cruisingrob21

Agreed - its been that way for a while. They seem to value new cruisers over established clients (no surprise there) and accordingly run many of the same itineraries. If you are a repeat cruiser you'll likely have the same menus, same entertainment, same ports.

I think you need to try HAL if you want that voyage

Ironically, the Majestic is the best of the royal class ships for Alaska, and probably the worst for warm weather cruising. Since the forward pool is covered and adjacent conservatory is covered, its a nice climate controlled forward observation area - something that pretty much every other Princess ship lacks (other than the Coral and Island to a degree). But given the covered pool, the entire top deck area forward of the elevators has no outdoor sunning space for warm weather cruises, and no wake view pool that the Sky, Enchanted, or Discovery have.

TA's usually get notice a week or two before. No notice has been given but usually a "warning" is given in a TA email blast on thursdays. As for alaska, it seems like much the same. The main difference I anticipate is that the Majestic will be in europe during summer of 2025, and the crown is doing an aussie world cruise. By process of elimination, it would seem like the Alaska ships will be Ruby, Coral, Royal, Discovery, Grand, and Sapphire. Expect the Royal and Discovery being Seattle based, the Ruby in SF, and the Grand, Sapphire, and Coral in Vancouver/Whittier. I'm not sure what planning there is to do - Princess is pretty stubborn when it comes to changing Alaskan itineraries - even HAL has added ISP to the RT Seattle voyages that stop in GB the last few years. NCL is running some 7+ day itineraries, but princess has eschewed their "Alaska Samplers" for the most part. There is a semi-unique voyage on the Majestic that includes Ketchikan, Astoria, Seattle and Victoria from Vancouver this fall, and a few 10 day voyages to alaska, but otherwise, Princess hasn't innovated much on their standard itineraries.

Choose the NA - the Sky lacks any sort of high level, climate controlled observation area other than the buffet. The Sky also lacks a outdoor wrap around promenade. If you have tender ports, pack some patience.

Resurrecting this thread - Princess did just cancel the Sapphire's call to victoria on this voyage (May 7th, LA to Vancouver). Unfortunately they did not substitute in Astoria or Nanaimo as alternate ports. Part of my aspiration for this voyage was to go on the Sapphire again since the days of the original Grand class and similar sisters seems to be nearing an end, but now without a single port call I might be looking at another similar voyage.

The interface between "innovative new venues" and the actual onboard execution and operation of these facilities is pretty spotty for Princess it seems. If a venue or program doesn't have a direct return on investment, PCL management is quick to abandon. Since the US is pretty ambivalent toward tea in general (compared to much of the rest of the world) I imagine that this venue never earned the money to cover its cost, much less station an employee there.

deck 7, just before the atrium. Shares a space with the "Tea lounge"

They have this booklet now which has the deckplans for some ships. But their deckplans show much less detail than they did 6 or 7 years ago (showed dining room table configurations). https://www.princess.com/html/global/brochures/pc/princess-cruise-experience.pdf edit - my mistake, it doesn't show the deckplans for all ships. But I thought I heard a while back on a TA call that the physical brochures were coming back in one form or another later this year.

Princess used to run 1 day cruises between Vancouver and Seattle for repositioning purposes, but only HAL does those now. They probably changed that to a 2 day voyage so they can run out the straight of juan de fuca into international waters, and open the casino. On these short cruises, I would imagine that the casino is the money maker when compared to all other onboard venues, especially if the weather is poor and people stay inside.

I've wondered the same thing myself about Costa ships and being transferred to HAL if the need arose.

I'm sure CCL brass will be having a chat with that harbormaster. Not good for skagway businesses either. I wouldn't be surprised if threats are lobbied about moving some of the bigger ships to other ports because of this.

The last Sitmar ship (ss Fairsky II, which became the original ss Sky Princess) was steam powered. Yep, designed in the 80s using steam power - the SS Sky Princess. The Sitmar technical branch was comfortable with that technology and supposedly had felt confident in their operating staff to manage it. Princess bought Sitmar shortly after the Fairsky started sailing. I'm sure at the time most folks in the industry thought the Sitmar folks were stuck in their ways. Princess knew what they bought when they got 3 steamships in the deal - but I doubt there were technical reasons for the acquisition, probably more business related to squash a competitive peer. Fortunately, the next Sitmar ship, the Fair Majesty, was still in design and it was possible to change to a motor ship before she debuted as the first Star Princess. But as you stated, Princess developing a class of 6 ships without azipods (when the technology had been around since the late 90s) was a bit of a goof.

