jeff74

I’m having a hard time getting a straight answer from Princess of what can be purchased pre cruise using the gift cards. I’ve been told 4 different answers ranging from “everything but specialty dinners” to “only the cruise fare”. I know that it’s not like Holland America where I can apply them to purchases straight from the website but I hoped that I could instead call Princess to have them manually apply them.

He is an authorized user. Good luck!

Thanks for the heads up! I had already used this offer for my amex and my wife's the other month when we booked our 2025 New England cruise but the offer didn't show up on my 14 year old's amex. After reading the updates yesterday I had him check again and there it was :). We used it to pay down another $1k. Normally I am not in any hurry to pay the balance owed until the last minute because there's no reason to give anyone an interest free loan but for 30% off that changes things. Since our cruise isn't for another 19 months it's quite possible that we'll be able to see this offer come around next year to further pay off the balance.

I’m guessing there were at least 100 kids on the Christmas cruise last year. It’s true that there are very few kid amenities but these days a lot of kids are just on their laptops playing online or locally networked games against each other.

We were on the Volendam last year for Christmas and thought that it was fun being on the ship during that time. We didn't have any issues with the number of kids being on the ship but we're biased having a son who was 13 over the holidays. The only time we really noticed the magnitude of kids was at the "Meet Santa" event during Christmas which of course should have been expected.

@frogfish12, the charter flight is included for my wife and I but not our son. The cruise we are on is from Tromso to Longyearbyen. I know there is the option to not take the charter flight but I’m not sure what that involves. I hear you about Germany and that is partially why we are flying into Amsterdam.

I will say that one huge plus for Hapag with us having a kid in tow is the added cost was just 1,600 EUR including the charter flight to bring him along as a 12-15 year old. 11 year old kids and younger only have to pay the charter flight cost which was 700 EUR for our particular flight. We were limited to choosing either the of the two types of suites which bumped up the cost but it's still cheaper than the alternative of getting 2 separate rooms. Compared to the Galapagos cruise on the Celebrity Flora that we got back from earlier this month where we had to get a 2nd cabin with zero single supplement discount it feels like a great deal. A piece of advice that I'd give anyone stateside that is booking on Hapag is to request to pay in euros. At least at the time when I booked, the conversion rate to USD that the cruise line was using was 1.2 USD per EUR which was at the time and still is a fair amount over the spot rate. Going this route will end up costing us about $2600 less and I've bought a EUR/USD ETF to hedge FX risk for my remaining amount that is due next year. If you don't want to go through the trouble of hedging you can always "let it ride" and go ahead and pay the balance early if the fx rate starts moving adversely.

@frogfish12, I was told that it was more like 6 months ahead of time. Even this is less than ideal but I went ahead and booked flights that bookend the cruise by a day or two on each end in Amsterdam as a placeholder. I can decide at a later date to either keep the flight and tour around the city we fly into before taking a train to the Chester l charter flight city or rebook to fly into the city where the charter flight is.

@frogfish12, it might be worth even trying to get a hold of Gary as well.

@frogfish12, we are booked on the inspiration since we don’t speak German at all. I thought that all the lectures would be in English but I could be mistaken. Hopefully any limitations on excursions would just be by timeframe at worst and not scope. I just assumed that since Hapag is trying to make a push into broader markets that the not understanding German won’t be too much of a hassle on their bilingual cruise. This one blogger named Gary Bembridge is currently on the inspiration so ideally he will post some good info on this topic.

@frogfish12, yes we are booked for next summer😀.

We are booked for June/July 2024 on Hapag-Lloyd for a 10 day Svalbard cruise. I'm only hazarding a guess but I think that maybe small ships wouldn't work as well up there since they need to have some ability to break the ice. We considered Hurtigruten and Silversea but decided to roll the dice on Hapag-Lloyd despite not being able to find much at all in the way of reviews for their arctic sailings.

Thanks! I’ll definitely post a review after the cruise. It feels forever away at this point.

I can’t help but think about that one Seinfeld episode with all this talk about the Drake.

Last week I booked a Svalbard cruise on Hapag Lloyd for my family for next year. The price was just under 27,000 EUR for the three of us for a Jr suite. It would have been maybe a few thousand cheaper to book two separate cabins but there weren’t any connecting ones that were available. We also looked at Hurtigruten and Silversea when deciding on a cruise line. Hurtigruten was coming out to be more expensive while Silversea was slightly less after adjusting for the fact that flights were included. The cabin size on both of these other ships would have been much smaller than where we ended up. FWIW, I decided to pay in euros because the quote in my local currency of USD was at an unfavorable exchange rate to what I believe my credit card will charge when the payment in euros comes due.

In particular, I was curious as to any thoughts that people might have on their expedition ships. I'm about to pull the trigger for an arctic cruise for summer '24. The overall product looked nicer than Silversea for roughly the same price but it would be great to hear first hand experiences. All the reviews I could find on youtube are in German. Thanks!

