Robkat

Well, not having used EZ Air before, my questions were to try to educate us about experiences others have had. But also to see, having thought that after booking with EZ Air that seat selection was possible, why we weren't able to do so. This whole thread has been very enlightening and we've learned a lot, about what we can expect and what we shouldn't! 😂 After reading all these posts, and making decisions based on experiences and suggestions, we were able to get seat selections into our ITA record, via an EZ Air agent, which we now know is the best we can do until the flights are paid for. As I said previously, the info we gleaned from all your replies, helped us understand how this program works, and helped us decide where we needed to do more research and where we should act. I'll send out our thanks again to all who took time to help us out.

Thanks so much for this! Will use it and hope for some good results.

Thanks for your reply. Well!!! This makes no sense, does it? How frustrating. I guess if you don't need them, it's not a big deal; but if you DO need assistance, it just doesn't make sense to make it an "ordeal" to contact them! Sigh.

Was there no meal service???? There should be two, right? Dinner & breakfast? If you asked for them, were you given snacks? Was this booked through EZ Air We're in Florida and this is the only direct flight, which is really important to us. However, your experience doesn't bode well for us.

Does anyone have the DIRECT phone number to EZ Air? Thanks.

This is really useful info @sultan_sfo, and we really appreciate you taking the time to reply. A couple of questions: When you went into ITA's website to book your seats, did you use the Princess confirmation # or ITA's locator #? How far out were you from final payment to Princess? And from the flight itself? We're assuming from your description of the process that you paid the seat selection fee directly to ITA? And there was no change to the amount due to Princess at final? We can't figure out, especially now that we've read your experience, why ITA is preventing us from doing anything on their website, with the window stating that this reservation is not paid for. Did you have any phone conversations with them ... we're wondering if a call directly to them might get better results than dealing with Princess EZ Air. And a very big and heartfelt thanks to all who replied. As I said, this is the first time we've used the EZ Air option, and through all your answers, we're learning so much! What an amazing resource CC is in a situation like this!

Thanks so much everyone for these replies. It's really given us some things to think about. It seems like if you get flights on a US carrier, even if you connect with a European carrier, you can make your seat selections. Because we're taking our flights directly from Miami to Rome, all on Alitalia, they might have some issue allowing seat selection? We're going to try the suggestion to call into Princess (oh Lord, give us strength!), and then maybe a direct call into Alitalia to see if someone there can help? Either way, at least you've all given us some good suggestions. In the meantime, if anyone reads this who has dealt with Alitalia via EZ Air and has any first hand experience with them, we'd love to hear about how it went. Thanks so much again for all your replies and suggestions.

This is the first time we've used Princess's EZ Air, so we don't have any experiences with it to draw from. We needed one-way flights from Miami to Rome, and we wanted direct flights. Princess offered the flight we were most interested in, and it is on Alitalia. We booked it, and received a confirmation from Princess, which had a Princess confirmation number, and also an Alitalia locator/confirmation #. The confirmation stated that we should go through the airline to make seat selections. We also saw that the flight costs would be added to our reservation and wouldn't be due until final payment for the cruise was due (not until around August). So, here's our issue. When we go into Alitalia to select our seats, we enter our reservation/locator number, a window comes up that says Reservation Not Paid, and won't allow any action. We would love to not have to contact Princess about this, as it seems tortuous to get any kind of answer from them. We've also been noticing how many of you use EZ Air, so we're hoping that there might be someone who has used Alitalia before, or who might have seen this particular issue before, even on another carrier, who can help us out. If anyone has any knowledge of why this has happened to our booking, or knows what to do next, please advise. Thanks.

Thanks for these replies. It's such a shame that there isn't a MDR option on that first day! When you're all excited to be aboard and have to face the chaos of the buffet, it certainly brings that experience down a notch. So, we'll definitely give LGB some thought as an alternative ... but wow! ... the price is really up there, isn't it? $72 for a lunch! Yikes! DH is a "value for the money" kind of guy, and even his aversion to the buffet may not be enough for him to feel good about LGB! 😂

Happy New Year to all our fellow cruisers! I know that this has probably been asked and answered dozens of time, but for some reason, no matter what combination of words I use, I can't seem to find the answers we're looking for through a Search. So ... could you please tell us what options there are for lunch on embarkation day on the Apex. And, more specifically, is Le Grand Bistro open for lunch? Can we/do we need to make reservations? (We tried doing this through our booking, but LGB is not offered for lunch???). And, we thought that LGB for lunch was $20pp + tax, but then just read recently that it is now $30pp???? Is it really worth that for a lunch? If we were interested in Raw on 5, but aren't sushi eaters, do you think there are plenty other menu choices? (We've found their menu but aren't sure what half of the offerings are.) We like teppanyaki-type offerings. Do they take embarkation day lunch reservations? We love Celebrity's buffet, but never on an embarkation day. We really wish that Celebrity would offer up a MDR lunch option though. Are there any other options that we haven't thought of? Oh yeah, just thought of Mast Grill, but would really rather a nice, calm, sit-down restaurant for that first day. Thanks for all information you can provide.

Thanks. We aren't too worried about it, but thought that being able to always see a current update would be a handy and nifty thing! We also thought that fresh juice and specialty coffees didn't count towards the daily 15 count? In any case, continue to enjoy and thanks again for the time you're taking to write this review!

