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The ships are cruising at capacity now. Far too often, there is a 15 to 30 minute wait to get seated even with a reservation. So 17:30 or earlier is the sweet spot if you want to get to the first show time. The wait times taper off as the night progresses. That's the one thing about traditional fixed dining I miss--you never had to wait for your table; it was always ready and waiting for you when you got to the dining room.

In San Francisco and Fort Lauderdale, I've wrapped the perimeter a case of bottled water from a big box store with shipping tape, so the bottles wouldn't come loose and taped a paper luggage tag on the top. The porters accepted it as drop off luggage, and it was not intercepted and was delivered to my cabin without any ado. This was as recent as last month.

Kinda sorta. If you know you want to go to the first show, make a reservation for between 17:00 and 17:30, and you'll be out of the dining room, hopefully, with enough time to walk to the theater and get seats. If the shows start later than you anticipated once JourneyView populates for your voyage, i.e. Sky Princess from Southampton with later shows, then you have a) time do something else to kill time or b) get to the theater extra early to get good seats. You really can't reserve a dining time any later than 17:30 if you expect to make it to the first show time at a regularly paced meal in the MDR. The problem is the pacing of the dinner by the waiters. They know the show times; they sometimes cannot pace the meal--whether it's their fault, the galley's, or your tablemates eating slow--to get you out before the show.

Still better than having both dividers open and having to share the space with strangers. What if they walked over to your side and and had a peek into your room through the balcony door? You never know in today's world.

1) Yes, in fact, the photographers beg passengers to pose for them 2) Same answer as #1 3) Depends on the ship. On the newer ships such as the Sky, no photos are pre-printed, but you can view the photos on a monitor and they will be printed on demand. 4) ??? Never posed for the ship photographers so never had photos to purchase.

The only real hot food on Princess ships are the sandwiches from the International Cafe because they heated them up on demand in front of you. The food in the MDR is always served warm/lukewarm/cold, never piping hot. At least, I've never received anything piping hot. Really disappointed in the French Onion Soup, especially, because this is supposed to burn the roof of you mouth when it is served. Most times, it's just lukewarm and only if you stir it to distribute the heat.

For me, there's no need to sit down and savor mediocre hotel food. It's just sustenance. 2 hours is just too long to sit and have dinner. I rarely have dinners that long on land, and when I do, it's only for a special occasion. I prefer the MDR for dinner because have a guaranteed seat. At the times I like to eat, the buffet is usually chaotic and a mad house and scouting a seat can be problematic. I want to have fun somewhere else on the ship, not the MDR. Again, that's just me.

If you have a good waiter that is well trained and willing to "run" for you, you can be in and out of the dining room in an hour. Order everything at once and just tell them to bring it out as it's prepared by the galley. You'll have a table full of plates, but you'll out of the MDR quickly. Unfortunately this is a rare occurrence ever since the restart as there seems to be some sort of hold up--not sure if its from the galley, the expediting process, or the waiters being overwhelmed.

20:00 and 22:00 evening shows in Princess Theatre are only on sailings out of Southampton where the British guests dominate. Pretty much everywhere else Princess sails, shows are at 19:30 and 21:30. Paul Chandler Burns announced this on The Wake Show our cruise on our 01/04/23 cruise on the Sky Princess. For the 18/03/23 transatlantic cruise that was before ours, shows were at 19:30 and 21:30. He changed show time beginning with our sailing to accommodate British preferences of dining late.

I was assigned B738 on the Royal Princess in Oct 2023. It's a great aft balcony because it is partially covered. The space between B738 and B739 is a fire closet on the inside. You can have the balcony divider opened into the no man's land between the two cabins. It will be first come first served if the person in the other cabin is not in your party. On my particular stay, the cabin steward told me the people in B739 asked also to open the divider, but I asked first, so I got the extra space. If you really wanted to be polite in a both want the divider open situation, you could have the have the divider open for you for half the cruise and let the other people have it open the other half of the cruise. Never saw the people in B739 on my cruise, so I was selfish and kept the divider open on my side for the entire cruise. I also recommend getting pool towels to place on the balcony furniture and changing them out often because depending on which way the wind blows, the soot from the funnel can fall on to your balcony.

What device is being used to make this analysis? Tablet, phone, laptop? Also, at what resolution was the content able to be streamed? Regardless of the speeds, pages/apps/videos on tablets and phones will always load faster than on laptops because they are watered down and are designed to use less data. That is why there is sometimes an option to revert to the desktop version on phones/tablets to get the full experience. As an example, videos stream faster on the YouTube app on a tablet rather than opening up YouTube on a web browser on a laptop.

Upgrades still happen with guarantee bookings. After having booked the lowest interior guarantee on the Sky for the 4/1/23 and the Royal for the 4/23/23 sailing, I was upgraded to a deluxe balcony and mini-suite, respectively. The closer to sailing date that Princess assigns you your cabin the more likely you will be upgraded. Also, ever since Princess began with the upgrade bid program, the more upgrade bid offer e-mails you receive, the more likely you will be upgraded. This is probably due Princess knowing they have no cabins to assign to you in the category you booked and wanting you to pay for the upgrade instead of the gratis upgrade. For both sailings Princess, began sending me upgrade bid e-mails close to everyday until T-minus 20 days to sail date until finally a cabin number finally populated my Cruise Personalizer 10 days prior to sailing. I would say don't cave into bidding for an upgrade until Princess assigns you a cabin, at which point if you do get an upgrade, the minimum bids will drop for the next full category upgrade. Using my Royal Princess booking as an example, the highest category I could upgrade to was a deluxe balcony for $250 pp minimum bid when I still had no cabin assigned; once Princess assigned me the mini-suite, Princess continued to send me upgrade bid e-mails--this time for a full suite for only $250 pp minimum bid.

