beltsbear

The royal princess had Voss sparkling water in glass for the top tier drink package. 

Just do the stock perks app, they did my credit in 48 hours, it shows up online now. It took five minutes. 

The desserts are a bit much.  This varies ship by ship but on the royal princess they would not just give me the gelato I wanted which was cheaper and easier.  So first time I ordered the big Sundae which is free for me with the gelato flavor I wanted.  The second time I ordered the big sundae without two of its features, no brownies and no coating the glass in chocolate.  They made it as asked. The third time i deleted everything but the gelato but they still put brownies and whipped cream in.  I was on princess premier.  The next time (in two months) , I will further experiment with the Jack Nickelson method of just getting gelato. 

On 3/26/2024 at 12:12 PM, Lady Arwen said:

Reserve Class is nothing like Blu on Celebrity ships.  Reserve Class dining is a roped off portion of the MDR using the same kitchen and menu.  Each night you will be offered a “special” dish which could be an entree, appetizer, salad, etc.  You do not need reservations and the service will be most likely be elevated from the rest of the MDR.  Blu on Celebrity is a separate restaurant with their own kitchen and menus.  No reservations and service is highly elevated.  This restaurant is only available to those sailing in Aqua class or suites.  Big difference.
 

 On Princess, we prefer to forgo the MDR as much as possible and eat in all of the specialty restaurants.  It’s actually much less expensive than Reserve Class and you get much better food and service.  I would only book Reserve Class if it were offered at a sale price.  However, some people enjoy it, so it’s strictly a matter of your expectations and tastes,

Agreed.  In fact Blu is better than MSC Yacht club dining in our opinion.  Probably one of the best non specialty dining on any line.  We miss it as it is now extremely expensive, and we just booked another princess cruise at about half the price per night. 

I have lived in the are for years.  The bridge is important and will be missed, but the marine traffic is essential.  They need to clear the debris like it is wartime.  They can't drag this out over months.  It needs to be done in weeks.  While most people do not get their food from the port, tens of thousands of jobs rely on it, along with fuel and essential industrial/farming equipment.  Two weeks won't ruin things, but two months will cause serious issues.  

A new bridge will of course take years.  But most trucking did not require the key bridge.  It was only required for oversize or hazmat loads, which can go the longer way around the other side of the beltway.  And yes, this will make traffic worse of course.

I am on the Royal with princess premiere.  I can order the fixed menu but nothing else as others have suggested. 

We are on the Royal now, and had $100 casino and $100 shareholders both considered in AUD so we took a haircut on those.  But our travel agent provided credit was given a good exchange rate, and in fact it was larger than we expected   A 13 day cruise is Australia is probably the worst deal for the shareholders credit!  

We have been on five princess cruises. We loved our time on the island but there were some major differences.  The buffet breakfast was unusually bad. No salmon on 2/3 of days, unlike all of our other princess cruises. Poor other choices, little room to eat.  Breakfast in main dining was normal. 

We are finding that ocean terrace is not open for much on port days , cutting the possible uses down greatly.  An opening time of 5pm is frustrating. Despite being premier they only allow us the fixed menu which seams wrong. 
 

alfredos works out much better but we vastly prefer sushi. 

19 hours ago, ALANG said:

Just got off the Celebrity Beyond almost two weeks ago.  Wife and I were in the Retreat  and were disappointed in the experience.  The pricing of the Retreat is insane for the value received.  Luminae was nothing to write home about but the service was very good. We have been sailing Celebrity for 15 years but now they have kicked their loyal customers to the curb with their cutbacks and ridiculous pricing.  So today we booked a 12 day trip in the Virtuosa's YC.  I am expecting a great experience.  Sometimes change is good and this past loyal Celebrity customer is looking forward to this trip.

 

 

We have done six celebrity aqua class cruises and loved them too. But it seems now we are priced out. So we did cruise on the virtuoso in YC in 2021 and loved it.  Service was a little spotty in the YC restaurant but the food was good. But overall YC was wonderful, and the non YC parts of the ship were nice with some issues.  The gym was unusable due to being half the size it should be. The buffet was rather low quality so we stayed in for YC meals for lunch. 

On 12/22/2023 at 9:50 AM, cruise_critical said:

Technically yes, but not to the extent that I was expecting unfortunately.

 

e.g., I'm currently on the Royal and with premier. Ocean Terrace has a fixed menu which is a small bowl of salad, beans, pickes, 2 salmon nigiri, 1 prawn nigiri, 1 tuna nigiri, and spicy tuna aburi roll (8 pcs). There is no other choice or selection that you can or are allowed to have as part of the plus / premier package. (anything differen is charged at ala carte rate) So you can have unlimited of what I've listed (even can order them individually, and not as a set) but nothing else on their menu can be ordered for free. (e.g. can't have any other type of nigiri such as hamachi, octopus etc, nor any of their other rolls or sashimi etc)

 

Alfredos is better, as you can pretty much order anything and everything on the menu, as a 3 course set or in an individual manner as many as you want. (e.g. can just sit in, and order the tiramisu and nothing else, or order 3 pizzas and nothing else etc.) Same for Vines with their limited food menu.

 

 

And ocean terrace is closed on most port days for lunch. We love sushi but have had very limited availability as it’s opening at 5pm most days.

2 hours ago, mike&elena said:

Has anyone cruising this month had any luck getting eggnog (with or without booze) while onboard?  It really wouldn't be Christmas without a good 'nog.'

