sandsunsurf

10:15 local time, the line is moving slowly, still hundreds of people outside of the terminal. Three ambulance responses since we have been in line. I will be surprised if sail away is before midnight. Princess definitely needs to do better, as does the cruise terminal. Through the windows it appears the bottleneck is the metal detectors.

As of 7:49pm local time, Crown is not at the Pier, huge line out front for boarding. Flashbacks to Ruby trip out of SF in July.

Thanks for the update!! Is this at the Hyatt Embarcadero? My favorite hotel in San Francisco! So should we cancel dinner reservations? Or is it just sandwich platters and fruit?

But at least they gave us $25 OBC to cover our additional costs in the city. 🙄 we are still super excited- we did most of our packing yesterday and then moved pajamas to our carry-on. We are driving from Reno tomorrow so now we can leave a bit later..

TL;DR- you buy wifi to access the internet, not to make phone calls. If you buy internet, you can use data messaging apps and use FaceTime or the like for communication. If you dig deep into your phone, you probably CAN make traditional cell phone calls and send texts, but it takes some knowledge and work. ---------- There is not an easy way to explain all of this. Even the (seemingly) conflicting posts are actually correct from that person's experience. I'll try to break this down into two parts: first being the connections the second being phone calls and texts. Unfortunately to be technically correct I will have to use some jargon. Please bear with me.. Generally, your phone connects to three "networks" in different ways using radio frequencies (not cords). 1) You have your WiFi connection, which accesses a local computer-type network (Princess MedallionNet or your home network, for instance). On Princess, if you pay for Internet, then the local network also gives you access to the internet, over the WiFi connection. If you are on the Internet, you will get data like from the web or the cloud storage using different protocols. These could be "internet protocols." Also, to picture this in your head, wifi is when your phone is acting like a computer connecting to the internet. 2) You have your cellular connection for the other two networks (which are now really just one connection)- a voice component and a data component. This is a radio connection to a tower that is then connected to the provider's "telephone" network. On the ship, the "tower" or "cellular connection" is operated by the Ship, and this is the expensive way to use your phone for calls and texts (more later). The data portion of this is now so advanced that this direct cellular connection to the internet is like using your wifi at home, but it's not using WiFi, it's using cellular. This part is simplified, but just understand that it is very different from WiFi. For the next part of this, we have to include a little history. Initially, a (dumb) cell phone just connected to the cellular tower which then connected to the "Plain Old Telephone System" which you know/knew as the plug in your kitchen wall with a phone attached using copper wires. In the 90's it was trivial to use a police scanner and actually listen to people's cellular phone calls, they were a two-way glorified walkie-talkie. Over the next 20 years or so, the cell phone introduced the ability to have some simple data attached to the radio signal, and SMS messaging was introduced. Then with 2g digital and later cellular, a separate data channel existed which ultimately gave us smart phones that could access the internet and have a voice conversation simultaneously. Now this is where the conflicting possibilities and posts come in... With your current 5g iPhone or Android, there is still backwards compatibility with the old SMS messaging, which means that your cellular carrier AND your phone's capabilities and settings matter. Talking on a cell phone NOW actually means you are talking on the data channel using a "voice-over-internet-protocol" or VoIP. GoogleFi as a cellular provider takes advantage of this and allows you to make a "cell phone" call over your WiFi connection to the internet or over a cellular data connection to the internet. Now we need to separate out the texting options. SMS is still (mostly) a cellular phone network function. iMessage is not a text message- it's a really complex data messaging app that happens to bring your SMS texts into the fold. WhatsApp or Messenger or Signal are all chat apps like that, also. The catch is that the person you want to talk to has to have the same app, vs SMS which is basically universal without regard to your cellular provider or phone make/model, because it is the old-school standard that used to share the cellular signal. With all of that background: If you buy internet on the ship, have an iPhone, and don't change settings on your phone, you can seamlessly message people with iMessage if the other person has iMessage also because iMessages is a chat app, but you WON'T see any texts from your friends with Android. If you have an Android, you can use Google Messages, which is like iMessage and integrates SMS with a chat app but you won't see SMS texts from others. So with Internet package on a ship, you can surely use chat apps if your friends and family have that same chat app. Where it gets more complex is that some phones and some providers have a setting that allows "WiFi calling" which means that you can use VoIP to make cellular calls and send SMS texts over a WiFi connection to the internet. Sometimes this ability is limited by your provider, not your phone. This is what the post from the user using GoogleFi is specifically talking about. So if you are able to change the setting on your phone, you may be able to send SMS texts and make phone calls using the ship's internet connection and package.

Well and now I'm in the same boat- calling again after "Will" was supposed to call me back. The current rep keeps going with circular questioning asking what promo code I used and she says there are not any notes in my booking showing that Will was fixing the problem.

@Pardytime you may want to call the Casino booking number again. I just had my second conversation with a supervisor who told me that there are more booking numbers that "have to be fixed" because they booked a Princess Plus fare but didn't get Plus, and that he will call me when mine is fixed.

I came here to post the exact scenario using casino rates available online- the reservation starts with the radio button for Princess Plus selected, then you select cabin etc. It does not show the standard, plus and promo price options again (like it would if I didn't log in), so it was a different work flow than normal booking. Because I was unsure of the outcome, I screen-recorded my booking, and sure enough the Plus package was NOT on my booking confirmation. I've talked with Princess twice and they don't seem to understand... But if you have access to casino rates, I'll bet you can duplicate this scenario. I think they HAVE to honor it because you are clearly selecting Prince Plus Fares.