BumperII

Reporting for duty.

Bumperii & Terry Maasdam – 18-Jun-19 –  21 day Great Alaskan & Pacific Northwest Explorer

You can cut the list in half just by doing the land portion first.  Bear in mind that for the land portion you are on tour, not on vacation and it can be demanding.  The cruise portion will give you time to relax and rest up.

Upsells are indeed rare, and there isn't really a place to go get one. But.......

Guarentees were really great while learning how well cruising fit us. Very favorable results until we got upgraded to a broom closet with a porthole.

So we started booking our staterooms with a option to be upgraded. That meant we booked the most economic class we could be comfortable with and left open the option to get some kind of upgrade.

We learned that the cruise lines do send out upsell offers to TAs. Again rare, but you need to have a savvy TA, make sure your TA knows you are open to an upsell, and watch your email closely around the final payment due date. That is the last chance other passengers have to cancel a booking without a penalty and the cruise lines are a little anxions to get those cancellations rebooked.

Then you must be decisive. When the upsell offer comes, jump on it. You snooze, you lose and it is pot luck.

We know that we are in a stronger position to get a price break if the cruise line is offering than when we are asking. We were on about 35 cruises before we were able to take advantage of an upsell offer, then lucked out three cruises in a row! And we got spoiled. We now have very nice mini suites booked on four upcoming cruses, and the S6 suites just aren't that much nicer, so, we probably won't ever buy another upsell. Good Luck, and Bon Voyage.

I do not care for snarky remarks and unkind assumptions regarding my character.

Thank you for submitting the review to open this discussion. I must agree that quite a few of the remarks were less than diplomatic. OK, totally inappropriate.

We are reading your thread in anticipation of b2b cruises in Alaska. We have been cruising since 2002, experiencing most "classes" of staterooms. It has been my experience that the class of stateroom has absolutely nothing to do with how much we enjoyed the cruise experience. Many fine cruises have been experienced in the most economical accomodations.

Our first suite experience was on a whim. We had booked the lowest price guarentee mini and the upsell to a suite was an offer we couldn't refuse. We jumped on it. Thus the riff - raff first invaded the suite life. The experienc was nice, but about four times as expensive as an inside stateroom. It was not four times as enjoyable.

After forty cruises, we sort of got to the point where we simply take what we want and pay for it. We really enjoyed our inside staterooms, and I hope the full suite passengers enjoy their accomodations as well.

We are fifteen years older now and we have a lot more cruises behind us than we have in our future. Soooo.. when the TA notified us of the upsell offer, again from the least expensive mini, we jumped on it. This will be our first full suite experience on Princess, and probably our last. And we are looking forward to it, and hoping to meet all of you there.

Again, thank you to the OP for the review. Like children waiting for Christimas, we eagerly await the experience and love hearing all we can about it.

We are Elite who have been traveling in suites (mainly for the extra space) and yes we pay a premium for it. We are looking forwards to Club Class on our next cruise in an OS.

 

However we fly ecomony in the back of the plane.

Got to love it. People think we are nuts because we fly first class to the cruise port and have a limo to take us to the ship where we are booked in an inside stateroom. We simply take what we want and pay for it. (y)

We are the week before on the coral

We will be on the Coral from June 24 to July 8th. We've done this cruise about a dozen times. I cannot remember a single minute that could be described as boring. We still haven't done all there is to do.

I think either choice is probably pretty well suited to your circumstances. As first time cruisers we spent very little time in the stateroom other than sleep and bathroom duties.

We found many fine sightseeing opportunities all over the ship, bow and stern and in between. We also took advantage of the onboard activities.

Either of these staterooms is a great starting spot. These staterooms allowed us time to figure out what cruising style gave us the best deal for the money. Bon Voyage

OK, I'm somewhat challenged with the Princess website, but putting everything together here is what I came up with:

Click on:

My Account > Upcoming Cruises > Manage Booking > Payments & Credits. Scroll down and you will see your military benefits credit.

