Sea Hag

We had early dining. I don't really know why he tried to talk me out of it, but he certainly gave it a good try. It was braised beef short ribs. Maybe the kitchen standardly made a smaller quantity of that, and the waiters were told to try and make it last for both early and late sittings? Maybe he didn't like beef short ribs and thought he was doing me a favor? Maybe he'd been told to push something else? No way to tell. A mystery for the ages. 😂

We did this once, quite a few years ago, when they still had the table setup. We loved the train ride but hated the table setup, so I'm really happy to see that they don't have that anymore. Our tablemates disregarded the size of luggage to bring on the train, making for a very crowded situation at our table. The scenery is great. We loved every minute of that. And the food was really good. We had jambalaya, which we thought was an odd thing to order on a train in Alaska. The waitress said it was really good, and she was right.

I will always listen politely to the waiter's suggestions, but I will also then politely insist on doing what I want to do. We were on a Celebrity cruise once where the waiter tried really hard to talk me out of something. I got it anyway, and it was the best thing I had all that week of mostly mediocre food.

We got one on our last cruise, and it was totally useless to us. Every one of the coupons required buying something we weren't going to buy.

Nice!

We each pack our own. I hand him a small stack for cross-packing in his bag, and he hands me a small stack for cross-packing in my bag. We each sort out an even small stack for cross-packing in the day pack we use as carry-on.

Last August, they had a desk right in the luggage pickup area. It was over next to the windows, and HAL was right next to them. We handed in our luggage there and were directed where to go to catch the bus. For the return trip, the bus dropped us off where we got on to go to the ship. We were flying Delta, and it was really nice that we were since Delta had check in set up right there where the bus dropped us off. Our flight was too early for Port Valet, but we were able to drop our bags off right there instead of having to schlep them though the airport. I agree with the folks who say that you can save money by doing something else, but the Princess transfers are the easiest, most hassle-free solution we've found.

It's that, and it's also the luncheon I'll never be invited to. Some people have so many days cruising on Princess! It's nice that they get this. 🙂

Me too. We canceled our September 23 cruise on Princess and booked one on HAL. Not sure how well we'll like HAL, but we're ready for a change. Especially since there isn't much incentive left in Princess loyalty benefits.

Your mileage may vary on this, and it wasn't on the Oosterdam, but we've had a cabin below the gym and never heard a thing. The only place I wouldn't book is below the hydro pool. You're not under that.

I think that's terrible! It seems to me like you should have been offered the option of one of the normal sundaes without all the stuff stuck onto it. Or simple scoops of gelato. Just telling you that you were out of luck sounds really bad.

I'd forgotten about this! Now that I'm reminded I'm also wondering too.

I'm not really a donut person, but I used to love those little round filled donuts. They had either jam or - even better - custard in them. Haven't seen those for a while.

That's a shame. My favorites are oatmeal raisin, and I had one recently on the Sky that was really very good.

There was going to be a solar eclipse back in 1991. I wanted to see that, and my first notion was to fly over to Hawaii. My husband said that he'd looked into things and he thought there might be a cruise ship in path and if there was then he'd rather do that. I called the travel agent that handled all the travel for the company I worked for at the time and asked her about that possibility. She looked it up and said that the Carnival Jubilee was going to be in Mazatlan that day, spang in the middle of the path of totality. Sold!

Wow! I wish you the best on getting this sorted out.

The Sapphire seems to have Sundaes on Lido, so probably there?

I agree with this. Somehow, my status has changed in the app since the last time I was able to get the 50% discount up front. Oddly though, we got the correct black background medallions for the cruise where we couldn't get the 50% off up front. Medallion orders must get their info from a different source.

I like that. This is better than my cookie solution, and this just didn't occur to me. Bravo!

On our recent cruise on the Sky, we switched out everything for Perrier. We got either 20 or 24 bottles. I thought 14; hubby thought 20.

An email to your pvp, if you have a good one, also works.

I said that badly. What I meant is that it would be very doable to change the way that the login cookies are written. The first time a person logged in, their account would be updated with the fact that they'd "registered" a device. The login cookie would, of course, be written to that "reigstered" device. After that, the cookie would be read on an ongoing basis to keep the person logged in and any other log in from a different, uncookied device would be rejected. The cookie would be set to expire at the end of the voyage. I've never set up cookies to write to a router, and I frankly don't know what's possible there but I think even that is still a simple case. I think that probably the first device a person logged in with going through the router would get the cookie, and other subsequent logins would be rejected. Maybe. Now, there's still the case of a person who has their device set up to dump cookies when they close their browser or some such. Those people have to keep logging in all the time. I'm pretty sure this is solvable, one way or another. For anybody who thinks I'm getting way carried away on this and that it'll never happen, I sincerely hope you're right and I'm wrong. I'm wrong all the time, so that comes as no surprise to me. I'm just saying that this is a real possibility. I see this as comparatively low hanging fruit for Princess to gather more revenue at a time when they're all about gathering more revenue.

When prepping for our last cruise, the app didn't show the 50% discount for us, although it had in the past. I went ahead and bought it full price, figuring I'd sort it out on the ship. The first time I brought up my account, the credit was already there. No sorting out needed.

My hubby was able to get one recently on the Sky. Our waiter said he'd never heard of this, but hubby explained what he was wanting (3 scoops icecream, chocolate sauce, strawberry sauce, caramel sauce, banana, extra whipped cream, extra extra whipped cream) and he got a very good result.

I'm not interested in hearing that a taxi or Uber would be cheaper. My hubby's preference is cruiseline shuttle, so that's what we do. 🙂 I'm just looking for definitive information on a specific question. Does anybody know/remember where the transfer from the ship to the Seattle airport drops people off? It makes a difference to us, in terms of what airline we fly. If the HAL bus drops people off at the lower level location where there's a Delta checkin desk, then we'll fly Delta. If it drops people off at departures, then we'll try and find a flight on a different airline that's later than what we can get on Delta so we can use Port Valet and not have to truck our luggage through the airport to baggage checkin. We flew out of Seattle last August, and I've honestly never seen such an insanely crowded mess in any airport in my life. I worry that it'll be the same when we return from our September sailing on the Westerdam. Any information on this will be very much appreciated.