karatemom2

You do not need reservations for Afternoon tea, nor does the system provide an option for that. Afternoon tea is free and strictly walk in - usually scheduled for around 3 pm on sea days in one of the midship dining rooms. There is always space and the experience is lovely. One of the best long standing Princess traditions. The only tea that would require a reservation is the special Royal Tea that is only available on a few ships that involves an added charge. It is a bit more upscale and uses an assorted tea collection and includes some added desserts and champagne. We did it on the Royal and it was nice, but for the price I didn’t find it all that much better than regular afternoon tea. If that is offered on your ship and you are interested, you would need a reservation and space is limited as they hold it in an area of the Piazza near the International Cafe

We live in the greater LA area and have done a number of cruises on Discovery and other Princess ships out of San Pedro during Spring. While the week you are onboard may not coincide with many college spring break schedules, because it is the week prior to Easter it will have a lot of families onboard which should be good given the age range of your group. Lots of the elementary and high schools in Southern California time their Spring break around Easter - week before is common. So I imagine there will be a busy schedule for all the kids onboard and some special activities put forth by the kids club. Also, given it’s a Coastal cruise and not Mexican Riviera you will find it family friendly for sure. You tend to find more of a party and drinking crowd (for Princess) on the Mexico itinerary- and even then it’s mild by comparison to other lines. California is beautiful in the Spring. You will love it!

That is such a lovely thought. My daughter is all grown up now but we cruised with both our kids all while they were growing up and I remember when my daughter was a preteen/young teen loving doing special things with her. However, as has been pointed out the spa and salon on Princess are ridiculously overpriced, just ok in terms of services, and not super younger person friendly. Here are some things we did that cost nothing in most cases just to give you some potential other fun ideas : Afternoon Tea - we would go together often as a special Mom, daughter activity. Our boys weren’t interested so something we could do together just us girls. Production Shows - My daughter is a theatre girl so we would often go to some of the shows onboard, just the two of us. Trivia - we would always scout out the trivia’s that might have more movie, pop culture, Broadway, or for my son history. Both kids had fun actively contributing answers, especially on topics they knew more about them Mom and Dad. Shop Charm bracelet promotions - Shops onboard often has a promotion where you can show up at events during your cruise. It’s a promo gimmick to get you in the shops to buy things, and you need to buy the bracelet that holds the charms but it’s super inexpensive. We have several we collected together over the years and it was a lot of fun. Scavenger hunts - some of the ships do scavenger hunts - we are just off the Sky and they had a running one on sea days. Again, boys weren’t interested - they were focused on paper plane or egg drop challenge, but daughter and I had fun doing them together. Ladies Pamper party - if your ship does this, definitely take your daughter. It’s basically a one hour free spa promotion where they demonstrate a few products on you in a “do it yourself” fashion. Again, sales promo but you don’t have to buy and you and daughter can have fun trying it out together. Even better, it is totally free. End of Cruise clearance bazaar - not all ships always have this, but when they do it’s usually the last sea day from like 10 am to 2 pm and they pull out all the old inventory and lots of it include very inexpensive and fun little things like purses, jewelry, etc. We would always go and scout out something fun for her to buy. Lots of stuff in the $10 to $30 range. It was fun just digging through all the “treasures”. In room primping afternoon - usually on formal nights we would spend some time together in the afternoon helping each other get prettied up for the evening - nails, curling hair, makeup, dressing up together which was just as fun as the salon and free! Hope this helps give you some ideas. I bet you will find lots of ways for special Mom and daughter fun!

We are just getting off the Sky today after two weeks onboard. We sent laundry nearly every day and it never took more than 2 days - usually it was one day. And nothing came back bleached, shrunk, or damaged in any way. Just wonderfully clean, pressed, and ready to hang up in our closet. While mileage may vary from ship to ship, overall we have had fantastic experience with the Elite laundry service. It’s an amazing benefit and I am very appreciative of this loyalty perk.

It’s an amazing experience. We happened to go on a formal evening. So our fellow diners were all dressed up. It’s a special evening, so my advice would be to wear what you would to a nice, upscale restaurant at home. Enjoy!

