Cruising Divers

Does anyone know what today’s item to find is and where it is located? My achievement list as well as pressing L on the keyboard shows only a blank activity screen. TY!

Yes, here is the current discussion thread about it:

Same here - not sure but I’d love to see one (and would definitely sail on it)! 🌟⚓🛳️⚓🌟

I thought this video was really well done personally! Beach, red, cheese, Almalfi Coast 

The house Celebrity margarita “mix” is horrendous. On our recent Apex cruise I only found one bartender who was able to make a semi-proper margarita; I asked him for squeezed lime juice, Patron and Cointreau so he took about 10 lime wedges and muddled them in a glass then strained the juice into a cup and then added the Patron, Cointreau and about a teaspoon of simple syrup and shook. It produced a drinkable margarita but was quite a bit of hassle and several other bartenders were unable to reproduce even that. Good luck. 

On 2/1/2023 at 11:04 AM, LouChamp said:

I am .  For that amount of money…it is Queens Grill for me on Cunard which we have sailed many times beginning with the QE2 , QM2, QV.  To each his own if I am wrong but although we are blessed to do as he is doing I would not on Celebrity. Let us see luggage, bathroom with toiletries, etc. There are a lot of influencers on these websites.  perhaps the money is better spent donating to charities which he may do but Not worth it for the Caribbean which islands no disrespect are a dime a dozen. Same with ports in the Med.  I am skeptical and if I am wrong all apologies but…

Sounds like you’re a hit at parties  🙄

I’ve done 2 of them and they both were fantastic and worth the money. One was better than the other but only because of personal preference. Island wings float plane was the same way; amazing crew and time had by all. 

We are tea drinkers as well, Prince of Wales (Twinnings) being my usual. The Bigelow Darjeeling was nice (needed no sugar/anything) but I really enjoyed the light pink bag (English breakfast?). Surprisingly good for non-loose leaf. We were on the Apex. 

We love Aqua and upgrade to it every single time we can afford to but admittedly have not (and would not) paid double what a standard veranda would have cost us for it. 
 

Breakfast in Blu is excellent and I’ve always enjoyed the rooms themselves. Persian Garden perk is also very nice also so my vote would be to do it if you can at an affordable price otherwise I personally feel forced to spend that money elsewhere. 

Thank you for your detailed review! We were also on this cruise (A1 Aqua Cabin deck 10) and agree with 99% of it. The differences:

Our cabin drawers/furniture were all quiet but the cabin itself “creaked” quite loudly and the room itself vibrated for long periods of time and on most days. We were quite surprised by this and found it difficult to sleep through the night in multiple days for this reason and also because we found the mattress to be a bit too hard for our preference.
 

We ate at almost all of the specialty restaurants and found the food quality and taste to be the best of any cruise we’ve ever done before, very impressed! The one exception was Le Petit Chef - it was *awful*, easily the worst meal experience at sea we’ve ever had. 2 poor overworked waiters for the entire restaurant and over 2.5 hours for 4 two minute animations. Clever idea but (besides the filet) the food itself so bad that we skipped some dishes altogether and saw other guests putting their food back into their napkins, others just walked out altogether.
 

Also strongly agree about the staff - absolutely stellar!! Such a full ship and they all did amazing, really impressive crew on the Apex everywhere. Will also agree about the atrium; was shocked to see it be so small and was thinking there must be a main one somewhere else… 

There were many missed opportunities for X to do photos on the ship IMHO - only 1 green screen and on photographer on each side of the atrium stairs were ever available for photos (that we found) and the ship must have at least 10-15 much more extremely photogenic areas that were never available/manned. Probably not a minus for most people but we do like to have our photos done when onboard and I’m sure X could have sold a lot more packages this week especially with all of the families onboard.
 

The infinite veranda was a nice/new/different experience for us and was better than expected. Wish we had had better weather but overall I feel like the crew and the cleanliness (and constant cleaning) really made the trip quite nice. Thank you again for your review and apologies for the hijacking!

6 minutes ago, grandgeezer said:

We haven’t dropped as much as a penny in the ship’s casino in the last 20+ cruises and have received four offers in the last several months, two by e-mail and two through regular mail. I never followed up on it as we have no interest in doing it.

We’d love to go, feel free to send any of those unused offers our way! We will definitely be spending a little bit of time in the casino during our next X cruise to increase our chances of receiving them in the future. 

