AKman2495

This is another "damned if you do, damned if you don't" thread.

For some, it is about time the went to dispensers and for other it is just another sign of decay......

AK, as you may recall, I was on the repo cruise and the 11/5 four-day cruise. I don't know where your cabin was but the dispenser never made it to showers in the oceanviews on Emerald deck. I guess I'll have to wait until next year. I remember when HAL went from Elemis bottles to the dispensers. Broke my heart. Since then, I always bring my own shampoo, conditioner and body wash.

 

AKman, did you go on the horse show/buffet Princess excursion in Progresso? A bunch of us who did got very sick the day after, and stayed sick for several days. It seems as if Montezuma got us at the buffet.

 

Glad you had a good b2b.

 

Maureen

We were in an inside on Baja and they were there......Yes, we did go to the horse show and buffet. I had a cold at the time but I got that before the buffet. We did not suffer any ill effects from the buffet through. I was pretty careful about what I ate and I drank only the diet coke....

Mike

Which tour were you going on that as cancelled? Were are due to be going on the Lamanai Mayan ruins with Princess.

We were booked for the Xunantunich ruins. However, you have to cross a river to get there and, with the rain, the river was running too high.

On the last cruise all of the women looked great. I was surprised to see a number of men wearing ties on smart casual nights-looked great.

The problem is that you have no way of knowing if a previous cruiser has tampered with the contents.

That thought never entered my mind. One, because I was thrilled seeing a bigger shower than the one we had on the Coral. Two, because they looked lie brand new bottles. And three, I cannot imagine anyone spending over a thousand dollars to get on a ship to tamper with the shower gel bottles, that are apparently new-and may have been installed just prior to our cruise.

:confused:

We just got off the CB. Hereis the breakdown:

 

 

• Original Productions

Spectacular shows in our theater are a hallmark of every cruise with Princess. Here are a couple of the shows scheduled for your upcoming cruise:

BORN TO BE WILD: With rock on the radio, we hit the road in a Pink Cadillac passing landscapes and encountering colorful characters on a spectacular media backdrop.

CARIBBEAN CALIENTE: A hot latin show covering music and dance from Miami, Cuba, Mexico and the Caribbean Islands.

Born to be wild was a pretty good show. I thought they had some great music, but it is typical "Princess". Caribbean Caliente was the better show.

• Movies Under the Stars

Cozy-up on a lounge chair with complimentary popcorn as you take in a movie, sporting event or concert like you’ve never experienced before. Shows being featured during your sailing on our 300 square foot outdoor screen include:

MAN OF STEEL: Starring Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, Michael Shannon. Directed by Zack Snyder. Rated PG-13, 143 min.

THE WAY WAY BACK: Starring Steve Carell, Toni Collette. Directed by Nat Faxon, Jim Rash. Rated PG-13, 103 min.

We only watched "Dirty Dancing" on the MUTS...

• Guest Entertainers

At Princess, we invite some of the world’s best entertainers – including comedians, magicians and guest singers – onboard to delight our guests. Here’s a few on your upcoming cruise:

Carlos Oscar: Comedy For All! *WINNER OF PRINCESS CRUISES 2011 ENTERTAINER OF THE YEAR*

We saw him on the Coral last year. He is great. He often does two shows that have different material.

 

Hawley Magic: Hawley Magic was mostly recently seen on America’s Got Talent. Out of 75,000 acts they were chosen to perform live on primetime TV in the finals. They are a husband and wife team that have performed together around the world for the past ten years.

We thought They were great. Pretty amazing. The only thing I rolled my eyes at was the clip from the TV show with all the hyped up drama-"they are doing this live on TV .....she could break her back.....ooo the tension...:roll eyes:

They did the same trick live, on stage, on a rolling ship-with no problems. Amazing.....but no overly dramatic hype....

I was just off the Caribbean Princess. They had a listing for 18-20 yrs old meeting almost every night. It was listed in the Patter.

