lstone19

Seriously? The art auctioneer personality and the CD personality I desire seem to be very different. Although I admit a lot of the art auctioneer personality seems to be an act considering how identical they all are. Regarding them not coming back, there seems to be a lot of "one and done" CDs these days. Princess seems to be having a CD retention issue. In any event, March is five months away and I believe the normal CD contract length is around three months.

The message board software Cruise Critic uses has a maximum width for the frame containing the discussions. You can verify this by making your web browser window wider and you'll see that after the frame reaches its maximum width, the only thing that gets wider is the borders. So the officer table is already as wide as it can be. Another column can be added but the web software will compensate by making the existing columns narrower.

From what I've been told, guest entertainers are booked fairly close in as their availability changes a lot. Production shows are then scheduled around them (and then watch it change during your cruise when a port is missed and guest entertainers have to be flown to the next port to board). The planning timeline for entertainment is fairly close in. While it's not quite the same, I used to work for an airline and worked a lot with our crew schedulers. So just like you wanting to know what the entertainment schedule is, if you were flying and wanted to know who the pilots were going to be for your November flights, no one could tell you yet as November crew schedules have not gone out for bid yet.

Rock Opera is not a Ruby Princess production show. The production shows on Ruby Princess are Magic to Do, Stardust, and Colors of the World (if there's a fourth one, it was not performed on our 10-night cruise last year nor our 7-night cruise this year. I was on Regal Princess a few years ago on long cruises with four production shows but was told when it's doing seven-night cruises, only three are performed each week).

Oh. I didn't think anyone meant it was going to be changed in the future. I thought they meant originally a different name had been announced and then they changed it to Sun Princess.

So I missed stories about the name being changed. When was this and what was originally announced?

They did. The ones from our 2023 cruises were just titled "Princess events listing." But while the new Patters are still on a 11x17 sheet of paper, while the old ones were folded to be two 8-1/2x11 pages, the new Patters are folded to be three pages per side, two 6-3/4x11 pages and a 3-1/2x11 mini-page. Makes scanning them more difficult plus the cutoff pages on pages 4 and 5 of each day to get the mini-pages.

If you can wait until next May, I will have some.

I've updated my personal website (https://www.stonejongleux.com/) with the Princess Patters from our most recent cruise (Ruby Princess 7/30/24). Patters from our other cruises back to 2016 are also there. Enjoy! If you see any errors, please reply so I can fix them.

But did the rate ever go up between when you prepaid and your cruise?

For anyone who has actual experience pre-paying (not via a package) and then had the amount increased, if I pre-pay now, am I truly pre-paid in full or am I essentially just buying $16/day of OBC that will be worked off against the $17/day I'll be charged on my cruise leaving a net $1/day to be paid on the cruise?

The difference between your situation and mine is you had no pre-paid Internet while I do for segments 2 and 3. So once on board, will the app recognize that? It may be that the app saw you were on board for 14 nights so only offered you 14 nights yet for me will see while on board for multiple segments, that only the first segment does not have Internet. Or it might not. One thing I realized on the latest cruise is that the app is really two different apps - a pre-cruise app and an on-board app with different functionality in each. When you're on board connected to the ship's WiFi, you can't access the pre-cruise part for any future cruises you have (but as soon as you get off the ship in a port and are off the ship's wi-fi, it switches back to that). So while I know the pre-cruise part of Internet purchasing will work correctly, I have no idea what the on-board part will do. Regarding the merging, when we booked the moveover part of our upcoming cruise (11+ months ahead of departure and B2B as the only way to take advantage of the extra nights they were offering), they immediately showed up as one cruise on the app. When we added the first segment in front of it, it was a couple of weeks before they showed up as one cruise. When we able to book dining, when I requested traditional dining for the first night, it added it for all nights across all three segments so that part worked as desired for us.

