leck57

Beef and Guinness pie. They only have them every 4-5 days but they are a great late morning snack or a lunch.

This exactly. It seems the OP is not aware of all the options. Been on many Medallion Cruises and never used the smart device to order.

I did see them once. I took a whole plate full of them thinking they were calamari rings. Quite embarrassing when I ate about two and then had the waiter take the rest away. 😬

I never have a problem ordering a drink for me and my wife. I cannot order, say 3 beers and 3 glasses of wine for the two of us. Yet I can and have ordered that much at a time, for room service. Strange that they enforce this at bars to stop sharing yet I can order extra to my cabin and have people, who may not have the drinks package, visit us there for drinks.

Just order extras from room service and place any that need to be kept chilled in the fridge. It's strange that when you have the drink package, at the bars you can only order one drink yet from my room I often ordered 3 or 4 beers and 3 or 4 glasses of wine all at the same time.

Only a couple of Princess ships have a capacity of 4,000 so the average is much lower. Also 60,000 passengers per week is 312,000 passengers per year? Glad you are not my accountant.

I don't think so. We completed a Princess cruise in November and both me and my bride received a survey.

Pretty much spread out, and as you are in the Glacier Bay area for a few hours people moved around. Very few were on deck 7 where we spent most of the time but quite a few were on the decks above the pool deck.

I know what your point was, and I'm saying it is completely wrong. I assume you just picked a spot behind glass and didn't move from there. There are heaps of locations without having to look through glass. I think you just needed to explore the ship a bit more.

Your balcony will be fine as the ship does a full turn around while in Glacier Bay. However we found a great spot on Deck 7. There is a small deck area outside Crooners on one side and behind the shops on the other side. I reckon there were no more than 10 or so people outside here and being a bit lower was good as well. I have no idea what that person is on about glass obstructing you. I assume they just picked a lousy spot and stayed there. Even on higher decks, such as the area near the Outrigger Bar, there are no obstructions, just more people. We had a balcony and found we were moving between deck 7 and our cabin quite frequently. Photo of deck 7 location and view from there. (What obstruction?)

That is absolute rubbish. I did Alaska on Royal Princess and I had no issues seeing everything from many different venues. I don't know what glass obstructed you, assuming you are able to stand. I've been on Majestic as well and the enclosed pool area would also be great for Alaska. The Sapphire would be a great option as well.

Unfortunately this is standard for most Apps. I recall about three years ago my mobile couldn't work the Princess App and as my phone was getting old anyway I bought a new one. At the time I think you had to have Android 7 or above. Seems a bit unfair when your phone works perfectly as a phone but that is the way it is I'm afraid. I learnt years ago there's just some battles I will not win.

It's interesting, and good, how people have different perspectives on ships. We just finished a cruise on Westerdam and we would easily prefer cruises on the Princess Royal class ships anytime. We were quite happy with the Westerdam overall as we are just happy to be cruising again, but found it poorly laid out, particularly the Lido, coffee up on deck 10, no atrium, Billboard on top of the casino, and terrible tendering. We also found areas just as crowded as we've found on bigger ships. We wouldn't go on Westerdam again. That said, I have no doubt we'll be on HAL again as we go by the itinerary as our main point of choice and HAL have some more varied itineraries than Princess at present.

Having cruised both lines recently I'd pretty much agree with most of your points. I might differ with the MDR as we found our recent HAL cruise dining room offerings to be marginally better than Princess (subjective I know). Along the lines of what you said, we found the entertainment on HAL to be sadly lacking in comparison to Princess and the Princess entertainment is spread out around the ship, not confined to a general area or a venue that adjoins the Casino. A big plus for us with Princess is the self service laundries on every deck. Overall we would cruise with either line. I have done 10 Princess cruises and finding the itineraries to be lacking variation, they seem to be doing the same old trips. HAL have some different cruises (eg Canary Is) which are attracting my interest. Even though we are nearing Elite level on Princess, I can't understand why people stick with one line to attain benefits which when compared to the cost of the cruise, are negligible. So, in summary, if we are happy with the cruise line and the costs are similar, the itinerary will be the major factor.

First up, full disclosure - we have done 10 cruises with Princess and a couple with Celebrity. We recently completed our first cruise with HAL on Westerdam, a return cruise from Singapore through Malaysia and Thailand. Overall we had a great time and the points I'll raise now, I appreciate, are first world problems. The Westerdam was in good shape, our balcony cabin as good or better than Princess, the crew fantastic with a few exceptions, and dining room food (subjective I know) was as good as any cruise we have taken. However the entertainment was poor, activities limited and often held in poor venues (eg bingo in Billboard), ship layout was not great (had to go to level 10 to get a decent coffee, not in a central location, Billboard was against the casino), on some occasions the Open Dining seating wait time and organization was a shambles, the layout of the buffet was poor. The main issue we had was that the tendering, which was done at two ports we were supposed to dock, was terrible. They ran limited tenders and seemed to have little docking space at the drop off point which slowed the process. At Langkawi I could have swum over to the large port which we have docked at previously, but for some reason HAL dropped anchor and tendered here. At Phuket we waited around three hours total on one day we were there to get to shore and then back. Overall, I quite liked the ship but it had no wow factor and I'd hate to spend many sea days on a cool weather cruise on her. However, we like the look of a cruise in April next year that goes to the Canary Islands then the Baltics, for 27 days. The ship is the Nieuw Statendam. I appreciate that this ship is newer and larger than Westerdam and the itinerary appeals greatly. With Have it All the cost is quite significant for a balcony cabin. I would be interested in the views of people that have been on both ships or Statendam in particular whether the issues I raised above are not so much of a problem on the Statendam. I stress the Westerdam cruise was not a bad one but there were some things we haven't experienced on other cruise lines. Please, no flaming. I have tried to be objective and hope for open minded responses. Thank you.

Sorry for the late reply. There is a large crew door opposite 8018 and a smaller Restricted Access door opposite 8020.

Hi Julia. I haven't forgotten this request of yours and will check it out.

This is my first cruise with HAL so I'm not really across venues prior to this. However I've not seen BB King mentioned. Other than the main stage the venues seem to be Rollong Stone, Lincoln Centre, and Billboard deck 2.

On Westerdam now. In addition to the mechanical stuff, a lot of carpet was replaced in the main public areas.

I do exactly as you do. I think the risk of taking your passport on shore is madness. I've never been asked to show my passport on shore but I know a few people that have their passports stolen when on shore.

Excuse what might be a dumb question. I have done all the Navigator App stuff and have my boarding pass showing on the App. I'll take your advice and do a screenshot but if I didn't, do you need Wi-Fi for the App to work. I have found that accessing Wi-Fi at airports in the past can be a pain and you often have to go through a registration process etc. If I had time, not so much a problem but when you walk into a cruise terminal with eyes generally for what queue to head for, the last thing I want to be doing is setting up a Wi-Fi account. Of course, I am referring to using the App outside of your own country where many phone providers don't provide global access. Specifically, I am in Australia and leaving on a cruise from Singapore later in the week.

I agree with the OP. As soft serve ice cream goes, it is pretty ordinary.

And also question why people ask here. Just about everything that is asked here, the answers are found on the Net somewhere. Using that rationale, they might as well close these threads down.

Such as one of their Connoisseur tours. We did one of those before the cruise and found it fabulous in every aspect. Everything is arranged and most meals are included. If you can afford the extra I would do it.

Yes, the letter was long and in some cases factually incorrect, but overall the OP has a point about a general drop off in standards. If people with over 500 days write to Head Office and let them know that in their opinion Princess isn't as good as previous, then you would hope someone will take notice. Moreso if a number of people complain.