abbydancer2003

I went to a meeting with the IT team at Elmendorf back in the mid 80s. They were nice people. At the time, I was visiting a friend in Alaska, and Elmendorf was a client.

Sorry. I added 20.00 to it and left with 29.00 and change.

I do what Jim does, I just in my head keep a general idea - for example: I put in 20.00. I spin for a while, and keep rough track of my little wins. Then at some point, around 15.00 I start checking my personal banker regularly to see if if the transfer button shows up. Note that if you've played enough to get a 1.00 free play, you actually have to check that room transfer (whatever it's called) is available. I then start checking every few spins. That said, I like playing and since it's cumulative over the whole cruise, I probably could straight cash out, but I like to play some. Lately I've been winning a bit, so I cash out when I'm 2.00 over what I put in. I think I'm getting a lot of bet collateral.

I've done Alaska 8 or 9 times, 2 on Celebrity and the rest on Princess. When it came time to select a family trip with my mom (her last as it turned out), I selected Princess because, although for mini suites Celebrity has a better product, Princess is best for Alaska. Have a blast.

Aren't Amsterdam and Rotterdam about an hour apart? Or am I missing something?

Hi all, I thought I would treat you all to the sunsets from Samoa, from our somewhat unique view out the back of the ship. They were taken about an hour apart. I hope you enjoy them.

Thank you, sweetie. I think calling it Disneyland is not the right word. It's more commercial, but it's a real village, but one where the residents have made it a much bigger production. A fake village would not have children and chickens running around. I think everyone there, performers, cooks, servers, etc, are locals who don costumes to show their culture. They live in the village. They have just figured out how to make some money from their culture. They are not actors from LA brought in to stage a village. It was fun and the food was great.

My points showed up today, around lunch time in Fiji, which is the 16th. Right now, I can't see my point history at all, it stays on upcoming cruises. Might be because I'm on ships wifi. I have a spreadsheet with my points from each cruise, plus a field where I sum my current point count and all the cruises I have booked that I think I need to reach Zenith. With this, it's now enough that without any more power up or Go Green, I'll reach it on the cruise I think I will in a year. Clearly I need a life.

I don't have my power up yet, but I did get the points for the last cruise today (we're on the second leg of the b2b2b. Ended on the 9th, but we're on the other side of the dateline, so 8th in Miami. Crossed a threshold - now 3 digits to zenith.

We missed 3 ports last year on a Princess cruise thanks to Hurricane Lee. We got about 1/3 of our base fare back as FCC, plus 100.00 OBC. I used the FCC to pay for over half of my 7 day Sun Princess cruise in 2025.

Greetings from our new room, an aft corner sky suite. You'd think it would be a let down from a Royal Suite, but, other than missing the second half bath, we're very happy. Our butler is good, a little less proactive than in the Royal, but we're getting everything we ask for. We order coffee every morning and by the third day he has the set up ready to go, so it arrives quickly and hot. I do like having both a balcony and a window. Glen heard that we'll arrive around 3pm tomorrow. We have a tour for the full day, so I guess we'll walk around for a while. Once I finish my 3/27 live, I'll post some of my highlights here as well.

Great review - thanks. Maybe I'm missing something, but why didn't they just print a new one when, apparently, they had trouble finding them? (I'm not convinced they don't do that). Our turnaround was Tuesday and and we got our old cards today. And so far, this cruise has been nothing like what people booked. We missed first port due to leaving Sydney 15 hours late, and now we're turning around due to a medical emergency. 2 of 6 gone, 3 of 7 if you count Maui replaced with early arrival into Honolulu. Fun stuff.

I’m happy you made it in, and I hope your ride is better than ours. We’re on the Solstice and yes, we are missing the first port. We’re also sailing in 30 foot seas which may not sound like a lot but it is. I think we’ll see a lot of casual footwear at formal night. I was on the Majestic in 2022. It’s a great ship.

