lstone19

3 hours ago, Bubbs33 said:

I am Canadian with a Canadian passport. First our cruise starts in Rome, the countries are Italy, Montenegro and Greece. I understand I do not require a tourist visa for Schengen countries (Italy and Greece). The Montenegro consulate also does not require a visa. However  I recieved this notice from Princess...

 

As a reminder, you will be visiting countries which are member of the Schengen Agreement. Schengen Agreement countries require passport
holders from various countries to obtain a visa in advance. This requirement does not apply to Australian, Canadian, New Zealand, UK, or U.S.
passport holders. A multiple entry visa will be required if a non-Schengen country is visited between visits to Schengen countries

Poor wording by Princess. The last sentence should start out "If a visa is required, a multiple entry visa will be required ..." or 

Adding to my previous post, not only did I receive calls via Wi-Fi calling, I even received calls when the phone was not logged into the ship's Internet (but recently had been). From my experience, even after a forced log out by logging in on a different device (when you log in on a second device, you get an alert that you are already logged in on a different device and asked if you want to disconnect the other device), the phone stayed known and still received calls and app notifications for awhile. This is similar to the behavior I see on some airplanes where when connecting to the plane's wi-fi to access onboard entertainment without purchasing Internet service, I still receive app notifications and can send and receive iMessages. In short, some Internet traffic leaks through to and from the phone even without being logged on to the Internet service.

1 hour ago, Thrak said:

Question: Do you have any issue receiving calls when you are using WiFi calling at sea?

None on my recent cruise. Of course, there may have been calls to me that I didn’t get and didn’t know I missed. But I did receive calls.

Having Global Entry will help. Make sure you have your cards as you will need those to access the expedited security lines (they're marked with Nexus signs but GE members can use them, at least for flights to the U.S.).

I have successfully made an 11:08am flight using walk-off and then Skytrain to the airport and then still had 45 minutes to kill in a lounge at the airport. And on a recent trip to Whistler, was on a bus from Whistler that arrived in downtown Vancouver about 7:45am and was at the airport via Skytrain and through security and Immigration/Customs right around 9:00am to easily make a 10:00am flight. But I had nothing at risk as I'm retired airline flying standby and if I miss them, I'm no worse off than if I just tried the first "Princess legal" flight. Another time, with bags taken off by Princess, we were at the airport by Skytrain by 10:00am (but were heading to an airport area hotel so not rushing to make a flight).

My opinion is most days, an 11:00 flight is easily makable via Skytrain but all it takes is a delay somewhere to mess it up. 

Show times and other events are not set in a vacuum. The ship's Executive Committee (which includes the Captain, Hotel GM, Entertainment Director, Maitre D', and Executive Chef) sets the times and makes sure that meal times and show times are co-ordinated. If TD dinner times are adjusted, so are the show times. When shows are scheduled to be seen after dinner, there will always be at least two hours between TD start and show start. Sometimes, shows are scheduled for the late TD diners to see the show before dinner in which case there will be enough time between show end and start of dinner. From my experience, other things, like Champagne Waterfall and late Captain's Circle events, are always 45 minutes before late TD and scheduled to end with a few minutes to spare.

Shows are timed to fit with the traditional dining times. Despite some people thinking that they are scheduled independently, the Maitre D', Executive Chef, and the Entertainment Director (as well as the rest of the ship's Executive Committee which includes the Captain, Hotel GM, and several others) do meet to make sure the ship's schedule is co-ordinated across departments.

BTW, dining times are also dependent on the market the ship is in. Don't assume the times being used on it in the Caribbean will apply in the Baltic.

45 minutes ago, kywildcatfanone said:

When we were on a couple of weeks ago I think most nights they shows were 6:30 and 8:30.  However, not every show was done twice per night, so it's a daily thing to know what the schedule is for the next day.

