beg3yrs

IMHO and in agreement with engineers on two different ships, the tap water on board is cleaner and better tasting than many bottled waters. No funny taste for me. This of course is for the water generated on board. Sometimes the ship takes on shoreside water and while I'm sure the water is clean, it may have a funny taste although I've never encountered that. As far as the plastic bottles go, Princess has an extensive program to sort waste into recyclables, burnables, non-recyclables and finally grind-it-up fish food. Your bottles will almost certainly be recycled. In some ports you can see pallets of various kinds of refuse being unloaded for appropriate disposition.

Regarding the cutoff time, for the Discovery sailing on April 3, we had driven from Tucson in two legs, staying overnight in Cathedral City near Palm Springs. Originally had planned to drive all the way to San Pedro but DW doesn't tolerate that long of a drive anymore and I have to admit once reaching Cathedral City, I was pretty much done as well. But I digress... It's supposed to be only about two hours from Cathedral City to the port. We intended to miss the initial rush and arrive around noon, leaving Cathedral City at 10AM. Figured with LA traffic we'd still have a buffer. Turns out we needed it! There were no accidents fortunately but with the inevitable high traffic slowdowns we arrived a little after 1PM and were starting to sweat the 90 or 60 minute deadline (sailing was at 3PM) as we couldn't remember which really mattered. Thought to ourselves that since we had "checked in" on the app we should be good to go. Anyway, the port staff told us we had plenty of time still and there was no worry. What we couldn't get from them was what the actual deadline was. They simply said that word comes down from on high and they close down. All in all, it was really nice to just show up, drop bags, park and then show passports and medallions and be waved onto the ship. Nice!

Thanks for that. Old age and cunning will overcome youth and skill every day and we got lucky on a couple of the questions as we'd discussed similar subjects recently. We did win but like Little League these days, everyone gets the same prize. ShiP champagne and a bunch of Effy trinkets. The champagne we gave away and the trinkets will become stocking stuffers for very young granddaughters and great-nieces in the extended family.

I have to agree with everyone that this cruise was amazing. The crew was fantastic but I've got to say this time it was the passengers! Everyone was so excited and in lock-step to see the eclipse that there was a real sense of camaraderie from the minute we boarded. It was also very special as so many of the best posting Cruise Critic members were on board. At the M&G we finally got to put faces and voices to the cream of the Cruise Critic community. We did have two not so great experiences. Our cabin steward constantly complained about being overworked which was kind of a downer. We know they have probably too much work but the good ones never complain. The Catch by Rudy: excellent food and we'll go again. But ... DW really wanted to see the Marriage Match game show at 8:30 and even though our res at TC was 6:40, we had only finished our mains by 7:50. Our server didn't want to take no for a dessert order so we reluctantly ordered the berries at 7:50 thinking that would be an easy and quick selection to serve. By 8:15 no sign of dessert or our server so we just left for the show (DW ended up signing us up as the vintage couple and we ended up on stage - quite fun). Afterwards we saw our MDR adjacent tablemates at Bellini's, next to The Catch and we stopped to chat. We were then accosted by our server and her supervisor saying the chef was disappointed and demanding to know why we left. This escalated to the point where DW finally told them to walk away. She turned back to our new friends and refused to speak to those two any more. Another downer. Regardless though, overall we had an amazing trip, one of the best shorter cruises we've ever been on!

I can't say firsthand as I am not sailing on the Sun Princess until June 1. That said, I've read a report on CC the smoking area is located on the Wake View Terrace.

It is possible to pay for excursions with gift cards. However you must call Princess and pray for a competent CS person. If they don't seem to know what they're doing, HUACA (hang up and call again).

It was pale white.

Yep, they did. Our regular waiter insisted the puffs were real butter and I insisted they were tasteless (crap - but I didn't say that). The assistant restaurant manager for our area brought some real butter pats.

On the Discovery now and the three balls of puff in what used to be the butter dish is tasteless and doesn't even scoop onto your knife well. About half slides to the side and remains in the dish. I absolutely agree with the poster who said it has curbed their appetite for the dinner rolls. At least I'll save some calories.

Don't know specifically about the Discovery but other ships do supply paddles and balls. The balls though can be a little "tired".

Internet access on all Princess ships has been converted to Starlink. Performance based on geographic location is now pretty much uniform. Starlink satellites are now cross-linked too so previous reports of trouble if they're not in range of a ground station are no longer valid. Previous reports on other threads regarding the performance on the Sun Princess has IMHO been pretty much in line with all other ships in the fleet. Pretty good but not mind boggling. Read through some of the Sun Princess threads and you'll get the first-hand reports of actual speeds.

Yes, you need to contact AARP. Emails are NOT the gift cards. My emails look like this: That order number is part of your gift card number but isn't complete. Nor does it have a PIN. You must go through to "Get your reward" for the complete information you can print/save to a file and so on.

Well, that may make things more difficult on the ship. Be prepared to argue your case. Hopefully they'll accept the list. After all, demanding the original printout is kind of a belt-and-suspenders administrative procedure. Years ago I too simply used a list from and Excel spreadsheet and it was accepted. Heck, I recall handing them a handwritten paper with numbers which they used to credit my account. Things have changed so as I initially said, be prepared to make your case.

You should have received an email from AARP for each card you purchased. Each email has a link to the associated card. That link takes you to a webpage with your card number and PIN on it. On that same page is a link to "Print" the page. I always save to a PDF which is usually an option under the Print but may be on the same page. Anyway, you can print from the card page or print the PDF file you've saved. I once tried to give customer service a simple list of card numbers and pins. They would not accept that. They wanted printed pages. I had to go to the Internet Cafe and go through my emails (again) and print the cards onboard.

My TA is across the continent so unless we're visiting Florida, we can't run down the road and drop off the card printouts. As @Thrak said, you don't get physical cards, rather you get an email for each card which contains a link to get the official "card" which is actually a couple of pages. You can print them out like Thrak does and take them to your TA. OTOH in my situation I save each "card" in a dated and numbered PDF file and then cut and paste the numbers into a spreadsheet (warning: long strings of numbers don't paste well into Excel, place an apostrophe in front of the long number and then you're OK) including dates purchased, when and how redeemed and so on. For each redemption I copy the just the numbers I'm redeeming into a separate spreadsheet, encrypt it and then email it to my TA. I send him the unlock password either by phone or text message (I'm kind of paranoid about sending information that's that valuable over email). I also take printouts of the "cards" I will likely redeem onboard with me. I've had guest services refuse a list from a spreadsheet, they want the printouts.