PMGS247

This is true too....I've never seen a shred of enforcement on of arrival time on Princess.

Touch on the little information button on the "Your arrival Status Green Lane" to get it to expand and show "Personal Information & Documents" and "Choose your Medallion wearable". Touch Personal Information & Documents. That should take you to the screen with the Suggested Section.

This is good advice. I feel like even having a non-surge protecting power strip is likely to get you one of the embarkation day notes requesting that you report to the Security office on a lower deck.

Under the Suggested Section "Arrivals"

I guess I have a wider definition of counting calories. If you're doing calorie math you're definitely on the calorie counting spectrum. Your logic is fine but it's yours. Most leave this type of thought behind when setting sail. I'm not judging either way, just an observation....different strokes. Package isn't for you.

The package is not for you. Sometimes the numbers are a slam dunk, other times value is in the eye of the beholder. Many people report drinking more as a result of having the package. This is probably the first account of which I've read someone feeling forced into an undesirable situation due to the calories involved, vs the more common "I'm on vacation" attitude of those who appreciate being able to drink freely and not worry about the bill. It's a totally valid opinion, just unusual...if you're counting calories the package is definitely not for you. Just goes to show, your mileage may vary...everyone has to decide for themselves, but you have to be an informed consumer. Princess itself is hardly the only provider of goods and services that is happy to oversell to an uninformed consumer.

Interesting. I took last year "off" from princess and tried Royal & HAL for the first time. It was my first non-Princess experience. Some good & some bad, the details of which are neither here nor there, but suffice it to say I found myself missing Princess so this year we're back with our only 2 cruises this year on Princess. Discovery in a few weeks, Caribbean Princess in November. November plans are more flexible and there's lots of time still for things to change, but that's the plan for now. Historically, the experience on board has far exceeded my expectations after reading tales of woe from here on cruise critic, so I'll be curious how it goes. I'm expecting Discovery to be like a busy walmart on a saturday morning, and the CB, well, everything laid out here. I also intend to try Celebrity at some point but haven't quite pulled the trigger yet.

I ran into this as well for an upcoming Mexican Riviera cruise. I was able to join a waitlist but only for 1 person....I'll have to cancel if I can only ultimately get one slot. I would be in the dog house if I left my wife behind lol Hoping maybe I can get one, and then sneak another one later.

Exact same here.

responses in this thread crack me up. having said that, the movie selections are pretty family friendly. Some PG-13 with some occasional language mixed but nothing egregious by most people's standards.

It's so true. Cruise critic is the place to send people when you want to convince them that cruising is the worst vacation method available. #1 Medallion. Just a huge fan. #2 Smoking Rules. Ironically I was a smoker when I started cruising and would not have started cruising if the smoking rules were as they are now. I LOVED smoking on the balcony...but as a current non-smoker I'm glad to not have to smell it from my balcony.

5 weeks from right now that'll be me snapping this photo on the 4/1 sailing.

Have to disagree with this. Many of the reasons have already been called out, but for me.. 1. This isn't guaranteed to happen, prices can go up as well. 2. If they're selling remaining cabins cheap they're the cabins everyone else has passed on, including yourself. 3. Associated travel costs for airfare/hotel are likely much higher closer to the date. I'm not saying there aren't situations where last minute deals could be great. If I lived near a cruise port, I didn't need to travel in, I didn't care at all about which cabin I was in, and it was relatively easy to pack up and leave home on short notice then I would keep an eye out for these deals all the time. It's definitely a real thing, but it's a very narrow set of criteria required for someone to make a generic statement that they should always wait for last minute deals. There's a lot of significant drawbacks to this approach for most people. Booking early does yield the chance to rebook at any time up until final payment for any price drops. Even after final payment it may be worth a call to the cruise line to see if they'll do anything for you. They might not, but it's not unheard of for them to throw in some OBC or allow you to upgrade to a better room without any additional cost. I pulled off the latter on a particularly undersold cruise back just before the pandemic. I was booked and paid for a balcony room then the prices dropped and it was basically the same price for a mini suite as I'd paid for my balcony. They upgraded me to the mini suite. All depends on the exact situation they're facing that dictates what they are & aren't willing to do for you at this point....you'll never know ahead of time but it doesn't hurt to ask.

Depends on what's on, to be fair. My wife and I branched out to HAL this past November to sail on the Nieuw Statendam, which has a big screen above its main pool much like Princess. They did not use it nearly as much as Princess though, playing a movie or live sports around 8pm each night. We did find ourselves calling the screen a waste throughout the day as it did absolutely nothing other than a couple hours at night. This is probably a more ideal schedule for someone like yourself, but I can definitely chime in with a different point of view and say I definitely missed the daytime movies. I will agree that they probably take it a little too far. If I had total control I'd have it be 1-2 morning/afternoon movies and cut out a lot of the filler that they run in between, but overall I appreciate that they make good use of the screen.

Yeah like I said the modern packages that are more all inclusive muddy the waters a bit, I was just using the pricing of the stand-alone package as a general rule of thumb to guide my decision to "double dip" or not. As someone pointed out my simplified example of $60+11 is a little dated and the actual current rate of a stand-alone package is $64.99+$11.71. The drink package cost IS still buried in the Princess Plus package it's just discounted in combination with a bunch of other benefits. Does this mean the gratuities from the drinks portion of the princess plus package are less than if you buy a stand alone package? I don't know....knowing the cruise lines it's probably fair to assume the crew eats some of that discount as well, but it's still a decent general rule to assume you're tipping $11.71/day for beverages on princess plus, whether you use it or not. Decide from there whether that's sufficient for the amount of service you're consuming. Totally fair if it is; just throwing my 0.02 on my thought process.

