PescadoAmarillo

Towel rack while in the pool?

Disembarkation was significantly delayed due to a slowdown with Customs and Border Protection. That is fact. Hearsay is that a facial recognition system is supposed to be in use, speeding up the process but that there was some friction between Princess and…someone (CBP?) and as a result it is not in use and that is slowing down disembarkation, thus slowing down embarkation.

This was from the cruise that ended today.

I have not done or needed to do it since 2019, but did it many times between 2011 and 2019. It’s certainly possible this has changed, but I found the ability to do so invaluable for just such a reason as outlined by @Trish Traveler.

I’ve never not been able to do this. I don’t have one currently booked outside of the final payment due date, or I could try to go online and do screen grabs.

You booked this yourself with Princess? You can still see specific IB cabins available for booking? That’s important. But I think, based on what you said, you could book an IB cabin, just not on Deck 9. If so… Wait until it is night, off-business hours in the US. Cancel your booking. It takes only a few minutes for the cabin to reappear. It’s still a risk, but only a small one. It’s never not worked for me and I’ve done it at least 20 times. Making a separate new booking and then getting Princess to cancel your existing booking and move the cabin to the new booking as @CruiseRaider suggested could work. I’ve done that, too. But even in the old days of excellent Princess customer service, it was a bit of a pain. Your ability to do that depends entirely on getting someone who understands and is skilled, and that’s a bigger risk these days than losing the cabin if you do it yourself.

Is that Le Meridian?

Lautoka is not a big loss, but Dravuni… 🥲. Yes, definitely worth a return trip. Find an itinerary with Isle of Pines and Champagne Bay and you’ll have more than made up for it.

This is the same menu they have every day for lunch in the dining room. I wonder when that started. There used to be a different one every day.

Does candy count?

It’s being built right into the apps with a 20% tip as a default, and friends who own a franchise smoothie cafe say their employees are making bank.

Love the Mystery Island pics! Lucky you to see an airplane take off…or land…or both!

While I appreciate your rationalization, what percentage of Princess cruises are 2 or 3 days long? Perhaps 1 to 2 percent. And since the entire survey process seems fully automated, I can’t imagine it’s any kind of a hardship to distribute comments to the people who deserve them, even if received 4 to 14 days after a cruise ends.

Princess needs to change that. There is no need to have that arbitrary cut off, and even less need to not inform their guests about it. It shows a lack of respect for both guests and crew. Many guests aren’t in a position to receive and complete the survey within three days even if they want to.

My understanding is that, if the survey is completed more than three days post cruise, the crew mentions aren’t disseminated to the ship. Perhaps @CruiseRaider can clarify if that’s incorrect.

Knowing you, I believe that, and was not referring to you in my post. Just all the others who hopped on board having “so many” friends among the crew and intimate knowledge (including contract review?) of their personal financial situations. It’s really been quite amusing. I’m not sure I could feel totally comfortable removing tips, even if it meant more money for the crew in the long run. I put myself through college on tips and understand their importance to those whose pay is contingent on them. We’ve removed one day of tips on one cruise one time when our cabin was so smoky that our luggage was still sitting the hall and we couldn’t even unpack until the second day of our cruise. (BTW, it finally had the desired effect, and the head of housekeeping was in our cabin within 30 minutes). Frankly, I’m glad I’m not going to have to worry about what I will do about tips for the foreseeable future. We like the plus package, which removes the question. I guess my issue du jour with Princess is that they have withheld from me the fact that all the time and effort I’ve put into crew mentions on the post-cruise surveys for years hasn’t counted. Thanks Princess…especially since I was using minutes my limited free WiFi and taking vacation time to complete many of them.

I doubt anything changed. In fact, I would guess that even on cruises where we are totally happy or unhappy with the service in the MDR, others have having a different experience.

Good to know that it works for you because you don’t order deliveries through the app but that is not what is touted and has been touted ever since that Consumer Electronics Show a zillion years ago when the Medallion was first announced. @mcgratru, it’s not just the Ruby. DH is currently on the Regal doing B2B cruises. He had reservations in DMW in the app for a private table nightly at a certain time. The first day of the first cruise, he received 12 separate emails, one for each night, changing the reservations. The first day of the second cruise he again received an email for each night of that cruise, but, by then, he had a table locked in with the Restaurant Manager. But it really shouldn’t take a “practice” cruise to get what was reserved for months.

I am gobsmacked by the number of us who have “many friends who work on ships”. I am also surprised that so many of us apparently feel totally comfortable asking our friends how much and how they get paid.

Thank you for this information, and also your info on the other current tipping thread. Since we’ve been booking Plus packages for shorter cruises, it really doesn’t affect us at the present time, but it’s good to know for the future (and to have what you were told backed up by others). I won’t ask or confirm, but appreciate when others who do share the info here. My heart will be with you on the Sapphire, but I’ll feel confident for the rest of my life that cancelling was the right choice. Family definitely comes first. I hope you have a wonderful time!

On our 2006 Australia trip, we stayed down in The Rocks area for a week pre-cruise. While police certainly had the area cleared of any drunk people by the next morning, we got used to seeing drunk seagulls stumbling about.

@Steelers36, not that it matters to this post, but you’ve just brought back some great memories for me. Thank you! I looked through my blog posts for these pics I knew I’d posted there. These were of Darko almost ten years ago, from those wonderful halcyon winters on the Emerald Princess in the Caribbean.

No. “My” Darko was promoted, to Dining Room Supervisor, before COVID, but has not returned to ships since.

The menus I’ve posted are from a 12-night cruise, and tonight, on Day 8, they are beginning to repeat. It would make sense that they have 7 different vegan menus geared to 7-night cruises. If I see any new menus, I’ll post them here, and hopefully others will as well.

My understanding is that the OP was delayed in boarding the ship because it couldn’t make it into the disembarkation port on the usual turnaround day. I think this just happened in Auckland. They incurred extra charges related to the delay, and missed one day of their cruise. This is not the usual “missing a port due to bad weather” scenario.