BrennerM

Anybody have experience with other Princess ships and how they have adjusted things in the last couple of weeks to respond to this threat?  Increased passenger illness screening on check-in?  Staff serving at the buffets instead of guests serving themselves?  Anything?

1 minute ago, npcl said:

If one were to, without actual data, apply a normal bell shape curve to the incubation window, we would be in the window of peak manifestation for the next couple of days.

Yes, it will be interesting to see if net new cases on the ship start to decline by the end of this week.  I would imagine there are some epidemiologists that are watching this very closely!

2 minutes ago, dog said:

Crew is working very hard and some have tested positive.

I'm no expert, but I feel like there is a high likelihood that a small number of crew were infected near the beginning of this situation and if they were preparing and/or delivering food to passengers, this would be a vector for the virus to infect many more people.  Given the strict in-room quarantine in the early stages (before they let people out to walk the decks) it seems like crew>passenger is the most likely thing that caused a majority of these passenger infections.  Not sure we'll ever really know for sure though.  Seems clear that this disease is very contagious in close quarters.

12 minutes ago, h-sar said:

Do they limit the side dishes? Is there an extra charge for them or are they included in the price of the CG entree?

No extra charge. I was about to say which sides I wanted but my waiter said “I’ll order you all of the side dishes” and that was fine by me!  And this was in anytime dining where  I didn’t even know the waiter well.  Sweet!

On 1/1/2020 at 1:08 PM, FM said:

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Since it appears you are a long time Princess cruiser, do you enjoy the quality of Princess's dining offerings? Would you say that the Crown Grill aboard the Sky is a step above the Keg … or similar to Ruth's Chris?    

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Not sure if anyone responded to this but I've eaten at the Crown Grill several times over several cruises and I can state definitively that it is better than the Keg (which I also enjoy very much BTW).  The tenderloin steak (filet mignon? can't recall exactly what they call it at the Crown Grill) is fantastic quality, and it's quite big.  I think they call it 7oz on the menu but mine have always been bigger than that, more like 10oz.  One of the best steaks I've ever had.  The rest of the menu is very good too (French Onion soup is decadent, tasty desserts, etc).

I've also ordered a Crown Grill steak in the MDR (for an extra fee but less than the full Crown Grill fee) and it was very good as well, and you can get the side dishes from the Crown Grill as well.

You can use the tap in your stateroom bathroom for drinking water.  I'm pretty certain the drinkable water on the ship all comes from the same place, so the water you'd get at the bar (or at dinner!) is the same as the stuff coming from your stateroom tap.  Of course if you want ice you need to ask your room steward or just get it at any bar.

50 minutes ago, paul929207 said:

Loyalty OBC is based on how you book. So one cruise gets one award. Book as two cruises and get 2.

This is not always true.  We did a 14-day Med cruise this past summer and we booked it as a 14-day (right on the Princess website, no TA) but in reality it was treated as two 7-day cruises B2B by Princess.  We got two cruise credits for it and 150 minutes of internet for each 7-day stretch.

In the past we've won Princess-branded:

• notebooks
• wine stoppers
• magnet clips
• keychain flashlights
• pens
• cloth bags

Usually the champagne is reserved for winners of the nighttime "Game Shows" rather than day-to-day trivia.

17 hours ago, bubbapuck said:

 

My wife needs as much darkness as possible when sleeping. As much as I would love a balcony. I have to go interior or else I will have a crabby lady on my hands. Thanks for the heads up!

We've always done an inside cabin in Alaska and it's great for sleeping.  Then we just use the Promenade deck to see the sights. Since it wraps around the whole ship (caveat: except on Royal-class ships!) you can walk to any side pretty quickly.

I didn't read the whole thread but I do have one comment for you:  the weather in Alaska can be pretty volatile, so the nice thing about the Vancouver cruise is that you get two chances to have a nice weather day at each of the ports (other than Whittier of course).  So you can plan ahead based on weather forecasts to ensure that you do your excursions on the best of the two days in each port.  Or you can do two excursions if there are multiple things you want to do.

