ringers0815

I like the crew, the itineraries, the smaller, older ships, the self-serve laundry facilities (great for long cruises) and the medallion.

Thank you for posting about your day. We are following along until we join the ship in LA for the crossing to Brisbane, Australia. Not sure if you will be on the ship for that leg but we are enjoying reading about your cruise.

Safe travels!

Thank you for doing this review. We will be on the ship in February for the LA to Brisbane crossing and find your review quite interesting and useful. Have a great day in Cozumel and a wonderful cruise!

Glover Garden is an easy walk from the cruise terminal where the Diamond docked in March. It’s right in front of the terminal, just cross the street and go up the street with all the shops. There are usually lots of people going up that street to shop, see the Oura church and visit the garden so just follow the crowds.

Thank you for sharing your trip with us. It brings back many memories from our Princess cruise in March. We visited the shrine in March with a Princess excursion. It’s a beautiful place but lots of walking. The weather was nice in March, sunny and not too warm, perfect for walking! We visited Kamakura on our own and it’s a beautiful place. We saw the big Buddha and a few other shrines and temples including a bamboo forest. I am certain you will enjoy your visit!

We have done most of our cruises with Princess recently but decided to do one with Royal Caribbean in 2024. I find their web site and app very difficult to use. Can’t find info easily, but maybe it’s because I am used to the Princess web site and app. Now I realize they don’t have medallions so we will have to go back to having key cards hanging from our necks… I already miss the medallion…

We took the bus from Yokohama station to go to the gardens. There are several buses that can get you there but it does take a bit of time (20 to 30 min each way depending on traffic). We took the bayside blue line bus which is one of the sightseeing buses because it stops at all the major attractions in Yokohama. There is a tourist info office at Yokohama Station and they were very helpful in helping us figure out which bus to take and where the stop was for that bus. There is a lot to see in Yokohama. China town is walking distance (a few minutes) from Yamashita Park (which is the park where the Daikoku pier shuttle bus drops you off). Yamashita park itself is very nice and you can walk all along the water to go to World Porters and beyond.

We sailed in early September in 2018. It was a beautiful week! Sunny all week and fairly warm the 3 days we spent in Alaska before the cruise. T-shirt weather on land and on the ship. Never wore gloves, just a sweater or jacket from time to time. Scenery was spectacular.

Very easy to do. We walked with our big suitcases from the Holiday Inn to the ship. It’s an easy walk, flat surfaces and sidewalks all the way.

Yamashita pier is at the other end of Yamashita park (where Gundam is). It’s an easy walk from one pier to the other if you don’t have lots of luggage.

Yes the bid is per person but they were charging us 4 times the bid eg if the bid was $100 per person for a total of $200 instead of charging $200 they were charging $400. They immediately saw that it was an error when I called and corrected the amount due to the correct one. But with the new system, if the same error occurred they would have charged our credit card and it might not have been as easy to fix.

I don’t know if I would bid again now that the payment is automatic. When they accepted my bid for a Feb cruise, I went in to my account to pay for the upgrade only to find that they had made a mistake and had doubled the amount of the bid! I had to phone them to get them to correct this which they did rapidly. I would have had a nasty surprise had they charged this inflated bid directly to my credit card. And I wonder whether it would have been as easy to get them to refund the charge and charge the correct amount than it was for them to change the amount owed before I paid.

I did not use the visa service, I downloaded the app and applied for the ETA on my own. Fairly easy (once I had figured out the port address) and got the approved ETA about 40 min after submitting my application.

I also thought that Princess must handle it for passengers since they do not have any info on it under "important notices" in the booking information. But when I called Princess they had no information and suggested I call the visa organization they recommend who, in turn, told me I had to apply. Since this is a new requirement (in place since Sept 2022 for Jeju) and cruise lines are only now going back to that part of the world, I did not want to get a notice at the last minute that this was required. Better safe than sorry.

I downloaded the K-ETA app and applied for the ETA today. It was approved within 30 to 45 min. The most difficult part was figuring out what to put for the address where I will be staying (as the system requires an address with postal code). I contacted the help center again and they told me to ask the cruise company what port we would be using then either find the exact address of the port in their system or find an address close to the port (as, according to them, not all the addresses are in the system). Once that is done you enter the name of the port, name of the ship on the next address line and finally the phone number of the ship on the next line. So a bit of work but once I had all that info it was fairly straightforward.

You can either use the link in the email they sent to confirm your bid or go via cruise personalizer, enter your booking number and name and it will show your bid and indicate it’s status.

Bidding opens after final payment and they usually send an email inviting you to bid. But you can also access the bidding system through your cruise personalizer. If you scroll down the summary page of the cruise you should see “Princess Upgrade” and you can click on the link to start the process.

The embassy replied that we need to apply for a K-ETA even for a cruise stop. I just find it bizarre that there is no information from Princess on this requirement. I have another cruise booked with them for Australia and they do indicate that we need to apply for an ETA for Australia. But nothing about South Korea for our upcoming cruise.

The system sets the minimum bid. There is a scale with an arrow and you can move that arrow from the minimum up to the maximum amount indicated on the scale. For example, on an upcoming 9 days cruise in Japan, for an upgrade from an obstructed ocean view to a standard balcony the bids vary from a minimum of $400 per person to a maximum of $1,100 (all in Canadian dollars). It will vary from one cruise to the next depending on the fares for each cruise. I noticed that the minimum bid set by the system can change over time. It won't change your bid but it can go down if there is a sale and the fare goes down. It happened to me on one cruise, I went back in the biding system to check when I noticed that there was a sale on and changed my minimum bid to the new minimum which was lower. so it pays to check fares and amend bids as required.

Most of the posts I read offered minimum bid (or close to minimum). That is what we did, minimum bid for a standard balcony (from an obstructed ocean view). Our bid was accepted but I think it really depends on whether the cruise is near capacity or not. Ours has lots of cabins available and we are 20 days away from sailing.

We will be there in March on a Princess cruises. I messaged the help center of the K-ETA web site asking if we needed an ETA for a cruise stop. They responded to ask Princess if they would be handling this for all passengers or if we needed to apply on our own. I then called Princess and spoke to several persons. No one seems to know. The final person I spoke to said he did not think we needed an ETA because we were there for less than 24 hours but suggested I speak to Visa Central, the visa service that Princess recommends. I phoned Visa Central and they said that yes we needed an ETA even for a short cruise stop but they did not know if Princess would be applying for all passengers. I have also sent an email to the S. Korean embassy in Canada asking them if we need an ETA. On their web site they say we need one if arriving by international flight. So I asked them if we need them for a cruise stop. If I hear back from them I will post here.

Well after speaking to 3 agents and spending 1h27m on hold the problem was finally solved. All the agents could see that there was an error (they had charged each passenger double the per person bid amount) and we had been overcharged for our upgraded cabin but the first 2 agents were unable to resolve it. They finally transferred me to guest services who were able to speak to the Revenue Department and resolve the issue. A long wait but problem resolved in the end.

I don’t think so. The bid is priced per person buts it’s the total of the 2 bids that has been applied to each passenger. Does not make any sense but will call them to sort it out.

I just got an email from Princess accepting my bid to move from an obstructed ocean view to a standard balcony. We bid the minimum amount for a 25 night cruise. Our cruise is in 23 days. But when I went on cruise personalizer to pay for the upgrade, they had double the amount to be paid! My bid confirmation and the email saying they had accepted the upgrade bid had the correct amount we bid per person and the total to be paid. Somehow they applied this total to each person doubling the amount that has to be paid. So now I have to phone Princess tomorrow to sort this out...