My comment was referencing that the sticker on the door, at least in Sky Princess, no longer has the former statement. The message has changed. There is still the sticker on the door that I show in the photo. It’s small and doesn’t really impede the view. We keep our door open most of the time.

We are currently in M103 on Sky Princess and those stickers are no longer on the door. We LOVE these forward facing cabins - truly just great. Having this cabin for viewing as we have just cruised through the Norwegian fjords has been such a gift. There has only been a couple of days where the weather was stormy that the balcony wasn’t usable, and even on those days we could still go out on the balcony, it just wasn’t too comfortable to stay out there. But we have literally used our balcony every single day - no worries about open doors or lights or curtains. We have been, after all for a few days in the land of 24 hour sunlight. We have had these forward facing cabins on Lido and Marina several times over the past few years and enjoyed them fully each time. We did the balcony dinner last night as we cruised the fjord out of Olden It was spectacular!

We don’t buy the packages. Not a good investment for us. But we like to have sodas and water in our stateroom cold in the fridge throughout our cruise so, like the OP, we preorder the very reasonably priced canned soda and water packages which are delivered to your stateroom at embarkation. Very cost effective and convenient!

The cruise has been spectacular! I’ll do a full review when I get home. Sorry, I can’t really help on the choices as the only thing we requested was Diet Coke. I will note though that they fulfilled the order with Coke Zero instead which I don’t like as much. They replaced some with Diet Coke at my request but were apparently running out and now all we can get onboard is Coke Zero. Seems to be the dominate option here in Norway.

We are on the Sky right now so I can share how it worked for us. We ordered three of the six packs. When we arrived to our cabin on embarkation day there were three certificates, one for each package. We simply had to call room service to inform them what we wanted and we requested our Elite minibar switch out at the same time. We also ordered the bottled water package and that was already delivered and waiting for us in our cabin.

Yes, we did it on our own. Just pre purchased tour tickets online in advance and Ubered over.

Yes, exactly. In our case our shower was not draining properly - the basin was literally filling up to the point we were worried it would overflow. I sent a message via crew chat our first day as soon as we realized the problem. Got an almost immediate reply that they would send someone to look at the issue. We went out for breakfast and trivia and some ship activities. Came back shortly before heading to lunch and ran into the maintenance man in the hall. He had just left our room and he let us know the problem with the drain had been fixed and to let them know if we had any other concerns. Sure enough, next time we used the shower it was fine! And then we also got a follow up call from guest services the next day making sure it was fixed and we were s satisfied with the resolution. No holding on line, no standing at guest services, no trying to chase down our already busy steward. It worked seamlessly!

We are currently on the Sky doing the Land of Midnight Sun cruise (magnificent - I will do a review when we get home). But I just had to give a real shout out to the Crew Chat feature and how well it works. We have used it for three separate issues, one related to our room service delivery of our canned beverage package, one related to problems with the drain in our shower, and one with a shore excursion problem. The response is amazing - immediate acknowledgement and promise of follow-up. All issues resolved promptly and to our satisfaction, and a subsequent phone call from Guest Services in each instance to make sure the issues were addressed by the appropriate departments. Princess gets a lot of flack for customer service at times, but we have been so impressed by this awesome feature, ease of use, and lightning fast resolution. Great job and kudos to Sky Princess guest services team. I would encourage everyone to use this feature on the app if they have any issue onboard.

Never seen a tip jar or anything that encourages tipping entertainers. However, I have often seen guest performers who are selling items like CDs or books after shows and in the shops onboard. I think it is perfectly fine if there is someone who makes your cruise extra special, by all means present them with a thank you card and tip at the end of your cruise. We have done this twice for entertainers onboard. Once was for the wonderful piano bar entertainer on our only HAL cruise who literally was seemingly the only one up with us and one other youngish couple each evening, keeping us thoroughly entertained with his talent and wit. He was so grateful for an audience and we were so grateful to have some fun - he really earned that tip. The other entertainers for which we did something similar on Princess were Elua on our Hawaii cruises - if you know, you know! So, no, not expected or really even encouraged on Princess at all. Just do what feels right for you.

