Cruise Raider

This .. right here ^^^^ is the correct answer. We had to have a passport for Honduras and Belize when we went!

My travel planner was just able to get me solo fares on a couple of cruises that were advertised at 120%. There was an IT glitch but she was able to send it in to get me the lower solo fare. So, not sure why they’d tell you they aren’t selling any cabins at the lower solo fares. Of course, mine was handled 3 days ago, not today. Maybe you may need to wait until tomorrow when the offices are fully staffed.

I would just wait and upgrade your package once you are onboard. That way, if a does occurs (which I doubt), you can grab it in between now and then. But also, you won’t pay the extra insurance costs for upgrading beforehand. You will also be able to use any OBC you may have available on your booking, if you wait until you are onboard. On your app, you can just upgrade online onboard but it seems like there is a push for employees to get you to upgrade and I think they get points for it. It will either be $20 or $30 per day pp, depending on when you booked your cruise, so if you are in a double occupancy cabin, you will both have to upgrade which will cost you either $600 or $900 .. again, depending on if you booked your cruise under the $50 pppd or the $60 pppd plus package. On a longer cruise such as you are on, I would always wait until I’m onboard as I would want to check out what wines are available under each package before I upgraded. You still only get 2 specialty dinners, regardless of how long long your cruise is. You could still get two specialty dinners, which is $78 per meal for two. For a 4 day cruise, we upgraded for $80 each, so basically, our upgrade fee for our two specialty dinners at Crown Grill was all it cost us and we got better wines, photos, prizes, etc. You just have to do the math … if there are no wines that please you in the Plus package, it may be worth it to upgrade if you are looking at buying specialty dinners anyway. you will have through day 2 to upgrade while onboard (current policy as of last month). With that being said, a decent travel planner or agent should be able to do it ahead of time with just the upgrade price if you contact them. I would only do this if I saw the costs were going up before your cruise started.

Haven't seen one of those in forever! I kind of doubt they will be back …

Yes, Apple News is a paid service ..

My favorite ship of all times is the Royal Princess. She has everything we love about cruising! I have cruised on the Coral in the past and really liked her, too. But, ever since the new Royal class has been introduced, we just love them! We just had too many issues with the Diamond, some of them could be fixed but some were just problems with the ship’s design and maintenance issues. There was so much mold in our bathroom and fifty carpet the entire sailing, draperies were ripped, plumbing issues, our steward left all sorts of garbage in the room from the previous passengers .. the ship was full and I didn’t complain beyond the first day as we really weren’t interested in getting any fired but did have to report the things that just weren’t functioning. they kept trying to seat us in that aft main dining room and every time one of the waiters walked by the table, it felt like the floor was going to cave in. It was also so annoying being the ones seated in that raised section. Our waiters would bring us wine that we clearly didn’t order … and then charged us for it even though what we had ordered was covered in our package. Then, we finally found a halfway decent wine within our package limits and they wouldn’t serve it to us in the explorers lounge even though that’s where they got it from to serve in Sabatini’s. Service and food in Sabatini’s was phenomenal. The first time our room steward was even seen by us is the last day at 8 AM. We lost the electricity on the entire ship and he wanted to boot us out. We were doing walk off and couldn’t use the elevators and clearly couldn’t even disembark as nothing was working. When it came time to disembark, on,ly once the electricity was restored, everyone was packed in a line to get off the ship .. that’s where I believe I caught CoVid as it showed up about 3 days after we got home??? Now, it could have come from the San Diego airport .. so, not maybe not fair blaming that one the ship. It’s just there was no attempt to maintain social distancing. Oh dear! I could go on but hate when people just whine whine whine and I see that I’m breaking my cardinal rule so I will leave it at that.

We were in B737 on the Majestic and it was a fantastic cabin. We would book it again in a heartbeat. So, the pros of this room are .. it’s a deluxe balcony so has a small sofa. The balcony is absolutely huge for a Royal class ship. The view of the wake is my favorite and of course, no wind to worry about. The balcony is half covered on this deck as well. A couple of the cons are that the room is a long walk to midship. I was in a knee brace during my cruise so, that’s the only reason I even noted that. Also, there was soot on our balcony at times, which the room steward kept clean. However, white pants may not be a great idea. We even had a mat near our door to wipe our feet so the carpet didn’t get full of black soot. All in all, the positives far outweighed any cons in this room! Some of the other aft facing decks had smaller balconies, some were uncovered. On the Baja deck, they were perfect.

Like you, I was going to pay off some fall cruises I have booked and was going to buy more GCs this month from AARP. They are really a great savings. I may have to put some future plans on hold.

Yes .. it was in late January into early February in and out of San Diego.