Also, Glacier Bay is amazing and I would always recommend the cruise which includes it.  And take the Skagway train up the gold rush trail, it is incredible (when the weather/visibility is good...)

Quick question: when was the second formal day?  I'm guessing Wednesday?

35 minutes ago, Happy2cruise said:

What happens if someone doesn't have a smart phone?

Just use the medallion as if it is a cruise card.  You don't get the fancy features of the smartphone app (ordering drinks, playing games, locating spouses, etc.) but you never had those before with a cruise card anyway.

Just now, gogiantsfan29 said:

Hi, we were on a Norway Fjords in May and are looking at Alaska for 2021.  Wondering how you thought they compared alike and different? 

They are quite different but it is tough for me to compare because we had a lot of rain and low cloud for our Norway cruise so we couldn’t see as much scenery.  Alaska has more wildlife plus the glaciers, but Norway has more history to go with the fjord views.  On one of our Alaska cruises we saw a pod of about 30 dolphins swim and jump past the ship in the Inside Passage and that is probably the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen from a cruise ship. I’ve attempted to attach a pic I took of some of the leaping dolphins but I’m on mobile so we’ll see if it works.

3 hours ago, bubbapuck said:

My wife has a very hard time sleeping with any light in the room.

My wife is similar, we did Alaska twice and Norway Fjords once and all 3 were inside cabins.  Pitch black inside, perfect for a great sleep even when there are only a few hours of darkness outside!

13 minutes ago, bubbapuck said:

Has anyone done this cruise or have any input on it. Pros and cons?

The 14-day Van-Van is basically just 2 identical 7-day cruises back-to-back.  They will have the same ports only in reverse order.  The possible benefit is if the weather is poor at a port on the way North, you might get better weather at that port going South (or vice versa).  The negative is that you will not see as many unique ports as you would usually see on a single 14-day cruise.

In my opinion there are at least 2 good choices of things to do at each of the ports so you could definitely cover all of your "Alaska cruise bucket list" in a single 14-day sailing.

I'll add one more thing for you:  I've done 2 Alaska cruises and had an inside cabin both times and I didn't feel that I missed anything by not having a balcony.  We just spent a lot of time on the Promenade deck instead of in our room which was just fine with us for the money saved.  On the Promenade you can quickly walk to any side of the ship to see different views/wildlife as they appear.

19 hours ago, MixerDave said:

I just wonder when people say their service dog "can detect low blood sugar, etc" what they do on an excursion.  Can "Fluffy" detect from a cruise ship balcony while there owner is off the ship, or is this all BS?

 

If it is a true, proper service animal they will have it with them 24/7 because that is the whole purpose of the animal.  If they go on an excursion they would definitely want it with them as well.   If on the other hand they lied to Princess when boarding and it is not really a proper service animal, that's a whole other situation.

We've done 8 cruises on Princess and I always research other options when planning a trip.  So far Princess has done nothing to dissuade me from cruising with them and I usually find a good enough deal with Princess that I don't see the point in trying another cruise line yet.  We're going on the Sky in mid-March and looking forward to it!  Check out the huge thread by the user dides which has tons of pictures of the Sky and lots of (mostly positive!) discussion.

After your cruise if you are going to London from Southampton I recommend looking for third-party cruise transfer tours.  We did one with a company called  "International Friends" that went to Stonehenge, Salisbury Cathedral, and Windsor Castle, and then dropped off at Heathrow plus a few hotels.  It was fantastic!  I suspect you could get similar tours that go in the opposite direction as well to get you to the cruise ship (London->Southampton).

4 minutes ago, dulcemariamar said:

 

Thanks for this info! I thought the Baltic cruise was exciting so I was nervous that the British Isles would be hard to live up to. 

