MacMadame

If the corporation is in the US (and Princess, Carnival and a few others are), that's where all the money is processed. If you google this, all the language saying that tips/gratuity are optional and service charges are not all comes from US-based law sites and US-based lawyers. No, that's not what I am saying. I am saying a gratuity is optional *for you to give*. It's not optional to pay it out to staff.

The first time I cruised was in 1979/80 on some Carnival ship whose name I forget (the Carnivale?). EVERYTHING was included except alcohol. No specialty restaurants. No entrees that cost more or charging for a second entree. Let alone waterslides, go-carts, rock climbing walls, etc. Not sure of the capacity, but it was probably 1,000-1,500. The last time I cruised was on the Disney Magic in its first year. There was one specialty restaurant. But again, everything besides that and alcohol was included. 2,400 capacity. Cruising has changed SO MUCH since then, it's unreal. Though we're cruising on the Coral which has a capacity of 2,000 and not a single water slide so it's mostly trying to figure out whether to buy a package and which one and how much to budget for all the things that are no longer included.

Probably arrested. 🤷‍♀️ I thought about it too and that's my conclusion. Though now that I know that they can disembark people after everyone else is off the ship, I might try to convince them that they need to let us do that. (Assuming disembarking later was better for me than doing it earlier.) Most of us don't think we'll be sick on our cruise so knowing what the choices are and the procedures that are supposed to be followed is helpful. I think OP's issue arose from getting sick the evening before disembarkation. For example, they couldn't get their medical records the night before because those records were in the middle of being generated.

That seems backward. Heat it when it's warm but not when it's cold?? 😕

I don't think it's confined to the cruise industry. It's some US legal thing. Tips are voluntary and have to go to the employee(s) while service charges are mandatory and don't have to go to the employee(s).

It's a service charge. Technically. Does NCL not call it that?

But they were wrong. My point is that they should have given themselves extra time even if they all believed without a shadow of a doubt that the ship would be ready. Saying the second sailing would go was risky. Canceling it right off the bat would have given them time to do a better job of getting the ship ready and a buffer in case things went wrong (as they did). Also, I have been involved in work that didn't make a schedule and often the people doing the work knew very well that the schedule was stupid and wouldn't work. But either they aren't willing to say so to their boss or their boss isn't listening or they were listening but weren't willing to say so to their boss. This situation reeks of that happening.

Yes, they do. But Princess knew they weren't getting the ship when they had originally planned so they knew the entire schedule had changed. They had the choice to just cancel the 2nd "inaugural" cruise when they canceled the first one and if they did get everything ready in time after all, they could have used the extra time to do a shake-out trip. Or a host of other choices. Princess chose to wait until the last minute to pull the plug and that's on them. 🤷‍♂️

This is true but the $15 doesn't include the gratuity. So if you order a $14 martini, it's still covered enough though it's $16.52 with the gratuity. At least that's my reading of the small print. 😄 It is all very confusing IMO. Too many ways of charging for things depending on where you are on the ship and the time of day. 🤷‍♀️

It depends. Some people have had good luck asking for just the gelato or even just not putting all the stuff in a premium dessert (so it's just gelato, syrup, and whipped cream). And other people have not. I *think* that the only thing with wheat in the premium desserts is the cake and if there is something like a pretzel stick in there. So depending on how sensitive you are, you could just pick them off (they are on top and easy to remove) if you are on a ship where they refuse to just give you gelato. But hopefully, they will be easy and just give you some gelato.

Personally, I think canceling with 4-5 days' notice is really bad and I understand those people being even more upset than the ones who got canceled on with more notice who I can also see being upset that they are no longer going on the "inaugural" cruise. I really hope that, if the next cruise gets canceled, there is much more notice. OTOH, I have friends who booked that 3-year cruise so I know it can be worse, much much worse. 🤣 And if any of them cruise, and decide to book a cruise and Princess has the best price for the itinerary they want, I'd be shocked if they didn't book it. I certainly am not going to cancel my cruise on a completely different ship that is almost a year away because this happened. It would take a lot of missteps over a longer period of time that would point to us not enjoying that particular cruise. I'm not going to cut off my nose to spite my face.

