SiliconCruiser

I put my spirits in plastic bottles so that there will not be any scrutiny.  I have never encountered an obstacle, but those who like to quote Google and other website information will most likely differ.

How about ... when you reach a certain loyalty level, Princess stop trying to sell you worthless merchandise, and less than honest sales pitches from the contractors that they have on board along with the ones that they have at the cruise ports.  Even better if they would stop trying to sell you something every time you turned around on the ship.  I was fortunate to have been warned of this before my first Princess cruise, but since I had worked in consumer protection I found their pitches laughable.  But then I realized that there were probably passengers who were falling victim to them.

4 hours ago, ChemistBabe said:

I have two kids, a 10 year old and a teenager.  We have taken two Caribbean cruises on Disney and loved both of them.

We'd like to go to Alaska next.

 

Princess is HALF the price of Disney and includes Glacier Bay.

My concern:  in general, I know Princess has older passengers than Disney.

 

Does that apply to Alaska too, or are Princess Alaska cruises more family friendly???

 

(We are looking for family activities, lowest common denominator food for my difficult child, movies at the pool...  Basically, for there to be other families and family activities, not just older adults.)

 

Thank you!

We were on an Alaskan cruise in the middle of summer break.  While Carnival's Princess and Holland America brands tend to focus their marketing towards an older (that they also presume to be more gullible)  demographic, we saw quite a few multi-generational families on this cruise. 
There was this Chinese-American family of 8 or 10 that sat at the table across from us every night.  With their menu selections, there was always a plate of white rice, along with a bottle of red wine and a glass of brown stuff (presumably cognac) for grandpa.  Something very strange about the setup though; in addition to additional gratuities that were provided to the wait staff, they started to buy drinks and share their wine with the wait-staff as well. I had to presume that they were told to accept and consume the drinks since they did so openly at the table while toasting their benefactors.  And at least on one night the head waiter also joined them.  Money talks!
Sorry for straying away from your question, but in the middle of summer in Alaska there are a number of younger families on board, which is probably a good alternative to Carnival's other brand Carnival, which tends to appeal to a younger 'party' crowd.

5 hours ago, 1025cruise said:

Yes, your bags will be scanned when you go onboard, and you will be asked to discard plastic.

And you base this on what?

The Plus package requires that at least two people in a cabin participate.  So each person is required to consume about 3 alcoholic beverages per 24 hour day to break even, or up to 15 drinks per person per day.  My DW does not consume alcohol, and she will not let me consume her share.  So bollocks to that scheme.  It might be better for me to visit that gathering with Friends of Bill W. and Doctor Bob (yeah, i know that is not how it is listed in the Patter.)

On 2/15/2022 at 9:11 AM, Carol28 said:

We booked an Australia/New Zealand trip for next February. Today I decided to check how much airfare is roundtrip Sydney even though I know I cannot plug in the dates for our travel. I just used this year and made up dates similar to our dates for next year.  What a surprise!  Airfare is over $2,000 for economy and $15,000 for First class.  (these are approximate, of course) Flying with miles is about 900,000 for First Class.  Here's my question - I know Princess can arrange our flights, but will the fares be less expensive?  I realize this is all 'iffy', but I just want to know experiences of others.

They'll get you on the cheapest flights, convenience not being a factor.  Probably on flights that you would not book for yourself, but they'll be cheap.

56 minutes ago, nini said:

At least this will help those doing New England/ East Coast itineraries.

Sorry, could help but think of the hurricane challenges that they're facing right now ...

6 hours ago, MissP22 said:

The setup isn't worth anything considering most people sail with Princess Plus.

Priority boarding? 

Priority tendering?

We don't buy the Plus.  My DW doesn't drink, and she won't let me drink her share ... 🤣 So the setup will help along with the 750 ml that I bring on board.
We already get Priority Boarding, ahead of PES, so if we use our status, we have to board later.

Never had a problem with tendering except in Cabo San Lucas where they contract with local motorized row boat operators in addition to using their own lifeboat/tenders.  (Then there was the clown (Princess crew member) who thought he could put 300 people into a tender (that's what they're rated for evacuation purposes.)

3 hours ago, danny8826 said:

 

We will be on the Discovery Princess during Christmas.  It boards from San Pedro in the LA area, but we have a strange question to ask the community.  

