PMGS247

YIIIIIIKES! Curious how the story of this one plays out.....what caused it, how quickly was it resolved, etc. Good luck. Sorry to see this happen to you!

Totally agree....as the week goes on though I recommend showing up earlier and earlier....people figure out how great the Duo is as the week goes on and it gets more and more difficult to get a spot. When we showed up top try to do Lunch on both of the final 2 sea days right at 11:30 when they opened the line to get in had more people in it than were seated in the restaurant. Someone described this in a Sun Princess video review as "too popular for its own good". Definitely found this to be true...still love it though!

It was 2 weeks ago.

Ran a few numbers on this just for the fun of it, and I guess I can see why they don't ship it to everyone free of charge.... I'm entirely making numbers up here but even if they're wrong the premise still applies to whatever the real numbers are.... Let's say there's 1500 people on a sailing that aren't on plus/premier. Let's say those 1500 people are on average traveling as a pair, checking in together, equating to roughly 750 groups to be checked in. Let's say they save 3 minutes per group. That's 2,250 minutes saved, or 37.5 hours. If they perfectly adjust their staff level for this, at $20/hr, it's a $750 savings. On the flip side, if they paid for these people's medallions to be shipped they'd give up $10 per group since medallions are shipped together, or $7,500 for all 750 groups. With those numbers, even if you adjust assumptions a little this way or that, they'd be massively out-spending their labor savings.

I don’t disagree. They must have decided the time savings wasn’t worth the actual cost of paying everyone’s shipping.

Seems like for the most part it's a few minutes, max, but a small percentage of experiences where it is more significant. So really it's entirely personal preference based on your risk aversion. Not a big risk, but it's not nothing. I always have mine mailed but I also always get at least plus so it doesn't cost me $10. I would probably pay the $10 for peace of mind if I didn't get plus, but that's just me. I enjoy getting them a few weeks ahead time...vacation gets very real when they ship/arrive. There's also something uniquely satisfying absolutely flying through check-in..it almost feels like you don't come to a complete stop. I feel like the time saved is much more valuable to Princess than it is to the individual. Even if it's only 2-3 minutes of your time, if a ship carries 3,700 passengers, the amount of man-hours saved on the check-in process starts to add up real quick.

Yeah that happened pretty regularly on my sailing. Having said that it usually eventually did arrive. The "status" feature isn't very good. Sometimes it would arrive while it still said preparing, other times it would arrive 10 mins after "delivered". There are also definitely "dead spots" around the ship where the location tracking doesn't work very well....one of these, of course, where DW and I spent most of our time on board. We learned quickly where the system thought we were (same spot but on the starboard side rather than port) and we'd keep an eye out for a confused crew member with a tray of what we ordered looking for us over there so we could flag them down.

fair. I’m just typically not in much of a rush when I’m leaving so if it takes them a while to get moving I just don’t care. If I had a flight time where I was pushing the envelope on getting there in time I would probably go another route. As-is I just appreciate that I don’t have to put in any effort to order and locate an Uber driver in the sometimes hectic terminal. Always had perfectly fine luck with the airport drop off part.

Everyone on the sailing with receive a boarding time window in their app and/or travel summary but it will be the same for everyone and it will be the entire boarding time window; typically says 10am-2pm.

This. I've never messed with Princess transfers pre-cruise, or even hotel-based transfers for that matter. Uber is comparable in price, often cheaper, and you have much more control over when you go. Post-cruise is just the opposite for me....assuming I'm going straight to the airport I always get transfer through Princess. Uber would probably save a few bucks but the bus is just waiting outside the terminal, it's very easy to just hop right on.

As of the last time I sailed on a ship with them, no….we had to call on board….but that might have changed.

The good news is if you spend enough time here on CC and watching YT videos you'll probably walk onto the ship expecting your vacation to be a full blown catastrophe and the bar will be set very low. Reality will not even come close to living up to all the CC and YT drama and you'll have a great time. As for dining reservations having read a lot on the topic and dealt with a few issues in person, for the most part people seem to have significantly better luck booking on board than finding available times on the app in the weeks before sailing. I'm pretty well convinced they keep a significant portion of the total time slots from ever being offered on the app. Call the dining line or go to the restaurant after boarding and in all likelihood you will have much better luck and a fairly wide selection of times to choose from. Semi-related note, just last week on the Enchanted I switched from Plus to Premier on board. I had pre-paid for 3 specialty dining reservations prior to sailing. The crew member who upgraded me insisted I didn't need to do anything, that I would be credited for the 2 specialty dining to which I was entitled. I kept an eye on my folio and nothing had happened by day 5, after we'd eaten 2 of the meals and had 1 to go, so I went down to Guest services when they weren't busy and they applied a credit to my on board account no problem.

yeah having been on this exact sailing pictured in this patter I can confirm the St. Thomas night nothing was different from any other night. The only other thing I could think of would be 80's night but that was the night before and in reality just a lido deck event...certainly not anything impacting dining room dress codes.

