lstone19

Actually, the Baltic cruises on Regal have three embarkation ports. St. Petersburg is the other. The numbers we heard last year were 90% Copenhagen, 5% Warnemunde, and 5% St. Petersburg. The mister drills for the latte two will be "private" drills in one room like the late arriving passenger drills they have at the main embarkation ports. Also, the ship's schedule will probably be based on Copenhagen with the welcome aboard show leaving there as well as the MDR menu rotation (baked alaska will be the night before Copenhagen).

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JF, in certain parts of the country, it is common to use "flu" to describe everything from the common cold to actual Influenza. For the most part, when I hear someone say they have "the flu", I assume they really mean a cold unless I have good reason to think otherwise.

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Food and Dining

We had assigned seating for the 5:30 slot initially, although we had to wait until the second night to get our table for 4. We got a great water side table in the 6th floor Concerto dining room, but the nice things ended there. Our waitress Marina was terrible, not so much in her personality but in her complete inability to be flexible and get us through our meals in less than 2 hours. We intentionally ordered few courses; usually a salad or appetizer and main course. Occasionally we had dessert, and an extra appetizer but regardless of how much or how little we ordered, the food came on a rigid schedule and we only got served as quickly as the slowest table in her group of tables she served. She seemed to favor the groups that spoke her native language, she lingered a lot around them. We spent way too much time waiting for our courses, and even when we asked her to get us out by 7, she said this was not possible! I had never experienced this kind of response on Princess. We were all very unhappy with this service.

 

The food was not good, it never came as requested (white meat,no sauce, and so on) and in general was old,soggy, poorly plated, and just all around unappealing. We talked to the head waiter but he was of no help whatsoever. The only thing we got consistently was the extra veggies we ordered to come nightly but we even with that we had problems with the way they were prepared. Floran, our head waiter in Concerto argued with us no matter what we said. We asked for a large plate of steamed veggies and keep getting oil/butter soaked veggies and when we asked Floran about this he argued and I was so uncomfortable that I wanted to walk out right then and there. The last thing I wanted to do was argue about my food preferences and restrictions. Floran was creepy, he was neither friendly nor kind and we could not stand to see him sulking around the dining room. It seemed like he was more than ready to get off the ship, major burn out?

 

After countless misses and much aggravation, we left the MDR (Concerto) and began eating In the Buffet where at least we had control of what we did and did not want. The Horizon Court buffet was quite good, in the end we were all happy with that choice. Although I asked to meet the Maitre'd, he was invisible throughout the meals and we only met him at the most traveled cocktail party. We began dreading the dining room, the service and the food. We finally decided to try the buffet, based on cruise critic recommendations, and never went back to our assigned table. It was very disappointing, to say the least

We were on Regal in both June and October. In June, we found the MDR food and service to be very good. Come October, the ship had a new Maitre D' (Federico Arcos who I assume is still there) but same Executive Chef. Food was still good but service was lacking (although our headwaiter did get things corrected). Now I hear the Executive Chef has changed as well and I've seen other negative comments about food quality.

Like you, I observed (and commented in another CC thread) that the new Maitre D' (Arcos) was only seen in his ceremonial roles and was never seen actually working the dining rooms (unlike the Maitre D' in June, Francisco Patricio, who was very visible frequently by the entrance of one of the dining rooms).

I used to think that the specific Maitre D' and Executive Chef didn't make that much of a difference. They are largely following corporate standard on menus and service standards. But clearly I was wrong. They do seem to make a difference. If the rest of the staff knows they are keeping an eye on things, they perform. But if they're invisible, the rest of the staff start realizing they don't need to live up to standards and they don't.

On another note - on the advice of people on this board we got a Chase Sapphire Card (along with the Global Geo Blue ).

There are two different Chase Sapphire cards - Preferred and Reserve - so just saying "Chase Sapphire" doesn't fully identify the card. Both include the "normal" travel protections (cancellation, delay, etc.) but only Reserve includes evacuation and emergency medical, some other perks, and the "normal" protections have higher limits. Rewards are somewhat more generous for Reserve.

