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I usually email rather than call my CVP, but when I've done that I usually have a response within 24 hours.

I've received and taken a move-over offer before on a Royal Princess cruise in December 2019. We had an interior on a 5 night California coast cruise booked, ended up getting moved to a 7 night Mexican Riviera cruise in January (just weeks before the COVID shutdown) with a balcony cabin, all our cruise fare in refundable OBC and airline change fees paid. To top it all off, when I told my parents about the deal they booked the one we ended up on too. Best cruise deal I've ever had.

We had nightly turn down service on our recent Sapphire Princess cruise. We had a very good cabin steward on that one.

A couple of years back my wife and I were on a sailing that turned out to be overbooked, and got a move over offer to move to another sailing entirely. We got our entire cruise fare (minus taxes and fees) as refundable OBC and an upgrade from an interior cabin on a 5 day sailing to a balcony cabin on a 7 day. They also provided an allowance (I believe $300) to cover airline change fees. It was a pretty good deal, all things considered.

We do MDR breakfasts several times a cruise to avoid the crowds in the buffet, but pretty much always on disembarkation day. I think we only did MDR lunch twice this time around, but had dinner in the MDR all but one night (when we weren't feeling all that great and went to the buffet.) We mostly ate dinners in the Savoy dining room, and service was generally very good there. Breakfast and lunch are only offered in the International dining room, so we got to know the staff in there pretty well too. I also noted that disembarkation was handled rather efficiently this time around, and our luggage tags (we deliberately chose a later disembarkation group since our flight wasn't until almost 2pm) were called about an hour before the scheduled meeting time. We decided to just chill out in the platinum/elite lounge for a while anyway before disembarking since it seemed like a much better option than sitting around LAX. With the facial recognition we didn't even need to show passports going through customs (My wife and I have Global Entry, but I don't know if that had anything to do with it or not.) On previous cruises I've found it's quite common for disembarkation to be running behind schedule so it was a bit unusual to see it so far ahead.

I booked our excursion while on board on our recent cruise, but I saw that immediately following the charge on my folio for the excursion there was an OBC added for 10% of the purchase price. Note that this only appears to apply to the guests on the excursion who are elite. My wife is platinum and only my excursion purchase showed the discount.

Back home this evening, and our first order of business after arriving at home was to find a ladder and get one of our cats out of a tree she had gotten herself stuck in (she hadn't been there too long fortunately.) I'll probably have some thoughts to summarize a bit later on, but overall we quite enjoyed the cruise in spite of the hiccups. I feel that Princess made good on the AC issues in the room, so I'll leave it at that. It was a bit of a bummer to miss out on our Puerto Vallarta excursion though. For Halloween, I decided to stir up a bit of confusion on the ship and dressed up as a Princess chef. While in the process of cleaning the closet in our old house while moving, I happened to find the chef's jacket that I got from the Ultimate Ship's Tour many years ago, and a plan was hatched... Finding a chef's hat and neckerchief online, I decided for Halloween I'd try going to the dining room dressed up as a chef. Many of the waiters and other staff commented on my costume, and we were even paid a visit by Ravi, the ship's executive chef, who talked with us at our table for a few minutes and made us a bit of a special meal. The Halloween party in Club Fusion was probably the most well attended event I've ever seen in that venue. I think even the cruise staff was surprised at how many people were participating.

This is an interior cabin on Aloha Deck a bit behind the midship stairs (I'm guessing any HVAC issues are going to be regional rather than tied to specific cabins.) I think it's better today, but it was extremely hot inside the cabin last night and I sweated through my shirt even sleeping with no blankets. As for steaks in the MDR, it seems the app blocks out certain locations for ordering (including the MDR and the specialty dining venues) but I'm guessing you could get a Crown Grill meal in the MDR if you asked your waiter the night before. There's enough steaks on the regular MDR menu anyway that I'm not sure you would need to (my prime rib portion yesterday was huge, far more than I could eat) but I could see ordering Sabatini's if nothing on the regular menu looked good.