This is correct. Paying per drink definitely has 18% on each drink. It's interesting with the increase in beverage packages, though. Beverage packages also include the 18%. Using round numbers lets call it $60/day drink package + $11 gratuity. You'd have to ask yourself based on your own consumption whether you're coming in above/below that amount of consumption and whether the associated $11 is sufficient or not. If you're consuming above, you might consider throwing some extra $ in occasionally. If you're below you might want to revisit whether you should have purchased the package. The waters are even muddier now though that the drink packages are buried deeper in the overall cruise packages. Still, that $11 or $12 is probably a good rule of thumb for how much goes to the bar staff if you have a drink package and in the eye of the beholder whether that's sufficient or not. I tend to get the most of out of my drink packages and will often throw in an extra dollar or two here & there. I pretty commonly add a little extra when something is brought to me using the medallion but rarely when I go up to the bar, unless I've really made the most of my package that day and feeling drunkenly generous.

Agreed. I can at least say for myself I was very cognizant of the fact that it was a unique scenario for the ship to be that empty and I made sure to soak up every moment of it. It's easy to get spoiled quickly though!

I'm anxious to see how it is when I sail on April 1 on this ship. This will only be my second experience with a royal class ship, but my first experience was immediately after cruising resumed and the Sky Princess ran at 35-40% capacity. It was fantastic, but I knew at the time it was a special circumstance to have the ship that empty. I've sailed the Grand class at capacity many times and never had too much of an issue, although now that someone mentions it, it's not like the IC is any larger on the Royal class but the passenger population certainly is.

#1 First cruise for most of the obvious reasons but probably most notably the stress of getting there and boarding 10 minutes before sail away. Learned the lesson about flying in the day before IMMEDIATELY. #2 December 2021 first cruise after the covid cruising shut down. Sky princess. First experience on a royal class ship and it was at 40% capacity. Standard eastern Caribbean itinerary but between the new experience of the royal ship, having all the room in the world with the low capacity, 100% perfect weather, and the feeling of FINALLY being out at sea again it was an exceptionally satisfying vacation.

Sea Lions are good! A bonus even. It's very whale specific....the only whale that doesn't get lumped in are Beluga. anything else is on the proverbial list. I think it all originated with Orcas and expanded to anything with the word whale in the name.

I appreciate the insight. I feel silly asking follow up questions because I know it's over the top but bear with me. What would you say is the likelihood of seeing a whale/spout between the ship and where the tenders drop you off on shore? Am I accurate in saying that the whale watching boats would be more prevalent towards the open ocean than in the bay where the ship anchors? Trying to set my wife's mind at ease and convince her to go ashore, but I don't want to outright lie either. If there's a chance the tender boat could unintentionally turn into a whale watching boat that would be valuable information.

Thanks for the review! Sailing the same itinerary on the first of April. You mentioned watching the wildlife from the Sanctuary - you saw whales? How noticeable were they? I ask this for probably the opposite reason that most would think, i.e. that I'm hoping to see them, which me personally I wouldn't mind it at all other than the fact that my wife has an irrational fear of them. She knows it's irrational, she wouldn't argue the fact that it doesn't make any sense, but it's very real and very permanent regardless. While I do think our history of cruising has settled her mind a little bit on the topic, where originally any deep water made her nervous, she has grown a comfort level with the little to no chance of running into one in the Caribbean...and having only experience in the Caribbean so far, this will be easily the most whale-intensive intensive itinerary we've ever attempted. I'm actually hoping to hear that without putting in some effort to go find them, that one is unlikely to be too aware that they're nearby throughout the cruise. If she sees one or hears that they're swimming around outside before we go ashore in Cabo, it may be difficult to get her onto a tender boat, regardless of what we have or have not pre-paid.

The only other notable thought that I excluded from my last post was I definitely gave HAL the edge on stateroom. At least comparing balcony to balcony. HAL wins with the couch and better bathroom/shower. You have to go to Mini-Suite on Princess to do better but that's a fairly noticeable price jump. I've honestly never stayed in a princess standard balcony room, I've always opted for a mini-suite because I feel like I need the couch and most of my cruises have been on the grand class (like the crown) where deluxe balcony isn't an option (at least that I've seen?), but I've seen enough about standard balconies to safely say I'd prefer the HAL Balcony/veranda over a standard...the couch alone makes it a shoe-in. On my upcoming Mexican Riviera cruise on Discovery princess I am slated for a deluxe balcony so I'll have the couch but I'm sure I'll be wishing I had my bathroom back from my HAL cruise.

Just did my first HAL back in November due to the lack of Princess options that worked with our schedule. Enjoyed it very much, found the two brands to be very comparable. Sailed the Nieuw Statendam I gave HAL the edge on food. I gave Princess the edge on entertainment due to a wider variety....HAL was very good, but very one note in terms of focus on music. There was a comedian but that was it...beyond that it was music, music, and more music. High quality entertainment and I did enjoy myself, but it made me appreciate the slightly more varied entertainment on Princess. I also found HAL massively under-utilized their outdoor movie screen, which was a feature from Princess we enjoy very much and one of the things that attracted us to that particular HAL ship.

No, the broadway shows on RCCL are included but you do have to reserve tickets in advance, which can be like trying to secure difficult concert tickets for some events, but I don't think that' the case for CATS since it's so unpopular. They really need to drop it.