snoozecrooze

I don't think this non-refundable/refundable deposit thing is going to yield too many clear answers. I checked across various ships in various months in various destinations and they're all giving me a smorgasbord of combinations between refundable and non-refundable. What we know right now is that Princess has just placed a restriction on certain hyped/high-demand itineraries on certain ships (e.g. Sun Princess in the Med), most likely to prevent the aforementioned 'abuse of the "deposit holding"' (for a lack of a better turn of phrase). It may become a more wide-scale policy, or it might not, but one thing's for sure -- if they've learned from Celebrity, it's a move that's likely to yield them more guaranteed money more quickly (which is what they're clamoring for).

The white and gold theme they've been trying to shoehorn into the schedule based on the sort-of-new (not really) Love Boat Piazza Party thing is completely irrelevant and unnecessary because they haven't actually been trying to make it a real, genuine occasion to partake in. This is in sharp contrast to what Carnival and MSC have done, as they have robust deck/dance parties based on the white theme, and a lot of people actually get into it. Don't get too wound up about it. No one is patrolling nor will there be any massive trend that you'll have to worry about not following. It's still just a cruise.

There are a ton of Princess Plus discussions on this forum. If you have the time, I'd look through all of the back-and-forth in the various threads here so that you can best make your decision: Showing results for '"Princess Plus"' in content posted in Princess Cruises. - Cruise Critic Community I think I'd consider that non-alcohol package as well and see if it suits your needs better. Visit your cruise's roll call on Cruise Critic. Find your cruise's Facebook group as well. You might be able to snag a spot on someone's private tour if they still have seats available. Adagio Bar is a must if you're in dire need of quiet time but don't want to be in your room. In general, I love the aft of the Ruby Princess a ton. Even just sitting in the aft, right outside of Adagio, it's extremely peaceful. The bleachers just adjacent to the pool, the bar stools, etc -- they all face the wake and it's blissful. Of course, your weather might not be as good at times, but YMMV.

This one is just unlucky. That's when Enchanted is wrapping up its 10-day stints and starts its week-long cruises on the 19th. Caribbean's in the middle of its 8-day, ending April 14. You'll just have to choose a different date.

@Cauzneffct and here it is! Official confirmation, so I hope your kiddos have a good time!

If you all have an adventurous palate, go for the Chef's Table. Ask to make a reservation as soon as you get onboard. An alternative to this instead would be the Ultimate Balcony Dinner (highly weather dependent, of course). Or you could do both!

Nope, no difference, other than the smallest of things in terms of decor, and that's if you actually care to notice. Same menus. If you're in Reserve Collection, you'll have your own section in the Da Vinci dining room, I believe, but you'll have the information you'll need once onboard. Otherwise, for everyone else, no big differences.

Was on Sky in Europe from Southampton in May and Fox and MSNBC were not there either. I'm pretty sure it has a lot to do with the geographic restrictions and that's it. Same reasons why Americans can't watch Eurosport for sports coverage, for instance, or why the Brits can't watch NBC Olympics coverage.

Hi Linda, You might not get as much response here because it's not in the main Princess forum, where most of the traffic is. But all 3 dining rooms don't have any particular differences as they all have the same menu. You can just choose the dining room where you'll find more convenient for you, location-wise, but you can also go to all 3 throughout your cruise; it won't really matter.

You'll have a few "regional favorites" or something along those lines (basically a dish that has a core ingredient relevant to that region you're cruising in), but no, your cruising destination doesn't significantly affect your menu in a different way. Just some examples of "regional favorites" on an Iceland/Norway cruise (you'll see where they're going with this after reading this list): - "Scandinavian Fish Soup" - "Seafood Cocktail" - "Crispy Salmon Cake" - "Rockfish Fillet Palermitana" - "Fish 'n Chips" - "Seafood Deviled Eggs" - "Seared Mustard-Crusted Tuna"