 

Are te most of the ports, ports you can just get off and enjoy the area or do you need to do extensive additional traveling. Like in Sweden is was an additional 50 minutes to get to Stockholm 

For the British Isles, most of the ports are right at major cities with lots to do, but there are also many things to do on excursions further from port.  As an example in Belfast we went to the Giant's Causeway and it was amazing but it was about 90-minutes each way although the drive was along the coast and was very scenic.  But we could have done the Titanic museum instead which was right at the port.

After we finished the BI cruise we agreed that it would be great to do it again someday because there were many good choices at each port so you could do a totally different cruise the second time around.  Our only criticism was that it was extremely port-intensive and we were pretty exhausted by the time we got to the 6th port day in a row (Glasgow in our case).  We were so thankful when the first sea day arrived!  But that's a minor quibble at best.

We sailed this summer in Alaska (Platinum level) on Golden Princess and we each got 150 minutes of free (slow) internet. We just each logged in separately on our phones and accepted the 150 minutes free. I first thought we had to share the 150 minutes but then we realized that we each have Platinum status.

We’re on the Emerald next June so we’re hoping it has better internet. But it’s not a huge deal for us, we also like being disconnected most of the time on a cruise.

We are sailing on the Golden to Alaska next week. Does she still have BOGO? Video on Demand on the cabin TVs?

 

Thanks

I didn’t watch a lot of TV (I was on Golden a few weeks ago) but it seemed to be the normal Princess TV content where they have a bunch of movie channels and some TV channels. The TV was bigger than previous Princess ships though. I didn’t see any option for video on demand. One of the channels had the Love Boat running quite a bit. We love watching it while cruising, it is so cheesy.

They put the two twins together and call them a Queen bed but it is definitely bigger (wider) than our Queen bed at home. Very comfy!

I agree, it is called a Queen by Princess but it is slightly larger than a traditional Queen yet slightly smaller than a King. They are very comfortable beds IMO.

If the muster is somewhat close to dining times they might just do anytime dining for everyone on the first night (no fixed dining at all). That was the case on my cruise a couple weeks ago that departed after 7pm.

I was also on this cruise so thought I’d add my thoughts. This was our 6th Princess cruise and this one had the least guest participation in trivia/game shows/etc of any we’ve done. So those ended up being less fun than usual.

The weather we got along the Mount Saint Elias range was the highlight of the trip. That area is overcast about 95% of the time so to get to see it in sunshine was incredible. We did this cruise 5 years ago and couldn’t see any of the mountains at all. Glacier Bay was beautiful but as mentioned Margerie was definitely not very active. I only saw 1 small calving plus 1 pretty big one just when we arrived at the Glacier, and then nothing for the next hour that we were there.

We also did whale watching in Juneau and saw a few humpback whales, saw a mama bear and her two cubs at the Mendenhall Glacier boardwalk (they were chilling out just 20 feet from the people!) and while sailing on the last day in the Inside Passage there were two pods of Orcas in the water, plus a pod of about 20 Pacific White-Sided Dolphins that swam and jumped right by the ship.

So nature was definitely the highlight of our cruise, by far.

Just found this via a Google search and wanted to chime in (a bit late I guess). We did the British Isles cruise last year so I have a good sense for the schedule. In many ports the ship stays until at least 6pm. For those ports you could book early excursions in order to be back on the ship by early afternoon and then she could do her coursework via either a phone hotspot (make sure you have unlimited internet in the UK/Ireland zone!) or an LTE hotspot device. Note that you probably won't get LTE service (or even 3G) from an inside cabin (we had ZERO connection on our phones from our inside cabin while in port) so I'd recommend you either book an oceanview/balcony room or she will need to go out of your cabin to do her schoolwork.

For the couple of sea days she will be out of luck. There is no way to get 1.5 mbps internet while onboard at sea. It is glacially slow internet and super-expensive.

Note: My wife's phone had a roaming plan for the UK zone and she used only about 500MB of data total. The bill would have been over $2000 if she didn't have the proper roaming package. We are from Canada where our cell plans are pretty awful.