While we are in LA, we wanted to buy some beef jerk.  We love a particular place that sell them down there and can't find them in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Are we allowed to bring these onboard with us?  We are buying them as gifts for relatives.  

 

Thank you,

Danny

Of course you can.  If it is locally made, as are many of the Asian style jerky it may be made is small quantities for local distribution.  There used to be places in San Francisco's Chinatown that did that, don't know if any are still around (anywhere in the City.)  Oddly enough, Costco (!), is starting to stock items from the SoCal Asian communities.

On 9/24/2022 at 5:37 PM, iriemon said:

We are on the Emerald Princess in Nov going through the Panama Canal. While on the cruise there are some calls that I have to make. I have the internet pkg and was wondering if I could use the WiFi calling to accomplish this. Has anyone used it?  Was the quality good?  Thanks

It will really depend upon your connection.  If your cell phone is capable of wi-fi calling, you may be able to use your phone as you normally would, and it will probably be better than using a third-party app (though I do find Google Voice handy as an alternative, and they have great foreign rates if you need to call outside of North America.)  Being close to the equator, you might get very good reception.

22 hours ago, Steelers36 said:

In fact WiFi was just an invented term to use as an easy marketing term for the IEEE 802.11b Direct Sequence standard.  The latter makes you think of a room full of white lab coats and pocket protectors.  The former sounds consumer friendly.

 

There are a lot of folks who get confused when I tell them I was involved with social media (for pay) many years before Al Gore invented the Internet.

7 hours ago, Thrak said:

 

 

Sorry, my bad. I missed a couple words in the original post. We are on the Emerald Princess in Nov going through the Panama Canal. A combination of poor eyesight (damn vision seems to vary from day to day) and an extremely small font.

It's the Princess Plus package ... 😂  Ti many martoonis ...😄

5 hours ago, CalgaryKevin said:

Hi everyone, 

I'm scheduled to travel on my first cruise ever in November, aboard the Sky Princess.  I am travelling with my brother and my parents (different room).  If I buy the 4-device internet package, can we each access it with one device, even though we're in two rooms?  Or does each phone know its room number because of the Medallion App?  Thanks in advance.

You can share the access with anyone you choose to.  We bought the 4 device package because it would cost us $10/Day either way, and we each connected two devices.

Wow, if this had been posted in one of the Facebook Princess group it would have been responded to by a bunch of naysayers parroting the Princess website about alcoholic beverage policies.

Also the same experience from a few threads on this site as well.

Indeed the responses have been more in line with actual experiences that others have found.

So ... I'll add mine.  Aside from the embarkation ports I have never had any one express any concern about liquids brought back on board unless they were blatantly brought back in a liquor store gift bag with the packaging prominently displayed.  Generally bottles (or cans) brought back in backpacks or carry-on luggage are not challenged at all.  On our second cruise many years ago, we had met someone for lunch in Shanghai (very elaborate lunch, I'm afraid I know how much the tab was (4 figures in USD.)  Our host ordered this bottle of rice whiskey (probably also very expensive) and he and I only consumed a little bit of it.  Long story short, he insisted that I take the remainder with us.  Fearing that the bottle might attract attention (remember this was only our second cruise,) I dumped the contents from a water bottle into a bowl and poured the clear liquid into the water bottle and put it in the bottle carrier of a backpack.  No one even blinked.  (took me forever to consume it though, give than it is around 130 proof and does not appeal to the Western palette.)

4 hours ago, triple7tahoe said:

On all of our Princess cruises (more than 100) we have taken a THERMOSTATICALLY controlled kettle. I think, if you read the fine print, the restriction of NON thermostatically controlled. That being said, we just took 5 Princess cruises out of Southampton and only the Island Princess did not provide a kettle in our stateroom. I am guessing that was because of a lack of 220 Volt outlets on the Island?

Understood, but Princess definitions are often left to the discretion of their crew members (including security) and English is not always their primary language.

8 hours ago, CCFC said:

Regal Princess cabin with kettle out of Southampton.

 

That looks a lot like a Black and Decker kettle that I had about 10 years ago.  I'm sure it would be confiscated if I tried to bring it on board myself.

