Cruise Raider

Kids are always allowed in the specialty restaurants, especially when they are well behaved. I think the price may be half that of adults but don’t quote me on that.

Absolutely!

I would never book a flight before 1:00 PM out of LAX after a cruise…but, that’s me. Now that they are filling the ships and there may be more than one ship in port, it will probably be very congested both at the pier as well as at LAX. If you have the option, I would suggest flying out of Long Beach airport. It’s not only a bit closer but the airport itself is so much less crowded. Not sure if that will work for you but if it does, I’d jump on it. If you do choose that Jet Blue flight, you may want to have a back up plan in place.

That is correct. There are still travel agencies that may charge a fee but Princess won't charge you anything to cancel prior to final payment.

I'm sure we are talking about the same travel agency. Don't get me wrong, they have been a great travel agency when we've booked through them in the past. They also have had some fantastic 'group' cruises under a 'signature' or 'buyers choice' designation and yes, they now give gift cards for their big box stores. The only reason I switched was to receive offers, which I have. It's all in what you want from your booking. I'm definitely not saying I wouldn't go back to using them for one of these 'group' cruises in the future. They really have been great deals and always something quite special.

I've used a big box agency in the past and after many times of cruising with Princess and hearing about this person or that person getting upsell and move over offers, I finally asked how the agency notifies me of such offers. They said they didn't ... they are just too busy for that. Since that time, I've booked all my Princess cruises exclusively with a Cruise Vacation Planner down at Princess. After that, I was getting offers all the time. I may miss out on some of the OBC and such but I have full access to my bookings and know offers will be forwarded on to me. I also use another travel agent that I use for all other bookings outside of Princess and I confirmed that she passes along these offers to her clients.

Don't forget, they have smoothies at breakfast time in the International Cafe and there is no charge for those and they are quite good. They come in just the right size for a 6 year old.

This is how I understand and it to work: if you won the bid for a suite, you would probably not get the double cruise credits for booking a suite but you would receive whatever other benefits that come with being in a suite, eg: the specialty restaurant breakfast and club class dining. I have no idea about the complimentary mini bar or free laundry but I imagine you might receive those as well. What you probably won’t get is more obc if you used a FCD and went from an inside or OV cabin to a suite or even a balcony. But, you’d be able to keep your current perks that you booked under. Just of note, we are booked on a cruise with some friends for November. We booked in an obstructed OV and friends are booked in balcony cabins. Their offers were for mini suites, club class minis, and premium balconies, while our offers were for non obstructed OV cabins, standard balconies or premium balcony cabins. I’m sure the offers are tailored to the cabin in which you are currently booked .. just based on what I’ve observed.

If only I had any left … 😂

Anytime our CVP / PVP touches our booking for repricing or adds a different promo, the shareholder credit does fall off. Ours is good enough to add it back on when this happens, though. We now have it to the point where she doesn’t add it until a few weeks before we actually cruise. It’s less work for her that way.

Every time I went by her office, if she was open, there was a two hour line to get in to see her, so I didn’t get a chance to ask her but I did ask at the guest services desk and then asked my Cruise Vacation Planner down at Princess … they both said the same thing: it could be used for anything else that OBC can be used for while onboard.

I wouldn't contact your credit card company or the BBB as this is not really the fault of Princess and you'd be setting yourself up for a fight you just won't win. Everything you would claim can be found in documentation that shows they are not in the wrong here. Canada's rules are a bit strict at this point. My suggestion would be to go to your 'other medical people' to refer you to a doctor that would be able to provide a letter of exemption for you. While I'm not sure what you mean by other medical people but if one of them is licensed as a Nurse Practitioner, that will be sufficient. If you have any medical documentation of your adverse reaction to the vaccine, you should take that to a clinic to get an exemption. Exemptions are pretty limited, though. The only other way to actually get your money back at this point is to file a claim with your insurance company and hope you have a Cancel For Any Reason clause within your policy. I know it's an expensive lesson to learn but if you wait even longer, you will actually receive less reimbursement that you are currently getting. Sorry to be the bearer of such bad news.

I, for one, will be happy to see these restrictions loosened for the crew. I look forward to the day when they can ditch the masks completely and I can once again see their smiling faces. I'm not even anti-mask. If a close contact prefers I wear one, I have no problem doing so...just ask and I will wear one. Oftentimes, if in an uber, I will ask the driver if they prefer that I put on a mask. And I always wear one on a plane regardless of the rule to do so has been dropped. But, just recently having come off a cruise, I noticed that only about 1% of the passengers were masking while 100% of the crew was. I could tell they were growing weary of having a mask on for so many hours during the day / night. Progress is being made.

