Ken the cruiser

Thanks! I believe we will be cruising with you from BA to Ft Lauderdale on the last leg of your Dec 1st cruise. That's also going to be an awesome cruise for us as it stops in 3 Brazilian ports and I won't have to get a YF shot waiver as I'm too old to get one. Yay!! 😂

For us it's all about being able to book unique 3-5 week itineraries with a refundable deposit that visit cool places, such as Antarctica, Longyearbyen, Africa, and Easter Island. We're also done with Caribbean cruises for the foreseeable future as we did a bunch of those when cruising started back up. Unfortunately, except for the Galapagos and possibly a transoceanic B2B cruise in an E-class aft-facing cabin, Celebrity falls to a distant 5th behind Princess (in a RC mini-suite or higher), NCL (Club Balcony or aft-facing balcony), HAL (aft-facing balcony), and on occasion Crystal (regular veranda), when we just want to be totally wowed on a cruise!

Cool pictures! If it's OK, I'd like to follow along. Our first Antarctica cruise was back in 2018 on the Zaandam and we had a fantastic time! We're heading out again on a 30-day B2B out of San Antonio on Jan 20, but this time on the Sapphire Princess. One thing we're doing different than last time that you reenforced earlier is that we are arriving a day early, as we definitely don't want to have to deal with the stress those unfortunate 219 "delayed" passengers had to go through with flying into the Santiago airport the day of the cruise. Hopefully the other 129 or so that may not have made it to the ship before it finally pushed off were able to make arrangements to meet the ship in Puerto Chacabuco? In any event here's hoping you have a wonderful cruise and fantastic weather!! BTW watch out for the mosquitos once you get to BA. But you probably already know that. MS OOSTERDAM Current Location

Cool! Thanks for the update! I knew there had to be a good reason! I guess he had to first head east to possibly avoid some bad weather before making the turn and head towards King George Island. 😁

I’ve been following the track of the Sapphire since it left the Falklands, and would be very interested to hear why it headed due east yesterday for awhile after leaving Elephant Island before doing an about face and heading back towards the peninsula. I’m sure there is a fascinating story behind it. https://www.cruisemapper.com/?imo=9228186

To help identify some of the various bird life we might see while visiting South American ports on this cruise, I found these helpful links. For those of you that haven't followed my Live From threads before (see below), I very much enjoy taking pictures of wildlife. I guess once you reach those golden years, you need to find something to keep your mind alert. For me while we are on a cruise, it's searching for the elusive "local area" pigeon and any other wildlife we might come across! 😉 51 Common Birds That Live Around Ushuaia Over 220 birds visit the Falklands 49 Most Common Birds Found In Chile 49 Birds Of Argentina - The Worlds Rarest Birds

Thanks everyone for following along! Our first cruise to this area was on a 22-day HAL cruise back in 2018. We had such a great time not only cruising around Antarctica, but also visiting a variety of South American ports offering a multitude of wildlife excursions to be wowed by! One suggestion for those thinking about cruising here in the future. Book your cruise and your excursions as early as possible as it was amazing how fast some of the popular wildlife excursions on this cruise sold out. Here's another fun fact. Prior to booking our HAL cruise in 2018 and again booking this cruise in April 2022, we had first booked a 14-day Celebrity cruise RT out of BA. But on each occasion, we wound up cancelling the Celebrity cruise to go first on the HAL cruise and now this cruise on the Sapphire. The key difference being that both the HAL and PCL itineraries included 4 days of cruising around the Antarctica Peninsula while Celebrity only offers 2 days. Also, in the case of this PCL cruise, we were able to book a VS for about the same price per day as a Celebrity AQ cabin.

If I recall, and I could be wrong, the only way to find out how much “refundable” OBC you have left on your shipboard account at any time while on a cruise is to go ask Guest Services.

For those who might be interested in following along, I just started my Antarctica/SA Live From thread. We don't actually board the Sapphire Princess until Jan 20th, but I got excited and wanted to get it started, as it's going to be another awesome wildlife adventure!

For those who might be interested in following along, I just started my Antarctica/SA Live From thread over on the Princess forum. We don't actually board the Sapphire Princess until Jan 20th, but I got excited and wanted to get it started, as it's going to be another awesome wildlife adventure!

For those who might be interested in following along, I just started my Antarctica/SA Live From thread over on the Princess forum. We don't actually board the Sapphire Princess until Jan 20th, but I got excited and wanted to get it started, as it's going to be another awesome wildlife adventure!

Thanks for the heads-up! We will definitely pack plenty of mosquito repellant.