There is no "$15 per day" limit. On anything. Every individual drink has a $15 limit. So if you get a beer, any beer up to $15 is covered. If you get a glass of wine, any wine that is under $15 is covered. If you decide to get a top-shelf drink that costs, say $17, the first $15 is free with Plus, You only pay $2+18% gratuity, so $2.36 total. (The whole thing is covered for Premier.) Technically there is a $15 limit on non-alcoholic drinks but right now I don't know of any non-alcoholic drinks that are more than $15. But if there was, it would work the same way as for alcoholic drinks. As for the premium desserts, I haven't heard of anyone who has had more than a few throughout their entire cruise, let alone 2 a day! So getting 2 a day and getting unlimited are essentially the same. 😄

Add me to the list of those who were able to book before final payment. In fact, I booked almost a year out. I used the new app if that makes a difference.

With the scrambled, sometimes I can tell and sometimes I can't. If anyone has used boxed egg fluid for an omelet I ordered, I was clueless. But I mostly order omelets in restaurants and restaurants tend to use real eggs.

I once had fish (lake trout) caught that morning and it was not only amazing but nothing like any fish I've ever eaten. I do think the difference is that those other fish filets were frozen.

They have it on every (residential) floor and so do all their ships.

Loyalty perks are different from packages though so they have a different calculation. I can see Princess deciding to have even more levels because many at the elite level have many, many more cruises than others. So if you have 500 days of cruising and get the same perks as someone with 100, you might be annoyed and think you should get even more. Something like this happened on the Ultimate World Cruise where their Pinnacle cruisers got split into two levels. Which is the worst way to do it (taking away perks from the lower level). And you can buy it for every day of the cruise or just some days. (A lot of people use the free wifi that they find in the ports so they don't need wifi on the ship every day.) It's not that hard. If you add up everything you were planning to buy on the cruise anyway (wifi, CA, and a few other things that vary per person) and it costs more than the package, not getting the package would be dumb. 🤷‍♀️

Only saltier and the eggs pop in your mouth when you crunch down on them. If you've had sushi with eel eggs on top, that's a form of caviar.

They announced it on a quarterly earnings call. But, sure, Princess lies to their shareholders all the time. That's not going to get them in trouble or anything. 😉

Which I appreciate. 😄

For people who think that number was pulled out of someone's butt, Princess has said publicly that 75-80% of cruisers buy a package. So 20% is a conservative estimate. It could be as much as 25%.

How do you know that the decision to sell packages isn't based on data from the medallions? I would think that at least the recent changes to the packages were driven by data from the Medallion. Do you have a source for this statement? Personally, I don't think Disney would have introduced them in DLR if it was not worth it to them. It would be pretty dumb to introduce a product that lost money and didn't provide useful data. Something to keep in mind, Princess is now charging $10 to ship the medallion. I'm pretty sure they are making a profit on this even if it is included in one of the packages.

I'm curious why people don't give their carryons to the porters. Is that risky (i.e., they may get lost or stolen from)? Loungers rent for full ($40) and half days ($20). You can reserve for the entire cruise or just some days. The whole cruise is cheaper per day but I can't find a reliable number for how much. Cabanas cost $80 per half day (so I assume $160 for a full day.)

I completely agree! My hope is that they expand casual dining. Now that they charge for it, adding more casual dining is an income generator. It would also make Premium more attractive as it has unlimited casual dining. So I see a lot of good reasons to do it. This assumes the space requirements can be worked out. It looks like you have good reasons to switch to NCL besides casual dining though. For me, my FLL to SF cruise on Princess is perfect. It's not too many days off work and the itinerary includes all the stops I want to make. It also means only one flight instead of two because of where we live. Plus I don't care that much about casual dining. It's only an issue because there are 8 sea days so some variety would be helpful.

Recent cruisers on the Coral report that there is a popup casual dining option on sea days and it alternates between Alfredo's and Salty Dog Gastropub (not the same thing as the Salty Dog on the Lido deck). Hopefully, that will still be the case when dh and I cruise next Jan. 😄