So, I know they do schedule this kind of thing.

BTW, we say two great comedians, a magic act and a number of stage shows. At least some of these might be interesting to 18-20 somethings.....

I am just off the Caribbean Princess and we had them in our shower. One shower gel and the other was the shampoo/conditioner combo. I was happy to see them as I prefer them over the little bottles they had.

I also have had a hearing loss and wear aids. I just got off the Caribbean Princess. My W and I watched one movie on muts. They had the sound down and I had trouble hearing some of the quieter dialog. having CC would be a gray help and, I think, would not detract at all from the experience.

That said, for some live shows, CC can be a pain as it takes some time for them to post the captions. But for those who are truly deaf, they would be better than what they have now.

I too was on the Ship. We were stuck in the Ship Channel due to Fog for a few hours. No Problem.

 

What happened after that was a Nightmare! I was scheduled to get off the boat at 9:40 am after the fog delay I got out of the Terminal about 2PM.

 

Since I was in my room , I did hear the orginal delay announcement but remembered hearing the Fog horns around 5 am. Look out the window about 8 am to see nothing but fog. The boat appeared to be stopped but I couldn't see the bridge or land. Step outside to balcony and was told by other passangers we were a mile and a half from port. Stuck my head out into the hall and porter was shocked we were still in the room. Stayed there. When back to balcony and talked to the man on the next balcony. Told him the steward wanted us out of our room. The man next door said that they made an announce to stay in your room for a while. Watched about 10 people every ten minutes get off the boat. Porter told us to go to assigned disbarkment area.

 

The wife and I were greeted by (make that Bitched out by) the area cordinator who said we could not stay there and just go somewhere else they would call us. Went down the hall, No A/C. Stayed about 45 minutes.Went back to assigned meeting area to ask when since no shipwide announcement had been made. She said announcemences have not been made and come back in 30 minutes. Finally heard overhead announcement. Went to verify if we had been called. 12:30pm they decide to serve lunch upstairs.(no way everybody could be off before 4 pm) finally a smart move.

 

Number finally called, went to gageway it was broke again. Had to wait till repaired. Allowed off. Noticed all luggage door to terminal closed. Found our luggage pick up spot. Half the luggage was missing. Parked wife with luggage next to wall while I go hunting for our luggage. After searching 15 minutes for our missing luggage I notice nobody was checking who was leaving with who's luggage. Noticed many others in my section hunting luggage too. Then I spotted a crate of suitcases coming in aleast an houir after all other luggage arrived. the missing two suitcases were onboard.

 

Baggage handler help us get baggage to customs. Line was quick. Went to get truck to pick up wife and luggage. Found truck and started to follow signs out of parking area. Exit signs directed me to an area fully blocked by cones. I freesytled it out of the parking area to the pick up area in the no parking zone?

 

The fog is one thing. Organization and communication is totally Princess Cruise

responsibility!

 

See people Mocked and Bitched at by the staff was uncalled for. I'm glad I was not treated that way but saw many nice people who were.

 

Wife suitcase returned with a 6" razor cut down the side. We didn't notice anything missing.

Sorry to hear of your bad experience. We had the opposite experience. We got up on time, got dressed and packed and went down to the Palm dining room for breakfast. We had heard the announcement from the captain that we were anchored behind another ship and we were going nowhere until the fog lifted. After a nice leisurely breakfast, we went to out room before 8:00 am took our bags out, tipped the steward and went to the theater, which is where we were supposed to assemble. A few times while we were there, the captain repeated his announcement that the ship was not going anywhere. We were able to go out on the promenade deck to check out the fog and we even went down to the IC for some provisions....

After a 3 hour wait, with water, coffee and tea available, the ship docked and they began disembarking based on the same order of groups-because that is how they were unloading the luggage.

I do agree that the Houston terminal has some issue with baggage handling, but it is a new terminal and that cruise was the second in its history.

