Martha1974

Base layers and thermal socks are all packed 😂! We’re just on our way down the A1 -going to have a quick stop at Lakeside for last-minute bits and to kill some time before we head to Tilbury for 6:20 embarkation.

We didn’t get any luggage tags for the Festive Event. We’re doing the event tomorrow night then staying on board for the 5-night Xmas Markets cruise. We are keeping the same cabin so we will have tags with the right cabin number on and are hoping that our bigger case may get brought on for us, (Saturday night’s clothes are in the carry-on) but I’m guessing that the assumption is that people that are only on board for the night will have minimal luggage and will be able to self-embark.

Oh wow, we got 6:20pm and I thought that seemed late… I assume the late sitting for dinner will be 8:15pm but I don’t think I’ve actually seen that published anywhere.

We cashed it in on the (late) afternoon of the last sea day… I didn’t want to leave it too late into the evening to avoid long queues at Guest Services. This was the wording on the Disembarkation Information that was left in the cabin 2-3 days before

On Sky Princess in September we were able to take our unused pre-paid OBC in cash from Guest Services (we had $200 unused and were told we could take up to $250 in cash, although others have said that this was not an option on other ships). It was in USD but as it was cash I passed it on to a friend who is travelling to New York at the same price we paid Princess for it. We got our money back and my friend got $200 for her trip a lot cheaper than she would have paid elsewhere... win-win.

Oh my goodness - the chocolate croissants 🧡💛💚 I only discovered them in the Pastry Shop the day before we disembarked Sky Princess - I was so disappointed that I hadn’t found them earlier but also a bit relieved that I’d saved myself putting on another 5lb by eating several of them every day! We ate lunch in the buffet most days - I can’t say anything stands out as amazing, but equally there were no disasters (apart from the day we didn’t go for lunch until about 2pm and most of the food stations were finished, but that was our mistake!)

If there are 3 price options in NZD those are the prices that Princess are currently charging for $25, $50 and $100 US. The OBC applied to your onboard account will always be those amounts of USD, it’s the non-US currency charges that change between cruises. For example we sailed on Sky Princess in Sept ‘22 and bought 4x $100 US OBC at a charge of 72GBP per $100 so when we got on board we had $400 even though the exchange rate had changed between the purchase and the cruise and by the date that we sailed the 4x£72 would actually only have bought $350. (The current rate for the same cruise in Sept ‘23 is 82GBP per $100). Once you’ve made the purchase Princess won’t change the rate. Of course this can be a good thing or not depending on whether the exchange rate is going up or down. However having done it once I would definitely do it again.

I always assumed that the American use of entree for the main course came from the French ‘entre’ meaning ‘between’ rather than ‘entrée’ meaning ‘entry’… I can confirm however that I have done absolutely no research to back this up and it is probably absolute nonsense!!

I agree - having eaten at Sabatinis on the last night of our cruise on the Sky Princess I totally overfaced myself by ordering something for every course and although the entree was delicious there was nothing about me that could have eaten it after 4 courses of amuse bouche, appetiser, soup and primo (all of which were delicious by the way). Explaining to our excellent server that the issue was my greed not the quality of the food was difficult - the assumption always seems to be that there’s a problem with the food not that a lot of people can’t eat 5 courses!

It is, although it seems to be hit-and-miss how you get it back. On Sky we could claim anything up to $250 in cash from GS but other posts have suggested that on other ships anything over $25 is refunded by cheque once you disembark (we took the cash - I didn’t fancy the hassle of depositing a cheque in US dollars into a GBP bank account).

We did this on Sky Princess in September - we paid £72 GBP and once on board had $100 US OBC on our account. The exchange rate at the time would have bought approx $85 US so we found it to be a very good deal.

We were anchored off Funchal on NYE 2019 (not with Marella, but we saw their ship) and the fireworks were incredible. Even though the weather was rotten I would definitely recommend being there on New Years Eve!

Thank you for sharing your thoughts. We are considering Marcella for a cruise with friends (we’ve cruised before but just the two of us, not in company) and had similar concerns - it sounds like they may be unfounded.

Thoughts and prayers are with the passenger taken off the ship. Thank you for such an in depth and interesting report - we are booked on our first Ambience cruise to the German Xmas markets in December and on a Northern Lights cruise to Iceland in March 2023. Loving your feedback so far and can’t wait to hear your thoughts about Iceland.

