JamieLogical

MF is just the lowest mini-suite category.

All I can say is that I hope things have DRASTICALLY improved on the Emerald since I sailed her so you can have a good cruise.

Brooklyn to JFK is a shorter trip than Manhattan to JFK... plus that was Marathon day, so that's why I was pointing it out specifically. Can't really expect traffic to be an WORSE than that on a weekend.

We booked a GTY MF on the Enchanted Princess. We sail May 4 and just got our cabin assignment on Tuesday night, so under two weeks out.

I just looked back at a few of the menus from my February cruise and I do not see any notations on the menus about items containing lactose. However, I do know that your servers at the MDR as well as every server in the specialty restaurants will ask you if you have any dietary restrictions. I do not recall seeing milk onboard at all (maybe in the buffet?), much less milk alternatives....

Definitely not. The last cruise I canceled with Princess, I saw the refund on my credit card account the next morning!

I have had Lyfts canceled by the driver when they were at the pier. The issue has been they accept the ride to pick me up at debarkation while dropping off a passenger who is embarking. If they go in the lanes for dropping off embarking passengers, they across several lanes of traffic and a median from where they would pick up disembarking passengers and there is no simple way to loop back around. Last time, I had my first ride canceled for this reason as they began driving away from where they dropped off the embarking passengers and realized they couldn't get back to where I was. The second time, I realized this was just going to happen all over again, so I literally chased my driver to where he was dropping off his previous fare and flagged him down.

I will have to keep that in mind if I ever end up back in a Balcony or below and don't have the tub/shower combo.

So, my experience with having a cabin by the fire door on any cruise ship has been that there is a little threshold at the bottom of the doorway that causes the room service carts and the housekeeping carts to rattle every time they roll over it. That noise of rattling dishes and whatnots can be disturbing if you are a light sleeper.

My understanding is that it is free so people who use the fitness center can access the changing rooms/showers. Maybe it depends on the ship since I know that on some ships, the fitness center and spa are not lumped together. Just checked the deck plans for the Enchanted, since the Fitness Center is on deck 17 and the spa is all the way down on deck 5. It does show changing rooms available in the fitness center, but not sure if those include showers. On the Ruby, which is the one my coworker is on, the changing rooms are shared by the spa an fitness center, so I am sure those have showers.

9 Days to Go! We will be flying down to FLL a week from tomorrow! As I mentioned, we got our medallions yesterday. Now we just need to not lose them before the trip and remember to pack them! I also printed out our luggage tags last night, so it is definitely getting real! I reviewed and revised my packing list yesterday as well. I didn't find anything on there that I still need to acquire before we leave, since we bought most of our travel supplies when we did grocery shopping this past weekend. I do have a prescription I need to refill next week, but that shouldn't be a major issue. It feels weird going on a 7-day cruise. Most of our cruises of late have been 11-12 days. I am sure I am going to end up overpacking because my standard cruise packing list includes more than I will probably need for 7 days. We are flying down the night before and we are staying with friends in NYC for two nights on our way home. So the whole trip will actually be 10 days, but packing for those two days in NYC is different from packing for two days on a cruise. Also, we aren't flying first class this time, so need to be a bit mindful of packing so we can get away with only checking one bag between us.

If your destination is Penn Station, then the Ferry is a good option for sure!

Yes it does. Click on the "Weekend Schedule" button: https://www.ferry.nyc/routes-and-schedules/south-brooklyn/

I would say anything around noon or later would be fine. You could probably make an earlier flight (I've done an 11:00am flight out of JFK after docking at the Manhattan Cruise Terminal on NYC Marathon day!), but if there is a delay with docking or clearing the ship, it could get pretty stressful. Something would have to go pretty catastrophically wrong for you to miss a flight that was after noon.

Trust me, it's an issue for wide people two. Here is a picture of me from our cruise in February. I am VERY wide: My husband is a little over 6' and he hit his head on the shower head in his first shower attempt on the Emerald. Fortunately, it looks like the Royal class ships have adjustable height shower heads instead of fixed shower heads, so that shouldn't be as much of an issue for him on the Enchanted.

Yeah... not many people I know are 5'5" and 120 pounds. I think for those of us who are much bigger than that, the showers simply cannot work. At least on the older ships. It looks like the Royal class ships might have *slightly* bigger and better configured showers?

I was hoping to avoid another intimate relationship with a shower curtain. Wouldn't want my old shower curtain on the Emerald to get jealous! That's why we were determined to book a mini-suite for this sailing. Even with the tub, the bathrooms in the minisuite still seem really tight to me, but we will see how it works out. I had a coworker go on the Caribbean Princess for her first cruise a couple of weeks ago in a normal balcony and all she could talk about was how tiny the bathroom was and how terrible the shower curtain was. I had tried to warn her ahead of time, but I don't think she believed me about how bad it would be until she saw for herself. I have another coworker doing her first cruise in July to Alaska on (I think?) the Ruby Princess and she is in an inside room with her family of four! I cannot imagine trying to share one of those teeny tiny bathrooms with three other people. I told her the tip about showering at the spa and she is planning to do that and leave the stateroom bathroom to her husband and kids.

