Stosh68

6 hours ago, Alakegirl said:

No chance of getting an old fashioned key card?  It creeps me out to be “tracked”

You're already being tracked.

1.  The keycard knows if you are in your room and a log is kept of every time the door is opened utilizing it.

2.  Have dinner reservations?  They know where you are eating and what time.

3.  Order a drink at a bar?   They know what time you were there and what you drank.

4.  Buy something in the store?  Same thing.

5.  Play in the casino?  Same thing.

6.  Use the app on your phone, even without the internet package?  Ship knows what access point your phone is connected to everywhere you are on the ship and therefore where you are.

7.  Walk anywhere on ship, cameras everywhere except the bathrooms.

8.  Watch TV in your room?  What you watched is logged and somebody is in room watching it.

And that's just for starters.

If you think you the cruise lines without the medallion don't have logs of every piece of data they can use for marketing, and that most of that data will tell them where you are you are mistaken.

People should be ashamed of themselves for spreading these rumors based solely on a post from that "other place that rhymes with credit" from some random person who assumed it was a stabbing because of a medivac earlier in the cruise because they "heard a rumor on the disembarkation line.

Haven't people learned by now that if this was true, A) it would be on a real news site, and B) somebody else would have confirmed and posted about it immediately, and not waited until disembarkation.  

6 minutes ago, TRLD said:

Have been on just about every Princess ship except Discovery and Sky. Have not seen one on any of the ships. Always possible that they might have something in storage that they can bring out.

There is.  On the Discovery, there were a couple of mounting holes by the edge of the pool.  I noticed them the day before I saw the lift in use, but didn't put two and two together until the next day when there was a lift installed.

Anyway, to get back to the question, Princess has a mobility questionnaire which may or not be relevant itself, but at the bottom of it is an email address and phone number for Princess' access office, and that might be the best way to contact Princess directly to get an accurate answer.

https://www.princess.com/downloads/pdf/faq_answer_legal/Princess-Mobility-Questionnaire.pdf

53 minutes ago, TRLD said:

Have not seen any pool lifts on Princess ships.

There's definitely a pool lift on the Discovery Princess.  I've witnessed the crew using it to assist somebody into and out of the adult area pool.

According to this website  https://www.specialneedsatsea.com/cruise-accessibility/princess-cruises/caribbean-princess/  there is a lift at the Neptune pool.

The obvious solution is to pause the show's every few minutes for commercials.   Then you can have your longer show, just like regular TV does.

Thank you for sharing your blog.

One post says starting September 1st, another says September 14th.   As I have a sailing that leaves September 1st, it affects me since I've already made my reservations.   Why are we merging posts that contain different information.  Figure out which is correct and remove the incorrect information.

1 hour ago, Teechur said:

Since ships like these are not built in the U.S., inaugural cruises will never happen here.

Remind me where Icon of the Seas was built and where it's inaugural cruise sailed from.  I forget.

While I'm not telling you to not book ahead, I certainly would and do myself.  However there were no available reservations while I was on the Discovery in February, and for the entirety of the meal over half of the tables in the the Crown Grill were empty.

I've never been in a Sabatini's or the Crown Grill without half of the tables being empty, perhaps Rudy's is different but I'm not a seafood person.

Secondly, if you read the casino threads, there's always talk about players being comp'd meals at the specialty restaurants, that wouldn't be possible if they were totally booked before the cruise left the dock.

I would be surprised that even without a reservation, if you showed up as a party of two just after 5pm, that there would not be an available table.

I'd still try to make a reservation though.

Wife and I always book private tables for two.   We've never been forced to sit at a group table.  We've been asked many times if we would like to wait, or accept a group table.   The only difference is that I always make 5:20 reservations.   With an average time of 90 minutes per dinner service, everybody with 5pm, 5:20 and 5:40 reservations will still be seated.   

10 hours ago, BlerkOne said:

So without a shred of evidence, some ambulance chasers are trying to start what amounts to a retirement plan for themselves.

Those ambulance chasers aren't even lawyers, they advertise themselves as writers, community managers and marketers.  And the same people have multiple websites.  https://season4.io/ is another run by the same group of people who claim to be diligently working to protect the vulnerable amongst us from the horrors of dangerous chemicals like Dihydrogen Monoxide.

On 3/10/2024 at 9:02 AM, 20165 said:

Ok so all you math wizards out there, how many $3 slot plays would $1k get you? Example, 333 when you run through the first round with your $1k, but assuming you get paid back 95%, i think someone said that is the pay back on the slots, then the next round would get you roughly 316 $3 slot plays and so on.  Can anyone think of the formula off the top of your head that would give you the total plays for that $1k assuming a 5% loss per run through of that money?  Sorry, its early and hurting my head thinking about it...

There's more variables to the problem than stated, and you'd have to do a monte carlo simulation of several million $1000 bankroll sessions to give you a bell curve that would be useful.

