jonesbk

Nevermind

Dunno about transferring holds to a TA, but….. When doing courtesy holds, make sure you don’t have any FCC (leftover from cancelled “pause” cruises, not FCDs) as if you put a courtesy hold on a cruise, if you have any FCCs, Princess’ system automatically uses them and books the cruise versus just placing a hold on the cabin for you. I just put a hold on a cruise this past weekend and emailed my PVP and, to my surprise, she emailed me back the next business day saying she saw that I was able to book it and everything looked right. A few emails later and a follow up phone call and I was made aware of Princess’ system apparently having the “power” to automatically book the cruise if you have any FCCs still in the system even if you’re just trying to place a hold on it. Very annoying, and my PVP loses out on the booking credit, an issue that they’ve made their management aware of. I honestly don’t understand how Princess can “force” you to book a cruise that you are just placing a hold on, especially when the deposit is non-refundable. So if you decide not to book it, after they’ve forced you to book it, you lose your FCC. If I decided to cancel the booking, I am hopeful, but not overly so, that I could have the FCC reinstated. If this has been mentioned on the boards previously, my apologies. We haven’t cruised (with Princess) since before the pause and haven’t been following Cruise Critic much. We did however try HAL recently and while it was “nice”, HAL is no substitute for Princess IMO.

On Princess, the tap water is distilled (as we were told/shown on the ship tour), hence Princess providing bottles of distilled water for free is likely them just providing ship’s water that hasn’t been piped to your cabin. However I am not sure if the water they provide is ship water or store bought, I didn’t have a CPAP when we sailed on Princess. I’ve heard HAL’s water is desalinated, which isn’t the same as distilled. Most CPAP manufacturers recommend using distilled water to avoid buildup, etc. I personally don’t have a problem paying for distilled water on the ship as I have to pay for it when I am at home, not sure why I should or would expect HAL to provide it for free. I also don’t have an issue using bottled water, or even tap water, in my CPAP. I just clean it more often when doing so to avoid mineral buildup. However I don’t use my tap water as home as our county water is drawn from wells and is very mineral heavy, as witnessed by the buildup in our humidifiers we use during the winter.

And I just thought the thread title was a typo for decks as a lot of the boards have threads on “hidden decks” LOL Very interesting that the ducks have made their way into cruise ships. I just thought it was a Jeep thing (I’m not a Jeep guy). I’ve seen similar things with painted rocks here locally. My wife found one that was painted like Mike Wazowski from Monsters Inc. Too cute!

You can also request one on Holland’s website (I did, our first cruise with HAL will be in March). It’s probably the luck of the draw, but I guess I got lucky and was assigned one who is very responsive and knowledgeable. Sorry we can’t mention names, etc…