PMGS247

Good to know. I'm one of those that has had success booking on board despite pre-cruise challenges, but it's a sample size of 1 so I can't really draw any conclusions. We'll see. My plan is to check the reservation system regularly between now and sailing to watch for cancellations, but will call the reservations line once on board as well.

Crown Grill, Bistro Sur la Mer

I'm curious what others say on this topic. I feel like I've run into this before where the booking system showed nothing or minimal available specialty dining in the days leading up to sailing but then calling the reservations line once on board and had no problem getting a time slot. But then I read this post and I know you're an experienced princess cruiser and I wonder how it'll go. We're on the same sailing on Halloween (assuming you haven't changed). Sets sail 7 weeks from tomorrow and currently there are only a couple time slots available per night (one night there are none available), only after 8pm, and only Crown Grill. No Sabatini's reservations come up at all for any night, any time. I'm definitely suspicious of how real this is. For a party of 2.

You can switch between different devices at any time. I'll defer to others who have sailed in the last couple months for speed/reliability as here's been some significant updates. Starlink or something? Last time I sailed in April on the Discovery it was not fast or reliable but I believe that's changed.

Despite its bugs I'm still a fan of the medallion. To me its the same as the cruise card, which is what was in operation when I started cruising so it hasn't changed much. For the most part the new features added by the medallion, while they are buggy sometimes, they are also mostly optional. I do feel like the medallion & app have sped up the check-in process. Fairly nominal in terms of your actual time spent with the agent checking in...maybe 1-2 minutes on average, but that adds up and has resulted in significantly shorter and faster moving lines. Depending on status and/or arrival time habits, this may not be a benefit that everyone experiences since they never had to fight lines, but there's no doubt the vast majority of passengers arriving experience a faster process from arrival to completing check-in.

Last couple sailings there's been a bunch of extra bedding/pillows under our beds which hasn't left any room for suitcases so we've just kept them in the closet. I suppose I could bug the room steward to clear the bedding out but I say this largely to point out that the closet works quite well as a backup.

For water - what blizzard said, plus I'll add you can also pre-purchase bottled water ahead of your cruise to have it in your stateroom when you arrive. It's kind of counter-productive in the sense that you have to pay for it vs free with package, but it isn't very expensive ($7 for a 12-pack) and then your room stocked from the get go. DW and I always do. Not that it's a big deal to remember to pick up extras when out and about but for $7 we can completely forget about it. Nothing to add to Coffee or buffet, blizzard covers it.

I thought I had read an account stating that they were opening back up, dinner only, and only one of the two each night, either planks or steamers.

The CB has always been a magnet for negative reviews. As you instinct is already telling you, it's easy to get an unrealistically negative set of expectations purely by reading cruise critic. There's always a risk of something negative happening on a cruise, and maybe your odds are slightly higher on a ship like the CB given her age, but those with negative experiences tend to be louder than the vast majority who have a positive one. I wouldn't sweat it. I will say it seems like AC issues tend to repeat in a particular section of the ship. It's been too long for me to recall that level of detail but to whatever degree you do read more about it, pay attention to where it's occurring and see if that aligns with the location of your stateroom. I've sailed twice on her and am booked to go again at the end of October. Always Dolphin Mini Suites. Never had a problem.

Yep I use rubber (ish?) princess wristband. Worn it in the pool, ocean....never had a problem.

Yeah this was kind of my guess...you may be able to get something technically in a card format but probably not the card OP is imagining.

Handy tip I just read somewhere on here: they're magnetic. We put ours up on the fridge.

Last I recall you will get a print-out ticket same as on a land casino. I don't believe the machines force you to use your shipboard account nor will they turn down someone trying to insert cash. Maybe things have changed and I haven't noticed because I use the shipboard account, but I don't think so.

I have kind of a funny story along these lines except it's user-error, not the fault of the police. My mother in law asked the police to keep an eye on her house while she was travelling. One evening she e-mailed us in a panic saying that she had seen someone on her webcam poking around the front of her house/shining flashlights and insisted we contact the police ASAP to get them to go check it out. She was unable to call herself, as she was travelling internationally. We get a hold of the local police and long story short, the people shining the flashlights in the door and walking around her front porch were the police that she asked to show up. So, we had a healthy serving of egg on our face after calling the cops on the cops.

