nreeder

2 hours ago, srpilo said:

 

I believe you mean September 2019 on the Ruby... 

As of April 2021, there is a complete new version of the Medallionclass app, in fact the previous onboard "Ocean Ready app" no longer even exists making most previous anecdotal app experiences somewhat less concrete.

 

I feel until there is current new real world use, we all just have wait til next month for updates on current practicalities.

 

 

 

.

Ok, I’ll add my experience.  We are on the Ruby in September in a suite.  One of the benefits of a suite is free speciality restaurant on the day of embarkation.  Another passenger on our cruise said they were able to do this and get the restaurant for free as the $29 fee had a $29 credit.

When I tried it for the two of us, it wouldn’t do that, it wanted to charge us both $29, no “free”.  So I asked the other passenger how he did it.  He explained that he went in and made a single reservation for himself for the first night at $29 and got the “credit” which erased it.  So I tried that and it worked.  However, using my app on my phone, I tried selecting my wife who is listed as a “companion” on my app, and making a separate single reservation.  No go, $29 fee no credit.  So I set up my wife’s iPhone separately as “her” (logged in using our booking number), and filled in her iPhone number, address etc.  Then I tried booking her as a single speciality restaurant reservation at the same time as I had already booked me.  Worked like a charm!  Got the credit which erased the charges.  So we have two independent reservations at the same time, but both are free.  Don’t know whether this applies to everything, but it is how it’s working now.  Maybe if you logged out of you, and then logged in separately as your wife with a different login, you could get this to work on one phone, but I didn’t try that.

Norm

You both need the Medallion  and an app on each phone .  That’s because if your wife orders a latte, she will want it to come to her, not you.  She will order it on the app that’s tied to her and the server will find her.  It’s different than the “Cruise Personalizer” web page where everything was centralized under one booking.

Norm

Sounds like to me some of you are trying to “check in” way too early.  There’s a limit which I forget as to how far in advance you can check in.  We are also at step 4 and can’t go further because it’s too early to check in for our September cruise.  You Can fill in all of the personal contact stuff etc now.

Norm

Ok, I may mess this up, but we are both Elite, and have a suite for a September cruise from LA.  As far as the app goes, there’s no option for “Traditional Late or Early Seating”.  I can book the same time each night and they assign me a dining room.  I can book Crown Grill and Share (Ruby doesn’t have Sabitinni’s).  The default is table for 2, and you can add people you know if you have their booking number.  What you can’t do is say I want to sit at a table of six people I don’t know now for the whole week.  I don’t know if this is because they are eliminating traditional early and late in order to accommodate all of the specific reservations they are going to face with the app.  Maybe they need all three dining rooms to be available for the app reservations system and can’t allow the “fixed” table seating that Traditional Dining allowed.  Again I don’t know this for sure, and have no inside info.  But if you figure that 2,600 passengers can all book specific times for dining, they may need three dining rooms to accomplish this.  We still have a lot of time to see how this sorts out.  We may just cancel speific time each night and go to Club Class dining as it seems equilivant to Traditional with extra entree, serving cart items but with table for 2 only.  Norm

Ok, after plowing through 15 pages of this thread and working with the Medallion app, there was an update of the Medallion app on IOS, sometime after 9:30 pm Pacific Time.

It fixed the bit where you wanted the same time and dining room every night.  You don’t get as a default Crown Grill which was the case hours ago.  I had already selected two nights where we wanted Crown Grill and Share, so I cancelled the nightly Da Vinci 7pm appointments for those nights.

What you can’t do, and this was our “default” is select a dining room, and ask for a table of six like Traditional Dining.  You can add people if you have their booking number but not “unknown” passengers.  The default is table for 2, no other options other than that so far.

Just FYI, we are both Elite, and on this voyage (Ruby, 9/11), suite passengers (thanks to a FCC of 125% from a cancelled cruise), even though it’s not June 6th or whatever date is supposed to be the kickoff.  Things may still change as we go forward. 

In the video, while the Princess rep didn’t say that beyond this Summer’s Alaska cruises which will require vaccination, that all future Princess Cruises would require vaccination.  As someone else mentioned above, he was surprised that Holland American and Seaborne will require vaccinations.  However—he did say that Princess isn’t planning any “test cruises”.  That implies something.  CDC says you have to do “test cruises” if you are planning on having mixed vaccinated and unvaccinated passengers on board.  If you don’t do “test cruises” it implies that you are going to require 95% of passengers to be vaccinated as specified by the CDC.  So it was kind of “speaks with forked tongue” as on one side he didn’t say all vaccinated, but he did also say no test cruises.  Go figure!