Your post got me concerned. We are doing a B2B2B next year (all on the same ship). Segments 2 and 3 are the result of a moveover offer and include Premier. Segment 1 was booked separately and is Standard. So I was concerned that when I would go to buy Internet, it would want to charge me for all three segments. But just checked the app and that part of it has all three separate, recognizes that we have Premier for segments 2 and 3, and only wanted to charge me for the length of segment 1. So that's good. So that leaves me wondering if I should buy it in advance (but just a few days - not paying for it now six months out) or wait until onboard. We will have a lot of refundable OBC on segments 2 and 3 due to the moveover. If the folio rolls over from segment 1 to segment 2, then that OBC essentially can be used to pay the segment 1 charges. In the long-run, it doesn't matter since it's refundable but would reduce how much refund we'll be waiting for afterwards.

As near as I can tell, Princess has stopped offering destination-related beverages and gone to a worldwide beverage menu. Pre-2020, I remember there being Alaska-themed drinks such as (IIRC) the Grizzly Bear as well as beers from Alaskan (a Juneau brewery) that were prominently featured. This year on an Alaska cruise, I saw none of this offered (although I didn't look at the beer selection). On a Fall 2019 Panama Canal cruise out of Los Angeles, they had the Alaskan beers at close-out prices as they got rid of what was left. On our first Alaska cruise in 1993, the ship's first cruise of the season, I saw them getting their initial supply of Alaskan beer at Juneau.

I posted that in the senior officers thread. However, officers change constantly. The captain changed at the end of our cruise. More could well change in the next month. So what I posted is already out of date.

To update this list - Do not push the "Quote" button. (It creates a copy that the next person cannot properly update). - Instead: Find the most recent post with the list. - Select and copy all of the text in that post, including these instructions, except the previous poster's "change notes". (copy from To update this list down to <Copy to this line . . .>) - Scroll to the bottom of the page to find the "Reply to this topic..." box. - Paste your copied text into that box to create a new post. - Make your modifications to the list. - Add your "change notes" at the bottom. - Click the Submit Reply button just below your new post. - Confirm that everything is correct! You can edit for up to 20 minutes after posting. SHIP Captain Hotel General Manager Cruise Director Entertainment Director Director of Restaurant Operations CARIBBEAN 7-29-24 Ozren Marelic Duncun Fouche Sophie Gideon Tim Donovan George Drugan CORAL Domagoj Cuculic Esther Shelton Joachim Rothe CROWN Mario Juresko Vincenzo “Renzo” Lembo (leaves) Michael Prasse Jason Allen ??? Francisco Patricio DIAMOND 7-22-24 Michele Bartolome Andi Sanders Lauren Meyer Giuseppe Franchina DISCOVERY 4-14-24 Tony Ruggero Dirk Brand Cole Bockman Luke Bonney Carlos Marques EMERALD 8-6-24 Johnathan Baranski Ricardo Capraro Lloyd Flay Luke Musson Francesco Ciorfito ENCHANTED 7-30-24 Raffaele Di Martino Richard Harry Jody Miles Kyler Mann Nicola Furlan GRAND Steven Lewis Kevin Tugwell Drew Raitch Jean Paul Musiu ISLAND 5-30-24 Marco Cataldi Danilo Portoso Robbie Conley Tobias Eland Stewart Daniele Rosafio MAJESTIC Giuseppe Castellano Claudio Mazzoni Olivia Guthrie Ron Goodman Douw Steyl REGAL Fabrizio Maresca Allie Ambriano Martyn Moss Neville Saldanha ROYAL 7-16-24 Steve Holland Helmut Leikuf Armando Merin Kelvin Joy Daniele Saredi RUBY 8-06-24 Steafano Ravera Gozde Orkun Jaclyn Friedlander Kylie Chappell Giuseppe Gelmini SAPPHIRE 7-30-24 Paolo Ravera Pieter Boucher Oz Lazo Drew Raitch Anton Criva SKY 8-03-24 Heikki Laakkonen Enrique Santos Aaron Hawkins Geofrey O'Rourke Cipiran Hoidreag STAR Gennaro Arma Nick Nash (relief) Bosco Pires TBA TBA TBA SUN 7-24-24 Craig Street Corinne Steel Madison Adams Claudio Giuliani <Copy to this line so there is space to type "change notes" after this line Stefano Ravera relieved Petar Lesic as captain of Ruby Princess effective 8/6/24 (Captain Ravera was aboard Ruby Princess the cruise before in preparation for assuming command) Corrected spelling of Tim Donovan's name