4 minutes ago, Ken the cruiser said:

Wow!!! That sounds fantastic!

Ken it really was. 
 

We cruise to dive normally and so I was not expecting AK to be so vast, interesting and spectacular so I was taken back. We have been blessed beyond belief with vacations (and their weather and overall outcomes) this past year though so at this point I’m just happy to still be here with even more to come lol. 

3 hours ago, Ken the cruiser said:

Just for future reference, which Princess ship were you on?

We were on the May 14th Royal Princess, Deluxe Balcony. On top of a totally stellar cruise we:

Rode in (the front of) a floatplane in Ketchikan over the fjords and then went snorkeling in 47° water for 45 minutes. 
 

Flew in a helicopter and walked around a glacier before going whale watching in Juneau where we hung out with 4-5 orcas for a while and saw a bunch of whale tails on the way out & in. Tram was fun as well. 
 

Rode the White Pass Railway, hiked the nearby foothills and then caught another heli in Skagway where we spent even more time on the glaciers/did much more exploring, was great fun. 
 

And Glacier Bay was amazing. We had perfect weather and towards the end we went into a field of 100% thick fog for about 20 minutes and then back our into the total clear; was an outstanding visit. 
 

Also did the “wildlife visit transit” to the airport and it was one of the best “to the airport excursions” we’ve ever done. Bears/tons of wildlife and a nice transit plan to the airport supplied by the city so Anchorage was a breeze.  
 

Highly recommended. 

We sail Celebrity almost exclusively (and have 2 more already booked including Christmas on Apex in Aqua) and we sailed Alaska for the first time this year. We finally decided on Princess, our first time with them, over Celebrity solely because of Glacier Bay. 
 

It was absolutely the right choice, we had an AMAZING time and the ship and experience was just as lux as any Celebrity cruise we ever took if not more so in some cases/cruises. 
 

We would go back to Alaska with Princess in a heartbeat, it was fantastic, beautiful and exceeded our expectations in every way I can think of. YMMV. 

On 5/3/2022 at 5:50 PM, Wulfwyn said:

We have already had 2 excursions canceled  due to vendors operational issues. 

Wulfwyn 

I am also wondering which excursions you have had canceled, thank you for taking the time to post/reply during your trip!

Thank you for doing this! My wife and I will be on the sailing after yours; we depart on the 14th. Very much looking forward to your insights - have a great cruise! 🛳️

Thank you all for the very helpful responses! I will randomly check the app and when our 30-day mark approaches I will check it daily (and report back what actually happens!).

As for the SD, we were under the impression that the sushi restaurant worked the same way as Sab. and CG so thank you also for that information - looking forward to being onboard!

Hello, I searched but could not find a direct answer. DW and I are in "Green Lane" status on the Medallion app however when we try to choose our arrival and departure groups/times the app says "Sorry! Arrival groups will be available closer to the start of your journey" so my question is, when exactly when will that be? 30/14/7 days before? We would like to board the ship early/during one of the first available timeslots and our departure date is May 14, 2022 if that helps.

Bonus question - when we try to book specialty dining the only restaurants to choose from are Sabatinis and The Crown Grill - why is that? When will we be able to book the other SD restaurants? TYIA!

Thank you again to everyone who helped us! We unfortunately are unable to get any more time off from work to stay and explore more after our cruise but besides finalizing a Vancouver hotel (which we'll do within the next few days and are currently strongly considering the Auberge) we have now finalized our tentative plans. Again this is our first time with Princess but we are quite excited about how things are shaping up!

We'll fly into Vancouver the day before embarkation and will try to board the following day ASAP so that we can book our specialty dining(s) and check with guest services for any available upgraded cabins. All of the good "obstructed" balconies appear to already be gone so we'll see how that goes...

The next day is a sea day and then we arrive in Ketchikan where we will do the Island Wings float plane tour followed by the Snorkel Alaska trip. We will try to catch a canoeing or ziplining excursion on the fly if the float plane is unable to go out for some reason; hiking and the bus ride to the Totem Poles are always available alternate options as well.

