pompeii

58 minutes ago, KillerSnake said:

Right now, my On-Line Web account shows Military as Refundable. It stays the same when I print out the Cruise documents.

 

If they changed the rules - OK. It is free money after all. Just wondering with all the nickel and diming going on across all businesses lately.

It shows as refundable on your account on the Princess website?  My husband also gets military obc and his is clearly marked nonrefundable for both of our upcoming cruises.  IIRC, it changed from refundable to nonrefundable last fall.    It also states this in the FAQ about the military benefit.  But to answer your original question, in our experience, nonrefundable is used first. 

Check out Trip Advisor.  Search your port and then things to do, then under experiences there should be tabs for day trips, walking tours, shore excursions, private tours, etc.

You can also read the ports of call section here on cruise critic for your specific ports.  You should find threads with independent tour suggestions there as well.  

International Friends offers this as well and the drop off at LHR is 1:30-2:00pm.  We did their Stonehenge, Salisbury, and Windsor tour a few years ago but got dropped off at our London hotel since we were staying for a few days.  Everything went off without a hitch and we enjoyed the tour.  We're using them again in August from Southampton to London via the Cotswolds and flying out the next morning.  Southampton to London & Heathrow via Stonehenge | International Friends

If you are Platinum or Elite and the app doesn't show the 50% discount up front, then your app has your loyalty level wrong.  You need to contact the IT department to have them fix it.  It is not a requirement that you pay full price before boarding and wait for the discount in obc once on board.  It should look like this:  

2 hours ago, ldubs said:

I get that many people don't like these motion activated night lights. Of course they are a safety and loss control item.   But being blinded Im not sure I get.  If there is no night light, would not the bathroom light blind you too.       

I have a little nightlight that I plug into the bathroom outlet.  Gives off enough light to be safe without being blinded.

We always put blue painters tape over ours, but if it's driving you crazy and you find yourself without any tape, someone mentioned that their steward took a little wad of tissue paper and dampened it with water, then stuck it over the sensor.  

We're doing the same s2s in July out of Southampton as Mike above.  However, we had no problem booking dining reservations on the app for each leg.  On turnaround day, our dining reservations change from 6pm in the Provence dining room for the first 21 days to 5:40 in the Concerto for the remainder.  

4 hours ago, rustysunshine said:

It is! We've sailed on Royal Princess and Regal Princess within the last nine months, and they have Lavazza coffee on both ships ☕

I'm glad it's on the Royal now.  We were on her from September - November last fall (2023) and they still had the old coffee and coffee machines in the buffet.  And they were broken most of the time.  We went through a lot of Starbucks Via!

My husband and I will be disembarking from the Island Princess on July 26 at Southampton's Mayflower terminal and boarding the Regal that same day at the Ocean terminal.  How easy is it to get from one terminal to the other?  I assume walking won't be possible and I don't count on the cruise line to offer any type of assistance or transfer, so will a cab driver be willing to take us that short distance from one terminal to the other?  Obviously, we'll have our luggage.  Or is there some type of port transportation between terminals?

On 2/2/2024 at 6:54 AM, MissP22 said:

Those complimentary tokens may have stopped. 

I always assumed they were given out to relieve some of the load on the laundry room.

We got free tokens no problem from guest services on the Sapphire last month for when we wanted to do a load or two ourselves.  Elite laundry service was also pretty quick, next day or 2 days max.  

54 minutes ago, hoopslover said:

There were 4 of us traveling together.  I asked on our roll call and got 2 other couples to join us so we had 8

What I don't like is that it's not just the number of people signed up, it's that they don't know if they'll have a guide.  So there can be plenty of people interested but they'll still not run the tour, or they'll cancel it.  Just seems kind of iffy and unreliable to me.  

On 2/15/2024 at 5:11 PM, Dolly2 said:

We will be on the Norwegian Getaway 9 night Europe- Northern Capitals May 12 2024. 

 Ship Excursions for the La Havre----- D-Day Landing Beaches May 14 2024 SOLD OUT!!!

Any ideas?

Here's another option for you.  I have never used this operator and cannot vouch for them, but I am considering it for our date in August.

Normandy D-Day Beaches Shore Excursion from Le Havre Cruise Port (vexperio.com)

On 2/15/2024 at 6:13 PM, hoopslover said:

We used Overlord Tours.  Best excursion ever!

On 2/16/2024 at 10:20 AM, John Bull said:

 

- Overlord will almost certainly be fully-booked - they book out early - but worth an e-mail.

 

Lots of options, none as easy as booking a ship's or Overlord tour but worth the effort.

 

Good luck

 

JB 🙂

  

Regarding Overlord, I'm trying to book it from Le Havre for our stop on the Regal Princess in August, but they won't commit to running the tour.  The email communication I've received is vague and says

"I have added you to the wait list and we will let you know if we can open the tour.

Again:

We open group tours depending on demand.