The short answer right now is, you won't get any new ships any time soon after the last ones that have already been announced are finally delivered (those being Sun and Star). This was widely reported at the end of last year from the Carnival Corporation CEO himself [read this]. Key quotes: "We don't expect any new ships in 2026 and anticipate just one or two new-builds each year for several years thereafter," Weinstein said during the call, which came after the company reported yet another billion-dollar-plus loss for its most recent quarter. "The shift away from new-ship growth comes as Carnival Corporation works toward paying down the massive debt it took on to survive the last three years when cruising ground to a halt due to the pandemic and revenue at cruise lines plummeted." Meanwhile, their competitors have made sure to emphasize their strategy of going completely the other way (AKA expanding their way out of debt). Notably, Royal Caribbean Group said the following in this article: "Our ambitions are to continue to grow each of our brands in their segments, because we think the segments that we are focused on ... have a lot of runway to them," Liberty told TPG. "They are all very underpenetrated globally." Liberty said the company's decision-making process around new orders in the coming years would be less about the company's debt levels and "more about our strategy. It would be more about what is it costing to build a ship these days and the return profiles that we would need to see to order a ship." Liberty said that, when it comes to capital spending, the high debt level that the company currently has would have a bigger effect on other, more discretionary projects that require heavy spending, such as overhauling older ships to make them more modern. New ship ordering is "not where the pressure is [when it comes to capital spending]. The pressure is more around discretionary [capital spending]," he said. "It's not that we're not looking to invest. It's that our threshold to investment is higher as we right now have less discretionary capital." So, make of that what you will. It's the situation CCL and the broader industry just happen to find themselves in and different leaders have mapped out different paths to escape the holes they're in. My (currently baseless) predictions are that Princess could definitely have an order by the late-2020s just in time for the youngest Grand-class vessels to hit 20 years old, and I feel the order could be made of ships measuring around 120,000 GT, but that's just if I'm being optimistic, and it all depends on the health of the company as well as the direction of travel trends. The days of smaller ships on Princess have long been numbered even before COVID.

Hi Tim, I've been faithfully reading your blog and am sad to see the cruise come to an end. You looked like you had a lovely time and it was fun traveling vicariously through your experiences. Please do share what West End shows you'll be seeing! Wishing you a safe and smooth disembarkation and onward journey.

Princess currently has those as "coming soon" on their own public deck plans. What Cruisemapper and Cruisedeckplans have published are "leaks". But what I can tell you is that there will be a TA seminar happening this week discussing some new features and entertainment options onboard Sun and we may be able to confirm the existence of your aforementioned features by the end of the week.

The thing about choosing Princess for the first time is to set your expectations accordingly (something I'd tell anyone doing it). You go into Princess looking to chill, and I mean, really chill. Especially on a ship like Crown Princess, the best part of it is the wide, open, endless promenade on deck 7 to just stare at the open sea. Adagio Bar is such an underrated space because absolutely no one knows about it and it is pure bliss. There's actually a lot you can choose to be occupied by on Princess, but from my viewpoint, that's because I don't mind visiting many of the planned activities. Some will also just find Princess the perfect sweet spot for both relaxing while also having that one thing at night you really want to do (like a production show or an evening game show). My one recommendation is I would make an effort to visit the activities led by the cruise staff, which I'm sure you've also learned from your experiences on Carnival. It's the fastest way to build friends and rapport with other cruisers but also cruise staff and that can help you set a goal for your day (finding certain events you now schedule yourself to attend, for example). Or maybe you've found a great group of people at Crooner's (the piano bar) and you guys will see each other every night. But again, the beauty of it is you can do none of that and just enjoy the presence of your own company. Not that any of that would be unique to Princess at all, but in my opinion, there's just less frenetic energy around you at the end of the day.

Most of the big points have already been discussed, so I'll leave those as is, but this small one stood out to me lol. I don't care too much for the Live TV offerings (they're really about the same across both lines) but Princess's on-demand television offerings are good enough that they're not... "terrible", are they? What happened here?

