damiross

I love my Keurig. It makes great coffee (I like breakfast coffee and the Walmart/Costco brands are great). The water is hot enough to use for instant oatmeal and tea bags. Main thing is that coffee is not wasted. My wife doesn't drink coffee. BK (before Keurig), I would make coffee in something like a Mr. Coffee. I would waste half of what was made. Just wish they had the machine available in the cabins.

Regardless of what I said earlier, my wife wants to go to the DMR for formal night (which, if I'm not mistaken, is the 1st sea day). Unless someone wants to take petty on me and tells me how to do it, I need to go through this topic to find out how to get a non-private table. We enjoy meeting others in the MDR. All I can get is a private table.

I solved the problem of making reservations by not making reservations. I don't know what time I want to eat tomorrow much less weeks from now. On past cruises, if we wanted to eat in a MDR we made reservations in the morning. Most of our MDR eating was done at breakfast.

A couple of ways to look at this. The San Diego cruise is an extension of the big ship cruise. It's like travelling across the USA in an RV. There are some places where you need to use a smaller vehicle to get to. The Royal Princess is the RV and Hornblower is the smaller vehicle. The San Diego cruise is a tour that just happens to use a boat for the means of transportation. "Cruise" doesn't really describe the tour but there really isn't a better word to use.

I am trying to figure out which cruise I'm taking. On the Hornblower and Groupon pages, there's a two hour tour for $40 (less 50% for Groupon). The Princess tour is $30. In any case, I actually have a 100% discount because I'm using OBC credit given to me.

My belief is that the zoo, like many museums, have become entertainment venues and not educational places. They feel they can charge more because of the entertainment they offer.

Thanks. Just hope BART will be a nice ride and not an adventure.

A lot of small businesses are working on a very thin profit margin. The 2-3% that the credit card people can make a difference in a profitable job or one that barely breaks even.

We like animals. We don' like the very steep prices the zoo has. The entrance fee starts at about $65 per day per person!

Not necessarily everyone. I know it is. You know it is. Mr. and Mrs. Smith on their first cruise may not know. It's also nice to remind veteran cruisers that it is a per day charge for the entire length of hte cruise.

I looked for it on this and another excursion. It must really be hidden! I couldn't find it.

This is what was amazing. I checked the Hornblower site. The fares were actually higher. I printed out the travel summary. I had forgotten that Princess had given us OBC so (1) the excursion isn't costing us anything and (2) I withdraw what I said about not wanting to use the OBC.

We are taking the San Diego Harbor Cruise. According to Princess, it is a 15 minute walk to Hornblower. Looking at the map, it appears the Hornblower office is located right next to the cruise dock. Am I looking at the right Hornblower? Also, anybody taken the SD Harbor Cruise? What did you think of it? I found out "fer shure" that Princess uses OBC for excursions. Is there any way around that? I wanted to pay for it and keep the OBC for other stuff. Thanks in advance.

I wish people would say the correct price. It is $xxx per day.

Now that you mention it, there are escalators. I checked the estimated costs for Lyft, Uber, and BART. The prices came out to about $45, $60, and $10 respectively. I didn't realize how much of a difference there was between Uber and Luft. I'll probably go ahead with BART.

I know if I was a steward, I would rather have cash than trinkets.

If the elevators are working. The main issue, though, is multiple changes of transportation. That would be the most difficult part for my wife.

It doesn't matter if a person had $100 or a million in the bank. Tipping should ALWAYS be based on the service received. If you get lousy service, then give a "lousy" (or no) tip. If you get exceptional service then give a bigger tip.

One way to think of this is like it is a dividend. With a dividend, you have an ex-dividend date and a dividend pay date. If a company announces a dividend and you own that stock before the ex-dividend date, then you get the dividend even if you sell the stock. You could consider the date that you request the benefit as the period between the dividend announce date and the ex-dividend date. Does the above make sense? By the way: I haven't sold my shares since I requested the shareholder benefit.

Sometimes it's better to pay more. My wife's knees are not the greatest and my knees are trying to emulate hers. I estimate it would be about $10 for us to go from Castro Valley to the pier. But, that involves getting a ride to BART, travelling on BART (and hoping the bums are not there and the train is on time), transferring to the F line and, finally, walking to the pier. While Lyft or Uber will cost about 5 times as much, the convenience of not having to do all the transferring is worth it.

Have you checked the flights nonstop flights from Phoenix to London? Flights are offered on British and American.

Do they allow luggage on F? Even if luggage is allowed, do you want to take it on a (in my experience) crowed street car?

When I finally located the boarding times on the Medallion app, I saw only 2:30 was available. I will do like I have on previous cruises: show up around 10:30 or 11. This is hat I did even though the boarding group had us in a boarding group that was 2-4 hours later. We've always been able to get on board by noon.

Correction. there is a surcharge for drinks. If you can remove the 18% then it is a tip. Remember: Tips are optional, surcharges are mandatory.

I have a container that weighs 100 pounds, more or less 😃, with a three or four chargers and several cables (both A and C) in it. Although I don't have (and never, ever, want) Apple products, I do try to put one Apple charging cable iun my container in case I run across some poor, misguided soul who has an Apple product and needs a charging cable.