CCJack

Good luck with the biopsy results, lets hope that torpedo misses by a long ways! In my opinion Quebec City is one of the most beautiful cities in N. America and a perfect cruise stop as the ship will dock right in the old town. You can walk everywhere. It would be a don't miss stop for me. Saguenay was very enjoyable. The sail in / out in the Fjord is really nice. We went to the national parked and hiked up the Fjord. As others have said, there is not a lot around the ship so you need to have a plan / excursion there. Good luck.

a couple random thoughts... A 13 day cruise is always better than a 7 day cruise ! Do you have a preference of Southampton (perhaps visiting London) vs. Copenhagen. I put a lot of emphasis on the departure city... flying in a few days prior you get a 2nd vacation tacked onto the first. Both of those could be fun depending on if you have visited before / have an interest. I have been on one MSC cruise, a few quirks that just weren't for me, so I may pass on MSC in the future; but others may like it. I loved the Apex. good luck!

Just be aware that short layovers can be a problem too. If you go to one of the non-airline travel sites, I am amazed that they will combine flights that have a 45 min. layover in a big airport like Amsterdam or Frankfurt after your transatlantic flight. No way I would want that. I always book our own flights, mostly because I want to control my layovers. Good luck... enjoy your trip planning... We are on a cruise out of Athens this September.

Thank you. Yes, I think these words on their website are maybe in "travel agent" language, and somehow they got put on the customer facing side of the website. There is no way a regular customer could decifer those words without help. Just to be clear, if I answer Yes - would be considered for any upgrade even a BD to BB as an example. But if I answered "M" then they would not propose a BD to BB but only to a mini suite, or higher correct? I will also look at your suggestion of deck 10 aft.

I just talked to the agent... PacnGoNow was the closest! The wording on the website is very poor: Complementary Upgrade M: Y/N Complementary Upgrade N: Y/N Complementary Upgrade Y: Y/N what it means is: "Y" means yes, you will take any cabin upgrade above your current classification (mine is BD) "N" means no, you don't want an upgrade. "M" means meta, you want an upgrade but only meta class (blacony) and not above. Since I chose yes (actually clicked a box) for all 3, it defaults to the N, so I currently am not eligible for any upgrade. The agent can change that. So the next question is if I get upgraded to any thing above BD is there any cabins I that could be viewed as a downgrade?

Thank you all... I reserved a specific cabin (B629) when I booked. I will call the agency tomorrow. Have booked many cruises with them and pleased with their service. I never was presented those options for other cruise lines. clarification... it was not "Complementary Upgrade, choose M,N or Y." It was: Complementary Upgrade M: Y/N Complementary Upgrade N: Y/N Complementary Upgrade Y: Y/N

Just booked our first Princess Cruise on Diamond Princess! However, we have sailed many other lines. I booked through a warehouse club travel website, which I have used many times for cruises. For this cruise, I was given the option of "Complementary Upgrade M" and another for "N" and another for "Y". I checked all 3 boxes, I assume that is a Princess thing allowing them to upgrade your cabin. However, I don't know what the M,N and Y mean. It appears that some suites have the cabin code "M" but I don't see any cabins labeled N or Y. If this upgrade is a bad idea, I can cancel and rebook. The cruise is a long way off. Our current cabin is BD deck 11. We don't really care about location on ship in terms of walking, but I wouldn't want an obstructed view cabin. Please share any thoughts. thanks.

We have taken 3 Med cruises, 2 in Spring/Summer and 1 at the end of December. Looking back, I think I enjoyed the December cruise the most. Some days we had to wear fall / or light winter jackets, but some days not. Everything was much less crowded. A few things were closed (Portofino shops and restaurants as an example... but we still went there and enjoyed the views with practically no one there.) Most places were fully open, however. Of course in the larger cities everything is open. This is a personal preference, however, but I enjoyed the cooler temps and fewer crowds.

Good suggestion, thanks.

Not a dumb question, but a couple things to consider. Some advantages of a ship's excursion (during the cruise) are: 1) priority on getting off of the ship early, 2) they guarantee return to ship on time, and 3) convenience of buses right at the ship gangway. None of these would apply for days prior to cruise, so maybe also look at independent tours or private guides and compare to the RCCL excursion price...

I agree. You have a choice at Mt. Roberts.... Hike up to the top of the tram or tram up to the top of the tram. Either way you can then hike at the top (going higher than the tram) - and enjoy the spectacular views. That is what we did. The trails at the top are easy but vast. You will not run out of trails up there, you can spend a little or a lot of time hiking up there.

We are on your cruise. American airlines moved our flight home on the 10th from 5:00 pm to 11:00 am, so we decided to spend another night and leave the following day at 11:00 am. . If they had moved to 12:30 like yours I think I would have kept Sept 10 departure. I would think you can make that. Note that Uber was not allowed in Greece up until a while ago. Now Uber has a pickup spot at the airport. There are some special rules.... perhaps only official taxi's can use uber app but not private cars... I am not sure about this I am not an expert . However the advantage of using the Uber app for a taxi is the price is set and paid through the app, avoiding the haggling with the taxi driver. Our plan is to use uber app. Good luck, we are looking forward to the trip!

I agree, I hope things go well. Although I don't like tight connections either, I think if the OP's flights are reasonably on time, they should have no problem making the ship. I would bet money they will hold the ship at least a little while since they moved it ahead, and there could be lots of people with tight connections now.

Yes, we booked through touringmalta .com. It was a great tour. Enjoy.

I wonder what the reason is for moving the ship's departure time up this close to sail date. A little unusual in my experiences. (Moving ships departure to later is not unusual.) Many passengers may be forced to change plans... transfer plans to ship, or train from Florence, etc. I hope it is not just to save fuel for ship's voyage to Split, the distance to Split has not changed 2 weeks prior to sail date !! (A worse reason would be to get the casino open 2 hours earlier... a captain did tell us that this is a factor in a cruiseline's scheduling decisions!) It is possible they will hold the ship if necessary up until the original sail time and they are just trying to get out early If possible.

I agree with Birdtravels... at this point, best option is to let NCL get you to the ship, you can't stress about what you cannot now control. I hope the OP has been to Venice before because it would be a shame to be so close to Venice and not spend anytime there since you are departing from Barcelona.

We were on the Joy about 6 months ago for Canada /NE. Same as you this was our 2nd time on NCL but the 1st time was many moons ago, and we have been on several lines since then. My first impression of the Joy is that the food was excellent.... better than our other recent lines (Cunard, Celebrity). We ate at Cagney's, Ocean Blue, Teppanyaki, MDR and Buffet. My favorite was Ocean Blue, one night I had seafood, the 2nd night in OB I had steak. Both excellent. Teppanyaki was very good, except we have a favorite local hibachi place and I actually like our local place better, but anyone that does not do Hibachi often would really enjoy Teppanyaki. I thought the buffet was also better than other lines we have been on. As a club balcony room, note you can make dinner reservations 5 days before those in regular balcony. Yes, we reserved the production show ahead of time, but you can also make entertainment reservations while on board. Overall, I thought entertainment had the feel of "budget cuts"! The production show (singular) was good, but the other nights were a Beatles band which played 3 nights, each with a different song list, and that was the main entertainment for those 3 nights. Other nights were nothing or a comedian. All the performers were really good, it is just that it seemed they are trying to put on 1 show for a week cruise instead of 7 shows as in the past. Our club balcony was great (deck eight with only a small amount of theater noise. Nothing that bothered us. ) The Joy is beautiful my only complaint is there is a lot of outdoor real estate that is used for kid's activities (go carts, etc.) Thus the outdoor deck area (pool and loungers) seems to be about half the size of what a similar sized ship would have. So for non-Haven people, yes, I think it may be crowded in the pool area. Have fun!

New to Princess, I have a similar question..... with independent travel insurance you really only need to insure non-refundable costs. So my question is ... are the plus or premier packages refundable if you cancel your cruise. Port fees and taxes are refundable, I am wondering if the plus or premier packages are refundable if you cancel late (but before departure).