I can’t talk re getting to the airport, but when we (self-)disembarked Sky Princess in September we left our cabin on deck 10 at 7:05 and were in our car in the CPS parking lot at 7:20. YMMV based on clearance by port authority etc etc but I was very impressed!

We were on Sky Princess a couple of weeks ago (disembarked 24 Sept) - the info we were given was that they expected to be cleared into Mayflower terminal by 7:15am and there would be an announcement to advise when self-carry passengers could leave soon after that. As it was my husband went down to the IC just before 7am and people were already gathering in the Piazza. We left the cabin on deck 10 at 7:05 and by the time we got to deck 5 people were already disembarking. I can’t speak to the number of taxis as we were driving home from the port, but I can say that it was 15 mins from leaving the cabin to getting in the car in the CPS car park. Our first experience of both Princess and sailing from Southampton and we were very impressed with the speed and organisation of both.

I had the escargots bourguignon in Bistro sur La Mer on Sky Princess a couple of weeks ago and it was definitely snails. There was very finely diced mushroom in the garlic butter, but I know a snail when I eat one (and they were delicious, I could have happily have eaten a couple of dozen of them).

I was very surprised to see it too, but it was definitely $250… considering we walked away from GS with 4x$50 bills. We actually had slightly more than that and were offered the full amount in cash but didn’t fancy the prospect of taking any of it in small change!

I don’t know the answer to that one I’m afraid - this was our first Princess cruise so we’ve never had any non-refundable credit. I was very surprised though (based on messages I’d read on CC about fighting to get OBC refunded.)

We bought some OBC (paid in sterling) for our recent cruise on Sky Princess and only used about half of it. When we received the information about disembarkation it said that anyone with less than $250 refundable OBC could get it refunded from Guest Services in cash, so we did that the afternoon of our last full day on board. We had already given our cabin steward an additional tip (in Euros) so didn't use the cash for that but it would certainly have been possible.

We were on the Sky Princess last week - here are a few observations: - at the ‘Princess Prizes’ draw on the last day there were several $25 / $50 /$100 prizes (I wasn’t counting but maybe 10 in total) plus one $5000 prize. We were Plus not Premier so weren’t included in the Prizes scheme and I have no idea how many OBC /SD type prizes were awarded - availability of wines included in the Plus package was variable! I usually drink Pinot Grigio or Sav Blanc (absolutely won’t touch Chardonnay - don’t judge me). Some venues had one or the other but few had both. Personally I was happy as long as I could get one or the other (and I’m happy drinking a House wine) If you are happy to drink Prosecco you will get that anywhere. - we’re not really interested in buying photos (particularly “posed” photos with backdrops) but I was surprised that there weren’t more photographers around the ship to take more casual pictures - it seemed to be on embarkation day and after that just the backdrop photos that were available. - this was our first Princess cruise so we wanted to try all three SD venues and were happy to pay the upcharge for all of them. When we sail on Sky Princess again we would be happy to eat at 2 of the 3 SD venues. So the decision for us based on our first Princess cruise is that the Premier package wouldn’t be for us! DH drinks beer (easily within the Plus package) and I’m happy to drink wine that’s included in Plus as long as it’s Sav Blanc or Pinot (again, don’t judge me!). The photo package doesn’t appeal, don’t need the WiFi for more than one device each and we’d pay for 2xSD anyway. The possibility of winning something with Princess Prizes isn’t enough to sweeten the deal for us.

YMMV but we boarded Sky Princess last weekend at 11:30 and got notification at about 12:45 that cabins were ready. Didn’t feel like a long wait by the time we’d spent 30 mins getting our bearings before stopping to have a “welcome aboard” drink!

Sorry to continue the rant… likewise please don’t yell at a very hard-working buffet server who is covering 3stations because you had to wait 90 seconds for them to come and serve you (and then continue complaining very loudly to your spouse when you get back to your table with your food that it’s “not acceptable”)… not an Ambassador experience but witnessed on A.N.Other cruise line this week - I thought I was going to have to physically restrain DH from going to tell them that they were out of order!

We’re just off the same cruise and can agree - we did have MDR bookings for some nights but there were no queues of “non-reservations” people when we arrived at the restaurants (all our bookings were for 7:30). Incidentally though, for the 2 nights that we ate in the buffet instead of the MDR or SD restaurants we felt the quality was better than other ship’s buffets that we have eaten in, and a really good alternative when we wanted something quick or just a starter & main or a main & dessert rather than the full “MDR experience”. I appreciate that’s not to everyone’s taste but we enjoyed it 😁