sundance1406

We did exactly what you are thinking about -- because we had done a world (on the Dawn Princess) and wanted to see how the small ship was. We did a 4 day, which was enough for us -- we decided that there were just not enough public spaces that we would want for that long a cruise.

On every excursion we have been on,the driver will usually wait a few minutes for stragglers.I can only assume that you were more than a few minutes late or the driver was on a strict schedule.It is no different than being late for a sailing.The rest of the world can't be put on hold for those that can't be on time!

We were at most a few minutes late and, as I stated above, we were told by one of the other passengers that the driver did not wait at all.

My wife and I were recently on a Northern Europe cruise (part of the 2017 WC on the Sea) from Dover to NY. We went on a 'self-guided' excursion to the North Cape in Norway (beautiful, by the way!). To make a long story short, we (apparently) misread the time to return to the bus and were (perhaps) a couple of minutes late in returning -- to find that the bus was gone. There had been no effort by the driver or the 'escort' of the tour to attempt to find us, according to others on the bus. When we went to the ShoreEx people after we did return (from our own resources), they didn't seem to care and when I had a call from the Princess HQ in Santa Clarita, they pretty much said the same thing -- that they don't wait for people that are late and we were out of luck (that we were going to agree to disagree...). Does anyone else have any experience of this sort? We have cruised with Princess for twenty years and well over 200 days, and have never had this treatment before. We are certainly through with ANY Princess shore excursions and are contemplating moving on to other lines.

My wife and I and another couple are cruising the Mexican Riviera in November and are hoping to golf in Puerto Vallarta. Does anyone have any recommendations / suggestions / warnings?

We have done the express walk off a couple of times and I don't recall having to do any notification or anything. In fact, the first time we did it -- we were on our way down to the lounge to wait and at the stairwell near the gangway were told we could leave and just did it!

We were on the January Sapphire cruise that AZJerry was on and went to the auctions. Jerry's assessment is EXACTLY the same as ours. As many others on this thread, I am saddened by this change and believe that it was not the right choice. We have a cruise in May (on the Dawn) and will see if any of the PFA art is back, but doubt that we will enjoy the auctions even if it is.

We purchased a couple of items on a Crown cruise a couple of weeks ago and it is on its way; I am very confident that PFA will honor purchases. We actually only made the purchases because we heard about the change to Park West.

I was on the Crown this past week as well; the art director's name is Hayne and his wife is Anya. He didn't mention during the auction what the reason was for the change, but did give us a 'highlight' version in private. I have subsequently done some sniffing around like others have.

My understanding is that the new senior leadership at Carnival (of which Princess is a part) has determined that they want to have more uniform practices across their products. That apparently includes the fine arts program. Having had that occur in my own corporation -- it often is at the expense of many excellent processes and practices. This is probably one of them. We have purchased many pieces ourselves over the last several years and will be waiting to see what happens with the new program.:confused: