JimmyVWine

Just bring your own stems. The servers are more than happy to pour wine into your better glasses. We stopped relying on Princess to provide us with decent glasses a decade ago.

Yeah. I booked a Summer-2026 cruise on the day that they came out for past guests. I assume that the "Book Early for the Best Price" promise is real. The new sale price is $ $600 more, but I would get $400 in OBC. Nope.

Then you probably should have gotten the email twice. 🤣

An excellent video. Thanks for the heads up. I wonder if the new, lower price reflects an issue with the restaurant being under booked, or if they intend to lessen the overall experience in the future. At $149 the meal shown in the video becomes debatable in terms of value. Maybe yes. Maybe no. But at $79, it is an absolute steal, especially if the wine included. (And even if not, I assume that all the drinks are within the range of the Premier Package.)

Are you sailing on Sun? If so, this "cancel and re-book" notification would not apply since that ship has been set up with Traditional/Reservations/Walk-in dining rooms from day one. No changes necessary.

Thanks for your thoughts. On our upcoming cruise, we are also on Deck 10, a bit closer to mid-ship than you, but not by much. Breaks my rule of "cabins above and below" but in order to get a Cabana Mini, you pretty much have to break the rule. Did the noise ever subside or was it all night long? We are likely to be out of our cabins until later in the evening, and I am wondering if this is a problem that extends up to or past midnight.

With the introduction of the Plus and Premier Packages, Princess has really painted itself into a corner in terms of how it can bait the hook for sales. It used to be that sales would include things like prepaid gratuities; free Specialty Dining; Free WiFi. But it can no longer offer any of that because doing so would undermine the concept of the Packages. And not too long ago, Princess rolled out its "best price guarantee" for early booking. So it can't lower prices beneath what it already promised would be the lowest price offered, or else it would undermine that pricing feature as well. So if it cannot offer free add-ons, and it cannot offer lower prices, can a "sale" ever really be a sale? Seems to me that the only way out of the painted corner is to offer discount pricing on the packages. "This week only, book a cruise and get Plus or Premier for half price!" They used to do this when the package was the All-Inclusive Beverage Package. They would discount that package or throw it in for free. But so far, we have yet to see a sale that discounts the current packages. If they want to move more product, that is what they should be doing. But maybe they don't need to move more product.

Interesting turn of events. The menu posted in the quoted link shows a price of $149 as do several other sites that I have seen. But I just booked dinner for 3 people on September 21 through the app at a confirmed cost of $79 per person. Not sure what’s up with that, but I’m not complaining.

Exactly. The length of lines no longer concerns me. I only care about how efficient the process is in moving people on to the next stage of the boarding process.

You are correct that before October 14, the Deck 9 Minis should be sold as Reserve Class Cabana Deck Minis with access to both the shared space and the Reserve Dining room. BUT...it is possible that since they are doing away with the Reserve perk after October 14, they are not extending that perk to people who bid for an upgrade. If you pay full price for an available Reserve Class Cabana, then you would get the perks. But maybe they are pulling back the perks for people who pay a lesser amount through the bidding process.

Your preference makes perfect sense as well. As for us, our lifestyle typically includes wine on the sofa watching the world go by every day!

There is no official "latest time." But they will want you off the ship by 9:00-9:15 for sure. When we had a very, very late flight out of Anchorage, we booked a transfer to the airport from a third party vendor that makes the same trip as a Princess transfer, but throws in a couple of stops for photos and viewing. We stopped at a wildlife sanctuary and at a couple of scenic areas for some photos, and were then taken to the airport. We had reserved a rental car in advance, so once we arrived at the airport we picked up our rental car, drove into town, went to the Anchorage Museum (highly, highly recommended-one of the best museums of its size that I have ever been to); had lunch, drove around the area on a self-guided driving tour, came back into town and had a wonderful dinner, then headed to the airport to return the rental car and check in for our flight. It was a very full and fulfilling day. No need to hang around the ship because there is "nothing to do." And no need to hang around the airport. Get yourself a car and enjoy a full day in Anchorage and the surrounding area.

The Princess website also tells you if the sofa or the bed is closest to the entry when you click on a cabin and the "Details" window pops up. As for the direction of travel, we like to sit facing forward while sitting on the sofa. The sofa always is placed on the same wall as the headboard. So the way the ship is configured, if the bed is nearest the entrance (and bathroom), those cabins will have both the bed and the sofa facing the direction of travel. (This is the layout that we insist on. We like to be near the balcony when we are on the sofa so that we have a view, and we like to face forward. If the sofa is by the entrance, you can't really see anything and we would never use the sofa.) If the sofa is closest to the entrance, then the sofa sits "backwards" to the direction of travel as does the bed.

For what it’s worth, I had this issue come up once. It took 2 months to finally get a replacement card issued. The solution came from AARP after they opened a ticket. Princess could not do anything other than confirm that I tried to enter the GC number and PIN 27 times and each time the card showed no available funds. And Princess also confirmed that they had no record of the card ever being used successfully. But they could not issue a new card since they did not sell the original one. The AARP representative that I was dealing with once this got elevated was wonderful. She asked me to send her an email directly to her own account with a narrative of what happened. She then contacted Princess and confirmed the story that the card had never been used successfully. Once that happened AARP issued a new card (electronically) and also sent me a $50 Mastercard for my trouble. Based on my experience, the solution has to come from AARP.

