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I've had an 9 night Ovation cruise to South Pacific in April 2019, 10 night Ovation cruise to New Zealand in April 2023, and a 13 night Royal Princess cruise to South Pacific just 2 weeks ago. First two Ovation cruises both had very sunny and calm weather for the entire cruise. Not even a drop of rain in sight nor any strong winds. Royal Princess cruise for past 2 weeks was great also. Couple of days had intermittent rain and mid-strong winds, but the swell wasn't high enough to feel tipsy on the ship, or stop people from going out on the ports still. Luck of the draw at the end I think. During my great time on the Royal Princess past 2 weeks to Fiji, Vanuatu etc, there was a cyclone hitting the upper QLD part of Australia from the east. So the cruises that were going up the QLD coast all had its port stops cancelled and instead went down south to Sydney. So yeah, I was lucky, but many others weren't even during the same period.

I did ask if I can have any other roll and was told for certain that it's not possible. Btw, the spicy tuna roll has no raw fish in it. It is a roll with rice, cucumber, avocado, crab stick, and has grilled tuna on the top with chili mayo) I think that is why they picked that one due to such non-raw nature. (easier to store / make / keep it consistent) It is quite delicious mind you. I really liked the sauce as it has a bit of a kick. As for just 1 type of nigiri, as long as you stay within the boundaries of what is included (salmon, tuna and ebi), I'm sure they will be able to accomodate it if you ask nicely enough. 🙂

Just got off the Royal. Wife & I were on Premier, and due to this, we often just sat at Ocean Terrace and order edamame by itself or just order the pickled vegetables and salad etc. to nibble on with some drinks. So there is no need to order the full set. You can subtract away. (obviously more useful with premier package for having no limits to number of meals)

Afaik, reserved class mini suites seem to be restricted to the mid-ship mini suites on Baja Deck 11. Don't think you can just pay more for it as I can only assume the number of pax is purposefully limited to keep the reserved dining (no wait walk-in) possible as promoted. But I would give Princess or your CVP a call to confirm for certain.

We are on one right now and for us it was defintely worth it for the nice mid-ship location and especially due to the Reserved Dining! The level of service is a step up, with faster food delivery (hence much shorter dining time is possible), daily special menu items, and anytime zero wait walk-in. For reserved dining benefit alone, all my future cruises will always be reserved class at a minimum now.

This is how the full set looks like. (photo taken today on Royal Princess)

You will see the embarkation time range (mine was 12:30pm - 3pm) displayed along with the embarkation QR code on your medallion app's home page about a week or so before the cruise date. However, we arrived there at 11am and was able to get in early no issues.

On my current Royal Princess cruise, Ocean Terrace was a fixed menu exactly as shown/mentioned above, but instead of the seaweed salad, it's a mushroom/greens salad with ponzu sauce. If you have premier package, since it is unlimited, you can just sit and order edamame, or just the roll etc. as many and as often as you like. (still stuck within the included items though) Alfredos allows you to choose from anything on the menu but in a fixed 3 course with 1 item from each course if you have the plus package. It becomes fully unrestrictive / no limits when you have premier package.

There are multiple dining rooms. I'm on a similar Royal Princess atm and it has the same 3 dining rooms. For this cruise, Allegro and Concerto dining rooms are for those who reserved a dining time. Symphony is for any time dining where no reservations required. So I assume it'll be similar for Regal. Breakfast is 7am to 9am Lunch is 12noon to 1:30pm DInner is 5pm to 9pm Which dining rooms open at what time for breakfast/brunch/afternoon tea/lunch vary based on sea/port days and is shown on the daily Princess patter. Dinner is open on all 3 every evening.

yes. and you can check how many alcohol drinks you've had / remaining from the app very easily.

Most alcohol/drinks will show a price. However, if you have the package that covers that amount, the full amount will be discounted once you add them to the cart. The cart will show the total amount minus the discount totalling to $0.

I'm currently on a Royal class with premier in a reserve class mini suite and no water is left in the room if I do not order them myself. So every morning, I just use the medallion app and order 4 x 500ml bottles of water delivered to the room. Gets delivered within 10~20mins. Can do that many times a day if you need more water. No need to go to the bar and do water shuttles. (I only order 4 just to make it not too inconvenient for the waiter) Can order soda cans, ginger ale or ginger beer, red bull, San Pellegrino sparkkling water bottles etc. All included and free for premier. Also can order most wines, cocktails, spririts, mocktails, baista coffees, premium tea etc. Only the alcoholic drinks count towards the 15 per day per person limit. If you go to the bar, you can also ask for fancy looking glass VOSS sparkling water bottles to take to your room (availability could vary by ship I assume). (or ask them at your table in the dining room etc.)

