Ken the cruiser

Unfortunately, we didn't take part in any of the Casual Dining venues while we were on the Grand. We tried Vines for lunch when we were recently on the Sapphire and subsequently determined Casual Dining venues weren't so "casual". Basically, the one time we went for lunch there on a port day, there were just too many people, all presumably with the Plus or Premium package, returning from their shore excursions with only two servers to deal with all of the 3-course meals at various stages being ordered. For us after that it was just easier to head to the buffet if we were back on the ship around lunch time.

Have you checked yet to see if all of the aft-facing balconies are gone yet? If we’re booking a cruise on an Edge-class ship, those are definitely our cabins of choice. 

Great pictures! Thanks for sharing as you’re helping us get through our cruising withdrawals while we’re between cruises! 😁

Wow! I just checked what the prices were for a Flora 10-day booking in Dec 2026. The Infinite Veranda is currently over $2,700 per person more than their cheapest Sky Suite with a real balcony! 😱

1 minute ago, vino123 said:

Thank you for all your wonderful photos especially the Prins Christian Sund @gretnagirl. We are on the Eclipse 16th Aug Iceland and Greenland cruise and are especially looking forward to the sail through the sound and the chance to visit Greenland.

@KenTheCruiser amazing that you saw the Northern Lights in August, we shall keep our fingers crossed and our eyes peeled. We have a sunset veranda cabin so hopefully we should get a great view if they are visible!

Great cabin choice, especially for this cruise! That photo was taken from our aft-facing Aqua cabin! 😀

Thanks for posting those awesome pictures! They definitely brought back a bunch of memories! On the second leg of that August 2022 B2B, we even saw the Northern Lights around 11 pm as the Summit was leaving Iceland heading towards Greenland. 😁

8 minutes ago, Robkat said:

Once the excursions have been paid, is the Elite 10% discount automatically refunded to your onboard account? 

Or do we need to go to the GS or Shore Excursion desk to request it?

 

Isn't it just the silliest to thing that the 10% isn't just removed and discounted when the excursion reservations are originally made?!!!?

SMH!

All of the excursions that were pre-booked prior to the cruise, and the associated funds used to pay for them along with the 10% discount OBC, will all be posted to your account at the beginning of the cruise. Of course, if you decide to cancel one of those excursions later on after the ship has sailed, the associated 10% OBC will also disappear.

I might note that on our recent Alaska B3B, the 10% shore excursion refund that was posted to our account at the beginning of each of the 3 legs was always refundable OBC. However, we did book quite a few excursions and had to use the credit card to pay for some of them after we used up our pre-cruise FCD, military and shareholder OBC associated with each leg. Now, maybe if you only use nonrefundable OBC to pay for your excursions, then the OBC might be nonrefundable. In any event, you can easily check your Folio on your App once you board the ship to see if it's refundable or not.

The only time we did not get the 10% discount was on our 5-hour airport transfer excursion at the end of the cruise. 

41 minutes ago, Italy52 said:

Ken, with regard to your question, my travel agency does not allow us to participate in the Princess Upgrade Program.

I guess that has something to do with Group rates. In any event, sorry to hear that. I’ll go back over to the peanut gallery now. 😂

10 minutes ago, Tampa Girl said:

 

Aren't the balcony cabins on the Zaandam also larger then the Koningsdam's Vista Suites?  

It would appear as such.

Just curious, but why don't you just put in a bid to upgrade your cabin?

Princess Upgrade – Cruise Room Upgrades - Princess Cruises

BTW I'm not a travel agent. 

6 hours ago, ridgecrest said:

We did the B2B Canada, Greenland, Iceland on the Celebrity Summit in August of 2022.  The ship left from Cape Liberty but returned to Boston.  We absolutely loved every moment of the 24 days even though we spent 7 of the days quarantined with Covid on the second leg.  We had an oceanview cabin at the very front of the ship on deck 6 which gave us beautiful views especially when we went through the Prins Christian Sund.

 

We had visited the Canadian ports on prior cruises but enjoyed them none the less.  The excursions were quite pricey but sold out very quickly.  However, there were other slightly cheaper options as fellow cruisers set up private excursions and gave CC roll call folks opportunities to join them.  So, I suggest that you join the roll call and stay active up to your cruise.