We had a 10 day cruise on the Volendam over Christmas. I was pleasantly surprised at the overall condition of the ship. There were definitely a few issues that I heard about from others on board including a couple that had a leak in their room for multiple days but I kind of feel like those things unfortunately happen to some people on any cruise. I did notice the broken water/ice machine in the Lido that was mentioned above and I had to crank the A/C to the lowest setting to feel comfortable for my taste (but my wife was happy since she likes the room warmer than me). There were also multiple issues not related to the condition of the ship such as several pre-paid items missing in the ether for several days and my mom's assigned room being repurposed as a storage area and filled to almost the ceiling with toilet paper (she ended up being moved from an inside cabin to an ocean view so in the end I can't call that a negative). In the end, all of the problems we encountered were sufficiently addressed, we had a relaxing time and I even managed to not lose money at the casino.

We just got off the ship on Tuesday and I agree that it was in great shape. Maybe a weird thing to say but I thought the automatic hand washing machine at the Lido buffet was pretty cool lol. Along more normal lines I liked that the casino was non smoking and that the aft decks on 6 and 7 were so quiet and a nice place to relax since we didn’t have a balcony with our room this time.

I’ve always liked pre purchasing casino chips just because I avoid having to worry about carrying the cash around pre-cruise. I wasn’t aware that there was no surcharge for buying chips and having it billed to the onboard account while you’re on the cruise. That’s a lot better than other cruise lines that charge 5%. Kurtmi03, I’m glad to hear your AC problem got resolved. Ours is struggling but has been able to keep the temp at what I would guess to be 76 at the coldest setting. My wife wouldn’t want to switch rooms anyway because she is generally cold and if we moved to one with better AC we would be arguing over the thermostat 😃. My mom actually has the opposite problem with her room being colder than ours despite being at the hottest setting. I feel bad for a couple I was talking to earlier today. They have a leak from their ceiling that has been there for who knows how long since they said their room has mold and smells like dead fish.

The charges for Canaletto were reversed last night. Now I’m just down to needing the OBC fixed. I’ve already shown them the screen shot of my itinerary with the purchase and have sent a note in the “let us know” section of the app so I’ll wait until our next sea day before bothering anyone at guest services again. On a different topic for anyone interested, I was told by one of the onboard medical staff yesterday afternoon that they had 3 known cases of Covid onboard (roughly 48 hours after the start of the cruise). As far as everything else is concerned, the cruise is going fairly well. Random thoughts and observations: I wish that I was down a bit less at the casino lol. The first bingo event and the library have drawn decent crowds but otherwise you don’t really notice that the ship is close to full occupancy. We liked the comedian on the second night. My mom and mother in law have been spending a lot of time at the Effy store much to the delight of the manager there. We’re staying in and ocean view room in the aft of the Dolphin deck and the engine noise and vibrations that happen when docking and leaving haven’t been a bother to us but we did notice a strong fuel smell when leaving Half Moon Cay. That’s it for now for the updates. Curaçao is our stop for today and my wife, son and I will be exploring on our own since there weren’t any excursions that looked particularly appealing. It’s a late arrival time and we’re docked from 3pm to midnight so that should limit the amount of financial hemorrhaging that has occurred around the deck 5 midship area for today at least.

Thanks for the tip on putting a comment in the app. I went ahead and took your advice. Along with the Cannelo double charge I forgot that I’m still missing some OBC. The total amount I’m still out of pocket is close to $100 but I have to admit I’ve already been doing the math of how much my time is worth to me since these 30-45 minute stretchs of standing in line at guest services have been annoying. I’ll try to go at an “off peak” time if needed going forward.

Good news… The casino manager saw me and said that they got an email that the rest of the chips were available. I also saw on my statement that the credit for my wife’s spa appointment appeared in the past couple of hours. We only have the issue with getting charged again last night’s specialty dinner remaining but I consider this a win from where everything stood this am.

No resolution as of yet on the casino chips. The issue was that in addition to there not being a slip of paper in my cabin showing the purchase the records that both guest services and the casino cashier have are showing that I only purchased $2740. I have all of my emails showing the various transactions purchasing the chips that I can show guest services and I also took a screen shot off my itinerary the day prior to the cruise showing my total purchase of 522 $10 increments of chips that I presented to them. Guest services had me email them it so that they could send it along to their main office. I assume the issue with them also only seeing $5 of my onboard credit that I purchased, the missing specialty dinners and the missing credit for the spa appointment are all related. Regarding the last point, guest services told me to talk to the spa then the spa told me that I needed to talk to guest services since any pre purchase should have shown as a credit on my onboard account that the spa would then draw down from.

We’re currently on a 10 day Panama Canal cruise and unfortunately it’s been a mixed bag at best so far. Negatives: We didn’t receive acknowledgement for many internet pre purchases that we made including almost $2500 of casino chips, $50 of onboard credit, 2 specialty dinners and a spa appointment for my wife. I have gotten the dinners sorted out but I’m still waiting on resolution for the rest. The room that we booked for my mom is being used as a storage closet and was filled to almost the ceiling with toilet paper. That issue has since been resolved with her being moved to a different room. I’ve attached a pic. Positives: The food quality has been good and on par with previous cruises. The ship is well maintained in appearance. The staff as always has been friendly and helpful. Net/net, I am really hoping that the rest of the issues get resolved today otherwise I’m out several thousand dollars. I’ve already spent 4 hours with guest services and it feels more like a working vacation to this point.