I’m a bit confused by the question. My comment was that the Beekman products are a big upgrade from what used to be provided. The picture I posted is definitely what used to be provided. I never suggested that that was current. My most recent cruise was exactly one year ago and the picture I posted represents what we had then. Hope that clears things up.

Major upgrade from the sea foam colored stuff from the past.

Cunard's Information Page says that the limit is one bottle per adult. And even if Cunard matched Princess' policy, the Britannia Class experience is not an upgrade from Princess. Cunard puts its efforts into the higher classes and it shows. "You may bring one bottle of wine or champagne per person on board to celebrate special occasions (no larger than 750ml). If consumed in restaurants or bars, each bottle will be subjected to a corkage fee. Guests who are under 18 years of age are not permitted to purchase or consume alcohol on board. In U.S. waters, Cunard abides by the U.S. legal drinking age of 21 years."

I'm not seeing this. On both decks, the cabins alternate with an equal number of each. For example, looking Port side on Deck 9, 9106 is "sofa by entrance" and the next cabin, 9204, is "bed by entrance" and the next, 9208, is "sofa by entrance and this pattern continues all the way to 9354. Same with Deck 10.

I got all of my MDR (Horizon Deck 7) and Specialty reservations a couple of months ago (same cruise) and can go in and edit my selections if I need to. Though there isn't much to change to. For a Private Table, we pretty much have to keep what we have or move to what I call "late lunch" (5:20). If we try to move to a "Shared Table" I get an error message. While the times I got for the MDR are not perfect, I was able to get a table for every night that I wanted. And Specialty restaurants were a breeze. Even Spellbound.

Twin brother?

For most 7 day cruises in the Caribbean there are two Sea Days. One Formal Night will take place on the first of those nights, no questions asked, and the second Formal Night will take place on the second Sea Day AS LONG AS the second Sea Day is not the last day of the cruise. If the very last day of the cruise is a Sea Day, then the second Formal Night will be the day before that. (So for a Saturday to Saturday Cruise, if the Sea Days are Sunday and Thursday, those would be your Formal Nights. If your Sea Days are Monday and Friday, then Monday and Thursday would be your Formal Nights.)

I thought that I read somewhere that Sun Princess was not part of the "cancel and rebook" process since it already had the dining options that the other ships were changing over to.

Bars and restaurants can operate without losing revenue because the time spent in them is measured in 2-3 hours. And if a person really needs to smoke, there is a workaround, even if that means leaning up against a dumpster outside. While smoking is a choice, it is also an addiction. Someone who is addicted to smoking can figure out a way to visit a bar or restaurant and either suppress their addiction for 2-3 hours, or find a place to smoke. This is nothing at all like a 10 or 14 day cruise, often with 2 or 3 consecutive Sea Days tossed in there. I'm just not sure that a person who is addicted to smoking could ever make that work. I'm not saying that Princess shouldn't go smoke-free, and I'm not saying that the loss of a certain (and shrinking) slice of its current customers won't be made up for by other, new customers. I'm just saying that smokers who figured out a way to still visit bars and restaurants may not be able to figure a way out to take a smoke-free cruise.

It depended on the port of embarkation and it depended on how deceitful people paying thousands of dollars for a cruise wanted to be in avoiding paying another $60 to bring on 6 bottles of wine as a couple. (Two free and 4 x $15). Yes, there were some ports where there was never a table to pre-pay the corkage. Nothing for the guest to do in that circumstance. Hardly makes sense to scream at the embarkation area: "Can someone PLEASE take my money??!!" But if those unpaid bottles were taken to the public spaces like lounges and dining venues, corkage was almost always charged. At least in my experience. And there were ports with corkage fee collection tables. I never sailed out of Port Everglades without seeing one. You walked up to the table, showed them your wine, and they charged the $15 fee to your account and stamped your bottles with a Sea Witch to show that they had been paid for. And now for my public service announcement. While it is true that corkage fee collection can often be self-policing, Princess has the most generous wine allowance policy of any cruise line in its price class. If we want things to stay this way instead of Princess reverting to the mean, we should tip our cap to their generosity and pay the fee that they assess. It is a small price to pay for the benefit of bringing on full cases (or more) of our own wine.

It appears to. Based on my reading of the two configurations, before 10/14, there are 4 categories of Cabana Cabins: 1. C1-"Cabana Deck Reserve Collection". They are all on Deck 9. These open up to the shared space with the partition that separates the end of the balcony from the shared space being a 4 foot glass panel. The 8 foot glass panel is at the edge of the ship. These cabins have access to the shared space and have Reserve benefits including entry into the Reserve Restaurant. 2. C2-"Cabana Deck Reserve Collection" Again, are all on Deck 9. These do not open up to the shared space and instead end at the edge of the ship. The 8 foot glass panel is at the end of the balcony as shown below. Look at the lowest visible deck and see how the glass panel extends way above the brown wood railing. These cabins also have access to the shared space and have Reserve benefits including entry into the Reserve Restaurant. 3. and 4. CA and CB Cabana Cabins-These are on Decks 10 and 11. On Deck 10, CA is mid-ship, some in the Sphere, and CB are further aft. On Deck 11, there are just a few CAs and they are all in the Sphere. There are no CBs on that deck. Other than location, there is no difference. These cabins do not have access to the shared space, do not have Reserve benefits, and have a glass partition at the end of the balcony that is "standard" with the panel ending at the height of the wood railing. After 10/14, the only thing that changes that that C1 and C2 lose their Reserve benefits privileges, so no private dining room for them. They will still all be on Deck 9 and will all still have access to the shared space.