railman

We prefer to book the airlines ourselves, and have had good luck. That being said we booked Delta for our Alaska cruise this summer, and a schedule change impacted us. We are staying in Vancouver a few days post cruise and booked a non stop red eye back to New York. We decided to suck up the red eye at the end of the trip to give us another full day. Delta cancelled the red eye non stop and booked us on a commuter flight to Seattle followed by a red eye from there. So we need to leave Vancouver three hours earlier loosing part of the full day we thought we had. Nothing we can do about it.

Took two weeks in November. Much quicker than I expected.

The Daytona 500 is on Sunday February 26th and will be broadcast by FOX. I will be on the Crown Princess that day on a Sea Day so it would be nice but I am not counting on it.

This past summer we were booked on a British Isles cruise with a pre cruise package from Princess which included a transfer from Hethrow airport to our downtown hotel. Princess had our correct flight on the cruise personalizer, but there was no Princess representative to meet us when we exited from customs. We spent 1/2 an hour looking around with no success. Not knowing what to do I called Princess in California and after another 20 minutes we were told to take a taxi and turn the receipt into customer service when we boarded the ship to be reimbursed. We did so indicating Princess owed us something additional for the trouble. After several days they credited us for the Princess transfer which was less than the taxi cost. Of course I did not know yet what the cost of the overseas cell phone would be. After several more days they reimbursed the taxi cost as well which we felt was very fair.

If I were booked on the December 20th cruise I would be concerned. They need to do temporary repairs in Hawaii and then move the ship to the scheduled dry dock in California. My guess is they can't cancel the dry dock. It seems having the ship ready for a December 20th sailing is in question.

I had a similar issue with my August trip. Called Princess and got it resolved. It seemed to be a technical issue, at least on my booking. Good luck!

RESOLVED!!!

Called Princess yesterday. They said the tour was not sold out, but the system was showing that due to a glitch. They said we should check every day. Checked today and sure enough it showed available so we booked it. We are now confirmed.

So now we just have to come up with the $$$ a full nine months before the cruise.

I am having problems booking a Keani tour in August. Can't believe it!

It may say 120 days but it appears Princess is moving up the date. I wish they would go back to 120 days!

Does anyone know local tour operators in the area?

I am speechless about this. We have cruised on Princess many times and the Alaska trip we have booked next August opened the excursion reservations nine months before the tour date. We have never seen this so early! We went into the cruise personalizer and booked various tours and found to our horror that none of the two tours to Keani Fjords from the Princess lodge have space available. This is only TWO DAYS after the tours were posted. We will be at that location on August 18th. The main reason we chose a tour to that location was to visit the park.

We can probably book a tour through the Park service, but transportation to the Princess lodge would be an issue. We intend to contact Princess about this on Monday asking why they have limited space so much. Basically anyone staying at that lodge wants to tour the park.

Has anyone else had this issue, and does anyone have any suggestions for us?

Bummer. We did the Chef's Table our 1st cruise on the Ruby. It was a really great meal. :)

We did Chefs Table on the Caribbean last year. Wanted to do it again on the Ruby this year but it was not offered. We have a June booking on the Royal and will sign up.

We were on thr Ruby in January for a B2B 5 day and 4 day. No Chefs table was offered, we asked about it. I think the ultimate ship tour was offered.

I have a similar situation for my wife's "special" birthday in January. I booked a 9 day cruise out of FLL. It is actually a B2B a 5 day followed by a 4 day. I told her she is going on a birthday cruise. The surprise is for the second segment we will be joined by 8 family and friends. I am trying to figure out exactly how to spring that surprise. I booked an Everglades tour on turn around day which will get us off the ship as the others board. When we re board everyone will be there to greet her.

When we took an Alaska Cruise/Tour it worked like clockwork. We arrived in Anchorage, took our bags off the belt at the airport and walked about 10 steps when a Princess rep saw our luggage tags and immediately took them from us and escorted us on to the bus. After about 15 minutes or so we departed for the Hotel.

When the Cruise ended at Vancouver we had purchased a post cruise hotel package for 2 nights including transfers from ship to hotel and hotel to airport. We were assigned to one of the later disembarkation time slots and as soon as we cleared customs our bags were taken from us and we were escorted on to a bus which departed about 10 minutes later. Upon arrival at the hotel we were given taxi vouchers to use on the day we departed for the airport. It all worked like clockwork.

Last March we were on the Caribbean Princes trip when the propulsion motor broke and we spent most of the time tied up to the dock in San Juan. We had purchased a transfer from the ship to the airport. At the time we booked that flight it was supposed to depart at noon, but American Airlines moved it up to 10:30. Princess should have picked up on it since we had listed the flight, but they gave us a 9:30 disembarkation time which would not have worked. The rep at the passenger services desk gave us a credit to the on board account and changed us to self disembarkation.

We are now scheduled for the January 12th trip on the same ship from FLL. We will be flying to FLL on Friday 1/11 and have purchased a pre-cruise package at the Embassy Suites which includes all transfers. We also have purchased a ship to airport transfer at the end only because we see there are five ships in the port that day and we were concerned about the availability of taxis. Time will tell how well it works.