Technically yes, but not to the extent that I was expecting unfortunately. e.g., I'm currently on the Royal and with premier. Ocean Terrace has a fixed menu which is a small bowl of salad, beans, pickes, 2 salmon nigiri, 1 prawn nigiri, 1 tuna nigiri, and spicy tuna aburi roll (8 pcs). There is no other choice or selection that you can or are allowed to have as part of the plus / premier package. (anything differen is charged at ala carte rate) So you can have unlimited of what I've listed (even can order them individually, and not as a set) but nothing else on their menu can be ordered for free. (e.g. can't have any other type of nigiri such as hamachi, octopus etc, nor any of their other rolls or sashimi etc) Alfredos is better, as you can pretty much order anything and everything on the menu, as a 3 course set or in an individual manner as many as you want. (e.g. can just sit in, and order the tiramisu and nothing else, or order 3 pizzas and nothing else etc.) Same for Vines with their limited food menu.

Do they have red bull cans? also, alcohol cans? (e.g. bacardi cans, jim bean coke etc.)

Sometimes, if the connection to a power socket is too far, I just connect the firestick to a portable power bank and tuck it behind the TV while I'm watching it. Decent 20000mAh size power bank should last 5+ hours. But yeah, if lucky, the TV's rear USB socket might provide enough power or the firetv to function just fine. Then that's the easiest method.

I have two teen boys. So I registered them on the website. Can't remember exacly but maybe within few months of the cruise. Can't be done within 1 week of sailing either afaik. Login to your account, then go to Manage the booking, then Check-in tab. You'll see "Youth & Teen Program Registration" under their names. Then you'll see this:

I have an option to bid from reserve collection mini-suite to a premium suite also but I decided not to bid as I prefer midship instead of walking down all the way to the front of the ship on the Royal. I also have premier package, so I do get many of the Suite benefits already such as Club Class dining, reserved theatre seating, evening canapes etc. But if you are currently on a non-reserve collection mini suite and not doing premier package, then I would say it is probably worth it for the bigger room, reserve dining, priority everything, louonge access, specialty dining on embarkation day etc. Ofc, it depends on how much $600pp is relative to your current cruise price/length.

On my last Ovation cruise in April, they also had no deposit bookings when made on board afaik. Either that or it was like $50 per person / something really low.

Yeah, Princess Premier is hard to beat, especially if you like a drink. I also like how it includes the 4 devices per person for internet as it also covers my kids' devices. One thing I forgot about earlier is that the unlimited dining package that I got for my upcoming Quantum cruise does include 40% off wine bottles under $100. So wife & I might make good use of that instead. Heck, even if we chuck in a few cocktails at the bar each day, it may still end up being much cheaper than the deluxe drink package.

I also got the premier for a cruise in Dec and from watching a few recent Princess cruise youtube videos, I saw that there are at least 2 different Champagnes onboard. Cattier and another brand which I can't recallt...Just saw it recently with it being served at Ocean Terrace IIRC. But yeah, if it's not that good, I'll try some good premier-priced Sauv Blanc etc.

Such high RCCL drink package prices are making the Princess Plus/Premier package prices just look amazing in comparison... Along with their kids for free sale earlier this year, the cruise ended up being so much cheaper than an equivalent RCCL with a better drink package (drinks up to $30) as part of the premier package. https://www.princess.com/cruise-deals-promotions/au/plus-premier-cruise-packages/

BTW, on 9/14 when the deluxe drink package was a low $107/day, it was a 35% off sale, not the more common buy 1 get 1 50% off sale. Another one I missed was the Unlimited Dining Package. Was $395/person on May 6th this year (40% off sale). I once again contemplated and didn't get it. Today, it's $541/person and it hasn't gone below $497 for past 5+ months. (best since was a 25% off sale) Here's to hoping that the Black Friday sale will top both! 🤞

I've been monitoring the deluxe drink package price this year and the cheapest price was AUD $107/day/person on Sep 14th sale thus far for my upcoming 7 night Quantum cruise. I regret not grabbing it at the time tbh. Now, I'm hoping that it will match that or be lower during next month's Black Friday / Cyber Monday sale. (usually has been the cheapest time of the year for the packages in my past RCCL cruises)

Oh wow. Okay, then I will keep my current 2 bookings which charged my card, then will speak to the guest services once I board to replace them with the perk instead. If that cannot be done, so be it but it's pretty bad that Princess treats them as a perk and not something which we actually paid for in advance by buying the package that they are advertising.

Yeah seems the system is broken, but Princess just aren't fixing it. I assume this issue hasn't even been told to the development team. So they probably don't even know about it. The same issue applies when you try it from the web portal btw. https://oceanready-personalinfo-ui.prod.ocean.com/