leck57

I have taken many cruises on Princess and always used a TA. Last year I entered a Princess competition but put my "unofficial" email address as my details as I knew it would generate a lot of marketing emails. Sure enough I have received many from a guy who states he is my Princess Vacation Planner. I've checked him out and he is in the Philippines as well and probably never set foot on a cruise ship. I'd say one minute he is an uninformed Princess Call Centre employee and next is an uninformed Princess Vacation Planner. Princess have done themselves a major disservice by outsourcing call centre ops to a cheap labour operation.

The way we do it as well. Before the cruise starts I look at the ship schedule to see in general terms what's on but once on board use the paper copy Events Listing to mark what we will do for that day.

Yep, understood. Strange that @lorri111 Travel Summary apparently doesn't have that wording.

Hmm Interesting. I just checked my Travel Summary for the cruise I finished on Monday and after Flights (which I didn't have any) it says "your ship begins boarding at at 12.30pm on Feb 05 and sets sail at 4pm on Feb 05"

It should be there. It's usually in bold print just after the cabin details etc. Anyway if it says Depart at 3pm I'd be getting there around 11am if you want to board early.

Yep, I think you do. In answer to the questions you raised in the initial post, in my experience the answer is no.

Go to the Personalizer on the website and then open the Travel Summary. It's in there as a boarding windows as there are no set times now.

Another question re Crown if I can please. We are looking at a cruise early next year. We always prefer a sofa in our cabin but does Crown have Deluxe Balcony category rooms, which have a sofa. At a quick glance I couldn't see any which means I gather we'll need a mini suite to have a sofa?

Oh sorry, yes I did misunderstand. If you'd have said you are Platinum but don't have the Premier package then I'd have gathered what you meant. You have the answer and if you want to pay then go for it. We are just off a cruise and saw a list of the prizes and many are not that great in my opinion. They can make it seem like everyone wins but, for example, one of the prizes supposedly valued at $75 is a "Pizza making experience". The odds of winning this prize is 1:2000 so that gives me an idea of whether I personally would participate. Of course people win 7 day cruises but I'll take my chances with the Powerball draw.

You are getting loyalty levels and the different packages confused. You have to get the Premier Package to have Prizes included, or pay extra for it. Whether you are Platinum or Elite level has nothing to do with it.

You are a wizard! The password I had for the website was as I wanted but the App had a different password that I wanted to change. I followed your directions and just reinput the old website password but it also changed my App password to what I wanted. Thank you.

That's great. Why other ships in the fleet don't operate the same way is anyone's guess.

I've been trying to change my password on the App for weeks and get the same type of message.

Might be tricky, but they seemed to have it pretty well worked out on the ships I was on before they changed it. It's not Dine my Way, it's Dine Their Way.

They'll do one account in most cases, unless you ask them to do one each. They are far more relaxed about this now. I often asked for 4 beers as I wanted to take some back to the room fridge and never got questioned. In the past they might have had concern that I was sharing.

Of course and I expect that on Princess as well. However if they had a number of walk in tables they could keep people continually moving through and tables always in use.

It varies, as it would in a bottle shop here. Two examples I can quote though are Brown Brothers moscato which my wife drinks is about $16 a bottle here and on the ship it was $64. Another Henshke Shiraz is about $44 in shops but $139 on board. Too much is probably the answer. Per glass these were $15 and $29, which didn't concern us as we had the package.

That's obvious. My point in general is that there should be a better balance of availability between bookings and walk ups, like there used to be. Essentially on Coral it seemed like if you didn't book they couldn't really help you.