Thanks @VMax1700 for this Live! After being away from sailing on HAL for many, many years, we just booked onto the Rotterdam TA & Norway! BUT ... not until 2025!!!☹️ However, we are so excited and, of course, are now wanting to absorb everything we can about this ship and about HAL now operates. Your Live Review is giving us an amazing amount of info! You mentioned above about the "15 drink limit" ... is there a way in the app to track this drink count on a daily basis? We will continue to follow along ... enjoying very much!

Hi @Kitty Ellas Mom, Really happy to hear from you that you're currently on this cruise and having a good time. (You too @Rick&Jeannie!) We were on her earlier this summer. It was our first cruise back on Princess in 14 years. We're now just about to turn Elite, so we had cruised on Princess quite a bit back then. We had a fantastic time. We enjoyed the ship completely, and in spite of a couple of issues (which got dealt with fairly efficiently), we loved the whole 2 weeks. The crew and staff were great, and our meals in Sabitini's and Crown Grill were very good to excellent, and the MDR meals were also good to very good. Yes, there are a few places where her age shows, but nothing that was appalling or inexcusable. We enjoyed being on her so much we booked on the 16 night TA for next year, and we would never had done that if we had found issues at every turn on this recent cruise. There is something to be said for a ship that has a little more of a "traditional, classic" vibe. Hope you continue to enjoy your cruise. And lesson learned, right? Everything we hear or read should be taken with a grain of salt ... maybe around the rim of a margarita???

Thank you for sharing @traceytd! There are plenty of posts about problems and things done badly by Princess, so it was good to hear your particular experience. Enjoy that OBC and gave a great cruise!

Yes, this is very good news and we are both very delighted to hear it! On busy cruises, we also avoid the buffet area (most especially during meal times), but this sounds like it would suit us perfectly, and would be worth "fighting the hordes" in the morning! 😂 Thanks @dreaminofcruisin for passing this along. And thanks all for the replies.

@Lady Arwen or anyone else who's familiar with Sky P's Lido deck: We'll be on the Sky for the first time in a couple of months. We just had our mini-suite guarantee assignment to L206. We were just on the Caribbean P, and on the Lido deck, they had Coffee and Cones, where specialty coffees were available, if we didn't want to run down to IC. Does the Sky have something similar on Lido (or anywhere else for that matter). DH ran down to IC bright and early each morning so we could enjoy a cappuccino out on the balcony before heading out for breakfast. From those forward cabins on Lido, it seems like it would be much faster for us if there was an additional specialty coffee place closer. Thanks for any info.

We really feel that the specialty restaurant quality/service/experience can be quite different from ship to ship. On our most recent cruise on Caribbean P, we thought Sabatini's was excellent ... very good food and lovely service. We went to CG for DH's BD and loved it so much, as we left, we reserved it again for the next week. Since there can easily be issues with how steaks come out, when eating at a steakhouse, we try to order something else we really like (unless we have a real hankering for beef). The first night, we had lamb chops (fantastic) and the next time, we had the veal chop (delectable), so we couldn't have been happier. And both nights, the service was very good. Next up in December, we're going to give Catch by Rudi a go, and have been impressed with most of the reviews so far.

???? Enjoy them???? Think you might need to be a little more specific for folks to give any sort of advice.

Thanks for getting back with a detailed answer. It sounds like there are attempts being made to curb this problem. That's really good to hear.

@Georgia_Peaches Thanks for this review. Wanted to ask your opinion of the much-discussed "interlopers" in YC issue. It has been pointed out many times (and sometimes with corroborating photos!) of how entry doors are held opened for people to get in. Others have mentioned seeing people sneaking into YC and using the buffet and even trying to eat in the dining room. Did you see any/much of this going on? If so, was the Staff trying to take care of the issue?

Well done! Kudos to your proactive TA, who did this for you! Thanks for the reply.

@Rick&Jeannie How in the world did you manage to get a Reserve cabin for less money than a regular mini-suite? I mean, that's fantastic, but we just don't understand how that can be when it's a higher category. Does your TA have special connections??? We're currently in a minisuite guarantee on the Sky, and are talking seriously about trying for a Reserve cabin. Any pointers to accomplish this for less would be appreciated!

Thanks to all for your responses. We also aren't too worried about reaching our drink limit, but we do order doubles for our pre-dinner cocktails, and given our following enjoyment of wine over dinner, we just would want to "make sure"! 😂 We like the M.O. of taking a glass into the DR with us, and then ordering another one immediately. Seems like that would work pretty well. It's been very interesting to hear everyone's methods of working with/around the system. 👍

Of course that would be something you'd "hope" for. But you mentioned in your first post that your travel agent had spoken with her Princess rep, who told her that Princess would not be "able" to covert the charge to OBC, or some other form of credit. The original error is annoying enough, but even more so if you have to argue with them, once onboard, to have those charges returned to you.

Well, this is utterly ridiculous! Princess admits the glitch but then says that they aren't able to correct their glitch, by giving you your own $ back? We have a Sky P booked for this December, also with the Premier package. After the reservation was done, we immediately made our dining res. In the App, we could see the 2 dining credits, and when we booked the two specialties, the credits were applied and our cost was $0. So, would you consider contacting your credit card company and disputing the charges? Otherwise, it sounds like you don't have any guarantee that you'll get that money returned/refunded to you, in one form or another. This is not right, you should not have been charged, and we hope you're able to get this resolved.