I look forward to reading your live review. Bon voyage …

having sailed in and out of all these ports recently, I can definitely tell you you will not pay any taxes on these drinks that are covered under the Plus Package. However, I know you will pay a city tax on any overage of the plus package. So, if you purchase an $18 glass of wine while in any of these ports, you will pay the $3 overage, 18% gratuity on the $3 for a charge of $3.54 total on your folio. Then, you will pay a city tax separately listed on your folio. In San Francisco, it’s 8.6xx%. In Honolulu, it was 4.5%. So, each city will determine its own tax .. it’s higher in California but still a negligible amount when factored onto a $3 charge. What you will want to do if you choose to buy a bottle of wine at 25% off with the package, is wait until you are at sea to purchase it. Screen shot in truncated but will show like this on your folio if your drink is over the $15 limit while you are port.

I also use a CVP that has done an amazing job with all my Princess cruises and even reached some of her support staff while she is away and they’ve been equally as good. But, I’ve also encountered people that haven’t thought their assigned CVP was up to par. Of note, Princess has taken away their dedicated support staff in the last year or so making it harder to deal with the same planners. They’ve also taken some of the new clients and distributed them across other planners. Like TA’s, there are good and bad in each group. I also found a great TA that I use for all of my other cruise line needs. so far so good .. but if one of them decides to retire, I might be cruising a lot less in the future.

Pros and Cons of the Diamond Princess (my opinions only) from a cruise they did earlier this year: Pros: the entertainment was absolutely phenomenal the food, except for one meal during the entire sailing, was also very good with a couple of the meals being incredible the wheelhouse was designed nicely Crooners .. small but very nice for entertainment Sabatini’s .. the best ever Cons not easily rectified: No international cafe No Vines No sit down pizzeria Ship 5 MDR dining venues felt very cramped Crown Grill was part of the buffet Cons they could have easily rectified: Decent wine choices were almost nonexistent Embarkation and disembarkation were horrible, compounded by power outages for both (no working elevators) Aside from a couple of outstanding staff members (two in the MDR, a couple in Sabatini’s, one at guest services), the service was pretty bad. It could have just been new staff but most were really subpar compared to the service we would normally receive on Princess Our room steward was awful and our room was filthy (most of the ship had a dirty feel to it but that feeling could have come from having such a dirty stateroom) Toilet in our stateroom needed to be repeatedly fixed … BTW, we never threw anything down there that didn’t belong. Safe in our stateroom also needed to be fixed twice While, I’m not really much of a complainer when it comes to cruising, I wouldn’t sail on the Diamond again. She just has too many cons to overcome, mainly ones that couldn’t be easily rectified. We still had a great cruise on her due to friends being onboard, the entertainment being so incredible and the food being so good!

Well personally, if the guy’s leg hurt bad enough to go to the medical center, wouldn’t he rather have the doctor onboard err on the side of caution in case it was an infection. Too much missing data .. did the guy have a fever? Was the area of the hip replacement reddened, swollen or warm to the touch? Also, the man bought insurance but doesn’t want to use it? Now, he’d rather complain about the high cost of getting back home. Sorry, but that is the reason for buying insurance ..

We normally cruise from a U.S. west coast port and haven’t seen them enforced yet. It may vary in other embarkation ports.

100%! just if. It’s to the OP, if it is a tender port, it can take a couple of hours after they drop the anchor to disembark, sometimes even longer. if you are booked on a ship sponsored tour, they will allow your group to disembark in a timely manner. Otherwise, you might be waiting a while to board the tender.

Just keep trying. One opened up for a friend of mine once when she was in a similar situation. BTW, without a passport, you just won’t be able to take this trip. Sorry about that!

We usually try to pack in carry on laughed only but in the event we go on a longer cruise or a cold weather cruise, we just put clear packing tape on the tags we print out and punch a hole and take a couple of those little twist ties to secure them.

The coupons are very generic and more of a marketing tool than anything else. They are no longer provided in a booklet but digitally and you have to print your own pages out for coupons that you want. While I get them for some of my sailings, I imagine anyone could print a copy. I’ve used it once in the gift shop, once for,a bottle of wine (just the basic house wine) in the specialty restaurants and a few times in the casino.

Princess Cruise Vacation Planners (CVP or PVP) always has advanced warnings and posts them on their pages on FB .. just in case you wish to book under the current pricing. I’d say they usually come out with the notifications about a month ahead of time. And BTW, I haven’t seen a notification since the price increase back in February.

You just have to note when you go in that the dining is included with your package so you won’t be inadvertently charged. We found that it is easier to address it proactively. A couple of times, we forgot to tell them it had already been charged and we got double billed. Easy enough to fix but now we always try to remember to just let them know when before they seat us.

I agree .. that tour is a lot of fun.

They use Jet Blue .. maybe just not on your itinerary. You can always request it and see what they can do.

I understood what you meant but asked if I could apply the $39 to the Winemaker's Dinner back when it was $40, said I would pay the overage but they wouldn't allow it. I do think they will let you order your food from the room service menu on the app to your cabin, though. While it won't be special like the balcony dining or the Crown Grill, it's a way to use up your perk without having to just let it go to waste. You can use your dining credits for anybody you choose. They don't have to be in the same cabin.

That's pretty unprofessional.