First, 95% payback on a cruise ship is extremely unlikely.  A more reasonable assumption would be between 85 and 90%, but even that is still unknowable without insider knowledge.   The second variable is the volitivity of the machine.  If you get a lot of smaller wins, then you have a low volitivity machine which will stretch out the number of spins your bankroll will last, if there are fewer, but larger wins the opposite will be true.   Again, you can't know this information for certain on a slot machine, but after a decent amount of play you can make an educated guess.

But some quick and dirty numbers using middle of the road settings from an old program a friend wrote shows that with 95% payback you'd get 6700 plays in the middle of the bell curse, compared to 3200 and 14k on the high and lower ends.   At 90% payback, those numbers change to 1900, 3400 and 5600 plays.   

So a $1000 bankroll could get you between 1900 and 5600 points on a 90% slot machine.  Keep in mind, there will still be instances where you get much less than 1900 points, and if you hit a more than expected amount of jackpots you could get a lot more than 5600 points if you played until you went broke.

If I had a limited bankroll and wanted to maximize points, I'd stick to video poker.  Assuming a fair game, you can calculate exact paybacks and optimal strategy for each game and variation.

21 hours ago, wcflats said:

It’s been our experience that the crew doesn’t enforce the no kids only rule at any of these locations.

I've never seen children at adults only pools.  I've had more issues with adults acting like children in the adult pool area.   

I wonder how much this has to do with beginning of "election season".   

Gone are the days where you could put up lawn signs, bumper stickers or where a pin supporting your candidate or cause without having wo worry about your car being keyed, house trashed or being physically threatened or worse.  Agree to disagree is a forlorn attitude to a certain percentage of the population and verbally and physically confronting people is becoming more and more common.

I can see Princess just not wanting to have to deal with it, and it's just easier for them to ban everything than for them to have to become the arbiters of what is or isn't acceptable, especially when 95+% of the crew aren't from the USA and don't know, care or want to involved in anything political involving guests.

It's easy for us to say, sure no "Vote for XXX" signs.   I see plenty of Canadian flag stickers on doors, and nobody gets offended by that.  But what happens when somebody puts up an Israel or Palestine flag sticker that we all know will "offend" a percentage of the population?  You can't possibly expect Princess to have a list of acceptable and unacceptable country magnets.

I'm not saying I agree or disagree, I've never decorated my door, but I've considered it for future cruises.  I'm just saying I can understand why Princess would say no door decorations and say it's because of a fire hazard, because it's easier to give "fire hazard" as a public reason instead of "We've found that more and more people have stopped acting civilized over material put on doors, and we're tired of having to get security involved over a bunch of upset Karen's and Kevin's.    

They all serve the same exact menu.  The biggest difference to me is that Allegro is isolated and can only be reached via the Aft stairs/elevators.  If you have an aft cabin, you might enjoy it.  If you have a cabin in the front half of the ship it will be a "longer" walk to get there.

Was free last month, even had free detergent available.

49 minutes ago, MissP22 said:

 

So your saying I don't have to keep asking a bartender, correct?

Have you been on a ship using the new app yet? 

Both the old and new app show the drink totals per day, I used both interchangeably earlier this month on Discovery.

Additionally, if the bar is not crowded, I find that you can ask the bartender to take the extra second to charge my wife and my drink package's separately.  When crowded, they just aren't going to take the time to and will charge my account for both drinks.

Since my wife won't go to the bar, she will usually order drinks for both of us on the app during the day.  Ordering drinks is typically faster in person at the bar at night when crowded which I do, but during the day the app service isn't appreciably slower.

On 2/15/2024 at 10:54 AM, NotMakingWaves said:

Hi All. I am headed on a Princess Cruise to Alaska in a few months. I am not a drinker and will be happy with the tea, coffee, iced tea and just water included in the standard fare. My question relates to how this works when being in one of the many lounges, as I expect to enjoy many if not all of them for relaxation and music. Am I correct that I am welcome in the lounges even if not ordering any alcoholic beverages? Am I able to order an included iced tea or a regular coffee in a lounge, or do I have to bring my own after picking it up in the buffet area? Thanks in advance!

Nobody cares.

My experience over the past year is that half the people sitting in lounges are drinking bottled water.

I booked a Hawaiian retirement cruise while on the Regal last November.   Other people I talked to during an excursion said booking on the ship would get me access to deals and OBC.

There was no benefit whatsoever, no OBC, no price deal, same price I could have gotten using the Princess website.   I booked it anyway, with the intention of finding a TA to take over the booking.

In January, I saw the fare had dropped by over $800, so I called my CVP and re-fared the trip through her.

If you're likely to book on Princess again, buy the future cruise credit while on board.

Since other people claimed to have gotten better deals while on the ship, perhaps they are available for certain cruises, but that wasn't my experience.

I put on the medallion, and instantly I felt a tingling sensation in my fingers.  I think it was reprogramming my DNA because all I want to do now is go to art auctions and buy my wife jewelry at Effys.

21 hours ago, rockraiders said:

We are doing land first and cruising from Anchorage to Vancouver. 
 

There were complaints about pretty much everything. 
 

