PescadoAmarillo

We definitely have similar cruising styles. But I will make a point of visiting Alfredos next cruise fire lunch on a port day and will take note of the changes. They say the opposite of love isn’t hate; it’s apathy. I think I can safely say I’m in that stage of my relationship with Princess. Each vacation decision is measured on its own merits. These changes are just another criterion, as were OBC and milestone losses.

Yeah, I read something about it, and thank you for spelling it out for me. I’m sure it’s hot news here on CC but I’ve heard nothing about it on the ship and am not going to be researching it. We have Princess Plus, so I’m not sure I’ll even notice a difference. Here’s the thing…we will probably never cruise for long periods again. I can’t imagine paying for a Plus or Premium package for 120 or 150 nights. I’m a day and a half into this “drinking thing” and I’m already burning out, but then I can go weeks at home without touching an alcoholic beverage. As for dining, we are traditional cruisers. Give us a good table in the dining room and we’ll eat every meal we can in there. The buffet on port days rounds it out. Alfredo’s is nice but before we had it, we didn’t miss it. We never order room service. We don’t order snacks in the cabin. I like my coffee hot and room service coffee has never passed muster. I’ve used Ocean Now food delivery perhaps four times, and all but one of them were when I was limited to dining in our cabin. I don’t even know what the new dining venues on the new ships are and don’t particularly care. I have zero FOMO. So, if we did ever cruise for more than a couple of weeks, the Standard pricing is fine. And if we cruise for just a couple of weeks, we’ll always get Plus.

I will post it today. We haven’t yet done it ourselves but intend to try when we disembark the ship.

He enjoyed meeting you and your wife on the Ruby! I think he was surprised when he told me he had and I was quite excited about it. “Thrak? You met Thrak?” 😉 I’m lucky in that he never guilted me into cruising when I didn’t want to. He knew I would cruise when/if I was ready and when I made the decision to cruise, I would decide to enjoy it. And I never made him feel guilty for wanting to get away from winter. Ours was a military marriage. Separations have been part of life.

Thank you!

Thank you! Thanks!

We’re in Vancouver and are boarding the Sapphire Princess today for a two week cruise to Alaska. I’m not doing a Live From as I’m not certain about onboard WiFi speeds, but I am blogging about our trip at http://pescadoamarillo.blogspot.com/2023/07/an-anniversary-cruise-to-alaska.html

You do brief very well! Thanks for bringing us along.

I do enjoy HAL, and they’re ships are allowed to enter Glacier Bay National Park, which is a plus, but their destination program pales in comparison to Princess’s. Sapphire vs. Coral is kind of a toss up for me, but I like the aft buffets a little more than the forward ones, and Skywalkers is great for scenic cruising.

Yeah, I guess I don’t know how to be all over them. When this happened last time, the original cabin was available for one of the two cruises we had been moved. When I chatted with Princess, they had me on hold (on chat!) for over an hour, and in that time, the original cabin disappeared.

This doesn’t always work. We’ve especially had trouble when booking a series of B2B cruises. We’ll book cabins in an area that we’re happy with, usually in a favorite location that will make moving between them on turnaround days easy. They are all marked No Upgrade. Princess’s computer sees that we could get a same cabin for two of the cruises in a row, in an area we don’t like, also making moves to and from that area on turnaround day hard. They move us to that cabin for 2 cruises (theoretically an upgrade only because it’s a lower deck). We haven’t been able to get our original cabins (which we paid extra to choose) back.

This. And with each new class of ship the issue gets worse. At one point, Princess actually had a second, different guest entertainer (not karaoke) show running more or less concurrently in another venue, such as The Explorers Lounge, so if you couldn’t get a seat for the Princess Theater show, there was another good option. I haven’t seen that for years.

Next week in Alaska!

Those groups turn out to be a lot of fun (I’ve been told), very fluid and friendly. On some cruises, the manager of the dining room used for breakfast and lunch can be asked to have an 8 person table available as a singles table, and people can come and go as they wish and if they wish. Attendance at the singles table at dinner tends to be more stable. @Sheila127, the really nice part about Australia and New Zealand ports is that the ship typically doesn’t dock in a freight area. You can walk right off the ship and find lots of excursion offerings in the pier area. And the ports, in general, are very safe, so you could be comfortable just a seeing around on your own, too.

interesting article about Starlink in the latest Travel Age West. https://www.travelagewest.com/Travel/Cruise/wifi-on-cruise-ships

Yes, HAL does disappoint with their combination cruise director/destination specialist. And their cruise directors are pretty (very) sedate. It’s hard to fully grasp what an impact that has on a cruise until you experience it. But I love their musical entertainment options.

True, and this is the only reason we did our long cruises on Princess. I was willing to do hand laundry every single night on the Norwegian Spirit for 12 days, but 120 days of that would have gotten old. Some of the older HAL ships had them and I believe that Azamara might have kept them in their R-class ships (like the Pacific Princess), but they certainly don’t exist on most cruise ships.

I don’t think you can go wrong with either choice. We are frequent Princess cruisers who also have about 75 days on HAL. I love HAL for the size of their ships, the tiny sofas in even their inside cabins and their food choices, but I also love their classical music entertainment. Princess has more activities, and with a lot of sea days, you might appreciate that. And, of course, the biggest Princess selling point in my mind: self serve passenger laundries.

That’s exactly what we”ll do, but it was easier when the Maitre d’ had a scheduled time on embarkation day to discuss dining options.

Yes, but….without DMW reservations, you’ll be waiting in a line to be seated at dinner every night. Heck, even with DMW reservations you might be waiting in a line every night…or the reservations might be changed…or disappear altogether.

The return address on the envelope used to be Bottom Line Technologies, but I had read here recently that Princess was making it a little more obvious that it was not junk mail by having “Princess” somewhere on the envelope. @Toledosfinest, love your user name. I was born and raised in Toledo and my family is all still there. In fact, my mom is in the Monclova/Holland area.

Honestly, and not to make light of your concern, I wish that an incorrect countdown clock was my biggest app issue. I couldn’t input any personal information for n upcoming cruise, and in attempting to get it fixed, ended with with someone in the Philippines trying to sell me chocolate covered strawberries.

Hi @chamima, hope you are well. My only experience with this is sitting next to a young couple for a ten night cruise, and they had a sealed dinner delivered every night. I can’t say it looked better than our food in the main dining room, but this was at least ten years ago and we all know Princess standards have slipped a bit… We didn’t see it but they said they were served kosher meals for breakfast and lunch also. We learned a lot from them that cruise, especially with the standing up and praying and sitting down, then standing again. I suspect that’s how a Catholic Mass looks to non-Catholics. 😉

The ship will not dock, but may offer an overland excursion (overnight) and passengers booking that will disembark onto a Fiordland boat and be taken ashore. It depends on the itinerary. You cruise into three sets of sounds: Milford (turnaround and come out the same way), Doubtful/Thompson and Breaksea/Dusky. If you’re very lucky you’ll get into all three, but we’ve also missed all three too, due to weather. Lots of photos here: http://pescadoamarillo.blogspot.com/search/label/Fiordland National Park

This was pre-RealID, so I had my drivers license and birth certificate, which were not enough as the last names didn’t match. The marriage certificate tied them together. If I had not been so happy to lose my maiden name (NEVER spelled or pronounced correctly), I definitely would have just kept it which would have made some things much easier (like double CCL OBC for our cabin in the past, not any longer).