We disembarked Coral today and had a package so didn't look too closely. However many beers were around $10.50, wine by the glass around $15-17, and cocktails about the same. If you Google this you will generally find some pics of booze lists. I found a couple of really good reds at $23 or $27 a glass and the Plus package limit was $22, however I was happy to just pay the extra $1 or $5. Most cocktails and basic spirits were under the $22. You'll find plenty of threads about the value of packages here and on FB but after wifi that's included, if you ignore the other inclusions such as those diabetic deserts (I had one, terrible) and the exercise classes, we find if you have, say 4 alcohol drinks a day on average that just about covers the cost. Package also includes café bar coffees and a cap/flat white etc were $6.

Ok, a report on Dine My Way on the Coral Princess that we disembarked today. Lovely cruise and a nice ship despite needing a little bit of love. We thought the comradery between the crew on this ship was the best we had seen, demonstrated by the last dinner parade and at the last theatre show where about 200 crew across all teams walked up on stage at the end of the show with many waving their National flags. Anyway, on to dining. Disclosure - I prefer the old anytime dining where you could walk up and either get seated or given a pager if no tables are ready. I do not like to be organised to the point where I have to be at a Dining Room at a booked time (Specialty Dining excepted) and I accept I may have to wait at times. On the second day of our cruise I thought I'd just fall in to line with the new system and book at table, this was about 10am in the morning. One Dining Room had no slots available, shared table or otherwise, and the other Dining Room had 5pm only. Too early for us. So I went to one of the Dining Rooms about 6.30pm ready to dine but not expecting anything. The gentleman on the door immediately advised that they had nothing and long story short, it led to a discussion about the booking system and the former way. I said to the guy that I could see heaps of empty tables and he said they were setting up for 7pm arrivals. I said why have long periods of time when tables just sit there. He had no answer, and of course, he was just being a good Company man. He could sense my annoyance and said if we returned at 6.50pm he would find us a table. We did that and at the conclusion asked if we wanted that table the next night, and the next night etc. While in the Dining Room I observed that about 25% of the tables were never occupied at any time and as we struck up friendship with the adjacent (almost touching) table, our meals took a long time, so I was able to observe over a few hours. I should stress that the guy on the door and I were very respectful to each other and he laughed every time we arrived for dinner and I said we had a booking for 6.50pm. I tipped him well last night. However no one should have to put pressure on staff or they be put in this position, with this system that now doesn't have any balance between booking or walk ups. In fact on Coral there was essentially no walk ups I assume between about 6.15 to around 7.30pm. I'm totally convinced the old system was much better overall, where both booked tables and walk ups were well allocated. I have done about 10 Princess cruises so know the systems pretty well but I'd hate to be a first time cruiser dealing with this.. But......it ain't going to change, so I'll play Princess' stupid game. For my 21 day cruise in July I have booked a table every night for 7pm. That might work for us some nights but others not and I will cancel that time at sometime during the day. However I will have blocked a table that no one can book until I cancel and like me, they will look at the App during the day and see no tables available. Also like me they may observe a Dining Room with many empty tables caused by no shows. Yep, it's a first world problem I know, and despite my ramblings this doesn't stop me from having a great cruise. I know people that are happy to book and want that certainty of a table at a set time will disagree with me, or of course, I'll hear how the system is fine on other ships, but I've been on two Princess cruise in the last 12 months on different ships and the issues were the same. Rant...has ended.

Nup, you haven't made a mistake. We did Alaska on Royal Princess and it was first class.

You probably know this but just in case...you have tried scrolling the times on the App? Some time back I had 5pm come up as the initial time and I wasn't aware that you had to scroll to see other times.

We cruised HAL and Westerdam last year and it made us appreciate a bit more noise. If I want quiet I'll go to church.

Personally I like the music sound level in Crooners or Wheelhouse and I don't expect to have a private conversation while a muso is playing. They only play for 45 minutes so either just wait or move to a quieter area. However, as some have said, I fail to see why some activities are conducted in the Piazza. Some are just noisy and could be done elsewhere.

Do you remember what brand? I haven't seen draught beer on Princess for a long time but I much prefer draught if it's decent. I seem to recall that they had Heineken once but I hate that stuff.