ILShipmates

On 10/10/2019 at 2:08 PM, ontheweb said:

They would not let me do that when I called in earlier. When I asked why, the response was that the program of letting you use OBC precruise for excursions is new.

 

The fax that they received requesting the OBC had both our names on it as joint holders of the stock.

Apparently it is too late already, but.... First, this is hardly a new issue. I have been doing it for several years. If you asked about splitting the OBC so you could buy an excursion, they probably won't do it. However (from experience) they will allow you to book more than one ticket to your account. I have called and purchased my wife's ticket under my account. If I remember correctly, both tickets had my name but that didn't matter.

13 minutes ago, royal65 said:

Is this true if you are pre-booking excursions prior to embarkation?  I have more OBC than wife due to shareholder and veteran benefits and when I pre-booked excursion, I had to charge hers to a credit card.

Pre-boking of excursions, etc. is a little different. If my wife doesn't have enough OBC in her account, I can call Princess customer service and have them use my OBC instead. Once on board it doesn't matter.

Have been researching options for transfers from Venice airport to cruise port.

Wondering if anyone has had experience with Princess transfers that they could share???

 

How direct is it? Do you wait a long time for other passengers flights to arrive? Is it a bus? Does it have a regular schedule?

 

How is luggage handled?

 

Any other comments would also be appreciated.

It has been a couple of years, but I don't remember waiting too long. It will depend on when your flight arrives. We were transferred on a bus. Typically you would give your luggage to the driver, then reclaim it when you get to the port where a porter would get it on the ship.

when the hold expires at 12 tonight can i put another one on 'right away'..same room. i have a nice obst balcony that i chose on hold now. decision will very likely be made tomorrow

I'm guessing you already have your answer as your time has expired. However, for most cruises, it is usually possible to have your hold extended by calling princess.

If we were to switch our current booking to the 3 for Free special offer, would it affect our EZ air reservation on our booking? I do not want to lose the airfare we currently have booked as it is much cheaper than what is being offered now on the same flights.

That would probably depend on whether the change resulted in a new booking number. We switched to the 3 for free and kept the same booking number. As long as the booking number doesn't change, your EZAir shouldn't change.

No $499 for me. Inside $699 pp.

Balconies are the same price, at least for the Oct. 26 cruise.

Regal Oct. 26

Kevin,... there are no OOV cabins on the Regal. Do you mean obstructed balcony? Those are showing as $1440.

IF YOU DO A SEARCH YOU WILL FIND SEVERAL POSTS ON THE SUBJECT.;p

Otherwise, you could just look under the "More" selection in the bar above (next to New Posts). there is a menu that includes "Countdown Clocks"

If done on a sea day you will need to contend with whatever type of weather is happening and the wind from the ship's forward motion. Depending on where your balcony is located that could be a major factor. I'd hate to try to do it on a forward facing balcony while underway. ;p

Exactly, ... That is why we try and pick a late port day.

Call the DINE Line as soon as you board. You should be able to get it. The main advantage of reserving before the cruise is being able to lock in a specific day. If you want it on a certain evening, it is possible that they might not be able to accommodate you.

 

Not sure about this answer... I tried the dine line, but was told to call the room service line. They asked what day and what time. We pick the day we are in port the longest so don't have to deal with wind.

I have seen at least one report, here on Cruise Critic, that people have enjoyed it in their inside cabin. Now, that does not mean that it really is available for inside cabins or that it really is available for inside cabins on all ships. As I recommended to Daisy Rose, call the DINE Line and ask. The worst that can happen is that you'd be turned down. The Sanctuary thing seems less likely to me, but, again, you can ask for free.

 

People have done it in their cabin. It has to be pretty cramped though for an inside.

See replies in red above.

we leave on our Alaska cruise/tour on Monday. Our room is yet to be assigned. We do the land portion first. We are suppose to separate what we won't need for the cruise portion in aseparate suitcase as they will take it from us and we won't see it until the ship. I am a little nervous as we won't have a cabin number on our luggage tag. Has this happened to anyone else?

Not a problem.... You can still print out the luggage tags and put them on your luggage. They have all the information that Princess needs (your mane and cruise) to make sure they get to the right place. They will probably have the information and write it on your tags when you check in.

Do most of you that sail Princess regularly have a personal vacation planner? First time sailing with Princess and feel I should ask for a pvp instead of trying to keep up with my booking on an unfamiliar website. I would appreciate your thoughts.

 

 

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Assuming that you are talking about a Princess Vacation Planner, they are probably better than not having one, but they seem to be short lived and when I had one didn't do anything special other than give me a single person contact to ask question of or call to book a cruise. I prefer a TA for the $$ benefits however, I still usually do all my own research and book the cruise myself before turning it over to the TA.

