brody013

We are US citizens who are booked on a Diamond Princess cruise this March.  After making  shore excursion reservations, the bottom of the "Excursion Reservations" section of our "Cruise Personalizer" states the following as "new":

  " Pay Before You Sail, Or Pay Later Onboard

  You have the option to pay for shore excursions in advance of your cruise.  If you wait, we will add the charges to your onboard account which is settled at the end of the cruise."

  Upon clicking on the "Pay Now" tab,  the payment options are credit card or pay pal.  Since our OBCs exceed the cost of the shore excursions and anticipated onboard charges, we will not make an advance shore excursions payment.

Anyone else with the same notice in their Cruise Personalizer account?

Thank you CCers for info re potential reduction in cruise fare and location of gratuity and OBC offers. As a result of your tips, we received not only a $960 price reduction for a window suite on a 17 nights Australian cruise in April, 2020; but also prepaid gratuities ($527 value) and $400 in OBC. The booking change did result in the loss of the premier beverage package and a reduction in TA provided OBC.

Just spoke to a Princess rep in customer relations after sending another email inquiry. On our March 12th Sea Princess cruise all USD OBC s provided by Princess (including our refundable military benefit) has been converted to AUD on a 1:1 basis.

However, USD OBCs either purchased online or provided by a TA will be converted to AUD at a conversion value then used by Sea Princess on the date of our cruise. If the cruise commenced today, the conversion rate is 1.28%. So, for example, 300 USD would be converted to 384 AUD.

By the way, this 1:1 matter came to light when we booked a Princess shore excursion online. The cost of this excursion was an amount in AUD, and the payment therefor was an offset of an equal amount of our USD OBCs.

Once aboard the Sea Princess, our TA, who spoke to a Princess rep, advised us to request that our refundable OBCs not be applied to any onboard charges. If there is a future problem, we assume that our TA will take care of this matter following our return home.

We are US citizens who are booked on a Sea Princess Australian cruise in March. Our Princess provided OBCs is 500 USD. However, our cruise personalizer account states that our OBCs are in AUD. Additionally, we will be receiving OBCs from our TA.

Since a Princess representative informed us that AUD and USD are treated as having equal value even though 1 USD currently equals 1.25 AUD, we will instruct Sea Princess' passengers services to not apply any of our onboard charges to the refundable OBCs from our TA. Hopefully, several weeks following the cruise's completion, we will receive a check in the amount of refundable OBCs.

While we will be using a non foreign transaction fee credit card to pay for onboard charges which exceed our Princess provided OBCs, Princess will charge a 1.1% surcharge of using a credit card.

Easyboy, thank you for your reply. Enjoy the remainder of your cruise.

We board the Emerald on May 28th. Will someone currently on the Emerald confirm that the 1st formal night was held last Monday and the 2nd formal night will be held on Friday. Our 7-nights itinerary is the same as the current itinerary. Thanks.

Based on our telecon with Oceania yesterday, the Riviera discount certificate only applies to the 2016-17 season which ends next March. We were planning to use this certificate for a 10-day Riviera Caribbean cruise in December, 2017. Unfortunately, Oceania rep's reply yesterday was that cruise is beyond the eligibility time period.