OTOH, the Preferred annual fee is $95 with no charge for additional users while Reserve is $450 with a charge for additional users. But for that extra $355, your first $300 of travel purchases in a calendar year are automatically rebated (so net $55 more) and the added protections and rewards more than make up for the remaining $55.

I find the travel insurance with our Chase Sapphire card to be pretty good.

Which Chase Sapphire card? There are two now. The Chase Sapphire Reserve, introduced less than six months ago, includes $100K evacuation and $2.5K emergency medical. With that, I'm tempted to do our next cruise without other insurance although I'd like more, particularly on the emergency medical. It also covers cancellation, delay, etc. I'd like to find a policy that lets me add additional evacuation and medical without getting and paying for the other stuff which we won't need.

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Medallion "Class" isn't a special class of passenger, the word class is mis-used. It is an updated personal on board identification system of every passenger. A medallion replaces the cruise card. The system will have some tech applications for passengers that wish to use them.

Medallion Class is being used as a class of ship, not a class of service. Ships with the medallion system will be Medallion Class ships (although they'll also still be in their size class (e.g. Royal, Grand, Coral)). But following the introduction of Club Class, Princess has caused a lot of confusion with the term.

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I was told that they would refund the FCCs to the credit card that they were paid for with, but that credit card is long gone with the issuing of new chip cards by our banking institute.

The bank gave you a new card number? That's unusual. But regardless, even when a new number is issued, the old number normally remains associated with your account and can still be used for issuing a credit. Even if the old number was compromised (lost, stolen, etc.), most banks will still allow merchant initiated credits to the old number and they post to the new number.

Just got my cabin assignment for 6.15 Regal Princess.

Do you mean 1/15? Regal is at sea on 6/15 plus five months in advance is a long time for a ship to already be sold out.

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I think you are assuming capabilities in the medallion far beyond what I am assuming. I doubt it has any capability to be programmed. I expect it is a passive device with a fixed serial number that replies with that fixed serial number when interrogated much like how the access cards that many people use at work to open doors. I expect a fixed serial number is built into it when manufactured and that is it. There will be nothing to manage on the device and no capability to manage it, therefore no device management password to be compromised.

Im on board, capt announced we have 12 missing or unaccounted for. Pushed back sailway to 630 then moved again until 9pm to try and get everyone on board.

Unfortunately, that may not be good enough. I work for an airline and my understanding is we had a plane land just before this happened and at this point, passengers are still on the plane with no estimate of when they will be allowed to disembark (also a departure that was off the gate but not in the air - still waiting and unfortunately, will eventually go back and cancel as the crew has gone illegal on their time).

This is also going to affect cruise departures through the weekend as we have cancelled the balance of the schedule for today with tomorrow being a big unknown at this point.

No it is listed as credit card surcharge on the cabin statement so it is clear what the charge is for

Wow, that's weird.

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Here's a bit that might fry your noodle though. So far I have racked up about $8 cc fees but as yet haven't exhausted our obc?? Will be checking to find out why I am paying cc fees for obc, guessing the IT guru's didn't think it through when implementing......

I assume you're seeing these on-line with your CC issuer. Are you sure these are actual charges? They're probably just authorizations in case you use up your OBC (do they show as pending?). Authorizations are quite normal but if they don't finalize the charge, they drop off after a few days.

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A good rule of thumb is never allow a merchant to convert a charge into your home currency (called Dynamic Currency Conversion). They will tell you this is "for your convenience" (so you know up front what the charge is in your currency) but the exchange rate and fees will almost always be worse than what you'd get letting it be processed in the local currency. Per their credit card merchant agreement, they must give you the option of having it be processed in local currency. Putting it through in your home currency without your permission is grounds for a charge dispute.

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What ship and date? And is there anything unusual about your booking such as booked through an Australian travel agency and priced in AUD.

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I think it's an Australian thing. IIRC from this coming up before, it May even just be for Australians on Australia cruises (does not apply to others on cruises out of Australia).

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Thx Jim.

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Were you logged in? Do you have a current booking?