I have noticed lately that they seemed to have changed them. We have several as well and recently on the Regal the ship model they offered were 2...1 HUGE one or the small one...so I got the small one...got home it is about 1/3 of the size of my others for Coral, Caribbean and Sapphire...which is funny since Regal is a bigger ship than all of them..haha

Mine for the Royal and Regal are size appropriate compared to the others, but didn't have a base with the name on it.

Can someone please help me, we are thinking of getting 100 shares of stock, how much OBC do you get with this? Is it different depending on the days you are cruising, 7 or 15 days or is it the same for all cruises? How do you go about getting this credit? Thanks in advance!!!!

 

 

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Time based.. <6 + $50, 7-13=$100, 14> =$250

How can I find out if there's a large group booked on our upcoming cruise? We are booked on the Jan. 9, 2018 eastern Carib on the Royal in C626. I'm concerned because the Caribe deck is almost completely booked while other decks have dozens of available cabins in this category. I hope this is not a dumb question. We don't want to be in the middle of a large group.

Thanks.

Not sure why Carib would almost be sold out on the Royal as the cabins/balconies are no different than other decks unlike on some of the other ships. When a TA holds a group it usually has cabins in different categories and decks. so my guess is that it isn't a large group.

Fresh brewed coffee from the coffee bar by the IC was NOT FREE on any Princess ship I have been on. Free syrup/concentrate coffee is available from room service or Horizon Court.

That depends on your perspective. The fresh brewed coffee is free at the IC, IF you purchase a coffee card. So, since you have to have a coffee card, is it really free????

Thank you! This is truly quite confusing. :D

Last time I checked, it amounted to...

Cruises starting this Fall, will require payment to hold a Princess excursion. So, for my October Panama cruise I had to pre-pay for the excursions I wanted.

Second, if you have OBC that came as part of your booking or from Military, that OBC can be used to pay some/all of the payment. When you go to pay, if you have available OBC it will tell you how much you have that can be applied. My wife ran out of OBC but I still had plenty, so a call to Princess was required to book both excursions using my OBC.

I have seen that pre-buying OBC did not count, and could only be used once onboard. At least that is the way it was a couple of weeks ago.

Hi is anyone interested in sharing a taxi or mini bus at any destinations on this cruise? :)

 

Jim and Dee Scott

Try posting this on the roll call for your cruise if you have not already done so..

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2359380

Yes Pam, I am learning that OBC can be used, but it will not be equalized.

 

I did not try to prepay as I thought that meant paying with money, like everything else you prepay for. So I now I have done so and seen how it works.

 

It does allocate your OBC first, but if one spouse has more OBC than the other (Military, shareholder, good will etc), it does not transfer over. And it will not recognize Travel Agent OBC as that does not show in advance on our cruise personalizer and only shows up when you get onboard.

 

So, although our excursion reservation total is well under the total amount of OBC we have, they still want us to submit partial payment by money (credit card) for my wife because her name has less OBC listed under it than my name does. Not sure what to do about this, but it is definitely better than I first thought.

 

Don

You can not do it on-line, but when I called Princess, they were able to book the excursions using just my OBC. Not sure why they don't make that provision on-line, but then the agent I talked to didn't even know they had made the change to "paying" ahead until I called. We both learned something.

Okay,

 

Gained a little clarity from the post which says you can prepay with OBC.

 

I had not tried to click the "Submit payment" button as I assumed it would require a cash payment, but it does in fact deduct the cost of the excursion from your OBC. The problem is, it will not "transfer OBC" between the couple. If you have military, Goodwill, or shareholder OBC, That is listed under one traveller's name, not divided evenly among the couple. When we made our reservations, the total was under $400, and our OBC is over that amount, but the majority is in my name. So it tells me I am reserved under existing OBC, but my wife has an outstanding cash balance to submit because she does not have sufficient OBC, even though I have extra on my side.

 

So this is not as bad an issue as I had presumed, but still an irritant. Also, if you have OBC from a Travel Agent, that will not show and cannot be used to prepay an excursion either. So you can reserve some excursions, but if you have an imbalanced amount of OBC between the couple, you cannot distribute it as you would hope.

 

Don

Don, we have seen the same thing you experienced. Don't know if this will help with the imbalance issue, but are you logging in from the ID that has more OBC? I figure you probably are, but just wanted to see if that makes a difference.

 

I suppose in the future we will leave the military applied as before to my husband and I will submit the shareholder under my name to balance things out.

