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He's also a lot of fun in the announcers booth! Good luck!

I think you are misreading this. Any OBC listed with an * is non-refundable - you don't have any. Check the image in post #16 on the first page to see what I mean. If you had Shareholder Benefit listed it would have the * after it.

I'm sure some of the other cruise line benefits are good - but the few times we strayed from Princess (where we get a discounted fare from our TA that I haven't been able to get on another line, the $100 military OBC and the $100 shareholder OBC) we have found that the "discounted military" fares cost more than whatever special is going on at the time - and you can't get both - so we have ended up not using the "military" discount - so far.

The last two cruises we were on we traveled with two other couples who have only been on one or two Princess cruises - we are Elite. We made a bet on who would get through the check in quickest - both times they beat us by 5-10 minutes - and they are still laughing at us even after I flashed my black card and asked them DYKWIA??🙂

We were there a few years ago when all they had was the gift shop building that Princess built - and a zip line I think. We were on a 14 day cruise and I guess they needed fill in ports...

We have been away from cruising a couple of years - we're Elite on Princess. I was very involved in Roll Calls for years, and mostly disappointed. But there were times when we had great groups and made lifetime friends. Our issue was we almost always were cruising with friends who weren't on CC and had no desire to participate with any of the CC activities. Now we have booked two cruises later this year, are traveling by ourselves, and would welcome an active group - and both Roll Calls are extremely quiet. Maybe in another month or so 🙂

Since you said this is your first Princess cruise, and if you didn't already know, the "Dine" line a couple of people have mentioned is a button on your cabin phone that you can use to make reservations - it's normally best to do that as soon as you get access to your cabin before it gets jammed 🙂 Have fun!

My only concern with the waiting until you get on the ship option is that so many people are getting the free specialty dinners people have reported that once they get onboard the restaurants are booked solid already. I had the "TA" freebie that I knew wasn't from our TA and was able to book on the Medallion App - didn't ask for money and I have no idea if it used the credit. But that's easy to resolve onboard - if they are already booked that's not so easy 🙂