On every Princess cruise I've been on, the Princess Theater main shows (with the possible exception of the Welcome Aboard show the first night) have always been twice a night timed to fit with the two traditional seating times (despite what some people want to think, the times of various things are co-ordinated. The Entertainment Director and the Maitre D', both of who are under the Hotel GM, both sit on the ship's Executive Committee where these things are planned - and I got that right from an Entertainment Director's mouth). And while I can't speak as to what the current officers of Sky Princess are doing, I've found that generally shows are scheduled to be after dinner so 8:00ish and 10:00ish are more normal. The exception is when there is another late event planned like a late deck party by the pool in which case the show for late dining will be before dinner in which case 6:30ish (for late diners) and 8:30ish (for early diners) will be the schedule. But those "late diners see the show before dinner" nights will be relatively few (like only once or twice a cruise).

Now for other shows, such as a headliner doing his or her second show (almost performers have a second show they can perform) in the lounge at the rear (usually a night or two after their main show in the Princess Theater), they might only perform it once.

5 minutes ago, Steelers0854 said:

 

Not entirely sure why we need to get this technical here, for most Wi-Fi equates to wireless internet access and that’s perfectly fine.  

 

Text messages, more specifically SMS messages cannot be sent over an internet connection, so even WiFi calling wont help you here.  Voice calls yes, but SMS messages no.

 

A lot of airlines actually offer this as a feature now.  You can get iMessages and even Apple Music for free onboard simply by connecting to the planes Wi-Fi network.  

1st quoted paragraph: The initial poster specifically asked to clarify if Wi-Fi as used by Princess meant Internet and assumed it didn't. So the distinction is very much on-topic for this topic.

2nd quoted paragraph: On my last cruise, regular SMS text messages were received while on the ship's Internet. Perhaps it has to do with the magic Apple does that copies regular SMS messages to my computer and iPad. However, on a plane where iMessages leak through, regular SMS messages do not.

3rd quoted paragraph: True on some carriers but not on the one I usually fly (and retired from). Having iMessages come through is not a listed feature but it happens on some (but not all) fleets - depends on what provider provides Internet to that aircraft fleet.

It is unfortunate that Princess is calling this "Wi-Fi" when what they mean is "Internet". Wi-Fi and Internet are not the same thing. Wi-Fi is merely a network protocol for wirelessly connecting a device to a network. A network reached via Wi-Fi may or may not be connected to the Internet. Both on a ship and many airplanes today, Wi-Fi initially only gives you access to the local intranet (on many airplanes, that's how the personal device entertainment works); reaching the Internet then requires purchasing (or having by other entitlement) Internet access. All Princess passengers have access to the ship's intranet via Wi-Fi (calendar, internal messaging, stateroom account, etc.); the "Wi-Fi" included in Best Sale Ever is actually the Internet access part of it.

On your phone when on the cellular network, voice calling and regular text messaging use the voice side of the cellular connection; everything else (including iMessages which seem like text messages but are really something different) use the data side of it. Connecting to the Internet via Wi-Fi allows that connection to be used instead of your cellular data. So when connected to the Internet via Wi-Fi but not on a cellular network, you don't have the things that require the voice connections (voice calls and text messages). But, if you turn on Wi-Fi Calling, then the voice connection can be routed via the Internet. In which case you do have voice calls and text messages even without being on a cellular network. And as has been said, you don't want to use the ship's cell tower because it is very expensive (how expensive depends on your cellular provider). 

Here's something a lot of people don't know. A lot of these pay for Internet Wi-Fi services are a bit leaky and some stuff gets through even though you haven't paid for Internet service. On some planes, I find by merely having my phone on the plane's intranet, I receive notifications as well as being able to both receive and send iMessages. And on a cruise a couple of months ago on Coral Princess (although I expect it will work the same on all MedallionNet ships), I was toggling a single-device Internet package between my phone and computer with Wi-Fi Calling turned on on my phone. At one point, I switched to the computer. Despite that, the Wi-Fi Calling indicator remained on on my phone and I received a call as well as app notifications! A little experimentation indicated that Wi-Fi Calling stayed available on the phone for an hour or so after I switched Internet access to the computer - YMMV.

