PMGS247

Agreed. In OPs example they do not have access to the Elite discounted wi-fi pricing, but yes, access to cheaper wi-fi might leave you a larger gap that you won't utilize enough coffee/soda/alcohol to justify. Elite discount 50% so that's like a $13 impact. It's one additional alcoholic beverage basically. Probably not likely to change the result for most people, but for some, sure.

Honestly it's the right call for most people. Where it's not the right call are: People who remove gratuities or don't use or share wi-fi AND they don't drink much. $60/day is low for a stand-alone drink package compared to the rest of the cruising industry so just drinks alone it's not that hard to justify it, but when you factor in the other inclusions it really is the right thing for most people. Not judging it any way and not saying they don't exist, there's plenty of people who's vacation style doesn't justify the $60/day, but it's safe to say it makes sense more often than not. If you plan to pay your gratuities and would purchase wi-fi anyway, you only need to get usefulness out of about $20 of premium coffees, sodas, and alcohol per day for the package to make sense. With on-board prices as they are $20 isn't much. A lot of people get this out of just coffee/water/soda before even factoring in a single sip of alcohol. If you take out wi-fi and/or gratuities it's a higher bar for how much you need to drink to justify the package.

Yep definitely works. I've never heard of being charged for sodas but it is definitely cans. One point of confusion in surfing the internet for this topic is that Carnival drink package does not work on Princess Cays. Given there's actually a lot more Carnival ships going to PC throughout the year than Princess ships, there's a lot of user created content and people's first hand accounts that would lead someone to believe drink packages don't work there. Not sure why such a difference exists between Princess and Carnival, it doesn't make a lot of sense, but it's always been like that as long as I've been cruising.

Yeah both the website and the app can be glitchy. I usually have better luck with the website but nothing's a guarantee. Contacting the TA is a good call.

You should be able to order immediately after booking. It won't ship until the last 2-3 weeks before your cruise, so it really doesn't matter if you order a month or 12 months in advance but I'm not sure there's a limit to how far in advance you can put in the order. App has been particularly buggy recently so if you're having trouble it's more likely just the app being its usual buggy self.

No seems like that ended sometime around the turn of the year. 80’s night seems to have taken its place.

That's odd that it doesn't give the opportunity to buy the packages. It should. That's a customer service call.

Thanks for the detailed breakdown! Living vicariously through you as a month ago today we were at Princess Cays. Want to go back on board! Seems like a lot of effort to get the drinks thing squared away when you were at 12/15. It is annoying that they don't listen to you when you ask them to split the drinks evenly but I think that's just an unfortunate reality at this point...as long as you don't actually go over and start incurring charges it doesn't really matter. They should tell you at the time if that happens where they're about to serve you a charged beverage which would be an opportunity to say no, they've been charging everything to your account and they need to go on the other one....although I wouldn't fall out of my chair in shock if they just silently charged you and you have to take it up with guest services later. I would just keep a close eye on it and have your other half order the next couple rounds or use their phone to order on the app for both. Going down the path of trying to fix it on the fly with chat or guest services is just too distracting in my book. I'm going to take some basic steps to avoid being charged by playing games with who orders the drinks and whose app we use but worst case deal with charges the next day. Chat function will just send me through the roof and ruin my evening LOL

Fair, I suppose I'm intending to address specifically those that come in to discussions like these seemingly hell bent on convincing others what's right for them entirely based on their own style. You certainly don't qualify....but there's never a shortage of them in threads like this.

should be able to make it work. even if you run out of real estate under the beds with the additional suitcase it's would be reasonably out of the way on the floor of the closet.

Totally reasonable. It's a fine line between doing the math for what you would have spent and what you'd be happy to have. In a lot of cases, people end up covering the $60 fairly easily with just what they would have bought so it's not even necessary to dig any further. This more stringent math is a better lowest common denominator for most discussions because typical nay-sayers will argue that if they wouldn't have bought it than it's automatically wasteful. As pointed out though, it's not wasted if you enjoy it, and if having the package is what gave you the mental freedom to enjoy it, then there's legit value in that. As with most things, YMMV, but the non-monetary benefits of the freeing mindset you get are a very valid justification if that's something you enjoy. It's just a nuance that just doesn't go very far in a discussion with people who are trying to crap on the idea of packages because they like to have a bare bones vacation and think everyone else should too. I have not read this thread, it's way too long, but given the 9 pages of discussion I'll bet a few of these people have chimed in LOL

On our sailing it was the first and second sea days. That should generally be true most of the time on a 7 day itinerary tho I’m not sure how it works on a 4 port itinerary since Formal night won’t be on the final night of the cruise.

Someone posted the webcam image confirming port side was indeed facing the harbor. The same was true when I was on this same itinerary 2 weeks ago, but I've been stalking it for a while and I can say that when they visited ~3.5 weeks ago based on the same webcam they backed in and starboard was facing the harbor. No idea what drives that decision. Seems like 90% of the time it's done like this with port side facing harbor. St. Thomas and Port Everglades are similar in this way. I think it's how I got in the habit of snagging port side rooms. On two occasions on debarkation day the captain has decided to pull in the other way in port everglades and I've woken up to the terminal outside my balcony, but seems like 9 times out of 10 they back in and you're facing the water.

Interesting! My wife and I just got off the Enchanted a couple weeks ago and were applauding the fact that they had closed captioning on all MUTS. I had assumed that was fleet wide but apparently not. They definitely can do this though.

I don't disagree with any of the ranting/raving in this thread, I don't have anything to add in that regard, but just to chime in on the one element that I don't think anyone's addressed: The delivery date of 6 weeks actually probably does make sense. They tend to ship all medallions for the same sailing at basically the same time, typically arriving ~10 days before the cruise, give or take. Doesn't matter if you ordered 15 months in advance or 4 weeks before the cruise.