It is time to start getting super excited about our upcoming South America cruise on the Sapphire Princess that includes 4 days of cruising around the Antarctica Peninsula! We first cruised in this part of the world back in 2018 and were so overwhelmed by all the whales, seals, and penguins we saw, we couldn’t resist booking another one! Leg 1 - Santiago CL to Buenos Aires AR Date Port Arrive Depart Date Port Arrive Depart 1/19 Arrive at Santiago CL airport 7:00 1/27 Antarctica (Cruising) 12:00 Stay at airport hotel 1/28 Antarctica (Cruising) 1/20 PCL airport transfer to ship 9:30 1/29 Antarctica (Cruising) Board ship - San Antonio CL 18:00 1/30 Antarctica (Cruising) 12:00 1/21 At Sea 1/31 At Sea (Drake Passage) 1/22 At Sea 2/1 Falkland Islands (tender) 8:00 11:30 1/23 At Sea Falkland Islands (tender) 13:30 18:30 1/24 Punta Arenas CL (tender) 7:00 19:00 2/2 At Sea 1/25 Ushuaia AR 12:00 20:00 2/3 At Sea 1/26 Cape Horn (Cruising) 7:00 8:00 2/4 Montevideo UY 8:00 17:00 At Sea (Drake Passage) 2/5 Buenos Aires AR 5:00 Leg 2 - Buenos Aires AR to Santiago CL Date Port Arrive Depart Date Port Arrive Depart 2/5 Buenos Aires AR 5:00 2/14 Punta Arenas CL (tender) 8:00 20:00 2/6 Buenos Aires AR 18:00 2/15 Amalia Glacier (Cruising) 16:00 17:00 2/7 Montevideo UY 7:00 18:00 2/16 At Sea 2/8 At Sea 2/17 Puerto Montt CL (tender) 7:00 18:00 2/9 Puerto Madryn AR 8:00 18:00 2/18 At Sea 2/10 At Sea 2/19 San Antonio CL 5:00 2/11 Falkland Islands (tender) 8:00 18:00 PCL excursion/AP transfer 9:00 18:00 2/12 Cape Horn (Cruising) 18:00 19:00 Fly back home 23:20 2/13 Ushuaia AR 7:00 16:00 Some weather-related links depending on the Sapphire’s Current Location - Ushuaia forecast - Drake Passage “Waves” forecast - Antarctica Peninsula forecast - Falkland Islands forecast - San Antonio “Waves” forecast As one might imagine there is quite the variety of wildlife found around Antarctica and the South American ports we will be visiting. For example, ever since our first penguin sighting while cruising around the Galapagos Islands in 2015, we have enjoyed keeping an eye out for some of the other 19 types of penguins. Hopefully on this cruise we will be able to see many of those listed below, with the Emperor penguin probably being the most difficult to spot. Great Penguins Emperor King Brush-tailed Penguins Adelie Chinstrap Gentoo Banded Penguins Magellanic Humboldt Crested Penguins Southern Rockhopper Macaroni This list includes some of the other wildlife we are hoping to see as well, along with of course any adorable looking insects or reptiles we might see crawling around! 😉 Seals Birds Antarctic fur seal Yellow-billed pintail Southern elephant seal Snowy sheathbill Leopard seal Upland sandpiper Weddell seal South polar skua Crabeater seal Kelp gull Antarctic tern Whales Wandering albatross Southern right whale Wilson's storm petrel Blue whale Broad-billed prion Humpback whale Antarctic shag Sperm whale Cattle egret Hourglass dolphin Orca Please feel free to follow along and I will try to make it interesting. Of course, if you have any questions, let me know and we will try to find the answer.

FWIW the iPhone/iPad 1.0.1 update for the new App has been out for over a week now and has been the only one released since it was released 2 weeks ago.

When you go to Payments section on a particular booking in your PCL Personalizer, and go to the bottom, the "*" denotes the applicable OBC is nonrefundable. Like when you have FCD, promotional, Military or Shareholder OBC.

That's what we're guessing as well, which is fine. We always use it to book excursions and are just thankful PCL continues to offer this special perk to both of us.

I’ll be posting the daily Patters on my Live From thread that I will be starting this weekend that will cover our upcoming 30-day B2B cruise on the Sapphire starting Jan 20 RT out of San Antonio, Chile.

We had checked as well, and they were still noted in Dec as refundable. The way I found out about the new way of verifying my military status was when we asked our TA to ask PCL to upgrade our loyalty status to Elite on our April bookings. When PCL updated it, they also removed my MOBC and our FCDs from our 2nd and 3rd legs of our B3B. PCL also said I had to recertify my military veteran status using this new Sheerid link, even though I've been certified since 2013. Anyway, it was easy to do and the MOBC was put back on our booking. As far as the removal of our FCDs go, we put them on a different booking and actually made more OBC in the process. But, at the same time, I am not going to ask our TA to have PCL update our loyalty status on any of our other bookings. Just too much stress for something that doesn't probably matter as long as our PCL account reflects our new loyalty status. But it does seem odd this all happened after Jan 1, 2024. I wonder if PCL has made some FCD application changes when it comes to B2B cruises? All I know is that my TA got the same answer from both her PCL contact she worked with as well as their PCL supervisor.

FWIW I learned a couple of things about the Military Appreciation perk yesterday. First, Princess now wants you to use this link to get your military service verified, if you haven't already been approved before. No worries, it takes about 2 seconds once you tap Submit. Princess Cruise Lines | Military Verification (sheerid.com) Second, all of the previous MOBC that had been applied to our bookings through 2025 that were once marked as refundable all became nonrefundable in those 8 bookings as of Jan 1, 2024.

Use the ALIVEA option rather than the PLAID to manually upload your brokerage statement showing you own at least 100 shares of CCL stock.

Really kind of weird since you’re logging in with a booking number rather than a PCL userid.

Weird. It should be the first thing you see under your picture when you click on "profile" on the intial page. May I suggest logging off and then logging back on with your next cruise's booking number, and then try clicking on Profile again. Other than that, I have no suggestions. BTW I'm using an iPhone.

Are you logged on to the new app with your PCL userid/password or using the Booking number process?

Here's something a little odd. On both my iPad and iPhone where I have uploaded the new app, there is a Princess log file being written to by the app. Never had that before and I wonder what its purpose is as it is pretty much useless.

Windy definitely comes in handy when you’re on a cruise and curious about weather conditions anywhere in the world. 😁