How often does Princess change the itineraries?

[icat2000]

Yes there is variety if you look across all regions. However, each region they run the same old cruises it seems each year. Same in Australia. How many times can one do the same South pacific or NZ itineraries to the same ports. 

 

It also because the ships are simply too big to get into some other ports.

[CruisingAlong4Now]

If you sail on cruise lines with smaller ships, you can visit more interesting ports that larger ships cannot enter. 

[Vexorg]

9 hours ago, Hlitner said:

As to the ABC islands (Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao), those ports are more distant then the other ports used on Caribbean cruises.  Often called a "Southern Caribbean" itinerary those cruises are often 10+ days to allow for the extra sea days.  As another poster said, Princess actually does do some fascinating itineraries in other parts of the world.  Consider next October's 56 day Regal Princess cruise from Southampton to Sydney which goes through the Suez Canal and stops at ports such as Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Singapore, etc.  That particular cruise can be booked in shorter segments.   There are also some interesting trans pacific repositioning cruises.

 

Princess used to offer a 7 night Southern Caribbean itinerary, but it only had 2 stops (Curacao and Aruba) and 4 sea days.  When we did it in 2017 they had changed it to 8 nights with a third stop in Bonaire.  I do still see one of these on the schedule (December 28th 2020 on the Sky Princess) but it doesn't seem to be a common occurrence anymore, probably because 8 night cruises make a mess of the schedule.  

[Vexorg]

10 hours ago, Hlitner said:

 

(duplicate post)

Edited December 20, 2019 by Vexorg
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[Hlitner]

3 hours ago, Vexorg said:

 

Princess used to offer a 7 night Southern Caribbean itinerary, but it only had 2 stops (Curacao and Aruba) and 4 sea days.  When we did it in 2017 they had changed it to 8 nights with a third stop in Bonaire.  I do still see one of these on the schedule (December 28th 2020 on the Sky Princess) but it doesn't seem to be a common occurrence anymore, probably because 8 night cruises make a mess of the schedule.  

Having spent over forty years cruising (and vacationing) in the Caribbean our favorite cruise ports have long been those ABC islands as well as St Maarten.  But doing the ABCs from Florida ports generally involves 4 sea days (2 each way) which does not work well for the most popular 7 day cruises.  There are quite a few ABC itineraries out of San Juan on other cruise lines.  As one who loves sea days (we have taken cruises with over 25 sea days) I disagree with those who love port intensive cruises.  But the reality remains that folks taking short cruises generally prefer more ports and fewer sea days.    When we do take port intensive Caribbean cruises we often do not bother to get off the ship in several ports.  In fact, we have avoided getting off cruise ships the last 5 times we docked at Ocho Rios.  And if DW has anything to say about it we will never get off any cruise at Ocho Rios.

 

One personal favorite cruise is the Regal Princess repositioning cruise which normally happens around the end of Oct or early Nov.  Next year it is done by the Sky Princess on Nov 5 and embarks from Brooklyn with ports of St Maarten, St Kitts, and Aruba before finishing up at Port Everglades.   We once took that cruise (then done on the Regal) for 3 out of 4 years and would see many of the same passengers year after year.   That cruise also offers an opportunity for those who would like to spend a few pre-cruise days visiting NYC.

 

Hank

[LMADAMS91]

On 12/20/2019 at 3:20 AM, villauk said:

OP,

When you mention Europe, have you sailed Norway, Iceland, Russia, Scandinavia and the Baltic? All of those are completely different from the Med. What about the Canary Islands, Morocco, British Isles - that’s without touching on Asia or the Antipodes? We also sail for the itineraries and try at least to have a couple of new ports on every cruise we take (see my signature).

No, only European cruise so far has been Med. Cruise (on Princess.)  I'd like to do the other two legs of the journey .....we did Rome to Athens.  There's Athens to Barcelona and Barcelona to Rome. There are a few repeat ports, but I'd be okay with any of those as well as SOME of the routes from Southampton depending on route.

Not sure I want to do Norway, etc.....husband and I really don't have much interest in this area. Russia doesn't do much for either of us either.    Canary Islands, Morocco would be okay but we've done land tours on the British Isles and not really interested in doing a cruise there. 

For us, at this point in our life, we are limited to a 10 day cruise at most and that is pushing it. We usually do a week some time during the dark of winter where we can see sunshine and have warm weather; then a family vacation with our adult kids during the summer when those still in school have a break. The Caribbean is relatively close for the winter break....but we've done both Eastern (Princess Cays, St. Thomas, St. Maarten) and Western (Grand Cayman, Cozumel, Belize, Roatan-repeating this one in January and have been to all of the ports multiple times.) These are the two main routes Princess does and they repeat them over and over (at least for the last 3 years.)