I do not believe the OP wants/needs an accessible cabin. When they booked a GTY, the lowest deluxe balcony cabin category it was not defined as accessible cabins as the deck plans had not been released. Now the concern is because they are booked into an "accessible cabin category" they can only upgraded to another accessible cabin category, which the OP does not want or need and limits their upgrade options.

For LaGuardia and JFK, I don't see why you would take the ferry to Wall Street. For LaGuardia that takes you out of the way and makes you drive the full length of Manhattan. For JFK, it takes you in the complete opposite direction. PS: I have taken Lyft from the Brooklyn terminal to JFK and LaGuardia without incident. I don't see any need to pay extra for the ferry and go in the wrong direction if you just intend to Uber/Lyft from Wall Street to LGA or JFK.

Got my medallion in the mail today! Now to start working on that packing list!

It's hard to say how likely you are to win your bid. It depends on a lot of factors that will be specific to your sailing(s). As for when you will find out, that can really happen any time up until about 48 hours before sailing.

Already done! Though I am thinking about rebidding. There are only four Reserve Class Forward Facing Minisuites on the ship, so the chances of me getting an upgrade are slim to none, but they are all right next door to the four normal forward-facing minisuites, one of which I am now in. So they are pretty similar, just the Reserve Class have the larger, wrap-around balconies and get the Reserve Class benefits.

I loved their attitudes, humor, and playful nature in the couple of videos we have watched so far. Will definitely be watching more of their content and both my husband and I subscribed to their channel last night.

Exciting news to report this morning. Late last night we got our room assignment! We did not receive an email notification from Princess, but my husband logged in to check before bed (we both check like 5 times a day) and there it was! I had a moment of confusion because the room we were assigned was a Forward-Facing Minisuite and I thought that meant we had won our upgrade bid for a Reserve Class Forward-Facing Minisuite. So I checked my email again and didn't see anything about winning the bid. So then I logged into the PlusGrade site to see if my bid had been accepted and it still showed as pending. Upon closer examination, I realized that the room we were assigned was not a Reserve Class room, so we just got a normal forward-facing minisuite, which I guess I didn't realize existed (they are only on a couple of decks). Anyway, we were really happy with the room assignment, because we do like staying in unique cabins with large balconies and this certainly fits the bill. The layout is completely different from a "regular" minisuite on Princess ships. We immediately went to CruiseDeckPlans to look at photos and videos of the room. We found a video of our exact room by a couple with a YouTube channel called "Suite Natured" and they are our new favorite YouTubers because they are ridiculously cute! We watched their video of our room twice and then watched their full ship tour of the Enchanted Princess. Here's the video of our room if anyone is interested: I will be sure to take plenty of pictures of my own as well. There are a couple of things I really like about this room. First off, it doesn't have that stupid walk-in closet area that the normal Princess rooms have. If you read my Live Blog of the Emerald Princess, you know how much I hate that space. I hate that it leaves all my stuff exposed and it's the first thing you see when you walk in the room. I like things neat and tucked away, so it drove me crazy just to see a mess of hanging clothes and a laundry basket on the floor first thing every time I walked into the room. I also hated that the tendency was for whoever was getting ready to stand in that space, blocking access into/out of the bathroom for the other person and posing a real danger to whoever was standing there if someone was in the bathroom and swung the door open quickly. I hated the motion sensor light that always seemed to want to turn on or off at the wrong times and blinded anyone who needed to use the bathroom at night. And, finally, I just hated how much space it wasted that could have been MUCH better utilized in the bathroom. So, right off the bat, I am happy our assigned room just has regular closets. It seems to have plenty of closet and shelf space, so that is great! I also, obviously, love the huge balcony and I think we will get some incredible views from it. I don't love the steel railing, since that does limit the view some, but that is the price you pay for being on the front of the ship. The fact the room has two TVs seems quite silly with the configuration. I also think that if you were a family who booked a minisuite and wanted the separation between the couch and bed that a regular minisuite affords, you would be sorely disappointed. Fortunately, that doesn't matter to us. The only other thing I am a little sad about is not having much of a view from the bed, but I think I can live with that. Ironically, we booked all of our MDR reservations for the Amalfi dining room, which is the one all the way aft on deck 6. It's only accessible from the aft elevators, so we will have quite a walk to dinner each night! We will definitely be getting our steps in on this sailing! I am so happy to be able to print our luggage tags and not go through that whole rigamarole at the port. Our Medallions are scheduled to arrive in the mail today!

We are booked on that one as well and plan to make our decision on final payment while onboard this sailing, since final payment is due 5/12 and this cruise ends 5/11. There are a whole bunch of factors that will go into that, but at least we will be better equipped to make an informed decision.