It’s the itinerary, not the ship, that will determine the passenger make-up and atmosphere. As such, I would expect the Sky Princess NYC-FLL cruise in November to pretty much the same as the near-identical cruise done by Regal Princess for the last several years. We only did it in 2019 but there are a large group of regulars on it and in 2019 it was a bit of a party cruise with venues and entertainment going until at least midnight. I can assure the OP that at 10PM, things will just be heating up, not shutting down.

9 minutes ago, gottagocit said:

It surprises me a little that with all the seas days in the itinerary the second formal night is on a port day. 

It's New Year's Eve. The ship was only scheduled in port until 4pm. From my previous Princess cruising experience, New Year's Eve will be a formal night if at all possible.

3 hours ago, azbirdmom said:

 

Thank you!  I saw lobster on the menu and don't want to miss that.  We skip formal night these days but we took an upsell to a suite and will order that from the MDR menu through room service.  Our friends gave us a specialty restaurant dinner as a gift and we were planning on doing that on the second or third formal night so I think we will now make that reservation for the third formal night.

With tonight being New Year's Eve, they may not be following the usual order for menus. Note that the menu he posted says New Year's Eve on it. I would not count on tonight's menu being the one you'll have for your second formal night.

Since this has turned into BSE and casino rates, seems like a good place to ask. Currently have a Hawaii cruise booked for Jan 2021 under Cyber (Internet, OBC, wine, specialty dining) plus BEST2DG (beverage package and gratuities) promotion. Then received the casino brochure pushing BSE (strangely, the casino host on that last cruise where I played a lot and after sending chocolate strawberries to the room said at end of cruise that I didn't play enough to qualify for anything).

I'm sure there are different brochures for different levels. Mine offers $50 casino play and "save up to 35%". If I am reading the fine print right, rebooking with this makes the deposit non-refundable (I assume we can still use a FCD) and since it's a Hawaii cruise, that "up to 35%" becomes 25% for insides and 20% for oceanview (we're in an obstructed oceanview (one that has no straight-out obstructions!) - I assume it's still only 20% even though Princess now sells obstructed under the inside drill-down on the web site). Do I understand how this works correctly? By my math, switching to the casino rate and BSE and factoring in the value of other promotions given up saves us about $160 per person but at the risk of making the deposit non-refundable.

Have not talked to TA yet due to the holidays.

38 minutes ago, Holiday Junkie said:

Sorry, but I don’t know what the difference is between MedallionNet and Ocean Medallion.

MedallionNet is the new Internet service on Princess ships. Ocean Medallion is the device that has replace your cruise card for charging to your account and unlocking your room. The only thing they have in common is the word "medallion"; other than that, to the customer, they're independent systems but thanks to the marketers having fallen in love with the word "medallion", much confusion has been created.

1 hour ago, HS2BS said:

We were on the Coral this past summer in Alaska and on deck 10, at the end of the front left side is a door. This door is to the outside and an observation deck - most cruisers do not know it exists! We had this area out front to share with two other couples, but what a great view of the glaciers!

They're on both decks 10 and 11 and can be accessed via either the port or starboard corridor. I've been out there in both Glacier Bay and the Panama Canal but never tried going up there when at sea.

On 12/25/2019 at 2:04 PM, Ombud said:

Actually since starting this post I've learned (from Princess) that it's going east not west from Rome. So I got a $15 OBC apology and shifted to the April 2021 TA. That's actually better bc I just fly to Florida (uh, my least favorite port .... will have to arrive a day early) but get off in Barcelona and like missing Gibraltar.  Will have a stop over in Lisbon

My guess is Enchanted Princess is going to be in Australia for Winter 2021-22 doing what Ruby Princess is doing this winter and Regal Princess is doing in 2020-21. I was expecting Regal Princess to go back but now that summer 2021 schedules are out, Regal Princess ends its Alaska season (and current published schedule) with a 4-night one-way from Seattle to Vancouver (via Ketchikan) and the usual reason for a Seattle based ship to move to Vancouver at end of season is so that it can then position down the coast to another U.S. port. So I'm guessing Regal Princess will be in L.A. replacing Royal Princess that is ending the summer 2021 Alaska season by heading to Singapore. But just guessing at this point based on where ships are ending their current published schedule.

