Dreamscaper

I don't know about other bookings, but our booking (made at the beginning of May) requires final payment 90 days before we sail.

I think it really depends on what you want them to hold. If you're like @Gwendy and just need them to hold up paper, any cheap magnet will do. Others like to take ones with hooks to they can hang their lanyards or other items. If you want something that will hang a heavier item like a coat, then you'd want a heavier duty one. Some on Amazon promise to hold 25 or even 100 lbs, but check the reviews as I've read the weight ratings are a bit deceitful (but I can't imagine bringing anything with me that would require that level of hold!)

As the ships fill, prices go up. I have no experience with your particular sailing, but for example, the one I'm booked on has gone from $2,314.65 per person when we booked on May 6th, to $3,401.65 per person (double occupancy, Canadian dollars) if we booked a similar stateroom today. If you got a hot deal, it's likely your ship filled up quickly with others taking advantage of the same sale, and that drives the prices up.

Curious if you ever heard back from him. No biggie, just curious :)

Thank you. I wasn't sure if that would be frowned upon or not :)

I'd love to replicate TD, as I do love the idea of having the same waitstaff who can get to know us (and vice versa), but I can also see the value of having some flexibility if we wanted a different time (perhaps there's a show we want to catch or had a really late lunch or something) or to try the buffet or specialty dining here or there. We're also traveling with sister in law and her friend so they may want to join us some nights but not others. So I guess we'll have to just go with anytime dining, as much as I would love the same waitstaff on those days we do hit the dining room!

Laughs! Good times indeed!

We'll be purchasing these for our trip at the end of October (from Amazon Canada, but I'm sure the US site has the same or similar): https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B0BFQXCZPG/ref=ox_sc_saved_title_3?smid=A8T9XFQE6JC65&psc=1

We were on the Joy (Caribbean) and the Jewel (Alaska). We enjoyed them quite a bit, but have no other cruise lines to compare them with. Hubby had never cruised before those two, and my only other sailing was with Carnival as an 18 year old many, many moons ago with a girlfriend, so it was a super party cruise for us! Vancouver is expensive, but lovely and worth it for us :) I expect to hit all the bars on board, looking forward to finding out which one we favour most!

See you aboard! This will be our first cruise in five years as well (although we were previously with Norwegian). And yes, it does look like it's going to be pretty much full. I'm a bit concerned about crowds for everything, but hey, I'll take it over sitting at home in our living room!

Thank you so much for this! I will definitely be using it!

Oh I think I misunderstood - you meant to see if I could tell what the current differences in prices would be between the current BB and BD areas? From what I can tell, it would be a difference of about $128 if we were to move to an upper deck. Not a lot of money, but from my phone conversations thus far, they wouldn't merely charge us the difference in the category, but would have to cancel our current low rate and then rebook us at today's higher rate. Apologies if this isn't what you meant and I'm still misunderstanding. This last guy has made it clear that he's done everything he can for me and suggested that he could put me through to client services again to see if anything further could be done, so I'm on my own now. Thank you and I'll be interested in seeing what your PVP has to say!

Looking at our cruise, a new booking would now cost us $6,803.30 (Canadian) for a mid ship upper deck (mid deck isn't an option) - but for the guarantee, not a specific cabin. A mid-forward cabin on deck 11 would be the same price as above, but I could book a specific cabin there. Our original booking price was $4,629.30 - for mid ship, mid deck, so unfortunately canceling and rebooking isn't an option either. I will probably end up writing to Princess to let them know what happened. But my stress levels have been through the roof the past couple of weeks so I'm taking a bit of a step back for at least a few days. And in follow up to your 2nd post (I don't know how to quote both here) I will probably ask client services if we could be moved into the BB category at our current rate, but given the "solutions" I've been offered up to the resolution reached yesterday and how much fuss he made over how hard he had to work to get it for us, I don't expect them to move us without charging us "today's booking rate" like they were trying to do previously :(

It's not that easy for us to just say "oh well, cancel it". We are traveling with a family member and her girlfriend and there was very little available in the window of time we all had available. We also have flights and hotel booked, the friend has booked her holiday time off, etc. We have been reverted back to the aft cabin, category BD when we had booked a "guaranteed" BA, and price adjusted back down again. But it took six hours on the phone to get that - up until yesterday they had us booked into an upgraded room and billed us an extra $1,100. I absolutely agree there should be some form of OBC or other compensation offered. There is none. Again, live and learn, I fully expected a guarantee to be a guarantee (with the possibility they'd move us to comparable or better if they couldn't honour the guaranteed BA, not put us down to a BD without even lowering our price or offering any compensation). Why they moved us down to a BD from a paid for BA is yet another question - I see there are still BB categories available.

