then that's the ship, IC or not 🙂 Also on our last few cruises we haven't seen any salads in the IC. I used to like the salads there too but haven't seen any in awhile. On our last cruise (January, Regal) the offerings appeared pared back from what we've seen and were primarily sandwiches and desserts.

That is correct -- the Island doesn't have an International Cafe but it has never had one to the best of my knowledge. We sailed on that ship last fall and it was one of the few things we missed 🙂 Otherwise we really liked the ship and didn't have any problems finding food at other venues.

We have an Alaska cruisetour booked for next month and in addition to posts here on CC (both this Princess forum and the Alaska forum) we found this Princess page helpful: https://www.princess.com/en-us/faq/cruisetours This page compares all the different cruisetour options in chart form: https://www.princess.com/learn/cruise-destinations/alaska-cruises/cruisetour-options/cruisetour-finder/ The attached Princess Alaska PDF also has good info. alaska-cruisetours-overview-what-to-expect.pdf.coredownload.inline.pdf

I just did a search using Google Chrome and it looked the same as usual to me.

Ours changed too with the exact same times (we're on Sapphire June 1) and we got a Booking Notice email from Princess a couple days ago on 4/17. It didn't explicitly say 'hey here's a change in the itinerary' but I looked it over and compared it to our prior documentation and noticed the change. I was actually very happy to arrive earlier in Skagway as we have a Jeep rented and with 3 other ships in port arriving at the same time we were hoping to beat the crowd. Now we should be able to with no problems. And the Glacier Bay time change was only about an hour shorter, so that doesn't bother us too much. Especially given that other sailings have times of 6am - 3pm or whatever -- I'd much rather have our time of 9 - 6 🙂

I just looked at our excursions after your post. We booked Hubbard Glacier for $299 and it's now $475! Others have increased as well, but none as much as that. It pays to book early.

Here's the one we got in February 2024.

We missed a port in January on the Regal. We've had this happen before as well and have always received a credit to our onboard folio. I would recommend double checking your final statement to verify you didn't get credit while onboard. If at the end of your cruise you have a credit balance in your account, they will mail you a check. If it's been 2 months you probably should have received a check by now for any credit balance you had on onboard.

One of our favorite features of the app is the ability to check our folio any time, without having to go to Guest Services. We check it frequently during cruises and take a screen shot on the last day. On our last cruise we got our folio emailed very promptly as well.

Edit to say I just saw your subsequent post about your flight leaving at 5:30 🙂 Sorry!

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