I have looked at other lines and we will be sampling some to see how they compare. I'm just not one who likes change....I LIKE Princess; it is comfortable and fits our personalities at this point, however, they just don't offer much in the way of variety for a short winter break. 

Thanks for the input. 

[CRUISEWITHH]

We want to stay local and that means California Coastal or Mexico.  

 

Don't mind that but can't figure out why they can't substitute Santa Barbara once in a while instead of Monterey or San Diego.  Princess does stop in Santa Barbara on their 10 Day Vancouver and their 7-day Vancouver to L.A. 

 

We loved Santa Barbara and the city was very welcoming with shuttles back and forth to town.  

 

It would be great if they could at least substitute every other year.  

[capriccio]

37 minutes ago, CRUISEWITHH said:

We want to stay local and that means California Coastal or Mexico.  

 

Don't mind that but can't figure out why they can't substitute Santa Barbara once in a while instead of Monterey or San Diego.  Princess does stop in Santa Barbara on their 10 Day Vancouver and their 7-day Vancouver to L.A. 

 

We loved Santa Barbara and the city was very welcoming with shuttles back and forth to town.  

 

It would be great if they could at least substitute every other year.  

 

Princess still stops in Santa Barbara. In addition to the Wine Country itineraries that are LA/Vancouver or vice versa (we did that cruise in 2012 and loved it including the stop in Santa Barbara where we had spent a week's vacation a few years earlier) and the 10 Classic California (also R/T Vancouver) there is Classic California Coast (7 days R/T San Francisco) on March 22 and September 27.

 

[Renmar]

On 12/20/2019 at 12:07 PM, Hlitner said:

Having spent over forty years cruising (and vacationing) in the Caribbean our favorite cruise ports have long been those ABC islands as well as St Maarten.  But doing the ABCs from Florida ports generally involves 4 sea days (2 each way) which does not work well for the most popular 7 day cruises.  There are quite a few ABC itineraries out of San Juan on other cruise lines.  As one who loves sea days (we have taken cruises with over 25 sea days) I disagree with those who love port intensive cruises.  But the reality remains that folks taking short cruises generally prefer more ports and fewer sea days.    When we do take port intensive Caribbean cruises we often do not bother to get off the ship in several ports.  In fact, we have avoided getting off cruise ships the last 5 times we docked at Ocho Rios.  And if DW has anything to say about it we will never get off any cruise at Ocho Rios.

 

One personal favorite cruise is the Regal Princess repositioning cruise which normally happens around the end of Oct or early Nov.  Next year it is done by the Sky Princess on Nov 5 and embarks from Brooklyn with ports of St Maarten, St Kitts, and Aruba before finishing up at Port Everglades.   We once took that cruise (then done on the Regal) for 3 out of 4 years and would see many of the same passengers year after year.   That cruise also offers an opportunity for those who would like to spend a few pre-cruise days visiting NYC.

 

Hank

For cruises like this they have to make a call at a distant foreign port to comply with the PSVA. Aruba is considered a "distant" foreign port because it is part of The Kingdom Of The Netherlands. Most other ports in the Caribbean do not qualify as a distant foreign port.

 

Theo

[Hlitner]

26 minutes ago, Renmar said:

For cruises like this they have to make a call at a distant foreign port to comply with the PSVA. Aruba is considered a "distant" foreign port because it is part of The Kingdom Of The Netherlands. Most other ports in the Caribbean do not qualify as a distant foreign port.

 

Theo

Yep and the itinerary also requires everyone to have a valid Passport.  This latter requirement immediately rules out USA folks who do not have Passports and only take closed-loop cruises.  This becomes important because it further limits those who can take the cruise and is partially the reason why this particular itinerary has often had some amazing last minute deals.

 

Hank

[donaldsc]

No new ports?  Lets talk about AK for example.  Most of the Princess AK cruises do Juneau, Skagway and Ketchikan.  Some of the other lines may include Icy Point Strait.   What about Prince Rupert, Homer, Wrangell, Haines, Valdez, Kodiak, Dutch Harbor.  I am sure that if I spent some time on it, I could find equally interesting ports in other cruising areas.  There are people who have done AK many timers.  How many times can you visit Juneau, Skagway or Ketchikan. 

 

Cruise companies just do what is easy and many of us cruisers just go along with the limited choices that they give us.  

[Hlitner]

1 hour ago, donaldsc said:

No new ports?  Lets talk about AK for example.  Most of the Princess AK cruises do Juneau, Skagway and Ketchikan.  Some of the other lines may include Icy Point Strait.   What about Prince Rupert, Homer, Wrangell, Haines, Valdez, Kodiak, Dutch Harbor.  I am sure that if I spent some time on it, I could find equally interesting ports in other cruising areas.  There are people who have done AK many timers.  How many times can you visit Juneau, Skagway or Ketchikan. 

 

Cruise companies just do what is easy and many of us cruisers just go along with the limited choices that they give us.  