3 hours ago, XBGuy said:

 

 

Thanks to the posters who were able to provide more insight into this issue.  I learned some interesting stuff, here.  Since this is a pretty standard operation, and, since it is completely invisible to me, I guess I don't care.

 

On the other hand, the techno-geek in me wondered about this statement:

While you are onboard, your daily charges will be authorized at close of business each day with your card provider. 

 

The implication here is that every night they transmit a file with records from every credit card being used on the ship.  Do you think they really do that?  From every ship regardless of whether it is in port or at sea?  Since the ships can be deployed over as many as 24 time zones, is there one "close of business" cut off, or 24?

 

Yes they do. The charges come from each ship so it's overnight on each ship. I use a Chase credit card and have fraud alerts set so I get an alert on my phone for every "card not present" charge. The first night, I was alerted to a $100 authorization from NameOfShip Princess (the ship's name shows as the merchant). Once my onboard spend exceeded $100, I received that the authorization had been increased by whatever that day's spend was. If I checked my Chase account online, it would have showed a pending charge from the ship that was the total of the daily authorizations. Once the cruise was over, the charge was finalized and the final charge replaced the pending charge.

15 hours ago, Thrak said:

 

A number of people here seem to think it's incredibly "funny" to constantly refer to the Steward as "Stewart". This was a somewhat common error among people who mistook the two names/titles/whatever. People here thought it was "funny" and have perpetuated it by repeating it over and over and over... It ends up confusing people who honestly believe what they read here. I really wish they would stop. It's neither funny nor clever.

Agree. As a general rule, as soon as I see "Stewart" or "mustard drill" in a post or someone call their ship "Princess NameOfShip" (rather than "NameOfShip Princess"), I just move on to the next post. My thinking is anyone who does that either lacks good observational skills (particularly when they get the ship's name wrong) or can't be bothered to proofread so who know if what they wrote was what they meant. Either way as I know there are already factual errors in their post, why should I believe anything else they say. 

To keep this on topic, the only thing that really bothers me about the safety video was forgetting on my last cruise on Regal Princess to turn it on and get it over with while we did other things. It wasn't until we wanted to watch something that I remembered at which point we were stuck waiting for it to play.

14 minutes ago, azbirdmom said:

 

Are you posting from your stateroom or from the Internet Cafe?  If in your stateroom have you tried propping your door open?  I know that the Medallion Net satellites yield poor coverage in Alaska and was expecting the same down south.  In Alaska it helped if I opened the door though and was kind of hoping that would be the case in Antarctica.  I'm sure the weather isn't helping - heard it is wet, windy, and very cold!

Keeping the door open might help with you reaching the ship's Wi-Fi access points but will do nothing regarding any issues between the ship and the satellites. Your Internet traffic goes from your device to an access point on the ship via Wi-Fi, then via the ship's internal wired network to the satellite dish, and then to the satellite. Performance with one part of that is independent of performance elsewhere. Your overall throughput will be the slowest of those various parts.

Why do you think anyone here knows? Even if someone posts what is showing on the cruise just before, they could replace a movie with a new one for your cruise. Since you're on a Medallion cruise, you might be able to see the details for your cruise in the MedallionClass app. And that is likely to be more accurate than relying on what is being shown on a previous cruise.

46 minutes ago, kywildcatfanone said:

Yep.  Never seen status get disembarkation earlier.  There is a priority lounge to sit in, but that is all I've seen.

We were on the 10/31 NYC-FLL positioning cruise on Regal Princess. I was surprised when we headed to the Platinum/Elite disembarkation lounge a few minutes before 8:00 to be told that all groups (at least if you were P/E) could disembark immediately (our time was still 15 minutes away). Immediately did so to find an empty Immigration hall! I think we were through everything (had bags to collect off the ship) and in a Lyft headed to the airport by 8:30.

