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Will be interesting to see if they cancel Mazatlán or come up with a different plan.

Mazatlán shows up as a stop on today's Discovery Patter on January 11

From the Princess website As provided in the Passage Contract, guests agree not to bring alcoholic beverages of any kind on board for consumption, except one bottle of wine or champagne per adult of drinking age (no larger than 750 ml) per voyage, which will not be subject to a corkage fee if consumed in the stateroom. Additional wine or champagne bottles are welcome, but will incur a $15 corkage fee each, irrespective of where they are intended to be consumed. Liquor, spirits or beers are not permitted. Please remember that luggage will be scanned and alcohol outside of our policy will be removed and discarded.* Alcoholic beverages that are purchased duty free from The Shops of Princess, or at ports of call, will be collected for safekeeping and delivered to the guest's stateroom on the last day of the cruise. A member of the ship's staff will be at the gangway to assist guests with the storage of their shoreside alcoholic purchases while The Shops of Princess staff will assist guests with shipboard alcoholic purchases.

We always bring our own.

We love Aqua Class and have sailed in AQ many times. Love Blu and the Persian Garden. At the same time, I completely agree with KBB (above). We are priced out of AQ Class on nearly every cruise we are looking to book.

If I were you, I would eat at Sabatini's twice

We like Equinox as well. At the same time, we regularly sail Princess. We also appreciate the relaxed atmosphere in a place like the Solarium on Celebrity, excellent food, especially in Blu, and creative drinks. Our problem (or just reality) recently is the COST. We have found Celebrity to be priced FAR MORE for the similar/same cruise. My own advice and in my opinion you can have a very similar experience, considering what you say you appreciate, if you: Book the Princess cruise Do a YouTube search for "Princess cruise Sanctuary" and see if that is the type of area you would like. I bet it is. Book the Sanctuary a number of afternoons while on your cruise Regularly book specialty restaurants on your cruise. They are pretty good (depending on the ship) and FAR less expensive than Celebrity.

Others have given good suggestions. I will add. It sounds from your original post that a 7 night is likely best for you with the possibility of a couple of extra days in the area. I think any of the 7 night cruises out of Seattle would be good for a first timer. Yes, Glacier Bay is spectacular but for someone on their first Alaska cruise, everything will be spectacular. Staying a couple of days in Seattle could be fun, especially if you like larger cities. Another option would be to fly to Seattle and spend a couple of days in Olympic National Park (not far from Seattle) My own best advice for your cruise, is to bring good binoculars.

This was Share on Ruby Princess

We look forward to dining there in January on Discovery. Personally, I miss Share as a Specialty Dining option.

We did that cruise last year out of San Francisco. When we left it was maybe in the 60's and seemed pleasant but not warm for the first two days. The last sea day returning to San Francisco was just plain cold.

In my opinion, about a third of the Sanctuary is mostly shaded with overhead coverings like the picture above (very similar on Diamond) about a third is mostly sunny with very little shade or overhead covering and about a third of the chairs are partly covered depending on which direction the ship is heading

Spa/Sanctuary pool (adults only public area) Sanctuary - quiet relaxing comfortable area - small cost

First, you will need to figure out which store or company you bought it from. You likely bought it from a company who rents space for their store on a Celebrity ship. Receipt in the bag? Any warrantee in the bag? I would contact the company directly and not Celebrity. If the same would have happened at a local shopping mall, you would likely have better results contacting the jewelry company you bought it from and not the company who owns the mall. In the end, you will likely be out the couple hundred bucks. Probably better to buy jewelry locally.

Its a little difficult when there is very little information on what people like/dislike about traveling, but here goes. We have sailed Celebrity many times. Here are a couple of things we like on Princess. You asked about specialty dining. The cost for specialty dining on Princess is MUCH less in cost. In general specialty dining is between $25-30 per person for dinner. On Celebrity is would be generally $45-55 per person. Personally, we like Sabatini's on Emerald and the bar next to it, Adagio. In my opinion, the cost is much less, but also the creativity and specialty dining experience is less as well. Other people have mentioned Vines wine bar or the other bars around the piazza, which are very good options especially before dinner. Another thing Princess does well is the Sanctuary area of the ship as a place to hand out and relax with interesting food and great service. A quick google search will give you plenty of pics and videos if it.

A couple of notes in addition to what others have added. I am glad you upgraded to the premium package. We have always found the wines at Vines to be very good. I would suggest if you spend a couple of nights at Vines before dinner with wine and their appetizers a couple of things will VERY likely happen. First the steward will likely ask if you want to take an extra glass of wine with you to dinner which is nice for two reasons, one the wine is good and two the glass will be a nice Reidel glass, which if you are a bit of a wine snob like me, you will appreciate. You will need to return the glass to Vines later that night, but you will likely have the same opportunity the next night.

We have booked a guarantee cabin twice, both time a balcony guarantee. Both times somewhat last minute. Both times the "guarantee rate" was significantly lower than the rate to choose a room. One time we had a balcony cabin which was perfectly fine. The other time we were assigned a cabin at the last minute and were in a balcony under one of the outdoor restaurant seating area which was pretty noisy during the day. In both cases it was worth it because of the cost.

I would expect Thanksgiving to be celebrated on any "United States" cruise ie, Caribbean out of Florida, Western Mexico out of California, etc. I might not expect it on a cruise out of Australia, or going to New Zeeland, or any Mediterranean cruise.