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In the Booking Confirmation, not the Travel Summary, the following address is provided for check payments: If paying by check, mail payments to: Princess Cruises, Attn: Cash Operations Po Box 9345 Seattle, Wa 98109-9345 Not trying to judge, but seriously, use a credit card and get the points/cash back/rewards for your cruises.

I defer this question back to you. It's really dependent on whether you want to wait another year to visit Europe and the itinerary. The Greek Islands, French Riviera, and Cinque Terre shut down by the end of October. You, for example, won't get the party vibe in Mykonos or Santorini in mid-October. The slow down starts in October, but there' still a lot of people. As a DIYer, I've noticed that hotel rates in October are still high as compared to November. Comparing that to the past, hotel rates used to begin to taper down mid September. I'm a DIYer in port and don't really join Princess excursions. What I can say is that it really all depends on the attraction. Most times "Skip the Line" still entails waiting in a line because so many people purchased "Skip the Line" tickets. The Acropolis, for example, has a dedicated entry for those on tour groups. The St. Peter's Basilica does not; the only way to skip the line at the Vatican is to pre arrange a tour with the Vatican Scavi to see the Vatican Necropolis and St. Peter's tomb, where at the end, you will take the staircase underneath the Baldachin/main altar into the Basilica. When we were in Genoa last November, we took the train to Milan and had pre-booked tickets months in advance to see Da Vinci's Last Supper painting. We ran into the Princess excursion at the site; we were on our way out, they were in line to get in and stuck out like a sore thumb because of their stickers. I get that DIY is sometimes daunting, but I highly recommend giving it a shot. Planning is half the fun and you save money. European trains and metros are very efficient. You can tell I really like Rick Steves vision of Europe. I don't really need ultra luxury or high end experiences; I'm more for the down to earth ones. I always travel with a laptop. Sometimes pre-purchasing tickets directly from the attraction helps. In Bilbao last November, we pre-purchased tickets to the Guggenheim directly through their website while on the ship. We skipped the long line to purchase tickets and went directly to the entry gates. I don't do cruise tours, so I can't answer. What I can say is expect small hotel rooms in Europe, period. Hotel room air conditioning is pretty standard in Southern Italy, Greece, Southern France, Spain, and Portugal because they get the heat. In Scandinavia and the UK, not so much because they are known for having dreary weather for most of the year.

If you can swing it, I highly recommend staying doing pre/post cruise stays in Rome and Athens. You need at least 3 days to see of Rome, but 5 is better; the Vatican and the Vatican Museums take up a day alone. Athens can be seen in 3 days. You already flew all that way; you might as well stay a few extra days. Also note, that the port for Rome is Civitavecchia and is 1 1/2 to 2 hours from Rome and the port for Athens is Piraeus which 20 to 30 minutes by car from central Athens. Europe, especially the Med, is a zoo between May and October. The pick up starts in March/April for spring breakers (or Easter Holiday as they call it in Europe) and the crowds don't really die down until the end of October. It's the reason why there's a backlash against over tourism by many European cities. Despite the cold and and rain, Europe is blissful from November to March which is the slow season. Not crowded, but the mass market lines have very few cruises to the Med during these months, so you don't really have a choice but to cruise during peak season. March/April and September/October used to be considered swing season, but everyone seems to have found out about this and want to go during these times as well. We lucked out last year when the Enchanted Princess had it's last Med itinerary in November. We were on her for 20 days and the ports were the least crowded I've ever seen, weather in the high 60s and low 70s, and the port experience was great despite the spotty ship experience. Europe is getting warmer and warmer as is most places in the world. Heatwaves are a common annual occurrence throughout Europe. The weather in the Med in May is not as hot, but still hot, but the chances for rain are still moderately there. The heat really contributes to your exhaustion levels, so, IMO, it's better to plan to do a little less than more. That's coming from a DIYer in port. You'll be OK if on a ship excursion. As far as visas/electronic travel authorities, you'll have to wait and see. The European Union is supposed officially begin the ETIAS electronic travel authority requirement for US passport holders in 2025. The program has been delayed for years. Cruising gives you a nice taste of Europe, but I still highly recommend doing land trips to Europe to complement cruising.

My parents are currently on the Sun. They complained about Park 19 not being open and swapping Kotor for Bar to Guest Services. They were each issued a $250 FCC valid for a year without having to exert much effort. I guess it's worth it to complain once onboard. YMMV.

To upgrade from Plus 60 to Premier 90 $30 x 54 days = $1620 x 2 passengers = $3240 total for 2 passengers If it was me, I'd put the money towards another cruise. 2026 is far into the future. There could be more changes to to the packages before then. It might be better to make the decision sooner rather than later to lock in the current prices. On the other hand, if amenities are added and/or the prices go up, and Princess follows their current policy of not grandfathering passengers in, you will again be stuck with the decision of whether or not to upgrade to the new package plan and pay the difference.