There are issues with some of those ports given their location, docking facilities, etc.  But I do agree with your last sentence about some folks just going along with whatever their favorite cruise line does.  There are more then 50 cruise lines and hundreds of vessels.  But many cruisers limit themselves to 1 or 2 lines and even to a specific ship category.  Having "loyalty" to a single cruise line, airline, hotel chain, etc. is a fantastic way to limit your options.  When asked, on a recent cruise, why we have cruised on 16 cruise lines our fast answer is that we love variety in terms of menus, entertainment, itinerary, etc.  

 

Hank

[JoRoy218]

On 12/18/2019 at 9:49 PM, tere247 said:

Full day in Tortola, and in Old San Juan, early call in Grand Turk,(before a Carnival ship) St Barts, Bermuda, Amber Cove, Aruba, Bonaire,  Curacao, Costa Maya, Key West.

Several of those are impossible to hit on a 7 day cruise out of FLL (Aruba, Curaçao), but I agree, variety is nice! 

[lstone19]

6 hours ago, Renmar said:

For cruises like this they have to make a call at a distant foreign port to comply with the PSVA. Aruba is considered a "distant" foreign port because it is part of The Kingdom Of The Netherlands. Most other ports in the Caribbean do not qualify as a distant foreign port.

 

Theo

 

I believe Aruba (and Bonaire and Curacao) are considered distant foreign ports not because they are part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands (so is the Dutch side on St. Maarten but it is not a distant foreign port; in addition, Martinique and Guadeloupe are part of France (they are overseas departments (for department, think states in U.S. terms) so their relationship to France is about the same as Hawaii is to the U.S.) but they are not distant foreign ports either) but because the ABC islands are so close to South America that they are considered, for purposes of the PVSA, to be part of South America.

[geoherb]

I just returned from a partial Panama Canal cruise on the Caribbean Princess. We went to Grand Turk, Cartagena, the Panama Canal and Colon, Limon, and Montego Bay. I noticed that the ship has changed the itinerary slightly for March. It will not go to Grand Turk and Montego Bay. It will go to Grand Cayman and Ocho Rios instead. 

[Renmar]

4 hours ago, lstone19 said:

 

I believe Aruba (and Bonaire and Curacao) are considered distant foreign ports not because they are part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands (so is the Dutch side on St. Maarten but it is not a distant foreign port; in addition, Martinique and Guadeloupe are part of France (they are overseas departments (for department, think states in U.S. terms) so their relationship to France is about the same as Hawaii is to the U.S.) but they are not distant foreign ports either) but because the ABC islands are so close to South America that they are considered, for purposes of the PVSA, to be part of South America.

Thanks for the explanation. Makes me wonder though why cruises on a full transit of the Panama Canal go out of their way to make a call at Aruba and then go partly back to also call at Cartagena in Colombia which is South America. I know, Aruba is a nice island but why go that extra distance?

By the way, I'm from Dutch descent hence the connection I tried to make.😕

 

Theo

[lstone19]

5 hours ago, Renmar said:

Thanks for the explanation. Makes me wonder though why cruises on a full transit of the Panama Canal go out of their way to make a call at Aruba and then go partly back to also call at Cartagena in Colombia which is South America. I know, Aruba is a nice island but why go that extra distance?

By the way, I'm from Dutch descent hence the connection I tried to make.😕

 

 

All the Princess full transit's I've looked at recently stop only in Cartagena. Are other cruise lines doing both? I know from experience there was a period 15 or so years ago when Cartagena was too dangerous for port calls so Aruba was being used then. Perhaps some lines are scheduling both to hedge their bets.

 

Of course, there's also the matter that even on a one-way cruise, people are cruising for what's along the way, not as transportation. So for itineraries that also stop at Aruba, maybe it's a simple matter of market demand for the port call.

[Hlitner]

6 hours ago, Renmar said:

Thanks for the explanation. Makes me wonder though why cruises on a full transit of the Panama Canal go out of their way to make a call at Aruba and then go partly back to also call at Cartagena in Colombia which is South America. I know, Aruba is a nice island but why go that extra distance?

By the way, I'm from Dutch descent hence the connection I tried to make.😕

 

Theo

You need to consider that many Caribbean ports (including all three of the ABC islands) have limited docking facilities.  When cruise lines develop their itineraries (often 2+ years in advance) they must work with the days when there are available berths in each port.  The itineraries must also give great consideration to time/distance.  Passengers are not very happy when their ship must leave a port at 3pm in order to make their next port on time.   The planners will often go out of their way to schedule full port days (i.e. 8 - 5) which can make for some strange routings.  There is also consideration given to the speed that must be achieved to keep to the schedule.  Cruising at 15 knots is much more economical then making a high speed run at 22 knots.

