cflutist

As others have said, you can ask your stateroom steward for bath gel (normally reserverd for Elite/Suite pax). Or, just use the shampoo ... liquid soap is soap as far as I'm concerned. I've done that in the past and my body didn't complain :D

Standard is a round bar of soap, lotion, conditioner, and shampoo.

Elite/suites also get bottles of bath gel, shower cap, bottle of Linen Mist, Q-tips/cotton balls, emory nail file, and this oval shaped bath sponge thingy (looks like part loofa, but is flat) and maybe more, but I can't remember. :confused: I should have taken a picture of it (presented in a plastic clam shell).

I must live in a parallel universe or something. Every time I've purchased Princess transfers I've received a ticket that looks exactly like any shore excursion tickets I've purchased in the same envelope with them. If I've decided not to use the transfers - which I have - I've taken them to the Shore Excursion desk and they've been happily refunded. I'm not sure why this only works for me...?

I can assure you that we tried but they said no. Perhaps it was because the ship was going to arrive late and there was a Lot of commotion on board with people re-booking flights, trying to change their disembarkation groups, etc. We did fax copies of them to Princess when we returned and they sent a credit to our Credit Card. They did NOT tell us that they should have given us a credit onbard. Also possible that there were no shorex since it was a 2 night Coastal?

I buy the transfers anytime it's practical. Just the fact that they handle your luggage for you takes care of extra expense as far as I'm concerned. I've never had problems cancelling transfers - and as noted above, all you have to do is take the ticket they give you on board the the shore excursion desk and they will credit your account.

That was not our experience on the Star last year. It was a 2-day Coastal from San Francisco to Vancouver. On the day at sea, the Captain makes an announcement that we are going to be late and that anyone with flights before 4 pm should rebook them (he said that the Internet and Ship's phone charges would be waived). Since we had a 3:45 flight, we decided to chance it.

We had only carry-on bags but they would not let us off with the Walkoff groups because we had Princess Transfers. I asked to cancel the Princess Transfers then, they said because we did NOT buy them onboard, we cannot cancel them (we bought them at time of booking). So we were stuck in the Catch-22 situation. I knew that it would take at least 20 minutes to load a Princess bus with pax and their luggage, and another 40 minutes to the airport. The Canadians at our dinner table said the fastest way to the airport was to take the Canada Line from Canada Place to YVR (26 minutes and $3.75 CAD pp). That was the best advice ever, so we were part of the Amazing Race, but we made our flight.

When we got home, we wrote to Princess expecting a royal runaround. But to our surprise, they called us the next day and refunded our Princess Transfers (I think they were $30 pp), but they said they were doing it only because we were Platinum (that's not good customer service to the others).

We're staying at the Pan Pacific (at Canada Place) and am looking for good Chinese restaurants within walking distance. There is Imperial near by but it got mixed reviews.