Well, our plans for Puerto Vallarta were a bust. Our stateroom was so hot last night that my wife got a really bad migraine and we were unable to go on our planned tour. We were moved to another room in the early morning which seems to not be as hot, but I'm still not sure if they are going to try to fix the issue in our original room or move us into the other one. Instead, my wife stayed in bed pretty much all day, and all I did was make a trip to Walmart for medicine.

Thought I'd add a couple more notes on Loreto: Out of all the ports on this itinerary this is the one I'd recommend having some pesos on hand for. Most places don't take cards, and although you could probably get by with USD having some Pesos made things much easier for us. Loreto isn't as much of a tourist town as Cabo or even La Paz, so more things are going to be in pesos. Also be aware that sidewalks in Loreto can be very uneven, especially if you get outside of the main tourist corridor. You will want to watch your step wherever you go.

Loreto was a very nice stop, I'd gladly come here again. Very walkable, friendly, and aside from a couple of people near the tender dock selling tours no pressure. My wife and I ended up seeing the City Hall (my wife was seriously interested in buying one of the paintings on display but there's no way it would fit in our luggage and I'm not sure if we could work past the language barrier to get it shipped home) and the cathedral, then had lunch at a Mexican restaurant called Orlando's near the City Hall followed by paletas next door. You can tell Loreto doesn't get many ships in port because they really made it feel like a party for the passengers coming ashore. It was also neat to watch the preparations for the upcoming Dia de los Muertos in the Town Square.

The people we are sitting next to in the MDR (the "private tables" for two aren't really all that private, but we've ended up in the same place In Savoy with the same companions for the last couple of nights) opted to do Corumel beach, and made it sound really great. I'll definitely have to consider that the next time we are on this itinerary. The activity schedule is a little thin tonight, so I'll probably do the logo trivia in the Explorers Lounge and call it a night. No big plans for Loreto (going to try a restaurant the other diners recommended and then just wander in town) but we have a big horseback ride excursion planned for Puerto Vallarta.

Today we found La Paz much more to our liking. No pushy vendors, and generally a much more laid back atmosphere than the giant tourist trap that is Cabo. Getting to and from town was a fairly easy bus ride, and we actually found some decent prices on souvenirs (I recommend the alley behind the Sears store for some much less touristy prices.)

I have to say that Cabo isn't high on my list of favorite cruise ports after this visit. Way too many pushy people trying to sell you things or get you to take tours. My wife and I did massages at the Sand Bar on Medano Beach (those were nice) but afterwards we tried to hang out on the beach for a bit and got mobbed by people trying to sell things, which completely ruined the experience. The first time we went to Cabo we did a Princess tour that pretty much took up the entire time we were in port so we missed a lot of that, but this time we did it on our own and it was impossible to go anywhere without a dozen people trying to sell trinkets or tours. Even while we were in a pedicab and actively moving people were still reaching in and trying to sell us stuff. Looking forward to Loreto mostly because the chance of this nonsense seems much lower there. That said, still enjoying the cruise and the ship, but we're thinking the ABC Islands might be a better fit for us next time around.

Apologies if I piggyback onto this thread, but I'm on board now and thought I'd post some initial impressions: So far I'm really impressed with the crew. I know many are relatively new and inexperienced, but they have gone out of their way to be helpful, and so far our room steward in particular (we are in an interior cabin on Aloha Deck) has been excellent. The food so far has also been quite good, and aside from some issues with our room safe (some digits on the keypad don't work) I haven't seen any issues that would suggest the ship had been sitting for the better part of two years. Looking forward to the next ten days of a badly needed vacation after several stressful months of preparing to sell our house, selling it and moving out (in fact it was just a week ago that we drove the moving truck to our temporary home while we find the next one) and looking forward to another cruise on what is easily my favorite ship in the Princess fleet. There was one minor hiccup shortly after boarding when the ship lost shore power, causing the lights in the International Dining Room to go out. The captain made an announcement about 20 minutes later explaining what was going on, and aside from one or two entrees being unavailable I didn't see any effects beyond the lights going out.