Princess loves it when people buy packages because it costs them very little to provide the included amenities and the revenue is exponential. At $90 per day for the Premier Fare, passengers would be paying $630 per week; the cost to Princess to provide those amenities for that week are a fraction of that. They wouldn't be doing this if they were losing money. The all-inclusive lines also include some type of rudimentary excursions with the price. Not sure how Princess can compete with that. Princess also doesn't have the small ship luxury vibe that the all-inclusive lines have.

Heathrow purposefully doesn't publish gate information on the departure boards until an hour or before departure. The airport authority wants passengers to spend as much time in the retail area as possible to try and entice passengers to purchase overpriced goods at the airport shops. It's been like this for decades. If you check a flight tracking website using your own resources while waiting, sometimes the gate will populate on said sites before the airport departure boards. Heathrow Terminal 3 is the worst; it's cramped and decrepit.

This development is scary. What happened to the "we have high bookings" schpiel? Clearly Princess needs cash flow. Princess will run out of amenities to add to the package fares to justify higher costs sooner rather than later. Eventually they will have to pull amenities included in Princess Standard and start charging for them for those booked on Standard and include them for those booked on package fares like they did with Room Service and OceanNow. Charges for evening shows coming to a Princess Theater near you.

There is no direct way to access your flight information on the Princess Cruises App. The method described above redirects you to your Cruise Personalizer, which allows the different features (excursions, spa, etc.) to populate. On the Medallion App that is now obsolete, the flight information populated on the App, albeit in a convoluted way. If you booked through EZAir the Travel information would populate automatically in the flights section of Ocean Ready. If you booked air independently, you had the ability to fill in your flight information via the app. Once filled in, the information remained on the App.

As an FYI... Per my CVP, post pandemic, Princess only has guaranteed pre/post cruise availability one day pre/post cruise. Anything over that, and you're put on a waitlist until someone from the department that handles hotel reservations can put together a quote, which in itself takes time because there's a back and forth that goes on and there's no telling when the hotel will answer back. My CVP says that it's harder and harder for Princess to get availability and their contracted rates because hotels don't want to give discounted rates to offset their increased costs. If it's too close to the cutoff, and my CVP didn't say what the cutoff was, the system won't even let you put in a waitlist. In addition, it costs Princess extra to hire the airport greeter and it really doesn't make sense for them to hire them if there's only a few people flying in on a specific day. Princess really needs to update the section on their website that deals with pre/post hotels because the sample rates are given as 2 nights and the rates posted are no longer accurate. If I were you, I would have considered ditching the Princess hotel booking altogether and booked the hotels on my own to save money and to save from having to rebook flights. IMO, the only cities where it makes sense to book pre/post hotels directly with Princess is London for Southampton and Santiago for San Antonio/Valparaiso, because the ports are far and the transfers are expensive. In the case of London, a private ride from from the airport to the hotel are included when booking hotels with Princess, which in itself can cost a fortune, so it is worth it.

AMEX issues a black credit card for their highest tier card the Centurion, which has the nickname, "The Black Card."

Try accessing Ocean Ready through your Cruise Personalizer on the Princess website. Also, don't worry about not ordering your Medallions. Princess will automatically make them for you and have them ready at the port, whether you've ordered them or not.

Agree with the above advice. Princess seems to be running two versions of their site at the moment. If using Chrome, a newer version of their site is used. If using Firefox, the older version of the site is used. Maybe the new site is being beta tested on Chrome? If you look at the Cruise Personalizers for the same cruise below, there is a difference depending on the browser used; the top is the newer version that populates when logged in using Chrome; the bottom is the old version that populates when logged in using FireFox. This is having cleared all types of browsing data on both browsers, including cache. Note the changes between the two. Some of the tabs have been changed (ie, there is a "Packages" tab and "Itinerary" has been moved next to "Luggage Tag and Travel Summary" in Chrome, the difference in the main graphics, etc.)

The worst thing that can happen is that you are told that the lower fare is for new bookings only and you have to cancel and rebook to avail of the lower fare. If that's the case, you can walk away and decline. If working with a CVP, there's a away they can refare without having to cancel the entire booking and staring a new one. On an upcoming TA, my CVP was able to refare and allowed us to keep the OBC offered with our original fare (which was no longer offered on the new lower fare), our pre-booked shore excursions (which we used said OBC to pay for), and EZAir flights. Our booking number remained the same.

