cardiffman

I'll also be on this cruise in February.

 

And, Mr. Cardiffman, you didn't spend your childhood in Santa Clarita

Viva Ruby Princess!

Viva M'exico!

No doubt others will chime in here. I don't understand how you think you helped your crew, or someone's graduation. If a passenger has cancelled the auto-tips, then individual waiters, stewards, etc are NOT allowed to keep cash tips for themselves and are required/expected to turn them into the pool for sharing. Would you mind indicating why you cancelled the auto-tips? What about your cabin steward and others? Were you concerned about tip money going to other wait-staff around the ship?

In reality there were no berries enrobed in butter and we did the automatic tipping because it's civilized and frees us to think about things that actually matter in the world. I am a rank amateur when it comes to satire, so I apologize for my misleading post. It's true we sailed in club class on the Ruby and really enjoyed it.

Sent from my iPhone using Forums

We did our first cruise on Ruby in Club Class and the dining experience was awesome. They anticipated our wants every night. We had stricken the automatic tips and tipped our "crew" a fair amount. We recently got graduation photos from the lead waiter's daughter's graduation ceremony, which our tipping helped with. They saw that the melon balls in port wine and berries lavishly enrobed in butter were big hits at our table so they were whisked to our table before our napkins were unfolded. It was very special to see the enrobing process tableside. After dessert specially decorated scooters would wheel up and bring us super plush towels. Any we did not use would be sent to our suites. I think some of this was "Ensenada Only"

Sent from my iPhone using Forums

off the berries subject just had to interject that the curtis stone chicken pot pie is probably the most popular new dish princess has introduced in years and is WONDERFUL!!! really have to be careful with putting huge emphasis on food matters on this site as peoples taste really are different

The comment about the pot pie reminded me of the scenes in Casino involving the blueberry muffins, which "Food and Beverage Director" Ace found to be highly inconsistent. So now we have Captain Queeg and a parallel with alleged gangster in one thread. (BTW I don't mean to imply that the diners vexed by indifferently prepared pot pies are gangsters)

Theoretically I could play a DVD from the laptop I take with me. This would most likely be some sort of social thing, where the group I'm with would choose the movie. (DW and I love to share comedy DVDs this way) I was sort of shocked that the low-priced laptop came with a DVD player in 2017. Maybe I should test this out.

We did our first ever cruise on that ship and we'll be back on it to do this very cruise in February.

As I spent my childhood in Santa Clarita (the family moved to Ventura the day after I graduated Canyon High), it was a neat surprise for me to see that part.

I've enjoyed your take on the boat, too.

So this reminds me of a system that the USA railroads built in the 70's to keep track of freight cars, using **color** barcode sensors next to the railroad tracks every mile or so. It was a huge boon doggle and it failed. But one of the railroads' communications networks built to support the barcodes being shipped around became part of the non-Bell telephone company Sprint.

The parallel here is that it is quite possible that Carnival has overreached and we'll end up with great WiFi and a bunch of inexplicable bumps on the walls.

Also, outside of cruisecritic, I don't think many people have heard about, or care about medallions...

As far as hearing about medallions, there is some hype about it on the website and the extent of calling it "Ocean Mediallion Class," admittedly below the fold. Don't you think it sounds like the pax should see it as a benefit when it is promoted to the pax?

Princess could have gone other ways that would not have put the new program so much in mind. Were we really thinking great ships, too bad about those sad little mag stripe cards?

I have only done one cruise and I thought it was sufficient that they used a mag-stripe card, and I assumed it was just a token.

They could have just kept it to the minimum information that CCL shareholders need to know, which I'm not sure is all that much, and not mentioned it at all. That would have given them the option to break up the transition into an intranet piece that raised Princess's use of the card in conjunction with a better network, and then the token/"Medallion" piece that would have converted over from the card.

Princess could have also created an insider "beta tester" program and rolled out the tokens to just those people first, with maybe a little OBC as quid-pro-quo.

I'm not sure I'd feel like I expected more from a Medallion-equipped cruise but that's in the context of my understanding of what a token can provide vs what a mag-stripe card can provide. I'd feel strange asking for compensation for the lack of a feature that I would have skeptically believed was not to my benefit. But they did "sell" the feature and so I'm not surprised that others are arguing it was supposed to benefit them.

