PR-Texas

Since you need the head of the bed elevated for health reasons, the inflatable wedge looks to me like the way to go. Reasonable price and it can be used for future trips without worrying whether the room steward can help. If you also purchase the mini pump which is smaller than a soda can you'd be set.  Seems a cheap price to pay for guaranteed comfort. 

I hate to see food go to waste. If I don't eat it, it goes in the trash. I remember reading somewhere that someone wished they could share so they could stretch their included casual meals to 4 visits instead of just 2, which would be nice on a 14 day cruise.

1 hour ago, suzyed said:

I wonder if they would let you buy one dinner and share it....nah, probably not!

I doubt it but we would really like that.  We often buy one dinner and share it when dining out... or order off the kids menu if allowed. Our last cruise was Disney with traditional type dining so the same waiters throughout the cruise. I told the waiters the first night that I wouldn't be "cleaning my plate". Has nothing to do with the quality of the food, just the quantity.

2 minutes ago, suzyed said:

LOL!  I guess we were unaware of breakfast in the MDR on port days since we never get up early enough to run to the dining room before it closes at 9 or 9:30 as the case may be.

That's me.  The only way I'll be up that early is if I need to be up and eat early to get to an excursion.  Oh well, I can sleep in on sea days.

I understand that this change will cause problems for some folks but my guess is that fewer than 1% of cruisers are interested in coming in either more than 5 days ahead or staying more than 5 days after. Possibly a larger percentage for those flying halfway round the world for their trip.  The change was probably implemented to simplify the booking process.

My take is that you do your research and go with what works best for you.  And on the BOGO, there's a possibility that the prices will go back down. Definitely worth watching especially if your cruise is in 2025 or 2026. See my post #20.  Since I've been monitoring they've gone up and down and up.

Unfortunately for our New Zealand cruise the independent operators that I've found might save us $30-$50 per excursion.  Since several excursions go a fair distance from the port and one is in a tendering port we've chosen to stick with Princess excursions.  Also when I compared the descriptions and reviews of the non-Princess excursions I couldn't find a compelling reason to choose them. Guess we'll find out if we made the right decision in November.

12 hours ago, paddingtonbear said:

Do you realise that the "20" is not the total amount of seats left? (well it might be at the very last minute). They start out at "20" then when they get to zero it goes back up to "20".  I don't know how many people on each excursion (it probably varies).  I think they use "20" to make people think they are going to miss out or to fool people into thinking it is a small group excursion?

 

I think they get away with things like this because people rarely go back and check prices.  You were very savvy to cancel and rebook. 

My understanding was that the excursion could have any number of folks but "20" was the number of seats left. Our "can't miss" excursion has fluctuated between 1 and 4 seats left since we booked a month ago.  It will be interesting to see what the numbers do as we get closer to final payment date on August 12. Doesn't really matter one way or the other to me. Pricing has played the roller coaster game going up and down. I'm expecting it to get higher as we get closer to actual sail date.

I was watching the excursions on our Australia New Zealand cruisetour in Nov to be sure I booked them before they sold out. I'm a bit of a spreadsheet nerd so I had the prices of the ones we wanted listed.  We booked 3 when they dropped below 20 tickets left.  Then I saw the prices of the other 3 go up so booked immediately before they went up more.  Out of curiosity I kept watching them and they went back down.  Immediately cancelled and rebooked and received a refund several days later.  Sometimes it pays to be nerdy.

Can't speak to now but I booked in January with a CVP and got a free upgrade from a BF to a BB midship.  I don't remember what the pricing was then so can't say whether I actually saved any money.  

You can search others on Amazon also.  The ones I found state which cruise lines they work for. That lets you choose the style and budget that works best for you. 

2 minutes ago, ratbin said:

Since my Mom picked the cruise, it seemed like a good idea! She can get around just fine. She is on a bowling league and walks and hangs laundry. Her OLDER sister golfs, does yoga, etc. We are a healthy long lived family.

Congrats on the health and enjoy the cruise.  If she picked the cruise and probably the activities in each port she knows what she can do.  The best thing to bring is a sense of humor.  Guaranteed that something will go wrong but probably something minor that you will laugh about years from now as you remember the wonderful time you spent with your family.

1 hour ago, CU64 said:

Why would you take your 90 yr old Mother on a port intensive cruise?

is she planning to get off with you all on a few days? On the days you are in port, she is alone on the ship, which might be fine with her as she has Family around for dinner.

It really depends on the 90 year old and what activities are planned for the port. Some 90 year olds are more active than some 60 year olds.  Some excursions you get off the ship and get on a bus for sightseeing without very much walking and only getting on and off the bus several times. I'm sure @ratbin has considered all the options before taking mom on the cruise.   Since they're from the US this may be the best way to see the British Isles.

It's fun to watch.  Sorry for the challenges it's causing some folks.  Really sounds to me like management made a decision without adequate discussion with IT to be sure the deadline could be met. That happens all the time and not just to Princess.  We won't be FP until early August so not a worry for us until then.

Princess does offer Military OBC if the military person "qualifies".  Definitely active duty and retired.  My DH is a veteran who served during the Vietnam time frame and he qualified.  The OBC varies depending on the length of the cruise.  It's $250 for a 14 day or longer cruise.

We'll definitely get plastic luggage tag holders especially since we're doing a CruiseTour.  Our luggage will be handled multiple times by bus and airline folks during the land portion of the trip and then by various folks to get to our cabin on the ship.

The main benefit to us is Pay it and Forget it.  We drink very few alcoholic beverages so crew appreciation, wifi, sodas, water, coffee and mocktails are the primary things we would spend on without the package.  We chose to have the Plus package included in our fare and I won't be checking to see if we get our money's worth.  Like I said, Pay it and Forget it.

When the account is fixed is when you say thank you very much and hang up.

If you go to Princess.com (no login needed) and click on Booked Guests.  Then click the link "Access Cruise Personalizer".  When it opens, enter your name, birthdate and booking number and click "manage booking".  Then you can do everything you need from your desktop.  I save a link to the login on my favorites since it will time out after about 10-15 minutes and you have to enter name, BD and booking number again.  I love my phone but the monitor and keyboard on my desktop is easier to use.  I haven't cruised Princess before but I've read that on the ship you can call the dine line to make reservations is you haven't done it before hand.

Starting tomorrow you can make them in the Cruise Personalizer.  I prefer doing everything on a desktop until I'm actually on the ship.

We're currently planning on doing walk in dining rather than reservations.  I'm thinking that depending on how hungry we are we'll just ask what's the quickest way to get us seated.  If it's a 2 top, that's fine. If it's a shared table that's also fine. We can always change our minds part way through the cruise if what we're doing doesn't work out or decide to eat in the buffet.

FYI, "I don't choose to answer that." is a good response to inappropriate questions.  None of your business works for really aggravating folks.

We booked Qantas using EZAir because of the shorter travel time and just less hassle even though it got us home later. Since we booked Qantas has changed the departure time on the SYD to DFW flight from 4:50pm to 11:50am so now we'll actually get home earlier than the previous Delta flight.  To make it even better earlier this week I was checking something and noticed that the cost of the fare on Qantas through EZAir had dropped so I re-fared the booking.  It still costs more than the Delta flight but worth the difference.

The challenge is the number of folks trying to make reservations at the same time. It may not be an enormous problem since most folks can't make reservations until fully paid but there are still a lot of folks who are going to want to make reservations.  I wouldn't be surprised to find the system really slow on June 17 and maybe for a couple of days after.

1 hour ago, Chiliburn said:

I found a nice video for you.

Thanks for the video.  Decisions, decisions. We still have almost 5 months before we're in Sydney so we have plenty of time to decide. 

It will go faster for those folks sailing in September and October if the people sailing in 2025 and 2026 wait several days to make their reservations. Unfortunately I doubt this will happen.  I will probably be REALLY slow because too many folks are trying to use the system at the same time since I think it applies across the fleet with a couple of exceptions.