 

 

I found if I am not logged in I can put any airport in there as well.

When I am logged in it has my home airport as DEN.

Yes, I just tried it with my current booking for this September's Regal TA (CPH-NYC). The EZAir screen comes up pre-populated with ORD-CPH and LGA-ORD but while CPH is a pull-down with just CPH and LGA is a pull-down with EWR and JFK as choices as well, ORD is a free form field which you can change. I changed it to Cleveland (CLE) and it then quoted me flights to/from CLE. Also tried Toronto (YYZ) to see if I can I can change the country and that worked as well (YYZ-CPH via Iceland Air with a connection in Keflavik is dirt cheap!). I did not go farther than that as I won't actually use EZAir for this cruise (we're using miles to go to Stockholm a week ahead of the cruise; as I work for airline, return from NYC will be employee standby).

Come August, I will see if I can use it for YVR-FAI ahead of our 7/2018 cruisetour.

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It will have your home airport. Can't change that unless you call Princess and have them change it.

I've never used it for real but in playing with it for an upcoming cruise, it did seem willing to let me change the home airport.

I'll find out later this year. We're doing an Alaska cruisetour embedded in a longer road trip but will be looking at EZAir to fly Vancouver-Fairbanks to get us to the start of the cruisetour (home is Chicago).

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OK I am a freaking idiot. OP lead their post with "going to hawaii/Tahiti next year" so I assumed that was where they were embarking their cruise.

 

...but on second thought OP has to take some ownership of the confusion by making the first sentence of their post totally extraneous information and and no point being specific about the actual turnaround port.

You're not an idiot. My first thought when you replied was what did I miss that fishywood saw. Confusing and ambiguous question (like many) led us in different directions until I actually guessed from her signature what cruise she was asking about. Agree, OP was confusing and cruise intermediate ports are irrelevant for purposes of the question (as if it the answer would be different if it was a 4-day coastal rather than a month-long cruise).

OP is asking to fly A to B, then C to D after a multi-day layover, then return D to A. If you say that that is no more complicated than the standard open-jaw you described, fine I'll take your word for it. Me, I would only trust such a booking to either direct with the airline or a well trusted brick-and-mortar TA and not under reseller/consolidator fare codes thru EZAir.

I don't know what you C to D segment is supposed to be. Assuming the OP is asking in connection with the 3/30/18 cruise in her signature, that's an L.A. round-trip. So she is asking about flying homecity-PHX returning LAX-homecity, an open-jaw as I described. But similar to an open-jaw, she can also do a circle-trip, flying LAX-PHX. They also usually price with round-trip components or even a round-trip to LAX with a PHX stopover (stopovers are sometimes cheaper than separate fare components).

Whether Princess will do this for her is, as I said before, a separate matter. But it's generally best to put all air travel in one reservation and let the system price it since they will normally find the least expensive way to build the fare, even if another carrier is involved with part of the trip. A big mistake a lot of travelers to Hawaii make is, assuming a trip involving two islands (let's say Honolulu (HNL) and Maui (OGG)), is to buy and ticket the mainland-HNL and OGG-mainland from their favorite mainland carrier and separately buy the inter-island flight from an inter-island carrier. Since many Hawaii fares have stopover privileges, it's generally cheaper to have it all on one ticket even when using the same inter-island flight.

Assuming you are asking about a pre-cruise (not post-cruise) stopover it would be a lot easier to book the LAX-PPT and PPT-[Florida gateway] thru EZAir and the [Florida gateway]-PHX and PHX-LAX (if you don't go the car rental route) on your own. I don't know if EZAir charges deviation fees anymore but a pre-cruise layover involving two different airports--meaning EZAir cannot issue your westbound travel on a single ticket--would certainly fall in that category. I would follow the KISS principle and stick with only one ticket each way thru Princess.

