polmcs

I’ll hazard a guess that you tried to add 2 passengers to the waitlist when there was only 1 slot available on the waitlist.

I got off a TATL cruise earlier this month. I had several of the issues noted in this thread just trying to get Oceanready and as expected, the problems didn’t end upon boarding. Actually, prior to boarding, I had another problem where I could not assign an arrival group. Even a week before departure, I got a “too far away. Please try later” error message. Waited until we got to Rome, 2 days before departure and tried again and got a “this ship has sailed” error message! That said, we had no issues at all checking in at the port. Just a quick passport scan and we were on our way and straight onto the ship. That has to be the quickest boarding process we have ever had with no queuing at all. Then the issues started. I could never see my stateroom balance. I just got a portfolio number not loaded. That also stopped me from booking excursions where I had waited to board to use OBCs to pay for them. Most frustratingly, I could not successfully order drinks in the app. It got as far as “order received “ , but never moved on to the “being prepared” state and the order would eventually end up in a cancelled state. A few times, the wait staff said that they saw my order, but they would re-order it and asked if I would cancel any stuck orders myself in the app. To fix the portfolio not loaded error, the IT chap at the Internet cafe had me log out and then log back into my account and that did indeed work. That did not entirely fix the drink ordering issue though. I was able to place an order, see it move into the preparing phase and even into the delivered phase. The only issue was that no drink ever showed up! That was even more annoying than seeing the order end up in a cancelled state. I had to go up to the bar to complain and to get my drink made for me.

Anyone had success getting a bid accepted when booked through a “big box” company? I was successful with my bid on a TATL cruise last month that was booked direct with Princess. My next cruise is to Cabo in Feb (should have been Sept on the Diamond) and was booked through a big box company. For the TATL, I received a mail inviting me to bid on an upgrade, but did not receive a mail regarding the Cabo cruise. I had seen references to the fact that the travel agent must participate in the program to be able to bid, but when I clicked on the upgrade link on my cruise personalizer, I was presented with some options to bid, so I did. I did not receive any confirmation of my bids (I did get confirmation emails on the TATL cruise, along with a notification about a month out that my bid had been accepted), but if I re-enter the bidding page for the Cabo cruise, I do see my bids as showing up and pending. Just curious if anyone was able to successfully upgrade a big box booking?

Upon boarding the Island Princess in Rome last month, there was a notice in our cabin to say that we we would have degraded Internet access for 4 of the 8 days that it would take us to traverse the Atlantic. Note, the internet whilst still in the Med, was pretty near useless to begin with! That did not bode well. We had an itinerary change due to an impending storm brewing in the Atlantic, so we ended up plotting a course that would take us much further South. A day later, an update letter showed up in our cabin stating that for 4 days, there now would be little to no Internet coverage and all those passengers with Internet packages would automatically be refunded $10 per day for the 4 days (even those that had Internet as part of the plus packages). The Internet was also down for a large part of day 5 of the Atlantic crossing. As an Elite, I had paid $70 for the 14 nights to have additional devices connected. Once connectivity was restored, I went down to the Internet manager and requested a refund of the 4 device upgrade for the 5 days with no Internet. I was given a $10 per day credit for those days, even though I had only paid an average of $5 per day.

Suddenly I’m not so disappointed that our Sep 6 5 day Cabo cruise on the Diamond was canceled about a month prior to departure. I still have the 5 day replacement on the Discovery to look forward to in Feb. I’m also feeling pleased that I cancelled the 17 day Mexican Riviera cruise this December, also on the Diamond in favor of a 14 day TransAtlantic cruise on the Island last month. I sailed on the Diamond to Alaska back in 2005 and even back then, the Sterling steakhouse was just a partitioned off part of the Horizon court.

We’ve never been charged tax on beverages bought under a package whilst still in port at San Pedro, CA. We did sail on NCL with a package out of New Orleans and it’s a few hours sail out of that port until you reach international waters and we were charged sales tax on every beverage until well into the evening.

Same error on my Feb 20 2023 Cabo cruise.

I’m in a similar quandary. I’m elite and my cabin mate for the November TATL is a blue noobie. At least for her second cruise next Feb, we’ll be in a full suite.

The ship is subject to speed restrictions in and out of San Pedro to minimize the impact on marine life. My Cabo cruise in Feb has also had the departure time moved up from 4PM to 3PM due to these restrictions. I’ve also had a Vancouver to LA cruise arrive an hour later than scheduled due to having to slow down on the approach into San Pedro.

Yup. I’m aware that I don’t need to make a reservation, but as the result of winning an upgrade bid, DMW was not showing that I had access to club class. I’ve since deleted my original reservations in the MDR and I notice pad yesterday that the DMW in the app is now reflecting club class. It just took about a week for that to be updated. I’m not out of the woods yet though. I booked an Alaskan cruise for next May over the weekend and the app is not showing a link for DMW for that particular cruise.

I will go online after the upgrade payment confirmation is sent and delete my MDR reservations. Well, through the web portal as that reservation in the app keeps cr@piping out. Still waiting on Princess getting back to me on that one. I see 5 green ticks and then it bombs out on me and tells me to link the reservation. Uploading VAX details is impossible as even the web portal doesn’t work.

