FTTF in my opinion

After disembarking the Liberty a couple of weeks ago as first time cruisers I have to say thank you to those who responded to my many posts. It was all very helpful and relevant. Two topics were about the old favourites - FTTF and the Cheers programme.

For any other newbies out there I’d like to say that we chose not to buy Cheers as we didn’t think we’d get our money’s worth. We were correct. This was due to the cruise being in 2 ports on 3 days. Off the ship, even on Princess Cays, any alcohol we drank was not covered by Cheers. If we’d bought it we’d have been out of pocket.

FTTF - get it! We were out of our taxi and onto the ship within half an hour and with no waiting in lines. Well worth the money. The only thing we found was that certain lifts (elevators) were out of use due to them being used to transport luggage onto the ship and corridors were closed off until cabins were ready. But as we were told our cabin would be ready straight away we skulked about like naughty children and went through the doors that were closed anyway. And yes, our cabin was ready and we weren’t stopped by various crew who were there. (We weren’t the only ones doing this either)

So unless you drink a lot don’t buy Cheers. And buy FTTF if you don’t like hanging about in lines. And yes, now we’ve got our “taster” cruise out of the way, as predicted by experienced cruisers, we want more!

Glad you didn’t regret your decisions on Getting FTTF but not Cheers. So much more to enjoy on your next cruise!

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Absolutely! We’ll know what to expect then.

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Glad you are happy with your decisions. I love FTTF just so I can drop my bags off when I get on the ship. So worth it!

Thanks for your thoughts.

I'm with you. I love FTTF and would never be able to get my money's worth with Cheers.

Welcome to the addicted club. I'm glad you enjoyed your first cruise.

With FTTF you needn't have worried. You were supposed to go right through those closed doors! We love it too.

Thanks for posting your thoughts.

Congrats on your first cruise! Glad you liked FTTF; we found it worthwhile as well. As for CHEERS!, it's obviously a personal thing. When we've had it, we tend to not drink in port because we know we can get it for "free" on the ship. We aren't huge drinkers, but like the piece of mind of knowing it's already paid for before we step foot on the ship, plus the knowledge that we can try new drinks and if we don't like them, we aren't "forced" to drink them because we paid $8, $10, $12 or whatever for it, we just order something else (we don't come close to the 15 limit each day). I'm glad not having it worked out for you though!

Bazzybuggs- just FYI the closed doors should have a sign on them that says if you're not platinum or FTTF please don't open the door and go to your cabin. The expectation is if you have FTTF you will do that very thing- so you weren't sneaking at all!

Thank you for your review. We will have our first sailing with FTTF in February and are looking forward to dropping everything at the cabin right away.

We also don't think Cheers is worth it for us and will instead load a $500 gift card so we can get whatever we want without guilt/worry but still several hundred less than Cheers.

We have cruised several times, and have had FTTF twice. I LOVE it and will always purchase it when it is available. I was not able to buy it for the Breeze last Oct and really missed it. I don't think we would get our monies worth with the Cheers package, so have not purchased it.

Welcome to the addicted club. I'm glad you enjoyed your first cruise.

 

With FTTF you needn't have worried. You were supposed to go right through those closed doors! We love it too.

Yep. The signs on the corridor doors say something like "Everyone: cabins will be ready by 1pm or so. Priority and FTTF guests, you can go right in." :)

We didn’t see any signs but being first timers we might have missed them due to being unfamiliar with ships and completely overawed by the experience

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We didn’t see any signs but being first timers we might have missed them due to being unfamiliar with ships and completely overawed by the experience

 

 

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There's nothing like a first cruise!

We didn’t see any signs but being first timers we might have missed them due to being unfamiliar with ships and completely overawed by the experience

 

 

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The signs are supposed to be up on all the doors on embarkation day and usually are. But on my most recent cruise on the Fantasy 12/2 there were no signs.

We have bought FTTF on our last three cruises. On the Conquest this past February, we went to our cabin and it wasn't made up yet. Our steward was across the hall and yelled over to us that our cabins wasn't ready yet. (Like we couldn't tell.) We just dropped off our carry-ons and went to grab something to eat. When we returned, our cabin was made up. It wasn't that big of a deal because all we wanted to do was drop off the carry-ons. We realized before the cruise was over why it wasn't made up. He wasn't the best steward we've had over the years. None of it was worth reporting, just that he wasn't the best we've had.