Here's the next day. Should I complete? Megatrip Day 16. Yorkie’s Knob (Cairns) Friday 2 Today is our second of two private tours on this cruise (4 ports, two ship/two private). It’s a tender port, and Ann and I have arranged that the Retreat Concierges will take all of us off. Ann and I agreed to meet at 8:15 inside the entrance to the Club, and we asked the rest to come at 8:30. We ordered a light breakfast in the room at 7, and Walter brought it soon after, and at 8:10 we were ready to go. I ran into two of our group outside the club, and brought them. Everyone was there by 8:30, so Mar took us out. We boarded the tender, but had to wait for it to fill, but by about 8:40 we were on our way. The tender ride here is close to 30 minutes, so we arrived at 9:10. Our tour is at 9:30, so all good. Dorinda contacted the company, and they had us wait at the entrance to a boat club. At 9:15, Chris, our guide arrived, and off we went to Cairns. (The r is silent). Apparently the two biggest industries are sugar and tourism. We passed sugar fields on the way in. Our first stop was the St. Margaret’s Cathedral. This church has, by far, the most interesting stained glass windows I’ve ever seen. The front two commemorate WW2. Here’s one. The story of creation is told along the walls, and it’s the scientific one. Some pictures. And the other entrance piece. If they interest you, you might want to see more info at their website. Following that, we drove and saw some of the sights. Because we were running a bit early, we stopped at the park at the lagoon. Curiously, there is a cruise dock in town for smaller ships, so I don’t know why we don’t tender to there. Maybe somebody knows? There were a number of birds there, and we saw this cute baby bird. Our next stop was the museum, which was a small museum about the history of Cairns. We were given an overview by a museum guide and we got some time to explore. They acknowledge and feature their indigenous population. Our next stop was the Botanical Gardens. We did not have time to see all of it, but Chris was very knowledgeable about it, and we saw lots of plants. We also saw the local turkey vulture. There are some very old banyan trees. Apparently they build around a host tree, and eventually the host dies. And of course there are chocolate trees (technically cocoa) And some wild ginger And no botanical garden would be complete without some flowering plants. After that, we headed to a nice cafe for some tea (coffee or soft drinks also available) and a scone. The scones were large and flavored with lemon and dates. We had one gluten free person in our group and they had a treat for him as well. Our next stop after that was a lookout over the city. There was a board there that listed all the hills in the distance. We had a great view of Cairns. Our ship is somewhere off to the left. Our final stop was a Palm Cove beach, a resort area on the ocean. It was about a 25 minute drive, and we had about 15-20 minutes there to use the restrooms and look at the water. Lots of restaurants and hotels there. I’m not sure it was worth the drive, but it was only about 20 minutes back to Yorkie’s Knob, and we arrived about an hour before the last tender. We were able to get on the next tender, which turned out to be a local larger boat. It was about thirty minutes back, and probably smoother then the ships tender, but there were a lot of people to unload, so it took almost another 30 minutes to get off. Because we hadn’t had lunch, I went to the lounge once on board and had some tea. Then back to the room to watch them hoist the last tender. That took quite a while as there was significant wind, and the crew in the tender could not connect with the ropes to hoist the boat. The rescue boat came out with a couple more people to help and they finally got it done. We changed for dinner and went to the lounge for a while, then dinner. I started with the glazed baby veggies, and it’s the only picture I got tonight. Dinner was uneventful, other than I forgot what I had, and we have another earlyish start tomorrow, so we called it a night.

Mega Trip Day 14 - Sea Day 6 - Thursday 2 Random ocean view to start the day We had the half hour change to get to “not Darwin” time, so slept late. After our usually morning coffee, we decided to go to the Captain’s Club breakfast in Tuscan. For the first time for me, the fruit, meat, and breads were a buffet at the entrance (my understanding is that they used to do this on all ships. I also don’t recall it on this ship in 2023. I had a bit of fruit, and then decided I wanted a bagel. No bagels on the buffet, so I was told to ask the waiter. He brought on with a lot of cream cheese. Since there’s cream cheese on the the buffet, next time I’ll have the waiter bring the bagel and get my own cream cheese. On the way back, I noticed that they’d posted the brand new menu and show for Le Petit Chef. We should have waited. We went back to the room, and noticed an interesting ship to the side. At 11:15 we had a bridge tour. We walked over a bit early, but Glen realized he’d left his cruise card in Tuscan, so he went back and I met the group in the elevator lobby. Glen arrived in time for the security check. As usually an officer explained how things worked on one of the side terminals. On Princess, they show you the main terminal and I have a picture of Glen in the captain’s chair. No matter, here we are enjoying it. After the tour it was lunch time, and today it was back to the first days lunch. Glen ordered the beet soup, and said it was more like a goulash and not much beet flavor. We both had the NY steak, and main dining’s strawberry shortcake for dessert. Next item of interest was trivia. Music today was 70’s and hard. I suspect we’ll do really well next cruise. Following that, I decided to tweak our specialty dining for the remainder or the cruise. I wanted to do a second Tuscan, a third Murano and the new LPC menu, that starts tomorrow. So I headed downstairs. First thing I wanted to do was confirm when the new LPC menu starts, as I absolutely only want to to do that. Arriving at the restaurant, there was no-one there, but a waiter came out of the crew door, so I asked him. (He was our tuscan waiter for breakfast, but now in LPC garb). He confirmed tomorrow and offered to tweak all my reservations. I decided to move Tuscan to tonight, LPC on the 6th, and Murano on the last night. We went to the lounge prior to our Tuscan dinner, and then headed over. We had the same server, and found out she’d had a great time with family in Bali. Her assistant brought oil and vinegar as the bread dip, which was a little surprising. He told us the basil had gone bad, and they hoped to get more in Sydney. They did give us some Rosemary and Thyme (fun fact: The song by Simon and Garfunkel has a lower vocal that’s a strong anti-war song. I learned this in the class I just finished). We split the antipasto plate to start. It’s really better to do when you have more people. I tried the filet mignon, as was recommended and it was really very good. For dessert I had their zabiglione strawberry shortcake (apparently theme of the day for me). It was very nice and light. Glen had tiramiso and said it was too sweet. As we were walking back to the room after dinner, I remembered that I’d asked Pradeep, our waiter if I could have the baked brie from Blu tonight and he’d arranged that. I felt bad for not showing up, so I went to Luminae to apologize. Everyone was very appreciative that I did that. Tomorrow starts our next round of port days, so early to bed.