Norm

The interesting thing is that Grand Princess layout forms the backbone of almost every Princess ship since.  The public deck layouts and multiple dining rooms are mostly carried out on the bigger ships built later.  They just added more passenger decks with each successive “class”.  Even the cabin layouts are mostly similar (except for “deluxe balcony” which doesn’t exist on her.  She’s had some of the newer ship’s features I.e. Alfredo’s Pizziaria, and her lido deck also got the fancy burgers and ice cream that later ships have developed.  The 2019 dry dock was a major one, not just cosmetic painting and carpet repair.  We hope to be on her on her transition from Alaska to Los Angeles next September.  Hope, hope, hope!

Norm

Actually, I know where Sun will be because we looked at her as a possibility when there were no 7 day transitions in September from the end of the Alaska 2021 Season to LA (now solved by this week’s addition of Grand to do that).  Sun is going to Alaska for 2021 Summer including one 14 day turnaround from LA.  I don’t know where she goes after Alaska.

Norm

Looking at the schedule, Grand Princess will do Alaska next Summer, come down next September, and do LA cruises for 21/22 winter season.  Not involved with the other ships.

Norm

We are looking at this time frame too I.e. the “transition” cruises from Alaska down the coast to LA and San Francisco to reposition the ships for the Fall/Winter California season.  It’s weird, all the Summer Alaska cruises are available for booking.  All of the Fall/Winter coastal cruises are available to book.  However, there are no re-positioning cruises available for booking on any of the ships.  Doesn’t make sense.

Norm

The Crooner’s location on the Majestic could have one benefit.  When Crooner’s is placed in the Atrium as on most ships, the singer/piano player has to stop when other entertainment is going on down on the Plaza of the Atrium.  On the Majestic, it looks like a room to itself.  Was a little disappointed in the video above of Majestic, as the La Mer, on the Atrium in the Crooner’s spot, didn’t look very romantic.  Maybe they put tablecloths etc on during dinner.

Norm

We also wouldn’t sail Majestic as currently configured.  It was specifically designed for the Chinese market.  Crooners has been replaced by a French restaurant—La Mer.  Sabbitini’s is replaced by a Chinese restaurant.  The Vista Lounge is a gambling/lounge. If you just want to have a drink after dinner, you have the wine bar, Bellini’s and the seafood bar in the atrium, and the afterthought Crown Grill “Bar” which on Royal class ships is really not “The Wheelhouse Bar” anymore.  We would look at Discovery Princess which doesn’t have these Chinese specific features, not because we don’t like the Chinese, but because these changes don’t interest us at all.

Norm

We got an email cancelling our September 26 cruise on Royal Princess.  There’s a new update on the Princess website showing all of the additional cruises cancelled today.  So go there for full information.

Norm

We've done all "three" and I'm using that term on purpose. The Hungarian Horse Show was fun with them riding around a track and even standing up on top of the horses.

We did the Spanish Riding School Performance on our own in Vienna which is only done on Saturday and Sunday morning and requires tickets in advance (can be purchased on the web).

Viking has a "behind the scenes look at the stables with the horses there and one of the trainers as a guide. We liked it because we had seen the performance and it gave us more background. However, there is no "performance" on this Viking tour so don't get confused about what you are going to see.

Norm

We did this in June from Viking Ve. Guide was very fun and gave a lot local info on each brewhouse we visited. What some seem not to realize is that you do get dinner at one of the places you visit along with the beer there and 3 other stops.

Norm

We are just off Viking Ve from Budapest to Amsterdam. No men wore jackets to dinner and I mean NO. Forget that.

What works best is the usual "layers" and that means everything from short sleeve shirts to long sleeve ones. Bring things that can be rinsed out in the bathroom sink (including underwear). I bought some "Ex Officio" underwear and socks and rinsed them out each night (had 4 pairs in case). They dried out overnight each night.

If it's going to be hot, then maybe some kind of sandals but sturdy ones as you are going to be on cobblestones a lot on this trip.

I changed into nicer jeans and long sleeve shirts for dinner, but not everyone changed. Many just wore what they had from daytime.