So if I book into a penthouse suite and pay for it, they can turn around and say "oh, we have none available, here's an inside cabin instead, but thanks for all that extra money"? An extreme example (our downgrade wasn't that extreme of course), but hey, it's based on availability, right? There's also fine print that says "Actual stateroom may not be furnished as shown". I would still expect a proper bed despite that fine print. They have the technology to only book the same number of staterooms for each category that they have in stock. If there is an overbooking by one or two before the system catches up, then bump the oversold bookings a level higher, not two levels lower. Right now I can't make a new booking for a BA because their inventory systems knows that there are none available.

thanks for the heads up. I only tested out the "Gray Noise" overnight, so perhaps the loop on that isn't as obvious. The app does claim to have 50+ "perfectly looped" sounds, but I'd have to listen for longer to see how true that is. I have an old iphone and it didn't get hot running the app, but I know some apps can do that. I'm guessing that the 'Lectro Fan does a much better job though, so I might just look into it - thanks!

We booked on May 6th, and we were assigned a stateroom around the 24th or 25th (unfortunately it was assigned in the wrong section, but that's a whole other (very long) thread). My sister in law (who made the bookings for us at the same time as hers), got assigned to the correct spot around the same date. Our sailing date is October 24, 2023.

They sent me no notice, I just happened to notice they booked me into the lower category spot in my Manage My Cruise section. That's not a Notice. And the reality is I have a Booking Confirmation with a Guar / BA and it does not state they can move me "anywhere on the ship" other than within that CDC language on my own confirmation. But I don't see any point in continuing the "argument" on this point.

Interesting you left off the first half of the first sentence in the fine print you quote. The full print says: "Due to operational guidelines from the US Centers for Disease Control, Princess may be required to change the location of your stateroom. In the event your stateroom is moved you will receive a Cabin Change Notice. Stateroom locations are based on availability." This was not a change due to a US Centers for Disease Control situation. Also, I received no Cabin Change Notice. I'm not sure why you're defending them to the point of twisting the quoted fine print, but I've seen there are many people here who swing widely to Princess defenders and Princess haters, no matter what happens. I think I've been entirely reasonable with my expectations.

I did not see anywhere that says that a Guar / BA is not guaranteed to be a BA. When booking they say that they can put you in the guaranteed category or comparable - two categories lower is NOT a comparable location. Why pay EXTRA to book guaranteed BA if you're not going to get it?

There is a Box Fan on the app I posted about... the apps might not work as well as the actual real item, but they're worth a listen to see :)

I downloaded a free app called White Noise Lite. It has a ton of sounds to chose from, including about six different colour noises as well. I tried out Gray Noise the other night and it worked well throughout the night with the alarm timer set to keep it in the foreground.

Update: I finally managed to reach Daniel and he got us back into the originally assigned stateroom in the aft at the original booking price for the aft category. So we did not get our guaranteed BA, but we are no longer being charged an extra $1,100 for that mini suite either. Our invoice price *has* gone down from the original booking price by $258 (note this is all in Canadian dollars, not American), which I imagine is the price difference in the categories at the time we originally booked. There is NO offer of any compensation for all this time, stress, and breaking of our original contract - you'd think they'd give us some OBC or a specialty dining credit or *something* - it would cost them very little and show us that they actually cared about what they've put us through LOL. Instead he made it sound like he was doing us this huge favour, telling us how much work he put into getting us to this point. He also repeated what Edwina had claimed, that this guaranteed location was not an actual guarantee. I pointed out that it said Guar / BA on our booking contract, and he was kind of "oh" . I'm not sure if that meant he realized he was mistaken, or if it was just an "oh well". This might be a question I put to Princess via Twitter as I think it's a very important thing to know for anyone paying extra for those guaranteed categories if they won't honour them. He said his hands were tied from here and offered to put me through to customer service again if I wished. I'm taking a breather, not sure if it's worth any further stress over this anymore. While I'm glad we're no longer stuck with that extra charge, I am disappointed in how this has all gone down, and I'm sure I'll be writing to corporate at some point to let them know what Princess has put me through.

We've been unable to select a specific stateroom on our booking, and booked a "guaranteed". They then put us in a category a level *below* their guarantee (probably a couple of levels, they took us from mid ship to aft). Trying to get it fixed turned it into an even bigger mess (there's a lengthy thread about my ongoing saga on these boards). From what I've read, TAs seem to have better luck booking specific staterooms. Live and learn, we're novices with Princess.

There wasn't an option to book a specific cabin - just the guaranteed "Princess will assign your stateroom prior to sailing. Selecting this option will guarantee a stateroom assignment in this location or a comparable location prior to sailing". We fully trusted the stated promise that we would receive a cabin in our booking contract category (or comparable - a downgrade is not "comparable" in my book. They even use the word GUARANTEE in their wording. I'm not fussy about a *specific* stateroom, I just wanted to be in that general mid ship area where we booked (and paid for). I don't know why sometimes you can select a specific stateroom and sometimes you can only select a category when you book, but we relied on that.. well... guarantee!