The next day (Juneau) we will have some time to explore the town (and most likely ride the tram) before our "Helicopter Glacier Trek" excursion begins and afterwards as well before our "Evening Whale Quest" begins, both of which were booked through Princess. We believe there will be no shortage of alternate options for us to book upon arrival if need be but we are really hoping (and wanting) to get onto the glacier(s) via Heli here. Harv and Marv did not have a time that worked with our Heli return time so unfortunately we were unable to book a whale watching trip with them hence the Princess booking.

The following day in Skagway we have booked the first morning White Pass Railway time slot and are hoping that the entire track will have had its' repairs completed so that we can make the entire length of the journey. We will again have a nice amount of time for town exploring/etc afterwards before our 1:30 "Glacier Discovery by Helicopter" excursion begins. We booked both of these through Princess however the Helicoper tour, from everything we could find, appears to be through TEMSCO so we were quite content with that. We originally tried to book it directly with TEMSCO but the time slot we needed was not an option on their website and it was only $30/pp more through Princess. We were also going to book the "Grizzly Falls Ziplining" tour but feel like although expensive we would rather have a second shot at or a second experience with a Heli/Glacier tour instead. If we have an amazing time in Juneau and are able unable to fly in Skagway then we will try to book the Chilkoot Trail Hike and Float as it also looks great for us.

We are in Glacier Bay NP the next day, sailing through College Fjord the day after that and then we arrive in Whitter. We currently have the "Turnagain Arm Wildlife Cons. Center & Tram W/Airport Transfer" booked but are somewhat open to changing it to the "Portage Glacier Cruise & Drive W/ Airport Transfer". 

QUESTIONS:

1. How early exactly can we check-in for our cruise and select our boarding time? I've read several posts on the topic but we are still uncertain...
2. We were unable to find any real reviews on the "Luxury Class' option on the White Pass Railway; does anyone have a first-hand experience? 
3. Thoughts on the disembarkation choice of Turnagain vs. Portage Glacier? We thought that after GBNP and College Fjord that maybe the Portage Glacier choice would be a bit too much of "more of the same' but of course that is just a guess on our part.

Thank you again to all!

Same problem here (on both DT and mobile).

I let the DT load and load on it's own and after the 3rd try it finally logged in. Seems to just be based on luck so keep trying!

Apologies for the extended delay and thank you again to everybody who has taken the time to reply!

After considering all of the very helpful information we received here on CC we have changed ships! We have also selected/booked some of our excursions and are now at a crossroads for the remainder of our choices.

Originally we were booked on the brand new Discovery Princess but with the lack of Glacier Bay and the not-so-long-in-port Itinerary we have changed over to the Royal Princess “Voyage of the Glaciers” (Northbound) cruise departing out of Vancouver in May and ending in Whittier.

Here is what we currently have booked and our general idea of how the trip will go:

We will fly into Vancouver the day before and do a little bit of "city exploring" including a nice dinner; our flights have already been booked/finalized but the hotel has not. We arrive at 2:30 PM and are definitely open to any Vancouver recommendations!

We want to board the ship as early as possible the next day and will book our specialty dining and inquire about any available cabin upgrades as we are currently booked in a room that we don’t particularly want but will be fine with if we ultimately have to end up with. There are currently many cabins available throughout the entire ship (and the balconies on the Royal Princess seem really small) so we are hoping to get a reasonable price on a Mini Suite. Any suggestions/strategies on upgrading once onboard?

The next day after embarkation is a sea day (which we are looking forward to in order to explore and enjoy the ship) and then we arrive in Ketchikan the following day at 7 AM and depart at 3 PM. We have booked a float plane tour with Michelle at Island Wings and afterwords we will go out with Snorkel Alaska (who were kind enough to change the departure time on the excursion to coincide with our return time from Island Wings). Everybody we have dealt with at both of these companies have been excellent FYI!

The next day we are in Juneau from 7 AM until 9 PM and we have reserved the “Helicopter Glacier Trek” from 10 AM to 2:15 PM and the “Evening Whale Quest featuring Alaska Cuisine” from 5 PM to 8:30 PM (because the listed Harv and Marv times will not work with the Helicopter GT excursion) both through Princess. We had considered doing the “Extended Glacier Trek” instead of the one we booked however we regain an hour of time back (plus $100 PP) doing this excursion instead. We also looked at booking with Coastal Helicopters directly but ultimately did not because we wanted to do some glacier hiking and not only a landing for 20 minutes/etc. We are still a little weary of/not 100% sold on the “Evening Whale Quest” excursion; does anybody have any experience with this (or any alternate whale suggestions)? We feel that if we get a more “up close and personal” whale experience on this small boat then it would possibly be worth it/the right choice (and frankly we are hoping to encounter them up close somewhat during our Snorkel Alaska excursion as well)... We should have enough time before our Heli tour and after it (but before the whale tour begins) to do some in-town walking around we estimate.