I think the time scale in the cruise business is a little warped. We have cruise trips lined up out to 2019 and that's after only one past cruise. We did get a good deal on a drop'n'go email offer in late September for a November cruise, but in the 21st Century 2 months ahead is NOT "dropping" and going, it is planning in advance.

Sounds like fun. From Buenos Aires too. Which is another bucket list entry. I did not think you would take land but would love to be in those waters.

I think it will be a great cruise to be seeing those sights. Imagine the discomforts of a noisy Zodiac boat pounding through the waves to a wet landing on an icy shore. Who needs that? :cool: They only let boats do this if they have less than 500 pax, which seems practically antisocial.

Okay, I've just got to ask . . . I've noticed you on lots of threads recently with posts that seem to say nothing at all (random, non-contributory to the question or topic), then followed by your "dilly dilly". What gives? I can't be the only one wondering. We all post random things sometimes, but you do know your posts are weird and unhelpful, right?:o

Atmosphere. If you go to a Starbucks where there is always a guy sitting near the door with a two-foot tall Cat-in-the-Hat hat, do they make your coffee taste better? Not objectively.

Antarctica! That is on my bucket list. Would love a quick rundown. Ship. departing from, length. thanks

Celebrity Eclipse Jan 20, 2019. R/T Buenos Aires 14 days. This cruise doesn't land passengers on Antarctic soil.

39, 119, 316. Next cruise is possibly what you call a repo of the Star Princess. The next two cruises of the Star Princess after that will coincidentally have friends of ours aboard.

Also 455 days until Antarctica but that isn't Princess.

isnt the cruise ship supposed to offer passengers X dollars to de-elevator?

35 dollars and a hotel stay if you are delayed. At least that's the EU regulation I just made up.

Our cabin steward removed the card we used and took it from the room. After we questioned him ( and pointed out it was a prepaid visa -only had a couple dollars on it before some gets uptight with me, but it was the principle of him taking it away that got me) it miraculously showed up under our door 2 days later

I'm with you. Theft is theft. Could have been your gym card or such, having it go walkies is gonna be a hassle.

I could write volumes about how the whole power cut off idea is just wrong. Power on ship is finite, I get it, but so is one's patience with miserly people. It's like those little restaurants where they don't have linen or paper napkin dispensers on the table nor paper napkins in accessible dispensers, but they give you one paper napkin with your food.

Sometimes the faults find you.

It is natural to have a skeptical attitude the first time out, and cruise ships do have problems compared to other places you could be, and these problems are somewhat unnecessary. Here are the things I disliked on my very first cruise:

• Every single second it seems like someone is trying to get you to spend money on something, by means of some annoying pitch that repeats over and over. And most of that stuff is not desirable at all (paintings, jewelry). I'm pretty sure the Marriott doesn't constantly tout things like that.
  
• Sometimes the ship (Ruby P in my case) makes creaking sounds.
  
• The furniture seems to be optimized for people who are fine with never removing their clothes from their suitcase and wearing wrinkled, stinky clothes.
  
• The WiFi only worked in one spot in our cabin.
  

On the other hand...

My wife and I were in a club mini next door to our dear friends who convinced us to go, so with three of my favorite companions, I had a good time overall. I've driven along that same piece of the California coast many times but the POV from the ship was totally different. I saw whales and porpoises practically every time I looked at the sea, and I saw the Channel Islands from much closer. We had a great time touring the Guadalupe Valley AKA La Ruta del Vino out of Ensenada. The head waiter for our table was a great waiter, too.

That picture of the Golden Princess in Sydney is amazing. As I understand it, a huge portion of the passengers on a cruise that starts or ends in Sydney are Australians. But that probably doesn't keep the bankers in those office towers from feeling like tourists are invading. That ship looks like it has to let the air out of its tires to get under the legendary bridge. What a sight.