 

Hank

[CRUISEWITHH]

21 hours ago, capriccio said:

 

Princess still stops in Santa Barbara. In addition to the Wine Country itineraries that are LA/Vancouver or vice versa (we did that cruise in 2012 and loved it including the stop in Santa Barbara where we had spent a week's vacation a few years earlier) and the 10 Classic California (also R/T Vancouver) there is Classic California Coast (7 days R/T San Francisco) on March 22 and September 27.

 

Thanks, but I live in L.A.   Why don't they do a round trip  for L.A.  We don't fly anymore so getting to San Francisco or back from Vancouver is not going to work for us.

 

 

[waltd]

7 hours ago, CRUISEWITHH said:

We want to stay local and that means California Coastal or Mexico.  

 

Don't mind that but can't figure out why they can't substitute Santa Barbara once in a while instead of Monterey or San Diego.  Princess does stop in Santa Barbara on their 10 Day Vancouver and their 7-day Vancouver to L.A. 

 

We loved Santa Barbara and the city was very welcoming with shuttles back and forth to town.  

 

It would be great if they could at least substitute every other year.  

I can't tell you how many times I have heard the cruise line had to skip Santa Barbara due to weather. That also goes for Monterey.    The port is a tender port.  You know how passengers can get when the captain has to make a decision weather or not to try and tender and he decides on another sea day.    

[BarbinMich]

On 12/18/2019 at 10:49 PM, tere247 said:

Full day in Tortola, and in Old San Juan, early call in Grand Turk,(before a Carnival ship) St Barts, Bermuda, Amber Cove, Aruba, Bonaire,  Curacao, Costa Maya, Key West.

We've been to all of those except Amber Cove (believe it's another cruise line's "private island") & St. Barts, but not on Princess necessarily although we've done 30 cruises on that line, many of them to the Caribbean.  I think the "problem" is that Princess ships are so large now that many ports aren't "accessible" so to speak, i.e. ships are so large with too many pax that a port can't either handle the size of the ship and/or the number of pax.  Tortola particularly comes to mind.  We visited there in 2004 on Celebrity's Horizon (less than 2000 pax).  May be true for Key West, too.  We stopped there 5 times between 1998 and 2011, as well as driving there once.  All those ships were under 2000 pax, I think.  Caribbean Princess stopped at Bermuda at the beginning of our last TA, which started in Houston).

[CRUISEWITHH]

11 minutes ago, waltd said:

I can't tell you how many times I have heard the cruise line had to skip Santa Barbara due to weather. That also goes for Monterey.    The port is a tender port.  You know how passengers can get when the captain has to make a decision weather or not to try and tender and he decides on another sea day.    

Yes, both Monterey and Santa Barbara are tender ports, but just wish Princess could alternate on their coastal cruises from L.A.   so that we could have some variety.  

 

We do enjoy just being on the ship, but would like to also enjoy different itineraries once in awhile.

[BarbinMich]

9 hours ago, Renmar said:

Thanks for the explanation. Makes me wonder though why cruises on a full transit of the Panama Canal go out of their way to make a call at Aruba and then go partly back to also call at Cartagena in Colombia which is South America. I know, Aruba is a nice island but why go that extra distance?

By the way, I'm from Dutch descent hence the connection I tried to make.😕

 

Theo

Aruba is not really out of the way, plus if ships don't stop there one would have several sea days before the canal.

[tere247]

On 12/22/2019 at 8:12 PM, JoRoy218 said:

Several of those are impossible to hit on a 7 day cruise out of FLL (Aruba, Curaçao), but I agree, variety is nice! 

The ABC islands were 8 day cruises.  I'll be doing it again on the Sky New Years 2020. 

[tere247]

9 hours ago, BarbinMich said:

We've been to all of those except Amber Cove (believe it's another cruise line's "private island") & St. Barts, but not on Princess necessarily although we've done 30 cruises on that line, many of them to the Caribbean.  I think the "problem" is that Princess ships are so large now that many ports aren't "accessible" so to speak, i.e. ships are so large with too many pax that a port can't either handle the size of the ship and/or the number of pax.  Tortola particularly comes to mind.  We visited there in 2004 on Celebrity's Horizon (less than 2000 pax).  May be true for Key West, too.  We stopped there 5 times between 1998 and 2011, as well as driving there once.  All those ships were under 2000 pax, I think.  Caribbean Princess stopped at Bermuda at the beginning of our last TA, which started in Houston).

Discovery Princess is going to Tortola and Old San Juan in Dec 2021. Both full day visits.  Also an 8 day cruise.  They seem to be saving the newer, different itineraries for Christmas and New Years.  I think if they wanted to, they can go to these islands. They're substituting St Martin for St Kitts  summer 2021.  Tortola is near St Thomas.  It can be done if they wanted. And yes.  Amber Cove is like going to Grand Turk. We were there twice on Princess ships. 

The ship is the new destination, not the itineraries.