jcarlisle

Our last one was posted within 3 hours of faxing it in. No email, just saw it in my personalized.

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Do they actually do Global Entry at Canada Place?

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Two questions that I don't seem to have found covered anywhere:

What is the typical "dress" for dinners in the restaurants on the Cruisetour? Are nice jeans good?

Second, is there a suggested or recommended gratuity for the escort / guide on the land portion of an escorted land tour?

Thanks for any responses.

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This may be a silly question but I'll ask anyways. If you get the health insurance through one of the links posted, do you still need to get travel insurance with Carnival to cover things like missing your cruise because of travel interruptions or the death of a non traveling family member?

Definitely take a good look at the policy, but every policy I have reverted purchased far surpassed what the cruise line covers. If all you are doing is the cruise, one offered by the cruise line may be OK. Typically when we do a trip, we are adding several days in front of the trip or after we get off the ship. This means hotels, and possible additional airfare, excursions, etc. when you buy a comprehensive travel insurance policy, you are typically buying coverage for a specific period of time, and for a specific amount of money, which can include the cost of your cruise, airfare, extra hotel nights, etc. also, the cruise we just finished had two children in our group, and they were covered for everything at no additional charge.

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Gosh, now I am almost afraid to go! I went ahead and purchased the insurance for everyone but it seems that what was available thru carnival could wind up up being painfully inadequate if costs could run into 100,000k! I looked at the links that someone posted for buying additional insurance, but it seemed somewhat similar to what was offered by carnival. Does anyone ever purchase enough insurance to cover up to 100k? I will definitely look into it more tomorrow (was on the road all day today to visit in laws)

I'm just worried I might not be able to buy any more since we are less than 2 weeks away.

 

I hope these do not seem like stupid questions, I never travel and am not travel savvy and I don't want to risk financial ruin by having an illness or accident out of the country.

Check out insuremytrip. . Have used them for every cruise we have done. You can input the outline of your trip and it will show you lots of options. We always get one with a high medical coverage amount as well as a high emergency evacuation coverage.

We did need to use it on our Baltics trip last year when DW developed a problem. Had almost $800 in on board doctor and medical charges. Had to file with our medical insurance when we got home. Took them 90 days to come back and "pay under the out of network" provisions. Think they covered $50. Filed everything with the travel insurance and they paid entire balance minus the $50 deductible in ten days.

Always get the travel insurance. Never know when or if you might need it.

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I bought two earlier this morning just to see how they worked. Wanted to see how long it might take to get them shipped as I am one month out from final payment. Said they would ship in two to three days. Planned to go out to get more to pay off the cruise, and they are now sold out!!! Sure didn't take long for that to happen. Have to keep checking the site every few hours to see if they get more in. They did say that they are "working on enhancing the security" for the e-gift cards, but had no time horizon worked out.

Tried again with no luck. Sent email to Verizon and got response saying they will not be available for "some time" until they can resolve "security concerns"!!![emoji33][emoji33]

Has anyone had any success lately? Have been checking every day since 1/24 and still none[emoji25]

Has anyone tried purchasing the Verizon eGift card recently? Just went out to look and could only find a $100 "Booking Gift Certificate" available. I know that there used to be gift cards in $50, $100 and $500 denominations. Want to get a few to pay down my cruise balance.

I think we are going with Princess. It will be nice to try something other than Carnival and it will give us 2 new ports, 3 if you count Grand Cayman which I already mentioned I missed last time since I wasn't feeling well. It will also break up our wait for our Oasis cruise this summer. I'm really excited to experience that ship!! Thanks for your opinions!

Re-check my post.... signature line changed.

Have been on two Carnival cruises, and have one booked for May with DD and our two grandkids. Have done 5 Princess cruises, two on theCaribbean Princess. Without kids, for 7 days compared to 5 or 6, and with that itinerary, I would do the Caribbean Princess in a heartbeat. Ship is more "elegant" feeling. Subtle decor, not overly flashy as Carnival. We have been to Ochoa Rios twice and will never go back. Since you will be going to Falmouth on your Royal cruise, that should give you a taste of Jamaica. On our last Princess cruise, we booked through a small independent travel agent that is one of Princess's highest volume bookers and she was able to get us a fare we couldn't get close to getting via the web or thru Princess. May be able to do same for you to make it even a better deal. E-mail me if you want more info on that.

I'm going to go with Coast Guard inspection. She just arrived this morning from her Trans-Atlantic

Looking at the Russian Embassy website shows the cost for processing a single or double entry visa to be $140 per person. Makes the tours offered by the local companies an absolute fantastic deal for all they include. We are booked for a 10 person private tour this July with SPB and our cost is $330 per person. A great deal in my opinion.