Open jaw trips (which is what you're describing with "layover involving two different airports") certainly can be done on one ticket (I work for an airline). Open jaw is fly A to B, don't fly B to C, then fly C to A. They generally even qualify for round-trip pricing provided B to C is the shortest segment. Normally, a ticket (even electronic tickets) will show "ARNK" (meaning ARrival uNKnown) for that segment. One way cruises (e.g. Alaska Voyage of the Glaciers, Panama Canal full transits, and Transatlantic cruises) all involve open-jaw flying for most passengers.

The question of will Princess do that when one of the cities is not an embarkation or disembarkation port is a separate question. But there's no technical reason for them not to allow it.

And if everyone does show up at the same time? I can envision circumstances where that could happen: a show or event most passengers attend ends and all go off to dinner, a late boarding time after a port, etc. Princess has promised them no waiting, so a table had better be there waiting for them. Of course Princess is setting aside a seat for everyone who buys Club Class.

Why is this somehow different than making an airline reservation or something similar (heck, even a cruise ship booking - see below)? Airlines (disclaimer: I work for an airline and while I'm not in inventory management, I have co-workers who have worked there and we do talk about this issue; also my undergraduate major was industrial engineering where the inventory carrying cost vs. running out cost is a classic problem) routinely overbook yet are promising they will have a seat. Why? Because they know they can expect a certain percentage to not show up. But sometimes, everyone or almost everyone does show up so offers are made to get people to take a later flight or alternate routing (same thing with cruise bookings - that's where move-over and downgrade offers come from). But they overbook anyway because it's all about balancing the cost of empty seats (lost revenue is the "cost" here) vs. the cost of dealing with the overbookings (the move overs and downgrades).

CC dining should be no different. You don't set aside 100% seats for the worst case; rather, when too many show up, you offer compensation for failing to live up to the promise. The compensation could be a bottle of wine, a complimentary specialty dining (perhaps immediately if they know there's room), perhaps a choice given that different people are motivated by different things. Do it right but infrequently enough and everyone ends up happy.

And think about your own restaurant experience. It's not that uncommon to show up with a reservation only to be told there will be a short delay due to a party taking longer than expected. We accept it there, why wouldn't we accept something similar with CC dining?

We have found that many Princess employees have no idea of what is going on and have been told numerous times that the buffet was the only place to eat upon embarkation.

I think that explains a lot. We tend to know more than they do.

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We have A&T and incoming text are free whether on the ship's cell or not. So for us this is the best way to reach us in an emergency.

But what if someone voice calls you? If you answer it, you'll pay the per minute ship roaming rate for voice calls. If you let it go to voice mail, with most carriers you pay double (once for routing it to the ship, and then a second time for routing it back to voice mail - leave it in airplane mode and that doesn't apply since the cell system just sees you as off so goes straight to voice mail within the domestic system).

They were supposed to fine tune Anytime Dining since its introduction and we all know how that turned out.

Unfortunately, so long as more people want to eat early than can be accommodated early, I don't know how you fine tune it. I suppose you could return to the day of everyone having a traditional time although back in those days, many were forced to late who wanted early (or vice versa in some markets - happened to us 25 or so years ago). Also, more dining room space would be needed (and then there will be the "they took more public space away" complaints). In the old days of everyone traditional (and very little in the way of alternative dining), dining rooms needed to accommodate 50% of the maximum passengers to assure everyone having a space. These days, they know a certain percentage will not eat dinner in a MDR so those seats aren't even needed in a MDR.

The opposite side to assure maximum utilization of MDR space is to do away with TD altogether (although I hope that will never happen). On our last cruise (Regal 10/22/16 5-day Canada), we had late TD and since we were by a window near the front, I could see that some of the tables weren't even assigned (the "wings" stretching forward of the entrance on our side did not have anyone there); other tables that seemed to be assigned never had anyone show up. There is a lot of waste from TD diners who spend a lot of time going to alternative dining. Perhaps there needs to be better education - if you plan to do a lot of buffet or specialty restaurants, book ATD since you won't be using it a lot. I suspect a lot of people end up in TD because TAs encourage it (or assume their clients prefer it) even though they have little intention of using it (it's the "me" era - too many think "I want my table reserved even though I also want to eat whenever I want even if that means not using my reserved space").