You can rescind your bid at any time before they accept it. I don't know if anybody would know at this point if it defaults to rescinding it automatically. If the prices drop, I will just rescind it manually.

I will have my fingers crossed for you.

I asked my CVP why some friends had received an offer on a cruise for November when we hadn’t. Well, she looked into my personalizer and my preferences for receiving promotional emails and phone calls had fallen off. So, I went in and changed them all back, I checked the next day and they had reverted back to no promotional emails. I rechecked them and bingo … this morning, they were still there. Yay! Now, I’m just going to wait for my offer. Within an hour or two, I received my offer. We had booked an obstructed OV and got an offer to upgrade to an oceanview room for $45 pp. Nope … our obstructed cabin is a really good one. I could also bid on a standard balcony cabin for $105 pp … nope again because they could put me anywhere on the ship and we could be stuck in a noisy cabin for the whole cruise. But, then we saw that we could bid as low as $145 pp for. Premium balcony .. so midship on the caribe deck or any aft facing cabin … ding ding ding .. we found a winder. I wouldn’t mind any of those locations so I bid the minimum. If they don’t accept it, we are in a perfectly lovely handpicked cabin and we’ve stayed in that cabin just a couple of months ago so we know we like it. Win win for us … either we will get a really nice balcony for approx $300 more or get a really nice obstructed oceanview for what we’ve already chosen and paid for. If the balcony cabins come down in price before we win a bid, we will simply upgrade with the current pricing, as we aren’t booked under any special promotion so don’t have anything to lose. If we do win the offer with the minimum bid we made, even better as we love the locations of all the premium balconies on the ship. Whatever happens … we will enjoy our cruise.

My DH earned a shirt but it is too small for him so, I won it as a constellation prize, so to speak. And no, I didn’t shrink it in the laundry on purpose! 😂. … but, I would have if I needed to. Sadly, the shorts are no longer being offered but it was fun while it lasted. I plan on taking it on my next cruise as I try to always be In Good Spirits while I’m on a cruise … not necessarily in the bar but in my attitude.

if you see Kieron or Alina in front of the Michelangelo, tell them Santa and his wife say hi and we miss them so very much!

Whenever we’ve missed a port, we’ve always been refunded that amount as refundable obc listed on our folio. It’s not much, though … I think like only $6 to $11. That was before the pandemic, though. I don’t think they are allowed to give port fees and taxes back as anything but cash or refundable obc.

Yea, the evening shows were at 7:30 and 9:30 PM.

We just disembarked the day you boarded. We also had a quick and efficient embarkation and disembarkation for our cruise. And yes, those first two days north out of SF are always quite bumpy. I agree about the food and service ... just excellent!! Enjoy your cruise!!!

We were onboard this cruise and were surprised that even the inside cabins had to be evacuated but now it makes sense.