I carry a printed off copy of the Crooners martini list from around 2015 when I cruise. So long as you get a waiter/bar person who has been around for a while, they are more than happy to let you order off that old menu. Last cruise I got to take with my late wife, first day aboard, she tried ordering her go to Quantum of Solace. The waitress said “no longer available and to order off the current menu”. I asked her to come back in 5 mins. I walked up to the bar and asked if they would make me a Quantum of Solace and they said no problem and just tell the waitress that it was OK for us to order it from her next time. No issues after that ordering any of the drinks off the old menu.

DMW doesn’t seem to recognize cabin type changes. I have a booking in a suite for a future cruise and DMW shows access to club class. I was successful with an upgrade bid for a different cruise later this month where I was originally in a balcony and I’m now in a club class mini. I had previously made reservations through DMW when allocated a balcony and those reservations are still in place (probably a good thing as I might have wanted to keep those), but DMW is not recognizing that I now have access to club class dining.

Trying EZAir for the first time at the end of the month. A one way TATL flight to Rome and then a domestic from FLL to home, so in effect 2 one ways. Pros… I could not get anywhere close to the EZAir price if I tried to book it myself. Cons… there was a schedule change last month. I only noticed as the operating airline PNR was no longer valid. Looks like they canceled our connecting flight so we got re-routed. We went from. 5:25PM departure on Black Friday, to a 7:14AM departure the same day. Not really feasible when visiting family and friends over Thanksgiving. I spent about an hour on hold with Princess to speak to EZAir. When we did get trough, they wanted $450 each to make any changes to the rescheduled flights, even though the airline had canceled. Eventually got them to relent and look for other flights. I gave them an alternative routing/times, but they couldn’t find it, but did offer an acceptable substitute, albeit with a tight connection at one airport. If booking direct, I would have absolutely insisted on the routing I wanted.

Fort Lauderdale is the only cruise port with Global Entry. The major difference with Global Entry at a sea port, is that unlike at the airport, you have to present the physical card to the agent.

I got an email yesterday to say that my bid on my late November TransAtlantic cruise had been accepted. I had bid $20pp over the minimum. Went from an obstructed balcony to a club class mini suite. Princess is selling club class minis on my voyage, but for about $5K more than what I paid for my balcony, so to get the M1 for just over $1.5K more than my original fare, definitely works for me. In fact, what I ended up paying in total, wouldn’t even get me a premium balcony at todays fare.

My waiter advised me to order a coffee and ask for my liqueur of choice as a separate shot. Reason being that the barista would only add a splash of alcohol if adding to the coffee. Asking for a separate glass meant getting a full shot measure 😉

Calls Princess help desk last week. I can see my cruise and see I’m in the green lane. I click the personal information and I see the 5 green check marks for about a second and then I get the link booking error. Also Clicking the wellness check button gets me a blank screen. Cruise is next month hence my support call. They logged a ticket, but I’ve not heard back i was able to use the web portal to add the missing credit card info (so why was I green lane), but there is no option to select the arrival info and clicking the wellness check just blinks for a second and then does nothing. other 2 cruises behave themselves a little better, so I’m guessing a corrupt database issue with the first cruise.

I’ve done Thanksgiving on Princess a number of times. Yes, expect turkey on the menu that night (even on my Tahitian cruise) but as the Thursday was a formal night on most of my cruises, it was also surf and turf night, so I went that route instead! 😉

Nothing received here at my end for the Rome to Fort Lauderdale crossing. I get all manner of junk (sorry, promotional) mail from Princess, so any bid mails should not be suppressed

Glad to see that you enjoyed your alternate cruise after the Diamond 5 day Cabo cruise was cancelled. We’ve opted to defer to the same cruise itinerary for next Feb. That said, if the Sep 6 cruise to Cabo had gone off as planned, then it would have been interesting to see what would have happened. The weather was lousy here in San Diego that week as a consequence of a Pacific hurricane hitting the Baja coast. I’m thinking that at best, we would have gotten a day trip to Ensenada and 4 sea days as the captain would never sail into the vicinity of a hurricane.

I did the Sterling Steakhouse on the Diamond Princess back in 2005 before it headed to the Asian market and even back then, it was simply a partitioned off part of the horizon court with table cloths and proper steak knifes. As as mentioned above, it is reasonably quiet, so no buffet guests trundling through the area. That said, it does not have the ambience of a proper steakhouse, or the Princess equivalent of a Crown grill.

It would have definitely been nice to have a bit more notice about potential cancellations, especially after final payments. I had booked an early September cruise out of San Diego specifically to avoid being at home on the anniversary of my wife’s passing. I got caught up in the Diamond Princess cancelations and now, given the fact that we’re now in mid Aug, cruise alternatives are few and far between (both the Crown and Royal cruises that weekend show as unavailable) and land vacations are somewhat limited given that last minute airfares are pretty expensive these days.

I applied for my first US passport in June (had to go to a post office in person as it was my first US passport) and I had my passport in hand within 5 weeks, OK, I paid for the expedited service and priority shipping, so that helped a little. A renewal should be quicker.

Thank you for the response. I was able to get into the DMW part of that booking and I can see that all my dining reservations are still intact for each night of the TATL, but what is missing from my reservations is my cabin mate! All reservations just show 1 diner. My travel companion is completely new to cruising, so I will have to have to set her up with the Medallion app and see what she sees on her end. Guess one way, or another, I’ll be calling the Princess IT helpline (despite the fact the credit card expiration issue should be a simple fix!)