For those doing walk-off, the disembarkation instructions just said "proceed directly to the gangway between 6:30am and 9:00am". No meeting place was listed.

On 12/22/2019 at 12:38 PM, gottagocit said:

It sounds like your first formal night is tonight which would have been the day you visited Montevideo had the seas not been so rough. Is that correct? If so was this evening going to be a formal night regardless or was it moved up a day?  It’s typically on a sea day. 
 

Per the schedule I found on a website that lists cruise schedules, Montevideo was supposed to be on Saturday 12/21 with Sunday (the first formal night per the post) on Sunday 12/22, a scheduled sea day.

I'm surprised to see Captain McBain back in command. He left 10/18 at the end of the 9/29 Panama Canal (Pacific partial) with Dariusz Balana, Coral's other captain, re-joining that day. My understanding was that the captain's had alternating approximately 10-week contracts so I'm surprised to see Captain McBain back already although I knew he would be back before the last of the cruises that go by Antarctica as he had mentioned on my previous cruise that he was looking forward to returning to Antarctica (on second thought, it's been nine weeks - he probably just returned as pushing the change out another cruise would have made his break over 11 weeks).

Also, I'm glad to see Daniele Rosafio is still Maitre D'. We had him and he is excellent and constantly visible in the dining rooms. He ran an absolutely wonderful Chef's Table.

19 minutes ago, kitty2264 said:

Fox8LiveNews in New Orleans reported at 5:30AM there would be some itinerary changes.  They also reported that Carnival had sent emails to passengers reflecting the changes.  Don't know if this is true but that was their report.  They also have a good look at the overnight repairs, whick of course were still going on as the sun was coming up. 

I suspect the change is the already announced move of Cozumel from Tuesday to Friday. The itinerary as scheduled has a lot of slack in it where as scheduled, the ship would have been sailing considerably slower than its top speed. With Cozumel and Costa Maya only about six hours sailing time apart at top speed, by moving the Cozumel port call to Friday, they've bought themselves almost 24 hours they can remain in New Orleans and still make Costa Maya on time. And on the return, Roatan to New Orleans could be done in about 44 hours but was scheduled for 60 hours. Cozumel is in the right location for the port call to be accommodated in that extra 16 hours available as it takes about 13 to 14 hours (a normal overnight) to get from Roatan to Cozumel and it was already going to need to go right by Cozumel on the way back.

5 hours ago, Renmar said:

Thanks for the explanation. Makes me wonder though why cruises on a full transit of the Panama Canal go out of their way to make a call at Aruba and then go partly back to also call at Cartagena in Colombia which is South America. I know, Aruba is a nice island but why go that extra distance?

By the way, I'm from Dutch descent hence the connection I tried to make.😕

 

All the Princess full transit's I've looked at recently stop only in Cartagena. Are other cruise lines doing both? I know from experience there was a period 15 or so years ago when Cartagena was too dangerous for port calls so Aruba was being used then. Perhaps some lines are scheduling both to hedge their bets.

Of course, there's also the matter that even on a one-way cruise, people are cruising for what's along the way, not as transportation. So for itineraries that also stop at Aruba, maybe it's a simple matter of market demand for the port call.

6 hours ago, Renmar said:

For cruises like this they have to make a call at a distant foreign port to comply with the PSVA. Aruba is considered a "distant" foreign port because it is part of The Kingdom Of The Netherlands. Most other ports in the Caribbean do not qualify as a distant foreign port.

 

Theo

I believe Aruba (and Bonaire and Curacao) are considered distant foreign ports not because they are part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands (so is the Dutch side on St. Maarten but it is not a distant foreign port; in addition, Martinique and Guadeloupe are part of France (they are overseas departments (for department, think states in U.S. terms) so their relationship to France is about the same as Hawaii is to the U.S.) but they are not distant foreign ports either) but because the ABC islands are so close to South America that they are considered, for purposes of the PVSA, to be part of South America.