eatdrinkfly

This is so great to see - thank you kindly for your posting of the items.

I'm not vegan, but am mindfully reducing my animal consumption for a variety of reasons and love to have options!

Hope to see it on the Reflection for my next cruise.

The buffet at breakfast was another story. Huge line for Horizon Court so we joined it and then were told by a staff member to go to Cafe Caribe as there was no line. When we got to Caribe there was an even longer line than we had originally been in. We joined anyway and then were told by a different staff member to go to Horizon Court as there was no line!!!

ya, we learned our lesson from the previous time we'd done the 1-nighter and avoided breakfast altogether this time. just got off the ship, hit a starbucks and hopped on the skytrain home.

I have done the Pride of America and wouldn't hesitate to recommend it. I have been to Hawaii on land vacations 12 times and we loved seeing it from the ship for a new perspective.

As well, it's so easy to combine with a land stay. We flew into HNL from YVR and spent a night in Waikiki, boarded the ship for the 7 day cruise and then after the cruise flew from HNL to OGG and spent a week in Ka'anapali. We flew from OGG direct back to YVR and it was perfect. No wasted sea days, just 2 weeks of pure Hawaii time. Would definitely do it again.

did anyone else have a super chaotic dinning room experience on Saturday night?

we went to Da Vinci dining room and were told it was a 30 minute wait, but that the Botticelli had no wait and was half empty... so we walked over there only to find it in absolute chaos with a mob of people out front.

we put our room number on a list and were told to come back in 20 minutes...

when we returned, the restaurant manager told us there no one was taking room numbers and that we had to wait in a line to the right and they were taking people from there...

then the guy with the clipboard who took our room number told us we were next on the list and seated us about 10 minutes later.

the funniest part was that they sat us in a section that was completely empty... meanwhile there were a hundred people mobbed out front trying to get a table. we were okay... but man, some people were REALLY angry about the disorganization.

I really wish they'd just take table reservations like a normal restaurant on the 1-nighters. We had the same experience when we did this cruise 2 years ago... maybe next year we'll just hit the buffet and call it a day, lol.

the best part of the balcony is relaxing with a book, a bottle of wine or some cocktails and working on my tan.

I agree with other posters that the Princess itinerary is likely better, but I disagree with your TA about the kids activities.

an NCL mega-ship like the Bliss will have TONS of kids programs and other kids on board, more so than the Princess ship.

There's nothing wrong with Princess's kids programs - there will be lots for kids to do still... but suggesting it's better than NCL, who specializes in family travel is incorrect IMO.

i actually feel like the prepaid gratuities system lets me off easy.

on holidays i would always tip the hotel cleaning staff $5/day... and eating a 3-course meal for dinner, would nett a bill that would have a tip in excess of $20... not to mention eating breakfast & lunch out as well...

i shudder to think how much in tips i dole out in a place like Vegas. easily $30+ per day every day. with a fraction of the service level vs on a ship.

so ya. $13/day per person is a steal as far as i'm concerned and I'm happy to pay it, plus i almost always give a little extra.

For any drink over $10 you pay the full price, not just the difference.

 

 

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oh, really? that's a crap policy.

when i've had drink packages on NCL & Celebrity, they just charge you the difference.

good to know for my next cruise with Princess where we do have a beverage package... we like our nice wine, so that's a bummer to find out.

Iam on the Ruby right now. Two nights agoI ordered a $9 drink from the menu which of course has a 15% gratuity added. I was under the impression that the AIBPcovered any drink priced $10 or less. Soimagine my surprise when the $9 drink is NOT INCLUDED since the total pricewith gratuity is $10.35 which was billed to my folio. So warning for all AIBP users, the totalprice INCLUDING GRATUITY must be less than $10. Princess has increased the price of their drinks so no quite a few arebeyond the $10 limit on the AIBP.

It seems to me that they didn't catch your package on your file... otherwise would you not have just been charged $0.35 for going over $10 if that was truly the rule?

Did someone onboard actually tell you that the gratuity amount has to be included for the $10 drink price, or are you speculating based on your bill?

To me it's less work than having to tell each bartender what I want ever single time I order. If I can do it once, at my leisure, and have it done "for all time" (or until I manually change it later but I can't see why I would want to do so) then that is far less "work" to me.

100% agree with this.

setting my preferences once and not having to verbally explain my preference every single order is waaaaaaay less work. and i'm really looking forward to this in action onboard.

this is why i use starbucks mobile ordering every single day. i logged my preferences once and hitting "order" instead of telling a barista every day what i want is far superior.

i'm a creature of habit, i don't drink sugar or dairy, so my drink orders are pretty similar all the time.