 

We did a puffin and whale watching excursion I believe at St. John's.  We just walked around Qaqortoq. We did another sea life excursion in Akureyri.  I forget what we had planned for Isafjordur but we missed it because of rough seas and we were sick on the return to this port.  We had an excursion planned for Reykjavik but Celebrity fumbled the ball on how they went about processing those doing the back to back.  They took so long that we had to cancel our excursion.  

 

A couple of tips.

Dress in layers

Take a mosquito net that goes over your hat to cover your face and neck in case the bugs are out in full force.

Have fun

We were on this Aug 2022 B2B as well but in an aft-facing Aqua cabin and had an awesome time! You can see my Live From thread in my below signature area, which highlights what we did in the various ports, what we saw along the way, and what we did on the ship. Hope this helps.

18 minutes ago, peagreenid said:

No, I haven't contacted AARP.  I read your information on post #94 and it sounded like you were dealing with Princess only.  If I don't hear back I will contact AARP tomorrow as they are closed now.

 

Thank you

After reading what I wrote back on post 49, it reminded me of the process I took. By calling AARP first, they not only gave me the PCL phone number to call, but also the guidance to record the person’s name, just in case I had to call AARP back if the PCL rep gave me any issues. 
 
We subsequently contacted AARP, who in turn said we needed to contact Princess to verify the funds from the gift card in question had not been applied anywhere, to include recording the person’s name in case AARP had to subsequently open up a trouble ticket to figure out what happened to the missing funds.

Anyway, good luck tomorrow finding a solution to your missing GC funds. 😁

7 minutes ago, mahdnc said:

 

Sky Princess will be in the moon's shadow for sure!  However this is what I am worried about:  cloud cover probabilities.  The map below shows what to expect based on past history.  Blue is good, orange is not.  Significantly better chances of clear skies in the Mediterranean Sea near Mallorca.  Not so good on the north coast.  Iceland (not on this map) is even worse. 

 

The data in the map only talks about probabilities.  What actually happens can be different.  Northern Vermont and Maine were not supposed to have clear skies for the solar eclipse last April (according to the data) and Texas was supposed to be the best bet for clear skies.  When Apr 8th finally rolled around, the exact opposite was true!

 

But your chances are improved because you are on a mobile platform (and of course, I hope you see it!)

 

 

This is why the complete itinerary counts, and for us the Princess one is loaded with some cool ports we either haven’t been to before or were fun enough to enjoy visiting again. 

5 hours ago, peagreenid said:

Can we just say that I have embarked on 5 hours of hell!  The first chat agent was excellent and confirmed that only 4 were used and the 5th was declined. But they just told me to call the call center.  I have had one quick call after a 30 minute wait that told me to call the Princess Gift Card line and they quickly told me they don't handle the AARP cards but the Princess gift cards handled on their site.  I called back and waited for 30 minutes again to be disconnected. I am now on my 3rd call and waiting for a supervisor. But they are all just trying to get me off the phone by calling AARP.  HELP!  Does anyone have any idea who I need to deal with directly

31 minutes ago, Ken the cruiser said:

Have you tried calling AARP yet and asking them what you should do in your situation? May be worth a try.
 

https://help.aarp.org/s/article/rewards-daily-deal-issue

I just reread my initial post 49. Did you follow my process? It doesn’t sound like you did. It appears after verifying the funds were gone using the info provided at post 45, I contacted AARP, who in turn gave me a number to call at Princess.

We encountered our first “insufficient funds” issue today when our TA tried to upload 10 AARP Princess gift cards and one of them rejected with zero funds on the card. Up until today, we had had zero issues purchasing our max number of gift cards every month for over a year now. We then verified the bad GC had zero funds using the link provided at post 45. Thanks @Thrak!
 

We subsequently contacted AARP, who in turn said we needed to contact Princess to verify the funds from the gift card in question had not been applied anywhere, to include recording the person’s name in case AARP had to subsequently open up a trouble ticket to figure out what happened to the missing funds.
 

We contacted Princess and their rep confirmed the funds from the gift card had not been applied anywhere and reconfirmed the card had zero funds. We then recontacted AARP, who then proceeded to open a trouble ticket. And now we wait for the 3-5 days for AARP to determine what happened. I’ll let you know what happens. 

5 minutes ago, mahdnc said:

He will have more options for sure. Better options though if he were south of Spain instead of north where the itinerary currently has him. 

Here’s the projected path, which we will be right in its path.