🎅🤶

They gave egg nog away on the royal princess in the main atrium while Santa was out.  No charge or medallion check. 

We got one on carnival without asking.  It was almost 50% bigger and wonderful.  Yes, the shower was more problematic. 

I have been on both lines many times.  Rooms are available when they are.  There seems to be no difference between lines.  Sometimes I have gotten into our room early on both lines, and sometimes I have not been able to get to our room or it has not been made ready on both lines.   It is a matter of luck more than a difference between lines.  

As others have said, I prefer celebrity if money was not an object, specifically Aqua class.  But our last three cruises now have been Princess, both for itinerary and cost reasons.  And we have thoroughly enjoyed them though me miss Celebrity Blu dining.   Aqua class is so expensive now I can often get MSC Yacht club for the same price per day.  My Elite on Celebrity gets me more, than my status on Princess, but now with us always including drink packages, it means less than it used to.  

Our next cruise after our soon coming Princess cruise is another MSC Yacht club, so price is clearly driving us away from Celebrity after doing six Aqua class cruises.

We have broken our run of seven celebrity cruises in a row. We are elite and usually do Aqua. But we have now done two princess cruises and book mini suite.  It us not as good as celebrity….. but it is around half the cost.  Then we also did yacht club on msc and it was pretty much the same price as aqua and it was a pretty good experience. 
 

I would like to go back to celebrity but pricing for aqua is near absurd levels most of the time. 

Nice ships. Bad food in main dining.  But worse than anything I have ever experienced are the announcements.   Whatever you are expecting….. it’s worse.  Super loud.  Longer than an 80’s remix of the song “rock me Amadeus ”. Interrupting dinner.  Sleep.  A nice conversation.  At some locations I had to cover my ears for five minutes, while paying to eat in a specially restaurant.  

Had 1200 princess casino points and was offered just $150 free play on a cruise.  Which is ironic because we had $500 in free play in this cruise we just finished and don’t know why. 

The buffet for regular passengers is worse than Olive Garden.  But the virtuoso was very pretty.  Specially steakhouse dining is NOT as good as princess, but the indo-China place was good. We were yacht club and the dedicated restaurant was excellent.  The perks did really make it a good experience. But yacht club is 3x the price of a comparable princess cruise so it had better be good. 
 

I agree that regular msc passengers get pretty terrible main dining b

On the island princess the internet was ok for just email and text and was touch and go as well. We just got back last week. Video or any heavy tasks failed. 

Princess has vpn websites blocked but vpn service works if you can activate it without using a website.  For example if you try to navigate to the atlas vpn website, you get a blocked message. 
 

once the vpn is on, the medallion app will think you are off ship and most of it stops working.  On the other hand , YouTube and Twitter are faster with vpn on. 
 

So I turn it on and off depending on what I am doing.  I have used nord and atlas vpn.   They seemed very similar to me. 

On 6/22/2022 at 9:45 PM, Taclin01 said:

Hi, I was wanting to get some feedback and some opinions on these two ships. We have sailed celebrity in the past. We have been on the Apex, Equinox,  Summit, and we are going on the Solstice in two weeks. I was wanting to get some feedback and some opinions on these two ships. We have sailed celebrity in the past. We have been on the Apex, Summit, and are leaving to go on the solstice in two weeks. I am looking at doing a cruise in December and found two great itineraries on the ships. We have never done a princess cruise. How does it compare to Celebrity? How is the food? We don’t really attend any shows or anything. We just want some good food and drinks. I do think that the summit was my least favorite. Any input would be greatly appreciated. I’m just nervous to try something new. 

I prefer celebrity over princess,  and I loved my cruises on the milenium, but now it’s an old ship compared to the discovery.  So discovery would probably be a nicer shipm I would assume better entertainment on the discovery.  If you did aqua class on celebrity, the food would be better, otherwise they will be pretty close. You could be closer to gaining status on celebrity though, and that could be valuable too. 

Also on board the island princess with a 72 hour old test at boarding.  

On 1/11/2022 at 8:16 AM, TrinaLC said:

Why not?

 

I would think if OP placed it in a duffel bag no one would care one way or the other!

 

 

The electric ones are even more restricted due to fires.  Airlines don’t always allow them , even in checked luggage.  They have a lot of batteries and exceed thresholds that they need to be reported for transit. 

On 1/8/2022 at 12:34 AM, Stefanni0522 said:

Hello - I have searched near and far on Google and keep getting results for Mobility Scooters so I wanted to ask if any one here has had experience with bringing aboard a personal stand up scooter to only use once you are in port?  

This is a foldable scooter that we just want to bring aboard and then use to scoot around each port.  Certainly would not use on the ship.  Anyone have any experience with bringing one aboard at embarkation?  We will be on an MSC cruise 1/16/2022 if that makes any difference.  I just think they are too new to have any protocol. 

 

Thank you in advance for any info you can share 🙂 

Are these electric?  If so definitely don’t bring them. 

We did this, and while we enjoyed it, it was surprisingly expensive for what you get.  They did not offer drinks from the regular menu, so while we had a drink package, we paid for our drinks there.  Alone that made it expensive.  Food was good, but rushed.  It came at us fast and we were in and out of there in 40 minutes.  Of the specialty restaurants it was our least favorite. We loved the Sushi place and Indo-China.  

On a spluge, I would go there for lunch, but it is not open for lunch.