Yep I got nothing.

Nope….Monday 4/8 and Thursday 4/11. Was there another patter calling out dress to impress or formal? If so, I’m confused and don’t know the answer to your question lol

I feel pretty safe saying these are the same thing. I feel like DTI is the newest term used by Princess but plenty of people still use the original “formal” terminology. I feel like this will take a long time to catch on, and probably never for many people.

I just sailed on the Enchanted out of Port Everglades this past week. We arrived at the port at about 9:40. Stood outside for about 20 minutes until they opened up the doors to go through security at 10:00am. By 10:15 or so we were through the security line and had checked in via green lane. The separate lounge at Port Everglades houses Platinum, Elite, and Suite guests. Being platinum that is where we were sent. It didn't matter much though because we only spent about 5 minutes with maybe 15-20 other people who'd gotten there that early and then they told us to go ahead and board around 10:20 or so. Anyone arriving after that point that was Plat/Elite/Suite wouldn't have a lounge to go to, they'd just be directed to go directly on board. I gathered from reading what people said who boarded on the sailing after ours that it played out the same way. YMMV, that is easily the earliest any of the events I describe above have happened, historically my experience has been security starts closer to 10:15 and actual boarding of the ship closer to 11-11:15, but they seem to be operating like a well oiled machine at this exact moment, so your odds are good that if you show up at 10:30 you'll walk into the ship boarding line. Luggage we had by 1pm. Again, YMMV, but in my 10ish Princess cruises I've never had luggage show up later than 2-3pm.

100% agreed the only technicality, and the math would come out correct for only a VERY narrow group of passengers, is that you can buy the stand-alone for just one person and are not forced to buy it for both passengers. So, one drink package for $65/day instead of two plus packages for $120. Needless to say once you start adding in the a la carte prices for some of the inclusions you've given up by not doing plus, you get back to that $120/day REALLY quickly but I'm sure the very specific situation where one person drinks like a fish but as a couple they remove gratuities and/or don't indulge on any of the other services they would receive under plus, the math could work. It would be a really unusual situation but I'm sure it's >0%.

The lounge for my last 2 sailings out of FLL, including this one, was Platinum + Elite + Suites. It ended up being irrelevant because they started boarding so quickly that very few people were through security quickly enough to even need a lounge to wait in before they were allowed to just walk right on the ship.

@talkorpi Great live from. I am just now catching up on this after not checking in basically at all since embarkation day where I confirmed that Elite/Platinum lounge was combined, but little did I know when I disappeared to use the restroom a few seconds after making that post, all of this within 3-4 minutes of having arrived at the lounge (and being one of the first 15 or so there) they started boarding the ship! We were on board at 10:25am or so. Never seen it go that fast. Great trip overall. As I mentioned on another site not to be named here, it was nice meeting you out in the water at Princess Cays! I hope you enjoyed your first Fort Lauderdale sailing.

I am in the priority lounge right now. It is indeed combined platinum/elite and I assume suites as well.

In October on the Caribbean princess it was one “Elite Lounge” which had plat/elite/suites. Either that or the agent made a mistake sending me (plat) there. It was packed to the gills tho and that was a much smaller ship. It would not surprise me if it’s handled different today.

In Fort Lauderdale last October on the CB it was all together.

You may see a slight benefit. 11 is like right on the border, but unlikely that they'll have everyone boarded by that point even if it has started. The way general boarding works is they hand out group numbers and you wait in the waiting area until your group number is called. Priority boarding is basically Group 0 (zero). When boarding begins, B2B return to the ship first, then Priority boarding (made up of platinum, elite, suites), then group 1 and onward. If you're really there right at 11 they may have just begun boarding or may be just about to. if they've started boarding, you'll be directed to go on board with the current group and not have to wait. Not a huge deal at that point either way, but technically this could still apply. If boarding hasn't begun yet you'll be directed to the priority lounge to board with everyone else in priority.

it’s just a separate lounge (elite, platinum, suites) from the general boarding groups and is the first to board after B2B. On my Halloween cruise this past year they offered pastries and coffee but I gather from some other discussion that’s not a guarantee. If you don’t arrive before boarding starts there isn’t really any “priority”. Green lane vs blue lane is just that, loyalty status doesn’t come into play at all. do be sure as you enter the waiting area that the agent sees your platinum medallion so they direct you to the priority lounge. If they don’t know they’ll just give you a general boarding group number.