MacMadame

It's just one example. There are also those luxury cruises that are out of reach for a lot of younger people, especially ones with families. Different strokes and all.

Boomers have between 10 and 30 years of possible cruising left. Remember the youngest Boomers were born in 1964 and aren't even 60 yet. In a business that is traded on the stock market, short term is next quarter. 😄 Or maybe next year at most. Middle term is about 5 years and long term is 10. I've never worked for a publicly traded company that had plans beyond 10 years and most didn't have them past 5 years. Not real plans anyway. Stuff changes too fast for that. Exactly. It's always been true and it's not this dire thing right now where the cruise industry is going to fall off a cliff in a few years. Or even a decade. Right now business is booming and not all from older people. There are tons of lines each with their own flavor and Carnival owns a hefty chunk of them (9 in total last time I checked). Maybe their 5-year plan includes attracting a younger crowd to Princess or maybe they don't and that will be the plan for one of their other lines. Btw, Virgin Voyages caters to a younger crowd and they are an adult-only ship. So it's not all about attracting families with kids to your line. There is more than one way to filet a fish. It's both. Because gutting it or removing it would be political suicide. 😄 Especially when studies show that just removing the cap on earnings like they did with Medicare would be enough to make it 100% solvent. Even though this impacts me negatively now (I reach the cap each year before the end of the year), I am all for that.

I saw on the news that they set up a lounge for people who came early to hang out, if they didn't want to go touristing to fill the time.

Are they going to lower the cover charge to take the 17% gratuity out? 😉 Virgin Voyages and MSC will honor your Princess loyalty. If you want to branch out.

We used to always buy extra-large eggs. But these days, large is all they have from our delivery service so we get those. Which is good because I've been doing a lot of baking lately.

Speaking as someone on the tail of the Baby Boomers, I haven't even retired yet, let alone died. Stop trying to kill me off (in marketing)!!! Seriously, I've been hearing about how it's not worth it to market to me for decades. It's annoying. 😄

My understanding is that this line as formed from the Life at Sea people who quit over the "ship is/is not seaworthy" controversy. Not sure I'd give them money until they had at least a year of sailing.

There is a spreadsheet linked in the first post in the thread.

They should have left him like they do to the passengers. 😉 We have one stop on our upcoming cruise that has several excursions I wanted to do. Luckily, Prince had an excursion that combined them! It's one reason I went with their excursion instead of the cheaper versions from non-Princess providers. That may be why they got a refund too.

Because no response usually means no one is there? That said, this is pretty sketchy. I would follow up with GS to make sure they did something and you think whatever they did is acceptable.

I kind of figured. 😄 My parents have gone there at least once, maybe twice, but they did a very expensive National Geographic cruise. I was thinking about selling or transferring. I didn't want to seem like a scam though. I didn't think of asking people I know. Hopefully, I'll get a new job ASAP and it will all be moot because I'll be going on our cruise.

Panama only requires Yellow Fever vaccinations if you are coming from Brazil. (I looked it up as soon as I booked the Panama Canal cruise.)

How do you get that?

Good to know!

I think that it's the packages more than the medallion. With 75-80% of passengers on a package, most of the time, it doesn't matter. Say I am on Plus and I drink 1 alcoholic drink a day but get "charged" for 2. Am I going to go to GS to get the 2nd drink off my folio when it doesn't actually cost me anything? No. I have better things to do than dispute charges that don't impact me in any way. Now for the 20-25% not on a package, it's much more serious because we're talking about real money.

The refundable fare goes back to the payment method used to make it. So my deposit (it's refundable) and excursions (refundable) will go to my CC and the rest of the fare will go to the Princess GCs. The problem for me is that I don't cruise regularly so if I end up with thousands of dollars on GCs, I'm not sure what I would use them for. Does Princess go to the Galapagos? LOL

We do that at Disneyland (DLR). We have it down to a science and you can do it without a lot of inconvenience too. That's the only reason half our DLR tricks work. LOL I can see I need to come up with some Princess tricks. That's part of why I hang out here even though our cruise isn't until 2025.

If it was me, I'd go early, drop off my luggage, and then go tour Alcatraz island. There is a lot to do in the Embarcadero besides that but I love Alcatraz. 😄 There is also the Walt Disney Family Museum about 15 minutes away and Fisherman's Wharf right there.

I thought smoking was confined to only one area? If so, the Sun may have a big enough casino that it doesn't matter as much. I guess we'll know soon since the Sun is about to sail.

I haven't gone on my cruise yet so my favorite thing is the itinerary and the cost -- because that's why I picked this cruise and not a similar one on NCL.

That was going to be my guess but it looks like now we will never know.

They aren't free though. You paid for them in your cruise fare. So you are also parting with your hard-earned dollars just like everyone else. You just aren't paying for more stuff that you don't want. Other people want it, so they pay for it. This idea that people who buy packages and/or use the extra amenities are the only ones that Princess is profiting from and so are suckers is just strange to me. Do people really think that Princess isn't making money on every Standard fare they sell? I find it hard to believe they are selling those fares at a loss or even just at cost. They are about what I pay on vacation and even around where I live. (I don't drink bottles of wine or generally wine at all unless it's free, just cocktails.) Even with this new 18% on top, I find the specialty restaurant charges to be less than what I pay at home (let alone while on vacation) and are a good deal. I particularly like that they are a cover charge so I can order what I want without worrying about how high the bill will get. (Dessert can really push the total over the top IME.) Thread drift is life! LOL

Maybe people are different than you and have a different idea of what these things are worth and what makes for a good cruise. Different strokes and all.

I've already given the money to Princess by buying the AARP Gift Cards. 🤷‍♂️

That's so bizarre.