Please note this offers no guarantees and is demand dependent.  We need a minimum of 8 people to open the tour but it also depends on how many and which guides we have available as to whether we can open the tour."

For those who have used Overlord, did you run into this?  I know from our roll call that at least one other couple is on their waitlist.  It makes it very hard to plan if they don't even know if they'll have a guide for Normandy that day.  It seems very odd to me for a tour operator that specializes in Normandy tours.

Yes, there have been numerous reports of these calls. Enough so that when we got one, I interrupted right off the bat by saying if he was calling about the $7000 package, we weren’t interested. He said thanks and hung up.  It’s a legit call but nothing we’d buy. 

Maybe it's triggered when your remaining balance is below the cost of Princess Vacation Protection on the booking?

I just paid for the majority of my July cruise with AARP gift cards, leaving a balance of $347.  The final payment date isn't until April, but I just received a "shortfall notice" from Princess stating the balance due.  Does Princess automatically send these out if you have a small balance left, even if you're not near the final payment date?  I'll pay it when I can purchase another card next month.

When I read further down in the notice, it says "THE FINAL PAYMENT RECEIVED WAS INSUFFICIENT TO COVER THE PRINCESS VACATION PROTECTION/PLATINUM VACATION PROTECTION FEE. THE PRINCESS VACATION PROTECTION/PLATINUM VACATION PROTECTION HAS BEEN REMOVED FROM THE BOOKING."  I looked at the booking and the insurance is still on there.  

Does anybody have experience with this?  I'm not going to bother calling since the call center doesn't know how to do much except try to upsell to one of the packages.  I'll email my pvp but they don't work on the weekends, so I wondered if I could get any answers here in the meantime.

7 minutes ago, PacnGoNow said:

That might have been why the CC wouldn’t work.  They were updating the pricing.  
😳

Yep, that’s my thought 

A couple of days ago my personalizer on the princess website would not accept a credit card payment. Tried several different cards, it just wouldn’t process it. Turns out a lot of people were having the same issue. The problem resolved itself overnight but my excursion went up by $40 during that time. Very frustrating. 

26 minutes ago, Rick&Jeannie said:

You're fighting a losing battle, my friend!  It's like all cellophane tape is "Scotch Tape"! 😄

 

Kleenex

Band-Aid

Sharpie

Crock-Pot

Shop-Vac

Q-Tips

 

All of the above names are commonly misused!

 

And above all, turns out browsers and search engines didn’t have anything to do with it 

9 minutes ago, rocklinmom said:

Looks like the shore excursions payment screen is fixed as well. I don't think I'm going to mess with it. 

Just curious...did the excursion you were looking at increase in price?  One that I was watching went up by $40 yesterday from the day before, and on fb some people are complaining that their excursions went up during the time they were unable to pay.  Kinda wondering if the credit card "pause" and rising excursion costs are related...?

Looks like Princess got the message.  It worked this morning and I was able to pay for my bottled water myself in the personalizer.  

42 minutes ago, Thrak said:

 

Google, Yahoo, and DuckDuckGo are not browsers. They are search engines. Safari is a browser. Firefox is a browser. Chrome is a browser. If you are using Safari every time you are only using one browser. Clear the cache and cookies on your browser. Try a different browser.

I’ve tried Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and Safari.  Judging from other’s comments, I think the problem might just be with Princess. 

17 minutes ago, EDDY0827 said:

Call Princess and order your water directly from them and use your card (verbally).

Make them figure it out, it is their problem.

Yes, that would purchase the water but would let them off the hook by not solving the actual issue. That’s why I escalated it…to make them figure it out. 
 

My question isn’t how to pay for the water, I know I can call in and do that. It’s if others have had or are having credit card problems on the personalizer and if you were able to resolve them. 
 

5 minutes ago, AtlantaCruiser72 said:

I've had consistent issues with payments on both the Princess and HAL sites for over a year when trying to process payment and using the Chrome browser on my PC.  Switching to Safari on my iPad works every time.  If your smart phone is an android and pc is using chrome try a different browser on your pc maybe

I'm using an iphone with safari and have tried Google, Yahoo, and DuckDuckGo as my browsers.  They all do the same thing.  I also logged into my husband's app and tried to pay through it.  I haven't tried using PayPal instead of a credit card mainly because I want to get the credit card glitch fixed.  Our cruise isn't until July so I can be patient.  

2 minutes ago, cruisepest said:

We had the same problem that I could not get the card to be recognized when I tried to book specialty dinning. This is the second time it has happened to us. It was only my wife's card that would work. You could try having your husband try to bottled water. I think that only the person who is on file as the prime card holder can book using the app. 

Thanks.  We've tried logged into my account with my cc number and logged into my husband's account with his cc number.  Nada.  We haven't tried with him logged into the app, but the app takes you back to the personalizer for the bottled water so I don't think that will work either.