The following day we will be in Skagway from 7 AM to 8:30 PM. We currently have the White Pass Railway trip from 8 AM to 10:45 AM booked but that’s it… We are considering the "Grizzly Falls Zipline" excursion and have contacted them directly to see if they could give us an alternate start time (as the one listed on the Princess website will not work with our rail return-time) but are still waiting to hear back from them. We are also considering booking the “Glacier Discovery by Helicopter” tour in case our helicopter in Juneau does not go out HOWEVER we really don’t think it would be necessary (and it will be quite expensive) to do both. The Princess website shows that we will not be able to cancel it after 12 PM on the day after embarkation either so we do still have some questions/hesitations about Skagway…

First - Is the “luxury class” White Pass train ride really worth the price difference from the standard trip? It does not appear to be from our research…

Second - Thoughts please on booking the “Glacier Discovery by Helicopter" (Skagway)? It appears that the Juneau excursion that we have already booked would be enough “helicopter time/helicopter fun” for the entire trip as long as it goes out but if it doesn't what are the chances that we'll actually be able to book a Heli tour "on the fly" in Skagway for after our WP rail tour return?

Finally - Any suggestions on what to add on after the WP railway excursion (if not the Heli tour)? We also considered doing the horseback riding trip but we have owned horses in the past and "a single file ride behind" is not exactly what we would want to do. The ATV and UTV trips seem to be the same way; we have rented them in other countries on our own for entire days/etc. so a “single file trip” is not really what we would prefer to do. 

The next day we will be in Glacier Bay, the following day in College Fjord and then we land/disembark in Whittier where we have booked the "Turnagain Arm Wildlife Conservation Center and Tram with Airport Transfer" excursion. We also have the option of the "Portage Glacier Scenic Cruise and Drive with Airport Transfer" and were torn between the two but thought it might be more fun to do the tram and animals vs. more Glaciers after what our past 2 days will have been.

Thank you to everybody who has taken the time to read this far, to everyone who have already contributed and for your thoughts and input on this revised trip!  🌟🏆🌟

8 hours ago, binro01 said:

I check daily usually. It only takes me about 5-10 min to do for all of my cruises. If I see a price drop, I send an email over to my TA and they handle everything for me. I usually get a new invoice with the reprice within 4 hours from them.

 

Recently, I had a very interesting "drop" because it also incorporated a upgrade from a forward facing OV Balcony to a guarantee suite on our April 4th Navigator OTS cruise. I was able to get the upgraded cabin and save 130 off the cost of the cabin. Big score! I was also able to reprice the second cabin where my BIL and our twin 18 year olds will be, from a chosen OV balcony to a GTY OV balcony and save almost 400.00 there. Just by checking.

I need to find a TA like this. I have used various services and people in the past and the one I have currently is better than the rest have been but none provide this much/quick level of service or any significant extra OBC or “lower than advertised” fare prices. 

9 hours ago, donaldsc said:

 

I am one of those who basically believe that a ship is just a big bus that gets me to places that I want to visit.  Of course I don't want a totally bad old ship with lousy food and nothing to do between places but given that most ships are basically comfortable etc., I really don't don't care about most of the ship board atmosphere. 

 

I am not interested in trivia.  I am not interested in the movies that they show as I don't do movies on land.  I don't shop on board.  I don't play bingo.  I don't go to the spa.  On the sea days that I find basically boring, I usually sit and read unless there is a good lecture and most of the ship board lectures are where to shop or what places to visit.  The places that they say you should shop at are the ones that have paid to be mentioned in the shopping lectures.  I have already researched the places that I want to visit and have arranged to visit them on a private tour.

 

So why do I cruise instead of fly.  The main reason is that a ship is an efficient and cost effective way of getting from point A to point B to point C to point D etc.  If I just want to get from point A to point B and stay at point B for a while, going by air is far superior to going by ship. 