Correct lol I didn't want to sound totally overconfident when I initially said "months" as I'm a bit absentminded, but everyone has been reminding me now of the yesteryears, ah, and the Pacific - dearly missed. Part of the scenario by the OP here still confuses me because I have no idea why this suddenly became an issue by the CC host (as it has been referred to) onboard their cruise if this policy is literally nothing new...

If you have the time, I would encourage you to take a look in the following thread about Princess Plus - lots of insights and discussion: Wifi packages are not allocated by minutes or memory anymore. They are mainly allocated by devices, although you can buy a 1-day wifi package if needed once onboard (not that you can't also buy a cruise-long wifi package onboard either). In my opinion, your TA should be your main resource for everything, to be honest. They should be sharing with you any resources they have to help you get a flow of what Princess offers.

I agree in principle and in theory with your points, but I also have low expectations for Princess and CCL when it comes to maintaining an even level of standards across the fleet. If they know what they currently have is filling up ships with new and loyal cruisers alike, then 🤷 A remodel is definitely in store for many of the Grand-class, but not any time soon IMO.

I'd lean on the side of "dreaming" right now, but you never know. I just don't feel like CCL has a ton of money it can allocate to vanity projects like the Marketplace buffet design, because it's not really a necessary change to make, and CCL just has too much debt at this time. Again, though, you never know; hopefully, someone with some insights can share with us the plans.

Menu shown here lists some of the sides:

We saw this in practice on our most recent cruise and we have to say it worked quite seamlessly for us. YMMV, I suppose. I'm pretty sure this is how it's been for months now.

Hi, I had to come back and inform you that I misspoke in my first response with regards to your first question about the dining. Everything I stated in my response is how Princess's current dining reservation system works. I totally blanked on the fact that Sun Princess will no longer have 3 separate dining rooms (something they have on all of their ships right now). Sun Princess will have just one main dining room called the Horizons Dining Room and we don't yet how they will (or won't) modify the reservation system in accordance with the new design. Also, it depends on the stateroom you booked. Did you book a Reserve Collection room? Or a suite? Each of those categories comes with their own dining room, while everyone else will be situated in the single MDR. I am not familiar with how the new Reserve Collection and Signature dining rooms will operate. All of the information I have stated can be viewed via the public deck plans here.

No standard dining times anymore post-COVID. You make dining room reservations in the Princess app, and you can choose between the 3 dining rooms at any time interval you want (every 15 minutes or so). You can establish a set dining time and table if you would like; you'll need to do that onboard with the manager of that dining room you visit, and they should be able to help you out there. I am wholly unfamiliar with NCL so I cannot answer regarding to the 21 day rule, and I'm also never the first to really complete the check-in information on the app anyways, so I might not be able to help you out there. You do not have to use the Princess app to check-in, despite everybody and everything asking you to. There is a button somewhere on the Cruise Personalizer that allows you to fill out the necessary information online. The recently-launched "Juice Bar" on some ships promotes that they're fresh. From word-of-mouth (I have not tried them), they should be fresh, but YMMV (there is some discussion about it here on Cruise Critic). No Starbucks onboard. Coffee has been done just in-house for the most part, but Princess did recently announce its second go-around with Lavazza, so that should be onboard Sun when she debuts. But just to be clear, I don't think that means Lavazza will have its own shop -- just that Princess will be using their own baristas to serve you some Lavazza coffees.

There are two travelers with blogs right now on the Island. Google "Island Princess Seydisfjordur 2023 blog" and you'll find them. They end with "blog" and "days". One of them did contract COVID onboard and they discussed their experience; overall, that blogger is still happy to be onboard and have shared how accommodating the staff has been. The other blogger has not shared any noticeably bad experiences either.

Correct, the ship went to Hubbard on the April 30 cruise between YVR and SEA this year. Important to note as well that any further reviews of Discovery this year will feature Endicott Arm and not Glacier Bay because the ship doesn't visit there this summer.