The crowd handling at Pier 35 has improved since the re-start. Cruised the Ruby to Mexico in October 2023 and it was about 45 minutes from drop off to stepping on the gangway. Not crazy about Pier 27 either. More aesthetically pleasing, but the logistics aren't there. The lines on embarkation day stretch all the way to the Embarcadero sidewalk (unless you arrive super early or super late). The area for security line isn't large enough and is on the 2nd floor. Port handlers have to constantly start/stop the line at the terminal door to not overwhelm the 2nd floor, which is why passengers are left to wait in the elements. Dropping off baggage can also take a while because you have to wait for a porter with enough space on their baggage cart to take your bags. Didn't incorporate baggage conveyors in the design so passengers didn't have to rely on porters. Turning into the compound to drop off/pick up takes forever because you have to drive over the sidewalk, which requires the police to halt pedestrian traffic. Not to mention the Embarcadero is a mess on turnaround days no matter which pier you leave from because it was never meant to handle such a large influx of cars. Better off walking to the port if you can.

Hard to predict the market since cruisers are returning in droves. Drop & Go rates are published after the final payment date for a specific sailing has passed. There is usually availability on cruises from California to the Mexican Riviera. The only ones that are more than likely to sell out are those cruises that involve a holiday like Labor Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas.

There have been horror stories of EZAir forgetting to pay for the flights. Happened to our friends. When they went to check-in online, it kept giving them error messages. After calling the airline, they found out their reservation had been canceled due to non-payment. They had to call EZAir to get rebooked two days before their cruise was going to leave. Quite a nightmare situation. Start checking your Flights for ticket numbers through the Cruise Personalizer at around the 40 day mark. If no ticket number populates at the 35 day mark, call Princess/your TA and have them call EZAir to ticket your air reservation.

My point in this comment was that the very Elites that are wanting more perks for being Elites have no desire to cruise with other cruises lines. For those loyal to Princess, "it's hard to teach an old dog new tricks." So this thread just comes off as entitlement for being Elite.

Immigration in some countries, like the U.S.A., require that there be a zero count of the ship's passengers to gain clearance to sail again. Because the B2B passengers already have their belongings on board and have their Medallions (they use the same Medallion from the previous sailing), they are allowed to reboard as soon as the ship gains clearance again, which is generally before boarding of the new batch of passengers occurs, as to not inconvenience them too much. In Fort Lauderdale on a B2B cruise, we were asked to meet at 09:30 to disembark the ship so it could gain a zero count. We waited in the terminal for 15 minutes and by 09:45, we were allowed to reboard. Boarding for the new passengers didn't start until 11:15.

Some airlines require that reservation be ticketed before they will allow for seat assignment. Ticketed means that EZAir has paid for the ticket and a ticket number has been generated. EZAir, according to their terms, will ticket no more than 45 days prior to your flight departure date. You'll know EZAir has ticketed your air reservation if there is a ticket number that populates when you open the Flights tab of your Cruise Personalizer. It might also be the case where the fare bucket EZAir booked you will not allow for advanced seat selection.

I meant the Hotel Hoppa when I said hotel shuttle. Hotels at around Heathrow stopped offering direct shuttles to/from the airport because of the traffic. Also, Heathrow began charging a fee to vehicles entering the airport compound.

The coach we used did not have a wheelchair lift and the aisle was not wide enough to fit a wheelchair. We did have a wheelchair user on our coach and they ascended/descended the bus stairs on their own and the driver stored their wheelchair in the hold compartment for the drive. Not sure if Princess will organize an accessible coach if alerted beforehand, like they do for accessible marked shore excursions.

ShoreEx tried their best with the situation here. They moved everyone on the 07:45 transfer to Princess Theatre and used that as their departure lounge. Really tense situation as the people were antsy and complaining. Great job by ShoreEx because they got the last bus boarded for those on the actual 09:50 transfer by 10:25 and it was on its way by 10:30.

For Princess Transfers: You clear immigration (if there are officers there, none when I was there!), pick-up your luggage, and some one from Shore Excursions will be waiting for you when exit the terminal to direct you to the coach for the transfer. Best to take the coach to assigned to Terminal 3 because airport hotels with shuttles pick up from this terminal. Terminal 3 also has easy access to further transportation should you need it. Shore Excursions will ask you to fill out a form with your preferred Terminal drop off prior to disembarkation, so they can sort out coach assignments before hand. For National Express: You take a taxi to the Southampton Coach Terminal and catch the National Express coach to Heathrow. The taxi is £10 max. Cheaper but you have to find a way to the coach terminal from the pier. National Express coaches drop off at the Heathrow Central Bus Terminal, between Terminals 2 and 3.

There was accident on the freeway getting and the coaches arrived into Southampton late that morning. All the LHR groups left at 09:50. There was a scramble to get the groups with flights at the Princess recommended 14:00 to their flights. Luckily it was a Saturday and the coaches made it LHR at a little past noon. Not sure if everyone made their flights.

This thread is all about snobbery. Think about the topic. It's basically, "We're Elites and we want and we think deserve these perks." Princess thinks otherwise. Notice how it's never a question on the post cruise survey. Cruise Princess because you like them for something other than your status and what is reaped from their loyalty program.

I was on the Sky Princess 04/01/23 sailing. We arrived into Southampton on 04/15/23. This was a full sailing (to the brims at 3950 passengers) and there were so many groups. The transfers to LHR all left at 09:50. Below is the disembarkation group schedule from that sailing. Hopefully it's legible.