Hard to say for sure, there is some "excursion description" text in there that needs decoded ! "Depart at your convenience" sounds like they are taking you back to Fira, and if so you would need to take cable cars down to old harbor. Maybe they are referring to Fira as the "port".

We did the 5 day post cruise. My only complaint was the lack of information before hand, practically nothing. Ours was post cruise, and on ship the guest services could tell us nothing about the land trip. However, once we boarded the buses, the tours were well organized and they explained everything. I don't recall how we upgraded the Denali tour but we did and I know others did after they were on the bus. We took few excursions on the land tour and mostly did day hikes on our own. Alyeska was the nicest resort of the trip (it is a ski resort) we never left the property hiking around the woods and taking their free tram up the mountain. Talkeetna is a quirky little town. The cruislines will put you up at lodging outside of town a few miles. Our lodge had beautiful views facing Denali. You could sign up for a 4 am wakeup call - they would call you if Denali clouds cleared up and the peak was visible. We signed up but didn't get called, it was not visible. It may be difficult to see the peak anytime on your trip due to clouds at that altitude. A lot of people take big excursions by plane or helicopter from Talkeetna to see Denali. We did not but I am sure they are beautiful excursions. At Denali RCCL put us up at a lodge a couple miles from the park entrance. Princess lodges are closer to the entrance. However, we again did some hiking using trailheads near our lodge (outside of the park), when we were not on the wilderness tour inside the park. There is a lot of travel time involved, but these tours give you a chance to see a completely different part of Alaska then what you will see on the cruise.

I can't recommend a specific one, but I like your thinking... I thought the Blarney Castle grounds were really beautiful but you don't really need that much time there especially if you are willing to give up waiting in line to kiss the stone. Our line to kiss the stone was short, so we did it, but you really aren't missing much if you don't do that. A stroll around the beautiful grounds around the castle and then on to Cobh sounds like a good plan.

I agree, we did the RCCL cruise tour and enjoyed it very much. I enjoyed the company of the other passengers and commentary from the guide and driver. Others may like to drive themselves and may enjoy a DIY more. DIY definitely would give you more flexibility, but I liked the cruisetour. I would definitely upgrade to wilderness tour (now called tundra??). I can't speak for Princess but for RCCL this would not have required you to upgrade before you left. Our guide on the bus asked who wanted to upgrade (and strongly suggested everyone upgrade, which everyone did). The Denali shuttle bus also goes as far as the wilderness tour, but we found that our wilderness bus would stop by a Grizzly bear, as an example, for quite a while to observe. The shuttle would also stop next to us to see the same bear but would not stay more than a minute or two, I suspect they have a schedule to keep. Have fun...

I agree with most of the responses here, cruiselines may need to change ports for a variety of reasons and I have never felt I was a victim of bait and switch. However, to the OP's point, I do think the cruiselines could do a better job of explaining these changes. As an example Celebrity moved us from Cobh (Ireland) to Ringaskiddy (which is across the bay.) Cobh is more desirable. I would just be curious, did the other cruiseline pay more money? Was our ship too big to dock at Cobh? is it weather related? I don't feel like we got cheated, but just curious Similarly, in Flam (Norway) our ship docked. They let our cruiseline excursion passengers (only) off. Then our shipped backed out and everyone else who didn't have a ship's excursion had to tender while another ship took the dock. No explanation given.

I agree with the above responses.. my only additional comments are if I were to prioritize your list, I would put trevi fountain towards the bottom, and maybe even Roman Forum. The Forum has huge historical importance but you really need to know what you are looking at and take time for explanations, etc. You may end up walking through or by the Forum to get to the Colosseum anyway. I would not skip St. Peters, even if you only have time for a walk through. A quick walk through would give you an appreciation for the size of this Basilica. Agree that the Pantheon is an unbelievable building when you understand its age and its condition (excellent).... try to find time to get inside. A good private guide is a good investment especially if this may be your only visit to Rome.

We stayed at the doubletree. Great views of the canals, and easy walk to canals, shopping, etc. Very short walk to train station. We also walked to our ship. About a 20 minute walk to ship, a doable walk even with luggage. Some people in the hotel took taxi to ship so that is a toss up.