If you have anything from the Travelsmith Catalog like shirts or pants, those can be washed and dried in the room on the cord that's in the shower. They also pack nicely.

We also enjoyed many of the tours that were mentioned above. I wouldn't do Munich or Salzburg from the ship as you spend half of the time going to and from on the bus and not a lot of time in those cities.

We had mixed feelings about the Bruhl trip. We had seen many of the palaces prior to that on our voyage, so they didn't stand out as much. Loved the Romantic Road trip though.

Norm

Reply to above, but short as it's slightly off topic from "water levels"

We had a wonderful trip. Ship was very comfortable and relaxed in décor which we wanted. There are some lines that specialize in fancy décor, and are more inclusive, but we didn't want that. Crew was wonderful especially the cruise director (David from England).

Learned a lot of history and saw lots of churches both Gothic and Baroque. Tours were seamless from the ship. Food and wine were great too (we had Silver Spirits package so could choose any wine off the wine list not just the default wines poured with each meal).

We are going to do China with Viking in 2019.

Norm

The following is a "copy and paste" from the Viking River Cruises website:

DANUBE RIVER

Due to low water levels on the Danube River, we anticipate the following sailings may be affected:

• June 24th Romantic Danube aboard Viking Gullveig
  
• June 25th Romantic Danube aboard Viking Atla
  
• June 25th Romantic Danube aboard Viking Jarl
  
• June 29th Grand European Tour aboard Viking Embla
  
• June 29th Passage to Eastern Europe aboard Viking Aegir
  
• June 30th Grand European Tour aboard Viking Ve
  
• June 30th Grand European Tour aboard Viking Gefjon
  
• July 1st Grand European Tour aboard Viking Bragi
  
• July 1st Grand European Tour aboard Viking Skadi
  

It doesn't really say "how" these cruises may be affected, but I assume ship swaps or something similar.

Norm

We are just off of the Viking Ve, one of the longships. During a briefing by the cruise director he indicated that the normal draft of the Viking longships is 2 meters. Emptying the ballast tanks can make that 1 1/2 meters. It does take, he said, quite a while to empty the ballast tanks as they hold quite a bit of water.

He did say, by now, there are so many Viking ships that on almost every itinerary, there is one ship leaving from one end, and another duplicate ship leaving in the opposite direction from the other end. That way they are able to swap ships in the middle or wherever there is a problem. Not perfect solution, but mother nature controls the level of the rivers, not the cruise lines.

Norm

Just FYI. At a technical talk on board Viking Ve last week, they said the draft of Viking longships is approximately 2 meters. It can be 1 1/2 meters if they empty the ballast tanks. That takes a while he said because they hold a lot of water. Still no guarantees but that plus swapping ships can keep you floating instead of riding the bus.

They also said they have so many ships now that most itineraries have a duplicate ship going out at the other end of the route and they meet in the middle so they can be swapped if necessary.

Norm

A last post. We arrived in Amsterdam Friday. It was 64 that day and cloudy but no rain. Yesterday it was 75 and today it was 85! Tomorrow we leave for London where it will be 87...

I guess you all need some rain. It we couldn't have had better weather during the whole cruise. I wish the same to those following us

Thanks

Norm

We are on Viking Ve from Budapest to Amsterdam. Today we entered the Rhine (and visited Marksburg Castle). So the journey on the Danube and Main went smoothly, and we believe we won't have any problems getting to Amsterdam on Friday. Weather was 75 F today, 80 tomorrow in Cologne, and 68 F predicted for Amsterdam all with no rain.

Happy sailing!

Norm

We are in Budapest and it's still 80 degrees each day (has been for almost a week). We leave tonight. No one has announced anything about water levels. Our ship just returned from Amsterdam without incident from what I can tell. We may see rain as we leave Vienna in a few days according to Weather Channel

Norm

We are currently in Europe, using ATT iPhones (unlocked), and using Vodaphone SIMs which we purchased in Munich. In order to get the Vodaphone app to work so we can re-load minutes/data if we want, we needed to switch our Apple account to Germany for the duration.

We've had no problems with calls, use Google Maps in Munich, Salzburg, Vienna, and now Budapest. Will use on river cruise for two weeks to Amsterdam.

Their "roaming" charges are the same as their local charges so we haven't incurred any higher rates in the other countries.

Norm