Thanks for your responses. I’m feeling much better now and looking forward to trying Princess. 

I was just on a Princess cruise, and somebody at a nearby table was complaining that they switched the square pats of butter with round pats of butter.  There are always those people who can't enjoy themselves without finding fault or criticizing every little thing.  

I've lost count of the number of times I've overheard passengers describe a situation or event that I had personally attended that made me question if I was even there.   Some people just live an altered version of reality from most others.

1 hour ago, Wanderfully said:

Well, from the length of time I've been a member of CruiseCritic and the small number of posts, I'm sure most can tell I use this site for information gathering not for interaction. But to clarify for those of you that asked specifically, I could care less about being tracked and have no pacemaker ( although I may have one by my next cruise lol) 

I don't like the Medallion system because I'm saddened and disappointed that the Marketing Dept hoodwinked the executives at Princess into thinking this was a good idea. 

I'm deeply saddened that Princess and its employees ( IT, Guest Services, Call Centers and TAs have spent countless hours, and many many dollars on the Medallion itself and the Medallion app ( now Princess app because Marketing surely wants to distance itself from the word Medallion) trying to fix all the problems that have so frustrated and yes, angered, even the loyalist among us.

And all that time and money could have been spent on better pay for the crew, and enhancements to the Princess product.

Goodness knows how much more has to be spent in the future trying to burnish the Princess name.

In the 8 cruises before now, I never had trouble finding anyone on the ship in my party. And if I did, it was probably fun. We discussed our day in the morning and made dates and never looked at phones.  (3:50 at Club Fusion for Bingo.. 2:30 at the Terrace bar after Trivia)  

The technology that allows the crew to see our name I feel is condescending. What used to be a fun interaction, a smile directed at a crew member with our drink request, a smile returned and some banter is now reduced to a crew member having to add an extra layer of servitude. ( smile and greet the customer by name, memorize what they like so they don't even have to talk you, your customer needs to feel special because ....because?  I don't know why,,,are we all that needy?) ........Maybe we just need to talk and interact with people a bit more and we'd all feel happy and special.

You may think I'm a luddite, preachy, old fashioned, this is the wave of the future and you may be right.....but I'll tell you, I hope its working for you because that is not what I'm reading on these boards or anywhere else in life. And at my age, I've learned that keeping it simple, not wasting time trying to keep frustration at bay and keeping things people to people on a even level as much as you can makes me a lot happier

These are just my feelings, not right or wrong. I love Princess and not using the Medallion is a way I can withdraw support from what I feel was a damaging decision.

 

It's the aliens.

On 2/6/2024 at 8:39 PM, sonomaphil said:

I post this 35 minutes after our first course was served and 15 after we ordered 2 more drinks.  Something is very wrong with the Salty Dag Gastropub. People are walking out to see the 7:30 show without getting desserts.  

This is 100% accurate for Wednesday too.

My wife and I walked out after waiting 53 minutes between appetizers and the main course.   Yes, it was exactly 53 minutes, as I looked at my watch and it was 6:30 when we finished our appetizers and we waited until the last minute so we didn’t miss a 7:30 event. 
 

There was only 3 other tables occupied at the time and two others also walked out early.  
 

The difference between service at Gigi’s and Salty Dog is night and day.  There’s no manager at the Lazy Dog that I saw, unlike Gigi’s where Francisco is amazing and runs a friendly and efficient restaurant.  
 

I don’t know if Princess stripped all the best crew and staff from the Discovery for the new Sun Princess, but the service on the Discovery this week has been disappointing in several areas versus the Regal in November.   Having second thoughts about booking Discovery for an Alaska cruise later this year.  

The new app is great when it works.  The instant I got on the ship, it logged me out and upon logging back in, it insisted my parents approve me.  If I logged in with booking number it bypassed the adult permission screen but it wouldn’t allow me to see or order alcoholic drinks via the app. 
 

The front desk sent me to the medallion sales desk and the woman on duty acknowledged the problem and submitted a ticket.  I had a voice mail this morning asking if my problem was resolved and now I can’t even log onto the new app at all.  
 

The voice mail asked me to return to the medallion desk to let them know if the fix worked.  I just visited the desk again to show them the new problem and the person on duty was stuffing tissues up his nostrils and when I showed him the new problem he gave me a **** answer about how it doesn’t work the way everyone else on the ship said it should and not wanting to fight with the only disinterested crew member I’ve come across, I just excused myself and left. 
 

Thankfully the old app still is working.  
 

25 minutes ago, Thrak said:

 

Yep. She does that as well. It's amazing that other people at the table seem to find it "unusual" and have apparently never thought of it themselves.

Had an interesting interaction with the waiter in Sababatini’s last night about something similar.  
 

Asked if I wanted coffee.  I said yes, with a shot of something in it.  If been offered this in the MDR many times, but waiter seemed confused and asked if I meant cream.   I said Irish Cream sounds great.  
 

Got regular coffee with a container of milk.

Oh well, I’ll make up for it with another salted watermelon margarita.