It depends when you purchased. The shares I bought last year at $10 are up over 50%, but the rest purchased before the pandemic are still in the red

Great post. Seymour narrows is spectacular to sail through - if I recall its the most naturally turbulent channel in the world (for folks in fluid mechanics related fields, it has a reynolds number of over 10,000,000,000 which is impressive when "turbulent" conditions starts around 2900). The rest of the inside passage is stunning to sail through. Princess and the cruise industry is at the point where perhaps airlines were a few years back with very low prices. If they could get you on at a loss, they could make up for it with bags, drinks, snacks, 'premium seating locations within the economy cabin', etc etc. Coming out of covid, if they could get the boats 60 or 70% full, and with some strong onboard spending, they could break even or make a profit. Now with the ships packed to the gills and people spending a lot, there is a lot of incentive to build bigger ships. I think RCCL leadership indicated they can make money on oasis class ships if the ship is only 70% full due to scale. Big ships will work for the cruise line for a while - in a year or two when prices have to come down because all the normal folks (non cruise critic posters 🙂 ) got their "every other year cruise fix" the demand should stabilize. The lines will be left with fewer ships than before the pandemic but more capacity than before and ships that can go to fewer ports due to size restrictions. But will the lines build smaller ships? - not until they have to. If you want a smaller ship now without paying obscene prices, your choices are the older X ships, HAL ships, and a handful of older ships on other lines - most of which will be deployed on more far flung itineraries.

This is not new - they re-use maps with slight changes all the time. But I agree, this map appears to be way off. If the cruise you are booked on changed and its not what you want to sail on, sounds like you need to cancel.

Tough to say - with few new ships on order for Princess and CCL as a whole (Star and Sun were being developed back before covid), there is still a need to invest in onboard amenities. While Princess won't try to compete with some of the amenities on NCL, Royal, and even Celebrity's newest ships, some remodeling might be in order. Remodeling might be minimal, but for Princess to say "the Ruby Princess was recently refreshed with a new take on the Horizon Court" that may be enough to help her compete a bit better with newer ships. Unfortunately for Carnival, Princess, and HAL, the majority of their fleets were constructed before 2010 and most of those ships will likely be entering the time of typical replacement for modern, 1st tier cruise ships (25 years). CCL doesn't have the balance sheet now, or likely in the next 5-10 years to replace tonnage at the rate it may need replacement. I could see lots of remodels as well maybe even lengthening?

Need to check booking parameters - if the initial booking was a non refundable deposit (which princess is doing much more now than before covid, especially on "low" categories like IF, OZ, BW, BF, ME), your friend might lose out on a portion or all of the deposit if they cancel and rebook.

Yes, grand cabins are slightly different layout but the size is essentially the same. The walk-in closet on subsequent grand class ships is a better layout than the original grand cabins, in my opinion. The Ruby could end up getting the updated buffet area like the grand has, and other grand class ships have had retrofitted. It could also get Alfredo's. Agree about the teak vs vinyl (or whatever the yellow painted surface is) but that's pretty common on all ships now. The grand was designed in the early to mid 90s - it was a different time. While the layout of the early grand class ships is different and the venues were shifted around, they are still more alike than not (all entertainment lounges are on deck 7, dining rooms on decks 6 and 5, 4 main pools topside) so I'm still confused how the ruby can be that much of a different experience than the grand (or any other grand class ship). What is "Spirits of the Seas"?

Oxymoron of a reply - short statement about writing a long essay. To the point, you would need to include the Crown, Emerald, and Caribbean in that essay since the first two are nearly identical sister ships, and the Caribbean is a step sister. And on the topic of cabins, go ahead and include the Sapphire, Diamond, and somewhat the Grand, the Coral, and Island. They all have very similar modular cabins (with the grand being the exceptions) and similar interior layouts and flow. So what's the problem with the Ruby again that is somehow different from more than half of the fleet? Small showers with curtains have been the bane of princess cruisers since 1998 when the Grand debuted, and likely before that.

By default, Plus (and Premier) only is for the first 2 passengers. You can call a TA or Princess to add it for 3rd and 4th passengers also, but since they are minors they (obviously) will not be served alcohol. However, they do get all the mocktails and sodas they would like in addition to the other benefits. BUT, there is no discount on the price. If you are considering getting them the wifi, a soda package, and gratuities, it may be more cost efficient to pay for it ala-carte.

I'm not too worried - like all of these "hired movers", they pop in for a few years, shake things up, and then are on their way to the next C suite position. Whether we all like it or not, although Jan was brought up through the ranks, she turned out to be this person. I forget her predecessors name but he seemed to be in the role for much longer than she was. Most of the CCL top management has moved around and I imagine Padgett will as well. HAL has a former Carnival VP as their CEO, and watching some of his talks and videos - it sure seems like he's looking toward the next promotion over growing HAL.

I tracked this pre-covid on a handful of voyages, both mine and other folks on cruise critic. It was not scientific, but it seemed like there were 3 windows. Either at some random point well before final payment, shortly after final payment, or within the last 10 days before sailing. I would say that given how full ships are now, it will be much closer to sailing so they can continue to advertise the least expensive categories and then assign folks near sailing.

The second buffet is usually opened for the "theme" part of the meal (german, asian, etc) and typically only at lunch and dinner. But I have seen it have continental breakfast type food occasionally. It is a nice second seating area. I'm not sure about Gelato - probably the ice cream area on Lido deck. Kids club is similar - venues are obviously different based on the ship, but generally follow the same program and have the same amenities.

heard a rumor its going to $65 and $95 for plus and premium respectively. No new perks. I'm cautiously optimistic that they will make some room to bring a "plus light" plan around 30 or 35 but something tells me that's not going to happen. Best thing to do is purchase a TA group rate as many of these include Plus for slightly less than the public Plus rate.