We are going on Royal Princess July 6th. DW would like to arrange a "Cleanse, Style Dry, and Hair Up" through the Salon on our first formal night. When trying to book in advance through the website, there are no "ladies" salon services available for any day. Lots of other services, but no "hair" services available at all. Does anyone know if this is something that you can only book on board? Seems implausible that all appointments have already been booked for every day 44 days out from the cruise.

Thanks for the info.

Prior to boarding our Royal Princess cruise this July, our party of 4 (possibly 6) will be doing a Segway tour of Copenhagen. We will then need to get us and all of our luggage to the Oceankaj Terminal to get on the ship.

Any suggestions for easiest way to get there? Are there cabs readily available that could accommodate up to 6 people and luggage? Would a car service be better? Any help and advice would be greatly appreciated.

Gwen: Particularly loving your review of the Baltic portion of your trip. We are on the July 6th sailing!

Question about getting ashore in St. Petersburg. If you did not have a Princess excursion, were you required to go to the Vista Lounge for a ticket? Did Princess excursions have"priority"? Or were you able to just go to the gangway to disembark? How many gangways did they use?

Any info would be greatly appreciated. We have a group of ten doing a private tour with SPB tours.

Thanks.

How long does it normally take to have the shareholders credit posted on your account once it’s been faxed in? We leave on June 1st.

I faxed mine in at 11:00 AM and it was posted when I looked at my account at 2:00 PM the same day. 3 Hours is pretty quick turnaround!!

Thanks for the review. My wife and I will be in D207 in July. Nice to hear you liked it!!

Thank you for providing us with the port information. It will be a real help.

 

 

 

We have a chip and signature credit card with no foreign transaction fees, so I called the card company and this is what the operator told me.

 

 

 

Chip and pin cards are used all over Europe as we know. In the USA credit card companies have yet to roll out with a chip and pin card. A chip and signature card will be accepted with no problem in stores, hotels, etc. as you will be asked to sign a receipt. However automated machines cause a problem as you are required to enter a pin number. The credit card representative provided me with a default pin number that can be used in this situation. The pin number can only be used for purchases from a automated machine. She indicated that there has been no problems with this type of transaction in Europe.

 

 

 

If you have encountered problems with at pin and signature card in Europe, please drop us a post.

 

 

 

Thanks again,

 

 

 

Islandfan

Andrews Federal Credit Union in Maryland (Andrews AFB) offers a chip and pin card with no annual fee, no foreign transaction fee, and cash advances are treated like a charge, not a cash advance. Well worth checking out. Got one for our July cruise from Copenhagen on RP.

There have been many posts about chip and pin credit cards on Cruise Critic. If anyone is a member of USAA (association for US military and their families) you can apply for a chip and pin Master Card. There is a 1% foreign transaction fee on all purchases. As has been noted, the Capital One cards don't have a foreign transaction fee but they don't offer chip and pin cards. There is no yearly fee for my USAA Master Card. It was very easy to get. I will take both the USAA card and my Capital One card to give me options.

Andrews Federal Credit Union offers a chip and pin card with NO annual fee, NO foreign transaction fee, and NO cash advance fee. I just got one for our upcoming trip in July on Royal Princess.

Victoria:

Your pictures are amazing. We will be on the Royal in July. I am curious about your tripod. You call it a travel tripod. Can you tell me what make / model it is and where you got it? I am looking for something light and easy to carry for our upcoming Baltics trip.

Thanks Emily for the feedback. I realize it is port intensive and only 2 sea days but my DW has issues at times if we are at dinner and the seas are rough. She has the wrist bands but when she takes gravol she appears to get sick from the gravol. I need to check if Bonine will cause her the same effects. We can not purchase it in Canada but we are not far from Buffalo or Detroit.

Just off the July 8th cruise, and we had very good seas... in fact DW commented that we have experienced rougher seas a couple of times in the Caribbean. Overall, we had really great weather during our cruise. Here's hoping your August cruise experiences the same.

Hi all,

 

I'm still on the hunt for my beloved Caribbean Princess ship model. It should look like this (photo attached) except of course say Caribbean. I'm keeping a hawk eye on eBay still.... :o

Emily:

Just off the CB from our British Isles Cruise. I remembered this thread from prior to our leaving, and did check out the gift shop on the ship and did not see anything even coming close to the model you are hoping to find. Maybe they are out of stock and may come back later, but as of last week, they didn't have any.

Absolutely loved your in-depth review of your British Isles Cruise. We used it extensively in our last minute preparations, and really loved your map of the "route" from the South Queensferry tender dock to the train station. We did that trip and absolutely loved the experience. Thanks again!!