13 minutes ago, The Mikado said:

Princesses’ own Covid page, which was updated September 6 of this year, doesn’t hold the same requirements. According to their page, we are good to go but this prohibition from going into our booking until we acknowledge that we are to be fully vaccinated is still problematic.

 

I am awaiting a callback (snicker). 

Might want to take a look at their updated page (Sept. 14)  Looks like cruises out of LA are requiring testing now.
https://www.princess.com/plan/cruise-with-confidence/cruise-health/vaccine-testing-requirements/

22 minutes ago, The Mikado said:

We just got our cabin assigned to us today and I went to the Princess website to perhaps view the cabin and I was confronted with the following announcement before I was allowed to continue into the Princess website: “Please be advised that guests five years and older on this voyage are required to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 and meet the following requirements…“

 

Since we are on the Discovery on October 1 out of Los Angeles for a seven day cruise up the coast of California, this announcement is somewhat puzzling.

Your cruise includes Ensenada, so the portion of that would be applicable would be "Voyages Departing from the United States, United Kingdom & Europe"

The message that you received would be consistent with the information on the web site.  Not sure what the rest of the message you received might entail.  According to the Princess guidelines, anyone over the age of 5 would require testing if they are not fully vaccinated.

43 minutes ago, rj59 said:

I used to be deterred by formal night, but now I see that a lot of men wear just a shirt and slacks, so I feel fine and not out of place.

I used to always bring a tux for formal night, but I started to feel out of place. So I switched to a suit, then to a blazer/dress shirt/tie/slacks, then I stopped wearing the tie, and on our next cruises I may just wear a dress shirt and jeans, or polo shirt with slacks, I'll probably bring a tie, but don't know if I'll wear it.  The only thing is that the tux was only being used for cruises; guess it will spend a lot of time in the closet.

The tap water on the ships is salt water, straight from the sea!  
That being said ... ships have desalination plants that convert salt water into potable drinking water (much the same as it does in Middle Eastern countries.)  The water that comes out of the tap from a cruise ship is probably as clean (maybe more so) than the water out of your tap at home.  While there will be some that will say they find tastes that do not suit their palettes, it is most likely cleaner than the bottled water that you pay for on the ship, or the stuff that gets delivered to your home or office.

4 hours ago, MsTabbyKats said:

For pizza, it's only MSC.  Being a native NYer I'm a pizza purist and MSC does it "just like the guy on the corner" did 73 years ago.

I didn't know that pizza purist were from New York ...

2 hours ago, janroatan said:

Thinking of closing out our cruise with breakfast in the Main Dinning room.

Could they supply a Bloody Mary that morning?

Probably less than convenient.  Might I suggest a canned cocktail (put into a non metal container) or proper mixings along with the critical ingredient in an all plastic 50ml container that might have been in your pocket as you entered the ship?  I probably indulge too much, but I can't say that I've ever been in favor of consuming essential spirits before I disembark (not to mention that I had vodka, but I do like to substitute gin.)  Alternatively, it might be even better to wait until you disembark and then patronize a proper spirits emporium where the cocktail can be properly mixed.

36 minutes ago, MsTabbyKats said:

It's only the Emerald for next fall.

Oh well, lots of time to do the research.

I greatly appreciate all tips and guidance.

 

Thanks!

From your preference for diversity, I think you will appreciate the wide variety of choices in the buffets on the Royal (only) class ships if they are properly staffed.  But don't dismiss the MDRs if you'd like a sit-down meal as well.  But no where on any Princess ship will you find a proper hot dog,. corned beef on rye, or pastrami on rye that you might find in the lower east side 😉.  And Alfredo's used to be more of a European pizzeria, but on our last visit they sliced the pizza (!).  The pizza place up on the deck with the hotdog/hamburger floor may have something more representative of a "slice" but it's not very good.

11 hours ago, latebloomer56 said:

True but as long as they serve their version of steak and kidney pie I would be happy. Hope to see this next month on the Sapphire.

That was notably absent on the Ruby.

7 hours ago, wowzz said:

As a Brit, can I just say that the Pub Lunch is nothing like a proper Pub Lunch !

As an American, I would have to agree with you.  Spent a lot of time in British pubs (probably too much,) and the Pub Lunch does not resemble anything I've seen in a real pub.  Not even the beers that are offered, and they can't even pour a true pint.