Marauder

7 minutes ago, gah_cruise said:

Yeah, I know this.........I don't have to pay per order if I leave the phone alone.

My question is.....why will Princess charge me for using the phone for each order..but happy for me to use an app/tv to order RS?

What is it that Princess is trying to achieve by dissuading me from talking to a Room Service Human ?

They need less people manning the phones and there are less mistakes.

Are people still able to get upgrades on board?  I understood it when the ships were sailing half full but now it seems like they're mostly sailing full or close to it.

Interesting.  I have never experienced any of the issues described.  The Website always works perfectly for me.  The app is a different matter altogether.

Curious what browser you are using?  I use Chrome.

Hmm. On my Sapphire princess cruise to Hawaii last November, I had no problem connecting to my work VPN.  I logged in every day both from my work laptop and my phone.  I'm planning on doing the same on my upcoming Emerald princess cruise.  I hope it still works.  It will be a pretty big problem for me if it doesn't.

1 hour ago, Abercrombie2019 said:

Yes, it does say that, but it also says this:

 

"Princess will assign your stateroom prior to sailing

Selecting this option will guarantee a stateroom assignment in this location or a comparable location prior to sailing."

 

 

I guess this would beg the question of what a comparable location would be.

This is interesting.  It used to say you were guaranteed the same category you booked or a higher category.  If they've changed it to "a comparable location" and considering a BD as comparable to a BA, that's pretty bad.

I have a follow up question and this seems like the right thread for it. If we don't have any of the packages and I just want a cup of hot water from the IC, does anybody know if they will charge me for it?  Background, My DW brings her own tea bags.  She likes specialty Japanese green teas, and the green tea at the IC doesn't cut it for her.  We don't drink Alcohol so the drink packages are not worth it to us. In the past, we would buy one coffee card between us. Between our occasional cafe latte's and my ordering specialty teas, one card was well worth it to us.  Now that the coffee cards don't exist, I'm fine with paying for the teas and latte's with my OBC but she drinks a lot of green tea so I end up ordering hot water a lot, maybe 5 or 6 times a day.  If we're sitting in the IC area I don't want to have to go up to the buffet area to get it for her.  I'm hoping they don't charge me $2 every time I ask them for a cup of hot water at the IC.

57 minutes ago, cdrmer said:

Is the internet package workable for the Hawaiian cruise out of LA?

On my Sapphire cruise to Hawaii in November it was really slow on sea days mostly because that's when everybody is online using up bandwidth.  I got into the habit of getting up at 5:00am every day (I'm an early riser anyway) to check my emails and do my web surfing.  At that time it was great.  Really fast.

On the Sapphire in November the posted hours for the gym was 7am-10pm.  We like to work out early in the morning so we started showing up at 7 and there were always people already working out so we started going a little earlier.  After about 4 or 5 days they suddenly started enforcing the 7am opening, not allowing anyone in before that.  A crew member told me that was because people in the cabins on the Lido deck were complaining.

56 minutes ago, dweeb said:

But this is what Princess advertises as their capability.  You cannot blame anyone for streaming or doing anything else since Princess's advertisement says to do this.  The blame is all on Princess.

Oh, I completely agree that the blame in on Princess.  I'm just pointing out what the problem is.  Princess's IT team seems to be completely incompetent.

On my recent Sapphire cruise to Hawaii I found that getting up at 5:00am and getting on the internet worked great.  Much much faster at that time than at any other time during the day no matter where we were in the Pacific ocean.

IMO, the biggest problem is caused by Princess switching to unlimited plans rather than x minutes for x dollars.    Having unlimited minutes makes people feel free to stream movies, youtube videos, zoom calls, online video games, etc.  I call those bandwidth hogs.  When you have hundreds of people streaming at the same time of course it will be slow for everyone.

The same thing happened to me.  I was charged the full amount on the app.  When I got on board, I had to go to the passenger services desk to have them apply the OBC for the 50% elite discount.  It did not happen automatically.  It was not a refundable OBC though.  I didn't complain about it because I knew we would use the OBC anyway but I agree that based on the wording in the terms and conditions it should have been refundable so I would suggest letting them know (and bringing a copy of the terms and conditions with you) when you go to the passenger services desk.

1 hour ago, startedwithamouse said:

Pretty clear if you read the bidding rules that you agree to pay (like ANY auction where you place a bid).  Where on the Princess website did you read you can refuse the cabin and not pay?

I don't see anywhere it says that.  It does say that payment is due within 48 hours.  It's not clear what happens if you don't pay within 48 hours.  I think some people are assuming that if you don't pay within that time you will be reverted to you old cabin but I'm not so sure about that.

Sapphire is one of our favorite ships in the fleet, definately our favorite Grand class ship for a lot of the reasons mentioned above.  We've never sailed on the Diamond and quite frankly probably never will simply due to the fact that there is no IC.  Alfredo's is a nice to have and one of the reasons we like Sapphire over the Grand class ships that don't have it but the IC seems like a must have for us, especially on cruises with a lot of sea days.

Everybody is different though.  If you don't get a lot of use out of the IC or Alfredo's either one would probably be fine.

