JimmyVWine

No. The "Quiet Pool" is only found in the Retreat area and that is not available to everyone.

Falls into the "damned if you do, damned if you don't" category. Failure to show a movie at 11:00 will result in a post here and elsewhere that has as its title: "Just Tried Princess For The First Time And It Was Sooooo Boring!" The rant will refer to the fact that the advertised movies were "non-existent". My solution would be for Princess to install a Bluetooth transmitting sound system around the pool area allowing anyone who wants to use their own Bluetooth enabled earbuds or headphones to connect to that system and listen to whatever is playing on the screen. For everyone else, the pool area is devoid of noise from the screen.

Also missing in the overall "analysis" is a comparison to other cruise lines. Can someone publish a list of cruise lines that work their pricing differently than Princess does? Off hand, I can't think of any.

But you are ignoring the fact that the empty cabins would be filled by offering them at a significant discount. Under this model, it is not an imperative that a cabin sail empty. But even a couple of empty cabins is better than giving people free cruises and having to also adjust their flight arrangements.

Doesn't work that way. It's not a one to one ratio between the "hold out" and the cabin with that one person hoping and expecting to see the price driven down. If 50 people are playing the game waiting for a dirt cheap cabin and there is only one cabin, the cruise line prices that last cabin at rack rate and drops the price $10 a day until it sells. Someone is going to bite at a rate that is lower than rack, but not dirt cheap. It's a reverse auction. The only way to beat that system is if all 50 people are acting in concert and colluding to drive the price down. That will never happen. Also, with a third party running a bidding system now, they could add these cabins to the bid process and get close to rack rate for them.

Date and metrics have gotten so much better over time that I would guess that they can predict full capacity very, very accurately. But it would still be better to miss by 5 cabins "under'' than it would be to be 5 cabins "over." See above. Their system works way, way more than 90%. But financially, it still has to be cheaper to fill 5 empty cabins at a lower rate (or even a "bid on" rate given that they now have a third party running an upgrade bid system) than it is to give 5 people a free cruise.

I'm no expert in the ways and means of hospitality booking, but it seems to me that the cost to Princess for making these overbooking mistakes is actually higher than finding out that they have a few unsold cabins a week or two before sailing and selling those cabins at an absolute dirt-cheap price to Travel Agents, Drop and Go customers or friends and family. Filling a few empty Balcony cabins from an "undersold cruise" for $300 each at the last minute seems way better than what the cost of these Move Over offers is for "oversold" cruises. How is overselling more financially advantageous than underselling?

Stage One of "The Future State": Order monstrosity. Divest dessert of all extraneous pastry, candy and sugar into a nearby bin: Stage Two of "The Future State": Someone without a Package follows close behind you:

Looking forward to your observations.

I had some rewards points on one of my credit cards and one of the reward options is the purchase of various gift cards. I searched and indeed one of the choices was Princess. I only had enough points for a $25 card but I went ahead and got one to use as OBC. I opted for an e-card. When it arrived by e-mail and I printed it out I noticed that right on the page you print it says that the card can be used on board only and must be redeemed at the passenger services desk. Since my cruise is already fully paid I didn’t check to see if this could have been used to pay down the cruise fare itself. I suspect that it could. But as far as using it to buy OBC, the card itself suggests that phoning to do so would be futile.

Cutting and pasting from an earlier discussion. I just printed out tags for our next cruise, and I tried all of the methods on this thread to see what would work best and to report back. Using Edge instead of Chrome got me the proper size tags and it didn't matter if I printed directly from the screen showing the tags or if I printed them after selecting the "Print Luggage Tag" command, or if I saved them as a PDF first and then printed them. All gave me the long tags with no customization needed. However, if you print directly from the screen instead of using the "Print Luggage Tag" command, your printout will have a header and footer that you may not want. The header is a date and time stamp and says "Luggage Tag: Princess Cruises" in small type and the footer is the URL Coder of the web page. Using Chrome, the tags started out as the short ones irrespective of whether I printed straight from the screen or if I printed after using the "Print Luggage Tag" command, or if I saved them as PDFs. But this can be fixed. Use the "Print Luggage Tag" button. When the Print dialogue box opens, look to see if the Print Preview of your tag is filling up the page, or is much shorter than that. If it is the latter, then in the dialogue box find the dropdown for "More Settings". Open that up and go to "Scale". It is probably set to "Default". Change it to "Custom" and then enter a number that will cause your tag to fill up the length of the page, or nearly so. For me, using the number "145" does the trick. Not sure if this will be the number for everyone, but play around with it until your tag gets to be the size that you want.

It's still a math exercise. As pointed out in an earlier post, it's not as if people who don't drink alcohol don't drink other things instead. As far as I can tell, the No Alcohol package ($39.99 per day plus 18%) + Balcony gratuity ($16) + WiFi ($10) comes out to $73.19 per day. And you can get all of that for $60 per day by getting Plus. If you'd rather save money, get Plus. And if you think that you are only going to spend around $20 per day on non-alcohol drinks, don't get a package. ($23.60 + $16 + $10 = $49.60) It's not as if people who are buying packages are getting a discount on tips and WiFi and you are not. The math certainly supports Princess adding another package at $50 per day, but it's not as if that bundle is going to work out to be a tremendous savings. But apparently it would make others feel more included and heard, so I suppose it can't hurt to do it.

They have one. It is the Zero Alcohol Package.

We were on Regal in 12/19 (Caribbean) and there was a very nice wine tasting of Italian wines for $25 paired with small bites. The wines ranged from good to very good and the event was well worth the price. We were on Regal in 10/22 (Med) and there was nothing at that time that was remotely similar.

I’m not sure I understand your math. If a person does not drink alcohol, then they just spend 5-10 minutes doing the math, estimating what their on board expenditures will likely be and comparing that to a package. If “pay as you go” works out better, do that. If a package works out better, do that. Princess is not “forcing” anyone to do anything other than a small amount of 3rd grade math homework to see where the better bargain lies.

The kids club areas are the dedicated spaces for the particular age groups. There are no other areas that are specifically allocated for children (such as an arcade) though there certainly are areas that kids would enjoy while supervised such as pools, sports courts, putting green and on occasion, organized activities in the Piazza. That said, some of these things that I mentioned may not be what a 4 1/2 year old would be interested in as much as he would be in the offerings in the club. Also, as you know, Alaska is very port intensive and even the sea days are designed to be highly scenic and wildlife focused. A 4 1/2 year old will be plenty entertained by the cruise itself with the club serving as a sufficient alternative.

Even without a formal night you can still break out your finest duds.

Ordinarily I could never imagine capping out on my 15 drinks per day on the Plus Package. But in your circumstance, I could see 15 drinks being a little light! So glad you made it. Enjoy!!

Heavens no. It is supposed to be made with tenderloin (same cut as Filet Mignon).

See post #23 above.

I think you are misreading what I posted. Invert it. If all others are tied for first, they are tied for “first worst”.

Well, with well over 50 cookbooks on my shelves, I only found one with a recipe for Beef Wellington and that book is from the early 70's. And I wouldn't follow that recipe on a dare. It called for roasting the tenderloin in the oven to an internal temperature of 130 before wrapping it in pastry and baking. So the meat is overcooked before it even gets wrapped! And it omits the duxelles completely and uses canned pate as the coating layer. No ham. But no amount of even the finest Prosciutto could save this recipe. It was from "Better Homes and Gardens."

Princess has the second worst internet at sea. All other cruise lines are tied for first. Their claim may be true, but that is sort of like being the fasted turtle in the race.

Same. It’s a tough dish to scale up for 700 people. Best for a small dinner party.