Please report back on how successful you are and the exigency to which your request to avail of the Best Price Guarantee is given. My gripe about this is when does the department that handles this get to the claims? If they drag their feet, the prices could have changed by the time they get to your claim and verify pricing. Having read through the claim form, it seems like sending screenshots helps. Anyone know if you can submit multiple claims if there are multiple price reductions prior to final payment?

They're your peers. You should have a word with them. Apparently, it's offensive if someone from my generation says something. 😜

You are charged upfront front when you purchase Internet packages pre-cruise. The charge is pushed through and will appear immediately on your CC. If you cancel the cruise, all ancillary charges are refunded to your CC. It will show as a line item on the Travel Summary. The problem is how long the refund will take. There are some reports that the refunds take too long. Personally have never had to renege on a pre-cruise purchase. I can say any overpayments made on EZAir have been promptly refunded to me once I get my CVP involved.

Princess must be having a fun time with credit card chargebacks. They are hiring in Santa Clarita for a Senior Collections Coordinator. If they got their folio accounting straightened out, they wouldn't have these problems.

Not quite sure of why Princess is making MedallionNet Max available. They don't have the demographic that cares about Internet speeds. Heck, some of Princess current demographic doesn't even understand how to connect to the Internet once on board or the difference between Intranet and Internet. I see very few Princess cruisers working for employers while cruising; the majority of them are already retired. Some of the said demographic swear to locking their phone away in the safe for the duration of the cruise, effectively going off the grid. I see mostly cell phones and iPads which have apps that can function just fine on the current MedallionNet speeds. Basically Princess is saying this new Internet plan will encourage more people to purchase the package. I don't think so. If anything, this might backfire and discourage package fare purchases if the pricing gets too crazy. Also, I don't understand the point about hosting a gaming competition on board prove speed and reliability. Is Princess saying that they want to attract gamers? If one wanted to game, one could stay at home and not pay for the price of a cruise to do so and be guaranteed the required Internet speed to game. There's all this talk about speed, but what about ping? If the ping is high, then fast Internet doesn't do anything for gamers because there will still be lag. Princess does employ some type of software that limits bandwidth speeds. I posed this question to an Internet Manager and this information was confirmed. If the ship is sailing full, passengers' speeds are capped at 3 MB. If the ship isn't so full, passengers' speeds are capped at 5 MB. Not sure what the threshold for "full" and "not full" are. That is, of course, also affected by the signal that the satellites can pick up.

Princess already did this. Once they got rid of the free Elite Internet minutes, they made it so Internet packages were cheaper if purchased pre-cruise. If I'm not mistaken, if purchased pre-cruise, Internet was $10 per day, and if purchased on board, it was $15 per day (half those prices if you were Elite). MedallionNet with SES was already around in those days.

Princess' hiding behind a curtain 3rd party statement regarding Park19 has been around since late last week. Still waiting for a statement or press release directed to the public and not 3rd party news sources regarding the abandonment of Park19 directly from Princess. They had an official press release for their Guinness Record for pizza eating, which wasn't news. Why not release one about this major development regarding their newest ship? Are they afraid of damage control? Too late for that. The entire launch of the Sun Princess was botched. I understand that an official statement or press release to the public doesn't change anything but own up to the mistake instead of hiding behind a curtain.

Considering how much extra money Princess is/will be potentially raking in on the Sanctuary Class fare, I don’t think they care. It’s a risk they are willing to take. I agree though that I’m not sure if the new Sanctuary Class will work on Royal Class ships. The Sanctuary areas are kind of small and I see more wanting to use this perk because of the ample shaded areas. I can tell you, for this concept to work on the Majestic, Princess would need to designate the Hollywood Conservatory as The Sanctuary, but as it is now, it’s open to all and no such area exists.

The Sanctuary on the Sphere Class ships don't seem very private and could potentially turn into a zoo. Princess, in their Sanctuary Collection press release, broke down the number of cabins available. In total, there are 215 Sanctuary Collection cabins, which means based on double occupancy, up to 430 passengers would be granted access. Yikes! That's besides that there doesn't appear to be many shady areas. At least on the ships prior there's a big awning.

Not sure that Princess has made it Dubrovnik post pandemic. Was there in 2012 and 2018 on Princess. In 2012, there was a Princess shuttle for $10 per person round trip. In 2018, the shuttles were free and were provided by the port authority.

Not sure why Princess insists on doing weekend sales. We all know that weekends are when Princess does general maintenance on their website and things don't work. Their CVP department and most TAs are also closed on weekends. The Excursions function on the Cruise Personalizer has been really glitchy as of recent. There was a time a few months ago that you to right click, and open each page in a new window to move forward with the steps. Maybe try that. I would keep on trying until the 23rd when the "sale" ends.