This was my problem also... we ran out of OBC for my wife. I was logged into my cruise personalizer and had plenty of OBC but that didn't make a difference. I finally had to call princess and they booked to excursions for me using my OBC. The reservation on personalizer now shows both our names rather than having individual reservation for each of us like the rest of the reservations. The real drawback will be when I run out of OBC even though I will get additional OBC from shareholders.

This is so new that the agent I talked to didn't even know about it. It is apparently for cruises after September???

Am I understanding this correctly??

 

Back when----you had to prepay excursions, we prepaid $850 worth of excursions.

Then they reversed it and you didn't have to prepay.

 

We have over $700 of OBC. Will they use that and reimburse us because of the reversal of requirement ?

 

Patti

Whether they will do that automatically or not I don't know. However, you have the option of canceling pre-paid excursions without penalty up till 5 days before sailing. You would then be able to rebook on line and use OBC to pay for them. I booked an excursion for our October cruise last night and it required a payment to hold the reservation. After selecting the "pay" option it then gave me the option to "pay" or use obc, and even told me how much OBC I had to use.

Not sure if transportation is different at MIA but we are doing a red eye on the 16th and Princess said our transfer to the ship wouldn't be there until noon. We've since made other plans. Definitely don't want to be at the airport for 6 hours!

 

 

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There seems to be a little confusion here. Some people are talking about arriving early the morning of the cruise while the question was bout arriving early the day before the cruise.

From my experience, if arriving the day of the cruise, there will be a rep there around 8 or so, but the buses will not start till 9:30 -10 after dropping the pax from the ship off. If arriving the day before, it will depend on how many people they have coming in for the pre-cruise package and when they arrive. We came in at an odd time as we were picked up by a limo service. Is that the usual????? But there should be someone there you can take to as long as Princess knows your flight info.

Hi - My parents are scheduled to sail on 4/8 on the Ruby Princess. I just received an email about check-in times based on cabin location. This is something new (to me) as they didn't receive this type of check-in info on their Alaska cruise last June. My question is...they are in a guaranteed category BB cabin and the cabin has not yet been assigned. What time should they arrive? Here are the times listed:

 

1:00p - Dolphin & Riviera Decks

1:30p - Caribe & Aloha Decks

2:00p - Emerald & Lida Decks

2:30p - Baja & Plaza Decks

 

From what I can tell, category BB is on Baja and Aloha (deck 11 & 12).

I've always been told to arrive as early as possible. If you arrive earlier than the time listed, will they not check you in?

 

Also - if they do not receive a cabin assignment before the sail date, how does their luggage get to their cabin? The luggage tag just says "to be assigned". They normally leave their luggage with one of the people outside the port. Since they don't have a cabin assignment, do they have to bring their luggage inside when they check-in?

 

Thanks!

One cruise we didn't get our assignment till we arrived. The Steward where you check in the luggage has a list and puts tags on your bags or in our case wrote on the tags I already had on them.

Can anyone please tell me what juices are complementary on board the Regal? We leave Sunday and really want cranberry juice, not sure if we need to pick up any before we get to the port.

 

Thanks in advance.

 

Leslie

Since you asked specifically about cranberry, I won't list the multitude of other juices you can get (including V8). The catch is that they are only available free during the morning breakfast time unless you want to purchase them from a bar. If you want it for later in the day, get a server (or room service) to bring you a large glass and take it back to your room.

Good day everyone! We are not new cruisers, but it's been YEARS and we're rusty...this July we leave for Alaska from the port of Seattle. We fly in on a Saturday evening and embark Sunday afternoon. And that leads to two questions. 1) We're having problems deciding where to stay that Saturday night...airport hotel seems much less pricey, and I imagine most, if not all, offer airport-to-hotel shuttles...but what about transportation from the SeaTac airport area hotels all the way to Pier 91? I found a few companies offering paid shuttle service from the airport to DOWNTOWN hotels and from there on to the pier, but most of the downtown hotels are out of our price range...and the ones that are a little more affordable are booked up. Are we stuck with an expensive hotel or does anyone have a suggestion for us? and 2) When we debark the ship, we're staying in Seattle the rest of the day and flying out the next morning...so again, same questions...how do we get from the pier to a reasonably-priced hotel? City busses seem impractical with all our luggage (there are four of us). Taxi cab? Can we all fit with all our "stuff?" Paid shuttle service? Which one? We welcome any advice and thanks in advance!

Our experience is a little dated, but we stayed at the SleepInn airport. They have shuttle from/to airport also will take you to the train if you want to go into town. They also had a shared van (slight extra charge) to take you to/from the port. There were several other hotels in that area that I am sure probably did the same thing.