They called our group, we left the ship and the customs people were giving us warm welcome homes. Our bags were all there, we passed customs and out transfer bus was there waiting-w had booked a tour but they dropped it and converted it into a transfer-with a refund.

At t he bus, the Princess coordinator took out tickets and asked us which airline-we were flying Alaska and she said that was terminal A.

We got to the terminal at the time the tour was supposed to end anyway.

All in all it worked out very well for us-and the Princess people were very pleasant and were apologizing for the delay on a regular basis.

FWIW.

I am writing this from my home. Yesterday was a LOOOOOOOOOOONNNNNGGGGG day! As you know, the fog held us up. We were in the Princess theatre for the whole time (well just about-went outside to check on the fog and went to the International Cafe for some refreshments)

Anyway, we were booked on a tour of downtown Houston with an airport drop-off. That didm;t go so well-they canceled the tours and converted them to regular transfer vouchers with a refund of the difference. Since we had a tour we had an earlier disembarkation time, which we kept. With the dally, we arrived at the airport right on schedule. :)

The only bad thing about the experience was that they had Fox news on the whole time-now keep in mind we just had 11 days of almost no politics and certainly no galleries of talking head yelling at each other. # hours of that was a real eye-opener. :roll eyes:

The cruise itself was great. Although we were off the ship most of the day at Cozumel, we went to the mainland and were actually on Cozumel about 15 minutes. The tour of Coba was fantastic.

We loved Roatan. It was a lush tropical paradise (true, some people said they experienced garbage, but what the heck, even paradise has garbage). We otoh had a wonder time on an eclectic tour of the island.

Belize was "interesting". Our tour was canceled because of flooding so they booked us on an alternate tour to Altun Ha. Those ruins were again spectacular.

The rest of the country -not so much. The roads are joke it took 90 minutes to drive 36 miles with very little traffic.

The place is below sea level and floods all the time. Hurricanes wipe it out every 4-5 years, They do have schools, which is good. But there is really not much else.

They are trying to attract retirees to Belize with low cost housing and low living costs.If you've seen the ads for "buy Belize" on TV, yes, the house you ill get looks just like that-what they don't show you is the hundreds of acres of swampland that surround the place. If you "buy Belize" good luck:roll eyes:

Yesterday, at the airport, my wife ordered a MCd's chicken sandwich...She said it was like "rubber chicken" I gently reminded her that "we were not on the ship anymore"....:(

When we left on the B2B on 11/4 it was about 40 degrees in Anchorage with no snow. This morning it was 7 degrees with about 4 inches....,,sigh...:(

How are you enjoying the food in the MDR? :)

A bit too well...:o

Princess tour or an independent tour or just on your own?

It was a ships's tour. We started late thanks to a Carnival ship that arrived and held up the gangway. We returned about 15 minutes late ands they were happy to see us-no cold towels....just get on the ship....

Well, we spent most of the day off the ship-but only 15 minutes in Cozumel....We went to the Coba Maya ruins. It was a long ferry ride followed by a long bus ride, but the ruins were spectactular!. It was hot and humid, amd we wnded up walking about three miles all told-I think I lost 15 lbs! but put is back with dinner;)

Tomorrow, Roatan and a lot easier day.....

I had an inside on a Panama crossing. It was E716. We never heard any noise from the lounges down below and it was a comfortable room. But the best part was that it was about 25 feet from the deck at the stern. This deck runs with whole width of the ship and except for one or two occasions -there was nobody out there. Even on crossing day, there were only a few people. It is totally covered and has a great view.

An inside on the Coral is a great way to go...

I saw your other thread yesterday. I looked up the cruise on Princess.com and officially, it is not listed at all.

I looked it up today and........it is still not officially listed.

FWIW.

Actually, it makes a lot of sense for Princess to do this. I checked out one of the sailings and, for the average room, the FCC is good. As for the "free" cruise, you get the fare back only if you book another cruise. Most likely, you will book a more expensive cruise and they make money...