Before the final payment date you would be refunded whatever you paid. After the final payment date It depends whether or not you have travel insurance. This page explains the refund policy applicable to cruise cancellations: https://www.princess.com/plan/standard-cancellation-refund-policy/ If you purchased travel insurance and have to cancel for a covered reason (most commonly some illness or family emergency that prevents you from traveling) the insurance will generally cover whatever amount is not refunded under the standard refund policy. If you have "Cancel for any reason" insurance that refund will be made in the form of future cruise credits that can be used to book another cruise. If you paid with gift cards, I would assume the refund would be put back on those gift cards.

Good to get another view on this cruise, since I'm on the October 23rd sailing of this same itinerary.

I did the Cabo By Land And Sea tour on my last visit to Cabo in early 2020 (about a month before the shutdown.) I don't remember the catamaran used for the water tour being that crowded, although the rest of the tour sounds pretty much the same as what I experienced.

It's understandable that things wouldn't work properly after the ship has been sitting a while, especially on an older ship. I was on one of the first Caribbean Princess cruises after that particular ship began sailing again, and we had a number of issues with our room, most notably leaks under the bathroom sink and several instances where the toilets stopped working for a while. I imagine ships are much like cars in that they don't do well if you just leave them sitting. In the meantime it does sound like Japan is starting to ease restrictions on international tourism, although I suspect it will be a while before cruises restart there.

Probably unrelated to the original question, but I'm mostly curious why that particular itinerary includes a seemingly random stop in Seattle before heading off to Hawaii. There's probably some operational reason for it (my guess is that they're either onboarding/offboarding crew there before the long repositioning or it would be easier to for the ship to clear customs in Seattle than in Honolulu) Also, I see that they have the Seattle to Vancouver repo as a 2-day cruise (with a sea day) instead of a one-day for this one. If you can get them to allow it that might actually be a bit more reasonable than the usual one-day repo. The main problem with the short repos is that a lot of ships tend do them at the same time, and Canada Place with 3 or 4 ships in port is just a mess (we're talking things like 4 hours in the security line.) If I was on the long repo I'd probably still just take the train to Vancouver, but 2 days might be worth it. I'd reccomend using a site like cruisetimetables to find out how many ships you're dealing with at Vancouver though.

In general any cruise where you disembark in a different country than the one you embarked in is fine. That said, based on experience the Seattle to Vancouver one day cruise is probably more trouble than it's worth in this case, I'd probably just take the train up to Vancouver and embark there if I was doing that.

Also on the October 23rd sailing here, will be interesting to see how this one goes.

Got an invitation to bid on upgrades for the October 23rd cruise I'm on. We're in an interior cabin, and the Princess website shows this sailing has all mini-suite and suites sold out, but there are options to bid on obstructed oceanview, oceanview, "premium" oceanview (which on Sapphire Princess would likely be the forward facing cabins with balconies that can only be used when the ship is in port) and standard balcony. . Obstructed Oceanview goes up to $115 per passenger, Oceanview goes to $205, Premium oceanview goes to $320 and balcony goes to $660. At those prices we'll probably just stay in our current cabin. It does seem like a decent number of obstructed oceanview cabins are available based on looking at the website but all balcony categories seem to be bookable only as guarantees.. It should be noted that this sailing has been showing "unavailable" for a while now, but some cabins have recently become bookable again.

More info on their website: https://fujisports.com/blogs/blog/princess-and-fuji-caribbean-adventure It sounds like this isn't so much a themed cruise as it is a floating convention that happens to be on this particular sailing. That said, I could see a program like this being popular with younger passengers on the ship, especially with the "Cobra Kai" fad going on lately.

Another factor that influences water usage on the ship is whether the pools are filled with fresh water or salt water. Princess used to be a bit of an outlier in the cruise industry by having freshwater pools, but more ships have them now. From the info I can find online Carnival and Norwegian, for example, still have saltwater in all of their pools, Royal Caribbean is a mix of fresh and saltwater depending on the ship.