Just checking back in now my WiFi is good again. We had an interesting last couple of days that started with the captain coming over the PA system into the cabins on late Monday night / early Tuesday morning. We were just turning in for the night when the announcement that there was a very ill passenger that required emergency evacuation of the coast of Oregon. There were sections of cabins on the top three decks that were requested to evacuate their occupants until the airlift could complete their task of removing the passenger for medical care. Well, I understand that the evacuation was from midnight until after 2:30 AM and people were in the public in their robes. I could be wrong on the exact times as our deck was not asked to evacuate but both sides of the top three decks and even inside cabin occupants were asked to leave their rooms. I'm sure the extreme measures were because some people just don't pay attention to the captain's orders and they had to get tough. Anyway, there were no further announcements but our nephew and his wife inquired around 3 AM if they could return to their rooms and they said it was ok to do so at that time. I'd have thought they would have made an announcement throughout all the public areas that they could return. I'm still unsure why the inside cabin occupants had to evacuate, though. I'm not sure if that incident delayed us from getting back into SF on schedule but our disembarkation schedule was quick and easy and we off the ship by about 8:30 as they were running ahead of schedule. Disembarkation was quick and easy, unlike the chaotic one we experienced at the same pier a few weeks ago. Our luggage was placed in the wrong group so it was a bit hard to find it but our nephew has eagle eyes and spotted it for us. It only took about 12 minutes after being out at the curb and our Uber driver loaded us up and we were at home before 10 AM. But, back to the cruise, there were a couple more codes called onboard on Tuesday, one for a small fire in the incinerator room and that was taken care of pronto and a medical code for a person in the spa. So, it was a busy and tiring day for the captain that final day, although the latter code announcement was from the bridge and not by the captain. We went to Sabatini's the last night of the cruise. We made reservations online for earlier dates in the cruise for both the Crown Grill and for Sabatini's and both were changed when we were boarded. We were not notified of the changes but noticed it when in the app to check the menus. Due to staffing issues, the Crown Grill was open 7 nights and Sabatini's was open the other 3 days. I suggest checking your app if there is a special occasion you want to celebrate on a certain day. It really didn't matter to us but it would have been nice if they notified us. We prepaid for these two dinners prior to the cruise when we made the reservations online. Well, there were no vouchers in our cabin, which they expected us to bring. At the Crown Grill, the reservation showed it was prepaid so there was no real trouble there as it never hit our folio. But, we were moved to the last night evening of the cruise for our Sabatini's reservation so we had to go to the front desk this morning to have the charge removed. We were asked if we had proof of payment for our reservation but the WiFi was very poor. There has to be a better system for this. Because we cruise on Princess a lot, especially after the restart, they had to weed through pages of charges. Plus, we had booked a four day cruise for November under the Premier Package which was supposed to include 2 specialty dinners but ended up canceling those bookings for the specialty dinners when we switched to a ten day cruise instead. Anyway, I finally found those charges at the same time as they did so they removed the duplicate charge from our bill. I tried putting it on Crew Chat late on the last evening after dinner and a couple of shows but nobody ever got back to me via that method of communication. I'm surprised at that but at least, the front desk was not busy when we went down there this morning. Anyway, dinner was superb at Sabatini's, as was our dinner at the Crown Grill. At Sabatini's, I really just wanted to eat a lighter meal so, I ordered the soup and split a couple of appetizers with my DH and had two of my own. I told them I wouldn't be ordering a pasta selection or a main course, so they were very accommodating. If you've followed my posts, you know I cannot stand to waste food and I also don't like to leave a restaurant so full that I'm uncomfortable so, I tend to order smaller portions. The soup and a few appetizers was just perfect. The fondue soup is just incredible. The burrata with tomatoes was rather bland and the amount of cheese is over the top (as much as I hated to do so, I just couldn't finish it all). The roasted peppers with anchovies was delish. The calamari is really good and so was the zucchini and summer squash appetizer. I did take a few bites of my DH's mushroom risotto, also great. The service was impeccable. I tried the dessert with berries covered in a lemon creme that comes in a small martini glass. It was also very good. My DH shared a macadamia nut or two from his dessert and put them in my lemon creme. Oh ... that was a true taste sensation!! There was an adult show with a comedian the last night of the cruise. He was so hilarious (I believe his name was Sean Kent) and didn't think anything was so vulgar or even distasteful that a child couldn't be in the audience. It's my belief that true comedians don't have to use profanity or vulgarity in their shows to be funny. I'd go back to see him in a heartbeat ... his comedy was refreshing. He picked on everyone equally ... so, you wouldn't want to sit in the front if you are overly sensitive to that. It was all in good fun!! The day we were at the Glacier, we met one of the guest services officers out there and he suggested getting a photo by the ship's photographer out there. Why not?? If it's not good, we wouldn't have to buy it. Well, come the last day, he asked if we'd seen our photos. I completely forgot to look. So, I thanked him for the reminder. Turns out that the photos taken can be viewed and ordered through the app. That is an awesome feature!! They don't print all the photos (they do with some of them, though) out which is great because it creates so much less waste. Well, I wanted to look to see if the photos on my phone were better than the ones the photographer took before buying it. Well, that evening when we went up to our cabin, there was a very nicely mounted photo of us at the glacier, compliments of guest services! Wow ... that is so awesome and such a wonderful surprise! While I know the supply chain issue has had an impact on the variety and quality of food / drink on cruiseships, I found we were really happy with what we ordered onboard. We are both wine drinkers and they had some wonderful wines onboard, while as on our last cruise on the Ruby, just a few weeks ago, they did not. One of my DHs favorite red wines had gone up quite a bit whereas my chardonnay did not. The selection in Vines is pretty good. The trout dish they served one night in the MDR was outstanding, as was the Alaskan cod. We were both taking our recommendations from our wait team and they were always spot on!! We thought the food was great on this sailing and the service was also excellent (save the crew chat). But, I'd rate the cruise a 5 star. We really had a great time. BTW, I always text myself the names of the crew that made our cruise so much more pleasurable so, I can include them in my post cruise survey. There are so many of them.

Not much help now, sorry. The WiFi is just not great. Bon voyage.

We have been entertained by Funch at Crooners. Sorry, I just now saw this post and we disembark in the morning.