We are on the Sky right now, our third year sailing from Southampton. We love these cruises out of Britain. Wonderful fellow passengers - truly just the best each year. This is not a knock to my fellow Americans, but the overall politeness factor compared to our LA based sailings is noticeable. This particular cruise to the Norwegian fjords and Arctic circle has a bit more varied passenger base then our Med cruise last year and British Isles cruise the year before, but the majority of our fellow cruisers seem to be Brits. We do have a kettle again in our stateroom this year, fish and chips and other classic British fare offered everyday in the buffet, and much nicer Afternoon Tea Service. Also, a bit more UK targeted questions on the trivias. Definitely a bit more dressy on formal nights. Overall, Southampton has become our favorite departure port and I see it as our jumping off point for most future Europe cruises for years to come!

Yes, Alaska is a huge family vacation draw for summer cruises. From June through August there will lots of kids onboard from toddlers to teens. Princess offers a wonderful program for the kids onboard and it’s a fantastic family vacation. There will likely be anywhere from 300 - 500 kids below 18 on summer Alaska cruises in our experience of many trips over the past 20 years while our kids were growing up.

Waking up in our lovely hotel in Portsmouth this morning and looking forward to joining you on our cruise on the Sky this Saturday. We also departed from the QE II terminal last year and took an Uber over in the morning arriving around 11 am. They were already allowing people to board at that point so we are sticking to the same plan this year. It was all quite easy and we already have our medallions so hoping for a smooth onboarding process.

We don’t buy the Package and I'm not much of a drinker, but I can guarantee if I did, I would be using it for real live fancy cocktails or nice glass of wine. I can get a canned Cayman Jack or White Claw to enjoy at a barbecue at home! 😂

Personally I love the medallion. Cards were a pain - I rarely am wearing something with pockets so DH ended up carrying it around for me most of the time. Medallion is always with me on my wrist bracelet - don’t have to worry about it. It’s convenient and easy. And we often travel as extended family with our adult kids - we love being able to easily find each other - no more the days of the dry erase board we used to use for messages in the cabin. I pretty much realize that in our modern age we are being filmed, monitored, and tracked as humans and consumers daily so it is what it is. If it makes my vacation easier and more convenient then I’m happy.

This is why we invested in a Princess excursion in Edinburgh. We really wanted to max out our day here and with the tendering situation, even being Elite and having priority, we wanted to make sure we were off the ship and at Edinburgh castle promptly. Once we factored in the cost of entry at the castle and transportation the Princess excursion didn’t cost that much more but it guaranteed us departure on the first water shuttle of the morning and we were at the castle right as it opened before the hordes of crowds. What a great experience - no long line for the Crown Jewels like we experienced at the Tower of London and ease of seeing everything in a reasonable amount of time. This left us the entire rest of our day to enjoy the Royal Mile and shops and attractions there and still have plenty of time to make it to the Royal Yacht Britannia in the afternoon. Something to consider if you want to ensure you are off the ship bright and early!

If you want to have a view of land choose the Port side as you will likely use your balcony more on the way down when you are sailing away from the wind and are more protected. Sailing back up the coast tends to be windier and colder - definitely less optimal for balcony use.

We haven’t seen the coupon books since COVID. I don’t think they are doing that promotion anymore.

There is a traditional Thanksgiving option on the MDR menu, but it is honestly one time where you will get a better meal in the buffet if you want traditional Thanksgiving fare. The sides are hot and and Turkey is carved fresh. You can pick and choose what you want. The MDR serving is dry and blah. And skip the pumpkin pie and opt for another dessert. They just cannot quite figure out good old American pumpkin pie! There will be decorations in the Piazza and maybe a Thanksgiving trivia, but that is about the extent of the observance.

Plenty of taxis available to take you to the top of the rock. We did the Princess tour, but next time I would do it on my own once I saw how easy it was and how many taxi operators were there offering the service.

No candle, but lots of singing! My daughter got engaged onboard a couple of years ago and they brought a beautiful plate of desserts and champagne, including love boat dream. And they sang a love song. Plenty celebratory without the candle!