My guess is whomever stole these didn't know what they were stealing and mistook them for jewelry. They would have been very disappointed when they eventually got a closer look. You never know but I doubt this is someone who would then take the sailing date information and turn this into a B&E...also very likely they no longer had your address by the time they realized it as they probably quickly repackaged the box and let it continue on its way, losing access to your address. Still, the idea someone threw out of asking the local PD to do an extra couple of drive-by's is a good one.

lol reality is we're the same story so when I say "alternate" I use that term very loosely.

yeah same has happened to me and DW. It happens because we use the app to order a lot, and it doesn't make any sense to put in multiple orders, so we end up using one of our phones more heavily than the other and that person's drink count ends up inflated. Now that we know we can make a point to alternate which phone we use but its kind of silly that we have to. Hopefully they implement a workaround at some point. It needs to be a combined 30 limit.

Caribbean Princess seems to be a magnet for negative reviews. Not that the issues people have had aren't real, but they're more uncommon than the reviews might lead you to believe. I am sailing on Halloween and it will be my third time on the ship. Love the ship, never had an issue personally. What you're looking for on Princess in terms of less kids / more laid back is spot on. Take the sailing, things can go awry on any ship, your odds aren't really any higher on the CB than anywhere else. You'll have a great time.

I have a similar booking that won't go away on my app. I booked one cruise and then had my CVP change it to another sailing date. The new sailing date shows up just fine but the old one hasn't gone away. I assume eventually it will go away when I don't make any final payment but even my deposit has been transferred off. Kind of a no harm no foul situation but my CVP doesn't seem to be able to do anything and uninstalling/re-installing the app doesn't seem to help either.

Glad your dog is going to be OK. Glad this happened now and not some emergency when you were out of town. I would personally expect a couple months for the dust to settle on the financials. Based on old covid time cancellations/refunds everything was like 4-5 weeks for refunds even when the situation was very straight forward. Maybe the fact that it's FCC and not a refund will help the situation but it's also got the insurance element which will probably add time and offset any benefit from FCC vs refund. If you're looking to allocate it to another cruise sooner rather than later and facing final payment due on that replacement cruise, they may escalate in order to sell you that cruise. Just a guess, though.

Yes, anytime up to and including on board.

Perfect example of how someone's individual assessment looks when the result is the package isn't worth it for them. This is someone who is platinum or elite, browses their phone, prefers the blue lane, drinks little more than the bottled water from their room that they pre-ordered, doesn't use any of the delivery services, and eats entirely from buffet/MDR/Lido. Very meat & potatoes. It's fine, but it's a very specific situation that is not all that common. Fair to say most indulge a little more on at least some of the offerings. Note: Wifi is $7.50 for Platinum and Elite. While I feel like the discussion left the OP's specific situation behind a while ago, it is notable that people like OP being new to Princess would be facing the $15/day Wi-Fi cost. It's. Different. For. Everyone.

While I'm fully supportive of many of the previous posts that talk about how to calculate the math, including their own demonstration of how their math works. That's how I do it, and I'm fully capable of writing another novel here on the topic but there's enough content already on that topic. I'll throw out another thought, for someone not interested in doing the full accounting...this is how I've boiled it down for a new cruiser or at least new to princess. As a general rule most people who average at least 2-4 alcoholic beverages per day will benefit from the plus package. You should take a closer look if you: Don't care about/don't intend to use wi-fi Intend to remove the automatic gratuities That's my overly simplistic outlook for people not looking to put in a ton of effort to do all the math. I encourage doing the full math, but if you check the box for getting the package based on the above, you're most likely going to come out comfortably ahead, and basically no risk of egregiously overpaying for what you get.

This is an interesting non-math based take seemingly entirely on subjective feel of what's nice to have rather than looking at the economics. As for the cost/benefit in dollars, you don't need anywhere near the 15 limit to get your money's worth. Heck, if you got even near the 15 limit in the first half of your cruise it wouldn't matter if you stopped halfway through - you already got alcohol enough to cover the entire cost of the package.

Right…the point is, calculate it the way that makes sense for you.