Did you happen to have a waiter named Joseph in Blu? He is the best, sure hope he is still there in October! :D

We had him on the Equinox in March - he was fantastic! we requested to sit in his section every night after night 2.

actually, this doesn't sound like the problem has anything to do with a code share, but rather the fare class on the LH flight.

their cheapest netts, usually sold only through travel agencies/consolidators don't qualify for advance seat selection.

in exchange you likely got a rate lower than was available online, but unfortunately in the case of the OP, since the advance seat selection restrictions weren't communicated, obviously this wasn't worth the savings to them.

sorry, that's a tough one to find out!

although your selling agent (Princess in this case) is legally obligated to disclose all rules and restrictions of your fare before purchase. if you don't feel they provided this information, you could ask for a refund based on that and rebuy a new ticket at a fare that allows the advance seat selection.

I stayed at the Ramada Cruise Port/Airport and it had a shuttle to/from the airport and the cruise port for free.

It was certainly not a fancy hotel and the restaurant was abysmal, but it was cheap and pretty clean and had the shuttles.

Thank you both - I'll look in to this one today. :)

Good luck! from my experience, not every agent with the cruise lines understands air product fully, but your booking will indeed have 3 locators associated with it.

1. Princess's - which is basically useless except to them internally

2. United's - used to choose seats with them on their flights, which you've done

3. Lufthansa's - this is the one you're missing that will allow you to access the Lufthansa booking online or with their reservations agents.

once you have the missing locator, you'll be able to buy your seats with Lufthansa. :)

you need to call Princess and get them to give you the Lufthansa locator. Then you'll be able to pay in advance with LH online.

Make sure you know the United one and the Princess one, so if they try to give you one of those instead, you know.

LH will have its own locator for the code share. Likely the Princess air person will have to call United to get it for you.

I've done Normandy as a day trip from Paris to visit the Canadian sites and landing beaches and I've done the Paris to Normandy river cruise and I can not speak highly enough of the river cruise.

If you really want to see all the lovely little areas in France that most tours miss, you can not beat this river cruise. Our itinerary was 7 nights roundtrip Paris up the Seine.

We actually skipped the Normandy landing beaches tour with Avalon because we had already done it the year previous, but those that attended said it was wonderful. They took 2 groups, one American and one British & Canadian. As well they had a historian onboard the ship the day before to do a talk (my husband attended and said it was informative).

I think it comes down to if you'd like France and the Normandy region to be the focus of your trip, or a 1-day event.

Curious, have you seen a complimentary one? I'd love a peak ahead of time.

i've seen them. i have a pic of me holding one on my instagram eat.drink.fly

Book the air as flexible and then you can cancel it and rebook if the price changes. this will at least prevent it from further climbing.

My friends and I bought the Deluxe package for our upcoming Allure sailing and they included the VOOM internet for $56 USD/day.

I'm very happy to have drinks + internet for that rate.

I believe i'll get my "money's worth" out of the package, but I also fall into the camp of people that don't like the giant end of cruise bill.

usually on my cruises I end up with about $50 in internet costs anyways.

As well, for this specific cruise, we're not planning on getting off the ship much (or perhaps at all), so we'll definitely make use of it.

we're booked on our 3rd Celebrity cruise in Aqua Class and I wouldn't even consider going without it.

Blu alone is worth the cost. It's decent for breakfast, but excellent for dinner - the food and the service. it's just a wonderful elevated experience.

also, another +1 for that shower in the cabin. it's a big improvement on the standard shower.

as others have noted, Carnival has been running non refundable deposit fares for a while now, Royal Caribbean and Holland have also started and now Princess is on the list too. River cruises have non refundable deposits... eventually i imagine the whole cruise industry will move this way.

it makes sense for the cruise lines to be getting a more concrete commitment from their guests and also for travel agents that do a bunch of work only to have cancellations where they make no money. although if you lose your deposit, the cruise line keeps it all, the agent still makes nothing... but perhaps this will discourage the people that book 10 cruises and only travel on 1.

i've stayed there, but not before a cruise. it's a beautiful hotel in a great location but not cheap.

Disney sells their magic bands for $12.99 to $48 depending on the design... so $20-$25 isn't out of line with the marketplace.

however Disney provides one free when staying onsite... you only have to buy it if you stay offsite.

i would probably skip the laundry hamper... not sure what you'd use it for.

we unpack our suitcases on day 1 and put the empty suitcases under the bed.

then as we wear clothes, we fold up the dirty ones and put them in the suitcase.

this system helps us to have less to pack at the end of the trip, and it gets the dirty stuff out of sight. easy peasy.

we paid for the burger in the Gastropub on the Equinox and it was so so SO good, that we went back for a second one later in the cruise and paid again. so if the new ones are anything like the Gastropub, it's worth the $ IMO.