 

Also, in many cases I would be far better flying to point A and then driving to points B, C and D.  I can think of one trip to New Zealand where I wanted to do a driving vacation and my wife wanted to do a cruise we did a cruise.  There were several instances where it took the ship almost a full day to get from point A to point B while I could have driven it in 3 or 4 hours seeing scenery on the way.  Also, there are almost no New Zealand to New Zealand cruises and almost every New Zealand cruise starts in New Zealand and ends up in Australia which wastes a full day getting from New Zealand to Australia.  That said, there are places in New Zealand and places in the Chilean Fjords that can only be done by ship.

 

So will I continue to cruise - yes.  The reason is that sometimes going by ship is the best way for me to see the stuff that I want to see and  more importantly my wife doesn't want to be packing and unpacking every day.  Also, that fact that I am getting older is a point in favor of ships.  In my younger days, we did land trips varying in length from 1 months to 3 or 4 months.  I don't think that I would want to do that now.  I would like to pick 3 or 4 places that are interesting and stay in each place for a week or so but I have not convinced my wife of this.

 

One last thing.  We have booked 3 cruises in late 2022 and early 2023.  One is a B2B cruise on a Star Clipper sailboat in the Greek Islands because spending 2 weeks on a full rigged sailboat in the Greek Islands sounds really cool followed by 8 days on a Viking river boat in southern France because I have never been on a Viking river boat or in southern France.  In early 2023 we are doing 10 days on a Viking ocean ship in the Caribbean not because I am interested in the Caribbean but I want to see what the Viking ocean ships are like.

 

Sorry for the long winded post.

 

DON

I am right there with you Don. 
 

My wife and I use the ships in the same fashion as you and have many of your same thoughts and intentions when booking them. We scuba dive everywhere for vacations so instead of spending our vacation in only one destination we are able to spend it in multiple destinations. We will go back to a single destination for a week/etc after had having an excellent time there on a cruise and have done this many times now, we absolutely love it.
 

This was shown/taught to us by amazing person we actually met here on Cruise Critic, the story is very interesting and the poster is now what we consider a very close family friend. We have taken multiple land-based and cruise vacations with him and in fact just returned from an eight day trip that was again spectacular. 

We do have a few deviations or additions to add however. Outside of the taxi service aspect we LOVE cruising because:

We love being on the open sea. Some of our best memories are falling asleep on the top deck under the stars and waking up at 3 AM and going back to our cabin. We love a balcony cabin, we never spend enough time on our balconies and look forward to every minute we can.
 

We love the formal nights and fine dining aspects of a cruise. There is nothing like coming back from a day of amazing scuba diving and jumping in to a nice suit for a wonderful dinner and doing it all over the next day. What a life to live!

We enjoy the hot tub and solarium adult only style pools. We enjoyed the shows. We enjoy walking around the little art galleries. None of these things “make it or break it” but are all just fun additional little highlights. 

We enjoy meeting our other shipmates. We have met some amazing people from all over the world. 
 

We do not stick with just one line so we have enjoyed all of the different unique aspects that the different lines have the offer. We think it would be wonderful to be top-tier at any given line but much prefer the unique experience that each cruise line offers. Slides on RCL, high tea on HAL, the lawn and sauna areas on X - all of these things have been highlights that we wouldn’t trade. 

There are many other aspects we enjoy too but I think you get the point. We take crazy land-based vacations also that we will never be able to do once we are much older but not everything has to be “extreme”, sometimes we like for them just to be “nice”.

We currently have our first post-C cruise booked for May and am just now considering canceling it because of how much we have enjoyed every cruise we’ve ever taken in the past; we just don’t thank it will be enough of the same experience (even though it is to an entire new destinations/region that we’ve never been to before) and for the amount of money it costs us we are not sure if we will go through with it... We do not have unlimited resources and are held captive by our employers for sparse amounts of vacation time so the time that we do get to spend to us is very precious. 

In the end I think we all took what we had for granted. I hope one day it will again be what it once was, it meant a lot to us and we would love to have it back once more. 

Just now, Ombud said:

My next 2 cruises are US Based so I just bought Princess insurance (they updated me to Platinum) as I only need to get to shore where my health insurance takes over. Without knowing where you are cruising to / from I cannot fully answer your question 

TY! We are RT from Seattle with stops in Ketchikan, Juneau, Skagway and Victoria Canada.