CRUZER2012

To me, the lack of connecting interior doors sounds really good. I would not like losing an interior cabin feature for the sake of having interior connecting doors. Cabins are already small without adding more people via an interior connecting door. The connecting balcony feature seems to be preferable.

As I say, that is a matter of my preference.

If the auto-tip is left on, extra tips are reported and the recipient gets to keep it. There's confusion about this because the extra tip is technically turned in until it's verified that the passenger left the auto-tip on. It's then returned to the recipient.

 

If the auto-tip is removed, anything you tip individually goes into the tipping pool.

Right. That is my understanding as well. To make it easier to verify, it makes sense to put your name and cabin number on the envelope.

I would only add a couple things:

1. Using a debit card for the onboard account can be a problem. I used my debit card and had problems with my onboard account. For whatever reason the daily hold of funds could not be made on my account. Fortunately, I came prepared and was able to put USD on my shipboard account. Apparently credit is better than cash.

2. There are rules for extra tipping. Rules for extra tipping "seem" to differ based on the ship. It appears that the extra tip goes to the tipping pool and not to the individual if the passenger giving the tip is not on auto-tip.

I do not know what the "rules" are for late night venue closings. I can speak to personal experience. On a Crown Eastbound transatlantic, I experienced what I thought were early closings. Crooners routinely closed at about 11:30pm. This was in spite of the venue usually being at least half full when Crooners closed. Skywalkers was generally open past midnight even though there were often less than 20 passengers at the venue. It usually closed by 1am. Go figure the reason for the difference. On a Christmas cruise on the Ruby Princess, the venues were open until quite early in the morning. I was at Skywalkers some nights until 3am or 4am in the morning. This may be due to it being a holiday cruise and the expected volume of passengers at the late night venues.

My guess, and this is just a guess, is that generally venue closings are set before a cruise based on the expected turnout for late night venues.

Received a holiday greeting card in my regular mail today. Pleasant surprise, nicely done. Made me stop and think, Princess does get it right sometimes. And this was one of those times for me. Liked a card vs an email. s

 

Allowing passengers to bring on wine, with a corking fee is another example. Some other lines are limiting passengers to 1 bottles only.

 

I don't agree with all changes Princess makes but these are two I do. Since I voice my disapproval at times, thought it would be nice to express my approval.

This may turn out to be a lengthy thread.

As I recall, last year there was a thread discussing the "appreciation" shown by Princess during this time of year. Some got no "appreciation", others got stickers, while others got messages in different forms. It will be interesting to see how Princess does it this year.

As an IT Professional - as opposed to computer nerd - I can only comment that depending on the objective of the website, a user's idea of what works isn't always something that can be achieved. Logic can be a tricky thing.

 

That being said, both Princess and the US Government contract their IT operations out (BTW President Obama more than likely had nothing to do with the IT organization choice for the Affordable Care Act). Whether or not they clearly communicate their requirements to the contractor and whether or not the contractor clearly understands their requirements makes a difference as to the end results. And all those corporations offshoring their IT work in order to minimize the cost of their infrastructure take a major risk by doing so.

 

The best bet - besides being sarcastic - is to give Princess feedback so that they can incorporate changes in their next software release.

I am a retired IT professional who has developed many software applications. It is important not to give the IT personnel all the credit or any of the blame for the results. In the final analysis, the customer who pays the bills is ultimately responsible for the end result. It is called Customer Acceptance Testing. Whoever did this final testing failed to do their job, misunderstood the requirements, or got what they wanted.

In the case of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) website, I have learned that the project was affected by Scope Creep (customer adding requirements late in the development lifecycle) and a lack of Adequate Testing. Both are well known factors that adversely affect the final product. Customer control of IT functions in large organizations is not positioned at the top. Let's hope that any problems in the ACA and Princess websites will be corrected quickly.

Just to specific destinations.

Then I wonder, which destinations are NOT on the Destination List of Values that Princess travels?

So happy when I see Princess decorating at an appropriate time before a holiday.

It is good that they let Halloween and Thanksgiving pass before they put up the Christmas decorations. Others would do well to follow that practice.

I would think that a deficiency such as requiring a Destination would get speedy correction. Even before that, it would seem that it would be identified during design of the website.

Am I wrong? Isn't the website a tool for generating more sales?

When I saw this forum title I was intrigued. I wondered if it might be a collection of minor annoyances. As I have read the posts, I find the rude experiences to be much more. Case in point is the gym/pizza experience. I think the conduct of the amateur comedian far exceeded anything I would call simply rude. :eek: I do wonder what this guy was thinking.

I was worried about those BZ's too! If you check on cruise deck plans dot com they show all the cabins with obstructions. BV BW BY and BZ, that's alot of cabins!An obstructed balcony sounds terrible, I like balconies so I can see the ocean, not metal!

 

With that said, I ended up paying MORE for a non obstructed MF guarantee (diff was $80 pp) so to me, it was worth it. I still get the element of 'surprise' when I finally get an assigned cabin, but at least I know it won't be obstructed!

 

The worst that could happen is we end up all the way up front....there are 16 MF cabins so hopefully we'll end up aft where we prefer. :)

So what is your point?

You do not like the obstructed cabins categories BV, BW, BY, or BZ. So you choose an MF guarantee, unobstructed min-suite. You said you pay $80 more per person for a much better cabin. Sounds straight forward.

I would suggest keep checking to see how pricing goes for the balconies. There is a possibility that pricing can go down for various reasons. You may find that an unobstructed balcony could be in your budget. Be diligent to keep checking the Princess website and your travel agent, if you use one, to check on possible changes in pricing.

Hi All

 

I asked Princess about the bar hop below is the reply,

 

Shogun

 

 

We did indeed drop the bar hop a few years ago and replaced it with the Treasure Hunt which is a bit more balanced way to explore the ship. I have passed your thoughts to our Hotel team for consideration.

 

 

Thanks for taking the time to write to me; much appreciated.

 

Sincerely,

 

 

 

Alan B. Buckelew

President & CEO

 

So there we have it its all down to the tresaure hunt, nothing wrong with, would not like to see it go, but the bar hop was more fun.

 

So folks if you want the bar hop back you will need to write and ask for it.

 

 

yours Shogun

Do you think that reply came from Mr Buckelew?