I was not trying to defend Princess, just point out that the traditional way of disseminating news was to issue a press release to the press, not to customers, given that some people cite the lack of direct dissemination to customers as a reason to doubt the veracity of it. Ironically, we took a move over offer off a May cruise on Sun Princess. Perhaps if Princess had allowed customers to cancel due to not all amenities being available, Princess would not have needed to buy us off with a free cruise.

Why would you expect them to trumpet bad news with a big press release? In the old days before websites, information was disseminated by putting out a press release to the press. Which is what Princess appears to have been done. If it was bad news, it was done as quietly as possible and late in the day when I might be missed (but the company could still complain they issued the press release). What they did is no different than when a company releases bad financial results late on a Friday hoping it will be overshadowed by other things over the weekend.

I suspect some people are using the wrong terms for some of the shows. Production shows are the named shows with the resident company of four singers (2M/2F - the ones wearing or holding microphones) and 10 to 12 dancers) - on Ruby Princess (where I am now) they are Colors of the World, Stardust, and Magic To Do (which has an additional male singer who appears only to do that show). Then there are the guest entertainers. We’ve had three - a hypnotist, a female singer covering a number of different songs, and a male singer doing a Prince tribute show. Guest entertainers are only on the ship for a few days so these shows will vary from cruise to cruise. To me, a variety show has multiple artists each doing just one or two numbers (variety of performers). From my experience, they’re not typical on Princess although tonight we have a single performance of a “Farewell Variety Show” which is billed as having the resident company, guest entertainers, and officers. It strikes me as thrown together which makes me wonder if a planned guest entertainer had to cancel or missed the ship yesterday.

We're currently on Ruby Princess as well. I don't think the production shows (that's the ones repeated every week with the ship's singers and dancers) have changed other than there seems to be less recognition of who the cast is (there used to occasional programs and/or cast listings in the patters - now it's all anonymous). OTOH, the specialty shows in the theater seem to be not as good. Maybe that's because our last two cruises have been Alaska and with so many ships there, it dilutes the talent pool. For the production shows, each ship is its own repertoire. Since 2016, I've been on Regal Princess, Coral Princess, and Ruby Princess and I like the Regal Princess shows (particularly Fiera) far more than the ones on Coral Princess or Ruby Princess. But the last two cruises have been on Ruby Princess where I am not as in to to its shows (particularly Colors of the World which I'll skip next time) than on Regal Princess. So any feeling of decline I might have has to do with the ship I'm on as the shows on each ship do not change often.

I know it can be added on board (at which point you've lost some benefits of it such as free shipping of medallions). The main reason to do so now is to guard against a price increase. From a money standpoint, Plus is marginal to a money loser for us but it changes the psychology of ordering another drink or going to Alfredo's.

We currently have a cruise booked for early 2025 with no package added. If I add Plus or Premier in the personalizer rather than having my travel agent do it, when do I pay for it - right away or at final payment?

I was just thinking about asking that. DRO, ED, and CD are all under the HGM. Almost everyone we interact with on a ship is under the HGM. A good HGM makes for a good cruise. Also, Captain Petar Lesic is leaving Ruby Princess on 8/6. Stefano Ravera (sp?) will be the new captain.

AFAIK, there were no excursions offered for Endicott Arm (I wasn't looking for one when we looked at excursions but I don't think any were offered nor has anything been mentioned about them in the usual night before announcements).

And as I was posting this, they must have finally retrieved the boat and we are on our way about three hours late.