We book ships excursions for the same reason as LuLu-they're easy. As for cheap, I've learned that cheap is not always best.

On our up coming cruise, we were invited to book tours through our TA's company. I looked into them. They are not bad-except that they cost a small fortune if you cannot fill up the bus. That means I have togo out and seek out others to join the tour or hope that others sign up independently. No thank you. That is a lot of time and trouble, IMHO.

True, taking a cab around town or just walking can be fine-if you are familiar with the area. Otherwise, you have no idea what you are doing or seeing.

If I was going to someplace whee I have been before, the need for ships tours would be reduced.

Since, at this point, we are cruising to new places, I'll stick with the ships tours. So far, I have found some nice tours that are not that pricy.

On our last cruise, I found that all of our ship's tours were great. The guides were knowledgable and happy to be with. The places they took us were good examples of the area we were in, and we never once had to worry about anything.

I think they were all well worth it.

I thought the President outlawed torture???

;)

We thought we’d find out what’s happening in the world; i.e. our government, but we have no live TV at all. No channels other than prerecorded stuff. Maybe we’re better off not knowing.

Trust me Pia, you are better off not knowing...besides, at the rate things are going, I doubt if it will be much different by the time your trip is over....:rolleyes:

Might be a good time to buy for those of you who are considering getting their first 100 shares.

I bought mine the Monday after the Costa Concordia disaster. I bought at $29.5 a share-a real steal and I'm still ahead:D

What about zombies?

If you are not sure...take this now!

http://www.nerdtests.com/mq/uttake.php?id=78155

It is a test to see if you would survive a zombie attack!

Many years ago I was in a barber chair getting a haircut when a young man came in. He was starting the celebration of his 21st birthday with a professional shave by a barber. The barber sat the young man in the chair, reclined it and covered his face with hot towels. Then he walked around behind the man and looked in a book. Went back to the young man and lathered up his face, back to the book behind the customer's back. A quick check inside the book. Back to the young man, etc. etc. etc. My haircut was finished and I left before the first blood was drawn.:)

 

You're probably better off with the safety razor. And if it's disposable, at least you know nobody else's blood has been on it.

My wife worked as a professional barber for a time before we met. She still trims my hair from time to time and uses a straight razor to turn up sideburns, etc. She handles that think like you wouldn't believe. About 30 years ago her sister and a friend went to beauty school. One night we went to her house -just after she learned how to use a straight razor. I was supposed to be her first live guinea pig...I will never forget her coming at me slowly with that razor -her hand shaking like a leaf. I saw my life flash in front of me.

Then my wife yelled at her something like what the heck are you doing? She grabbed the razor and showed her how it is done...right around without missing a beat....

My shave was great. No blood and I didn't have to save for a couple of days after that one!I do not believe they use straight razors, though. Because it didn't feel like one-and I know what they are like...

I treated myself to the 55 min double shave with fascial. On the Coral they called it "the shave to end all shaves). I think it was one of the best hours I've spent with a woman, legally, in a long time. :D

There were plenty of hot towels, and soothing lotions. She shaved me twice. I have no idea what typeof razor she used because my eyes were closed. But, it was heavenly.

Yes, she did sell me some products-but I was impressed that she offered only a minimum and that was based on what I told her at the beginning as to what I had been doing. I liked the products she recommended and am still using them.

All in all I found it to be great-so great I've booked another one for an upcoming cruise.

Well, the old days of streamers are gone sad to say, but least year we experienced something very similar. We were in Vancouver on a Sunday before our ship was set to sail. A HAL ship was departing that day and the weather was beautiful. There must have been at least 1,000 people at Canada Place that day. Now Canada Place has a lower floor for cruise ship access and a second story walkway that runs all the way around the site.

So...the 1,000 or more people on the second story were able to line up as the HAL ship departed. People were waving and cheering. The ship has music playing and it was as close to an old fashioned sail away as is possible today.

Something I will no soon forget.