We have four cruises booked, and the Military Benefit shows up on all four. Thank You Princess

Our thanks to all who posted here. After reading this thread, we got an upsell offer to a suite on the Coral. Following the rave reviews, we took the offer. We have been all in every class stateroom, starting with an inside P cabin back in 2002. This will be our first experience with a suite on Princess. We too are splurging for a special occasion.(yn)(yn)(yn)(yn)(yn)

I'm a long time CPAP user with something over thirty cruises to my credit, all without the slightest problem from either the airlines or cruise lines. Sometimes the TSA agents spend a little extra time looking the machine over, but that is about it. The current machine is a dream station. I pack the whole thing as well as a 15 amp extension cord and a three prong cube with three outlets. I recently bought a small carry-on with wheels that holds the equipment nicely along with compter and kindle. Sleep well and Bon Voyage.

Ditto!

We are booked on the Coral Princess b2b out of Vancouver. We have cruised Alaska over a dozen times. As stated previously, this is probably our first choice because the aft public spaces that remain intact.

Suspect that the answer to your question is Yes, they are both still tender ports. We have been to Icy Strait about a dozen times. It is pretty much unchanged, not seeking a whole lot of modernization.

Sitka was improving a facility about five miles away from the present tender facilities, but I don't think it could handle more than one ship at a time. The tender business in Sitka is probably still alive and well. Bon Voyage

Inside guarentee for us is the only way to go until one has seen enough of cruising to figure out what works best for you. Our first ten cruises were inside guarentees, and we received some kind of upgrade every time. Then we figured out that we liked J and K cabins and booked those for awhile. That worked well and we stuck to that plan for the next twenty cruises. We had a lot of fun on cruises with inside cabins.

We also spent a lot of money on shore excursions. After some time, we started spending less on shore excursions and tried out a balcony cabin. And of course we scored an upgrade to a Neptune suite. So we have been booking balconies the last couple of cruises.

Don't let anyone take away the enjoyment of an inside cabin booking. When you first start cruising, you won't spend much time in that cabin, too much to do onboard ship, games to play, shows to see, people to meet, and of course beverages with little upbrellas. Bon voyage!

Is Prinsendam supposed to lead the parade?

 

The picture is not very good on the FLL webcam, or is it just me?

According to the port schedule she is first in line for departure.

Checking in for the first time this season.

Bringing N/A malt beverage on board has never been a problem for me, I have done it several times on both HAL and Princess. HAL used to offer two brands Buckler and Sharps. Neither is a big seller, and often HAL only has one to offer.

Sure wish I could help you with your decision, but...... Every Veranda stateroom on the Amsterdam is pretty good, there simply are no "bad" veranda suites on that ship. That is the reason we have taken to booking "veranda guarentee", and letting it go at that. Haven't been disappointed yet.:)

Splendid Choice. Great Views, and love the sofa and refirgerator. Bon Voyage!

Thanks for all your help. We just booked C728.

Lots of great suggestions and ideas here. We actually prefer the computer printed luggage tags to what they were issuing ten years ago. It doesn't cost much to print out extra tags. We put two on every checked bag, one on each handle, and one on or in every carry on item.

We use the 2 in scotch tape, right down the middle of the page. Covers all vital information. Then fold and staple as directed.

And you can double up sheets if you like. Print out a sheet of paper with your name, address and phone numbers and back up the luggage tag sheet before before you fold and staple.

We carry a small roll of duck tape with every cruise. If you have to use that instead of a staple, duck tape works fine too.

Finally we tip the the longshoremen a few dollars just to make sure the luggage doesn't fall overboard during loading.:D

 

We need to thank Princess for teaching us how good an inside cabin can be. completely.

Now you know. Many a fine cruse has been enjoyed while bunking in an inside cabin. We have taken 37 cruises, 33 of them booked insides. We were upgraded a few times, but even the upgrades were really no big deal.

There is a perfectly good reason why we booked inside cabins. It is because we are poor. :D

Unlike most others, we enjoy the balcony for Alaska and Canada - New England trips only. Because of health issues, we aren't allowed out in the sun anyway, so the inside cabins suit us best.

Suites are usually four times as expensive as inside staterooms. They are nice, but they are not four times as nice, or at least they don't give us four times as much comfort.

If you are a serious coffee drinker, the brewed coffee is a must. We buy the card just for the brewed coffee.

Ditto

Do Neptune Suite passengers still have the privilege of having breakfast in the Pinnacle Grill? Does this continue to be a "given"? I'd be very unhappy to be expecting it again and find that the amenity no longer exists.

It differs depending upon the size of the ship. On the larger ships where the Pinnacle Grill is a windowless inside venue, Suite passengers have a section of the MDR reserved for them exclusively.