I have a standard lesson I give to people who want to learn craps, but I fear that on the ship the dealers won't be as helpful. Vegas dealers are so good to novices that you can have fun at the craps table with a very simple approach (not win, have fun). I will state the lesson here in order to perhaps expose myself to ridicule. I tell folks, put a chip on pass. If the dealer adds money to yours at any time, scoop that extra money up. If they take your money off, replace it. If you hit your budget, tip the dealers and say good night. Listen to ideas from the dealers and other players at your discretion: don't ask the barber if you need a haircut. This advice works best at $5 tables, at the $2 table when they suggest odds, you're math will not work in some cases.

Also I generally play don't pass (and don't come if I'm really wreckless) but I switch if the shooter is next to me. And again this might not work on the ship because it sounds like there aren't enough players. If there are only four then there's only one shooter who isn't myself or adjacent to me, and I feel it is impolite to bet against someone standing right next to me.

If we went by drsel's advice, the travel and leisure industry would be devastated as millions who vacation do it either from credit cards or hard earnings.

Your comment implies we all pay off our credit cards and cancel any plans that involve future unsecured borrowing. That would be a calamity, if only briefly. Not all of us are going to follow drsel's advice, I can assure you. But those who do will be better off. And that would not be a calamity.

It's interesting that this boat has always been scheduled to reach US shores after a period in Europe, yet this seemingly predictable circumstance and its effect on the boarding schedule was not factored in until so recently.

Relative to the astute observations on boarding logistics, @Optotronics, I would suspect that the gangway-clogging photographers will have to stand down and miss this one embarcation in order to achieve 40 pax/min? One can dream.

That's incredible! One should always use surplus cash generated from assets to pay for ALL vacations, including cruises.

Never use your hard earned money!

Intriguing... But so much depends on your definitions. I may meet this criterion or I might not. I won't go into details of my own sitch but I would ask, which of these meet your criterion?

1. (I think I know this one) Delaying a cruise only so long as it takes to get the amount owed on the credit card low enough that the card won't hit the limit during the vacation.
   
2. Diverting a set amount from the checking account to a savings account every paycheck, and going on vacation when there is enough in the savings account
   
3. Buying stocks/bonds/real estate and redeeming the capital gain (aka selling at a profit) on these to pay for vacation
   
4. Buying stocks/bonds/real estate and using the passive earnings (dividends from stocks, interest on bonds, rents on real estate) to pay for vacations
   
5. Buying a house on credit, paying off the mortgage instead of rolling it over, and using one's otherwise thrifty ways to pay for vacations
   
6. Some people don't believe that buying a house is wise. So this alternative would be the same as the one above, but rewritten for the wise renter.
   

Of course neither of us are engaging in this discussion in order to pass judgement on the behavior of others. But some of us like or need to optimize our spending, and in that vein it is valuable to discuss and politely debate the finer points.

I have previously done a Royal Caribbean Norwegian fjords cruise and now the Hurtigruten tour - two different worlds - Hurtigruten ships are working ships and does have 35 mostly short stops along the coast. I'll rather call it an expedition ship rather than a cruise ship. I only did 3 nights - 6 nights one way would be OK for me - the full 11 nights will definitely be too much of the same.

 

 

Sorry - I'm not english speaking, so do not alway get all the details correct. I ment that I did not buy ice-cream and did,'t see the price.

I find your English writing easy to read. I read some of your blog writing after finding this thread, and it has been interesting so far. I love the historic aspects, such as the history of Fredriksted in USVI, and the Spice Route cruise from Singapore to Barcelona. In the days of Alexander the Great for example there was commerce along most of that route, just more difficult and time-consuming and most of the time things didn't go the whole route.

Hallasm,

This thread is ideal for my interests and very informative. I have done one Princess cruise and I have some more planned. Having seen a quick notice of "Sponsored by Hurtigruten" on a program called "New Scandinavian Cooking" I became intrigued by the offerings of this line.

So, many thanks for this information.

Also one of my ancestors is a 19th-Century Swedish Sea Captain.

As a huge fan of ice cream I wondered what you meant when you said you didn't notice the price of ice cream. For me it could mean that I would not care about the price of ice cream, and just point at the bowl and discretely tell the waiter, "Keep it full, if you please" Or it could mean that you didn't order any and by chance you never saw the price.

It seems like Hurtigruten is the "Polar Opposite"--pardon the pun--of another line I read a little about, called Seabourn.