Crystaltipps67

Greetings from a fellow Brit. Please don't panic - we pay the auto gratuity but rarely anything more. I certainly wouldn't ever be carrying round a stack $ bills to dole out to people as we go. It's not our culture and I'd feel really uncomfortable about doing it. Room stewards do their job. I've never felt that they were doing anything above and beyond to deserve anything more. The only additional tip we've ever given was to a MDR waiter who saved us a table in his section every night, got the chef to cook us Phillipino food because we mentioned a Phillipino dish that we like, always spotted when the wine glass was getting low and appeared with a fresh one, and was the funniest man we've ever met. He got £20 in cash (cruising out of Southampton) on the last evening and a mention in the post cruise survey. Hope that helps.

We've only ever booked fairly last minute on Princess before, but booked our next cruise some time in advance. We are 63 days out now, and there's no ship activities showing on journey view on either the old or new app......when does that detail normally appear? Many thanks.

January 2022 was 2 years ago. Makes me think this is probably fake news.

Show times depend on where you are - in Europe during summer 2023 show times were 20:00 and 22:15. I think that my be because typically Europeans prefer to dine later than Americans.

Yes that's what I'll do as I don't have the facility to print from my phone as I have to use a work printer - I was just making the point that the app isn't showing the option.

We DO have Plus but we don't have any symbol at all on that screen in the new app.

I'm 73 days out and I don't have the luggage tag tab on the new app.

That doesn't work for us in the UK - it's only available to US/Canada/Mexico permanent residents booked in the US. And US 'insurance' is very different to UK 'insurance' - we don't pay a % of the cruise, and we pay significantly less as it's true insurance, covering us for risk rather than being able to cancel for any reason (which would never feature in UK insurance policies). There are exactly no benefits available to UK residents in the Ruby tier.

I don't understand what the point of Ruby is. Certainly for us in the UK it's not an incentive as I don't believe we gain a single benefit after our 3rd cruise when we reach that status. So maybe just adding a little something as a benefit for Ruby that we can all benefit from would be nice.

I thought I'd moved to green lane on the new app too as I had a green tick and 'ready to sail' , but at the top of the page it says that to become green you have to have your medallion shipped, which of course we can't in the UK. So I think we're still blue 😞

I think we are comparing apples and pears. I don't see any appetiser on the Catch by Rudi menu that consists of what you describe, so I must be looking at the wrong thing. Sorry.

I get your point and agree that probably unable in the West to get that quality food for the price of the upcharge. But $250 - wow! In the UK three courses in Rick Stein's flagship seafood restaurant (one of our best known seafood chefs) would be around £110 (about $140) pre tip (which in the UK would normally be 12.5%) based on the most expensive seafood choices on the current menu. So the differential isn't quite so great for us.

For me it's about the value for money. I've already paid for (decent quality) dining, so to pay a further $46 per person for a meal on board is something that I struggle with as I'd be paying twice for a single meal. What other lines are doing is not really relevant to me, although I get why you're saying it. It's what the ship/line I'm on is charging that matters. If I've got some free OBC that needs to be spent then I'll look forward to trying The Catch, but otherwise I'll eat what I've already paid for!

Unless I've been calculating it wrongly we pay $60 a day for Plus. Take off the gratuities of $16 per day and ignoring all the other benefits I need to drink $44 worth to make it value for money. That's basically a hot chocolate, a bottle of water, a pre-dinner cocktail and two glasses of wine with dinner. Whilst we wouldn't do that every day at home, we have no problem doing at least that every day on holiday. . We also do use the wifi as it's included, but we wouldn't buy it if it wasn't included. Beng Brits we don't tip extra on board having paid the CA charge, so will not be using any speciality dining if they start charging an additional non-negotiable service charge on top of the service charge!!

We were more than 10 years between sailings. When I downloaded the app after booking our Captain's Circle number had been added to our account - I'd not told them anything about it when I booked (via a TA in the UK).

We were on Sky Princess in July 2023 sailing out of Southampton and yes, a kettle was in our cabin (standard balcony). HTH.

What is it that you perceive to be so unsafe about London?

As a fellow Brit I suspect you, like me, will feel that you are receiving the level of service you've paid for with the CA 'charge' and won't feel the need to tip further. But that's the difference in culture between us and our friends over to pond!

We are in the UK so don't have the option of delivery. We were on Sky in June this year. We arrived at the terminal at about 1030 and I was onboard and had a glass of Prosecco in my hand by 1100. We have no elite benefits so this was bog standard boarding. I honestly have no idea if this is typical or not and it was before the changes to the green/blue lanes.

In the UK if you want a bag you pay for it. It's an environmental issue. Everyone just takes their own bag with them when they go shopping. I can't quite comprehend getting incensed to the point of refusing to buy something when the answer lies within my own hands (or bag) 😉🙂

I get that, and I pay my CA despite knowing that it is not necessarily even going to staff on the ship I sailed on. But I was responding to someone who was calling people who don't tip their barber or their Uber driver cheap and jus trying to explain that not all countries would expect that.

UK tipping culture is very different to US. In the UK we generally tip if service exceeds expectations, not because someone has done their job satisfactorily.

We are from the UK and have cruised with Cunard. Whilst it was fun to dress up, we are both agreed that black tie is more than we want to do on a cruise now. But we do dress up a bit for formal nights. This is the sort of thing we wear....

Plus package only gives you two casual dining meals regardless of length of cruise and there are other places to choose from (Vines/Ocean Terrace) to use those credits. I love Alfredos but am unlikely to use my meagre two credits there as I don't want/can't manage a 3 course meal there and so I'll use my credits for sushi instead! Let's hope that the empty tables prompts a re-think.

I got this exact same email (including the missing apostrophe) on 23 August for a cruise that ended on 8 July this year. It's legit - my email provider showed the attachment details without me having to click a link or open a document. It was my final account.