42 minutes ago, Lady Arwen said:

 Our CVP, as they are now named, is fabulous.  Always accommodating and always available, unless weekends.  I just leave a VM message and she takes care of it.  On weekends or holidays I just put a hold on what cruise I want or the change of fare or change of cabin.  So easy.  I’ve been let down by so many TAs, I just gave up on them.  Perhaps I’m missing some OBC or a bottle of wine or even a lower fare, but whatever.  My CVP is worth her weight in gold

This is where I'm at too.  The minimal OBC that I've gotten from TA's in the past is not worth it to me.   I usually email my CVP and I've never had to wait more than 15 minutes for a response

1 hour ago, geoherb said:

 When I sailed on the Majestic last summer, my friends loved Harmony but were disappointed in the Crown Grill. Perhaps it was just an off night.

 

Funny, with us it was just the opposite.  We loved Crown Grill (as usual) but were very disappointed with Harmony.  My DW is from southern China and lived in Hong Kong so we're used to really authentic Cantonese food.  We were looking forward to Harmony since the Majestic was built for the Asian market but when they brought the ship to the west coast they Americanized the food way too much.   Maybe if you like Americanized Chinese food you'll like it but we won't go back.

Interesting.  I booked an aloha deck cabin on the Sapphire that looks like it's below the Sterling Steakhouse.  I'm hoping that won't be a problem.

The exact same thing was happening to me.  I updated the app to the latest version and it started working   Your mileage may vary but that is one thing you could try if you are not on the latest version of the app.

20 hours ago, IBM Sweathog said:

I cannot load half my info to this Medallion app.  I have an Android phone and Android tablet.  I tried using the so called internet version and still encounter the same errors.  This is the worst app ever developed.  My question is does this app work on an Apple phone?  How is everyone loading your travel info like driver's license or passport info?

I was having a lot of issues on my Android phone.  What worked for me was deleting the app and re-installing it from the Play store.  That gave me the newest version and a lot of the bugs seemed to be fixed.   For example, on the previous version I had, they only had an option to scan your passport, which wasn't working for me at all.  On the newer version they have the option to enter your passport number.

Question from a new Elite.  People have said you can exchange the mini bar for two coffee cards.  How do you go about doing that?  Do you just tell your steward on the first day?

36 minutes ago, XBGuy said:

 

It's funny, we were in the exact same position a few years ago.  With two cruise credit to go in order to achieve that exalted level, we booked a suite.

 

To be honest I'm not sure our main purpose in doing so was to achieve Elitism.  It was a 5-day cruise, and we just wanted to try a suite.  All our previous Princess cruises had been in Standard Balcony cabins.

 

I have to say, the suite experience impressed us.  😁

We were in that situation in late 2019 and we booked two short cruises back to back to get to elite for our planned March 2020 RT to Hawaii.   Then, well stuff happened.  We still haven't cruised since reaching elite status.

11 minutes ago, 1emerald1 said:

This is where a PVP is helpful.  Mine has refared every price drop before and after final payment with no problems whatsoever.  And either calls or e-mails me back the same day.

This is my experience too.  I just had one a couple of weeks ago where I noticed the cabin right next to mine was $200 cheaper than what I had paid.  I immediately emailed my PVP and asked if I could get that fare.  10 minutes later she responded that it was done.

The consistency (what he calls sameness) from ship to ship is one of my favorite things about Princess, especially since it's such a good design with the Atrium at the center.  That allows me to focus on itinerary and price when I'm shopping for a cruise knowing that I'll be happy with whatever ship I end up on.

I agree with others that the one really valid complaint he had was the smoking in the casino.  Princess needs to do something about that.

No  March 30.    Submitted request for option 2 on March 12.

I was also on this cruise. I thought debarkation went very smoothly. Maybe that's because I was expecting the worst. As others said, they had told us ahead of time that only one person per party would be allowed on the shuttle to the parking lot (that would have been a cluster...). Instead everybody was allowed on the buses with luggage stored underneath. We showed up at the Wheelhouse bar at about 7:45 and were immediately given a ticket and told to go down to Michelangelo's. The line down there was longer but moved quickly. We breezed through Customs then off the ship and on to the buses. We were on the freeway by 8:45. Much smoother than the debarkation on my last two cruises out of San Pedro.

The other thing that surprised me was the lack of lines at anytime dining, especially considering there were over 3400 passengers on this sailing (at least that's what a crew member told me). Anytime dining is usually a madhouse on Princess but this time we never saw any lines and there seemed to be plenty of tables available even at peak times. My suspicion is that since there were a lot of families with kids, probably a lot of them with to the buffet. Since we rarely go to the buffet I can't speak to the crowds there.

That's for sure...when they mailed that refund check it took a month!!

On my most recent cruise on the Crown, I had a large amount of refundable OBC due mostly to a move-over credit. We spent most of it but had about $200 left over at the end. I went to the PAX services desk on the last day and asked about it. The guy told me he could refund the balance in cash right there if I want it. I (stupidly) told him it was ok to charge it back to my credit card. As you mentioned though, they don't do that. They send a check about a month later. Next time I'll take the cash.