4 hours ago, mahdnc said:

I did look at that Princess sailing when it was released last month for sale and the pricing was already high. Unfortunately the position of Sky Princess for the eclipse is not to my liking in terms of clear skies probability but it’s possible that they will change the route to a better spot like the southern Spanish coast.  Then again two of Cunard’s ships are going to view the eclipse from Iceland which has even worse weather prospects for clear skies. 

IMHO the Sky Princess Captain should have more options on the high seas to find clear skies than ships docked at some port in Iceland.

4 hours ago, peagreenid said:

Can we just say that I have embarked on 5 hours of hell!  The first chat agent was excellent and confirmed that only 4 were used and the 5th was declined. But they just told me to call the call center.  I have had one quick call after a 30 minute wait that told me to call the Princess Gift Card line and they quickly told me they don't handle the AARP cards but the Princess gift cards handled on their site.  I called back and waited for 30 minutes again to be disconnected. I am now on my 3rd call and waiting for a supervisor. But they are all just trying to get me off the phone by calling AARP.  HELP!  Does anyone have any idea who I need to deal with directly

Have you tried calling AARP yet and asking them what you should do in your situation? May be worth a try.
 

https://help.aarp.org/s/article/rewards-daily-deal-issue

28 minutes ago, mahdnc said:

 

Our first cruise (Carnival 1991) was a total solar eclipse cruise.  If Celebrity were to market a TSE cruise in the Mallorca area in Aug 2026, we would sign up in a heart beat.  Besides the Princess offering, Cunard is sending 3 ships to see the eclipse at different places in Europe.

 

Map drawn by National Solar Observatory, AURA, and NSF.

 

Discovery Princess, April 8 2023, near Mazatlan.  Photo by Robert Fritz

Our mini-suite on the PCL SEC has gone up $2500 per person since we booked it the first day it came out. It will be interesting to see if Celebrity even offers one. And who knows, we might even jump ship over to it if the price is reasonable and the itinerary is even close to the Princess one. 
 

https://www.princess.com/cruise-search/details/?voyageCode=Y625
 

As far as Cunard goes, wearing a sport coat to dinner every night just isn’t my thing. 😁

16 minutes ago, C 2 C said:

Any advice?

 

I have a Live From thread in my below signature area along with some other awesome itineraries we’ve been on lately. With regards to the Iceland B2B cruise in question, do they even offer that B2B NJ to Iceland to Boston B2B cruises anymore?
 

For us we have moved on to Princess and HAL when looking for 3-4 week Northern Europe and Alaska B2B cruises, and even NCL when it comes to going to Longyearbyen. But since this is a Celebrity thread, I’ll leave it at that. 

11 minutes ago, Happy Cruiser 6143 said:

 

Remember that fabulous itinerary we were all booked on that Covid killed two years in a row?  14 nights over and 14 nights back, no international flying involved.  

FWIW we went on it in August 2022 and had an awesome time. 

9 minutes ago, JamieLogical said:

 

Yeah, we have never really needed more than one device per person on our past cruises, but this cruise we are both trying to work from the ship. It will be a hassle having to switch between our phones and our laptops, especially with multi-factor authentication, but I think I will just put up with it to save $20/day!

I just make the resulting link to login.com (or was it logon.com 🤔) a favorite on each device once we board the ship, then click on it when I want to switch to that device. For example, the resulting link from login.com when we were on the Grand last month was the following where “ap” was the 2-digit code for the Grand Princess. 
 

mnet.ap.ocean.com
 

Since PCL just recently changed the ports, it might take a little while for them to get excursions posted to your specific itinerary. Here is a link you can use to see what excursions are usually available at any given port. I did notice Cherbourg has some, but Brest must be a new port for PCL because it’s not even list under Europe yet. 
 

https://www.princess.com/ports-excursions/

Just so you know. I usually bring my iPhone and iPad on a cruise and simply switch my 1-device internet service to the device I’m using at the time. For example, when wondering around the ship, I switch it to my iPhone. Then when I’m back in the cabin I switch it to my iPad. 

4 minutes ago, peagreenid said:

Do you happen to have the number you used to call and verify?  I'm hoping it isn't the normal call center number.  And that might help me expedite the process instead of doing the normal loops around the Princess call center.

Thank you

Unfortunately not. However, I would use the Online Chat function on the PCL website, tell them the issue, and I’m sure they’ll either be able to help or give you a number to call.