TwoCruisers

Just ordered water for my upcoming cruise, which is 8 months away. At least the price for the bottled water package came back down, and I'm locked into the lower price.

I love Princess also, but there is one thing that I don’t love about Princess. The inside rooms, the ocean view rooms and the normal balcony rooms don’t have comfortable seating in the room. On all of my cruises on Celebrity and Royal Caribbean there was a small couch in each room. The Princess ships usually have one chair for the desk. This is not comfortable for relaxing or watching the television. Please don’t tell me I should book a deluxe balcony or something higher to get my comfortable seating. There should be comfortable seating in each and every room.

I have the Delta Credit card which gives me the same perks that yours has. When signing up for EZ Air you enter your frequent flier number and it is connected to your credit card. You get the benefits that you mentioned.

I just got notification from the airline of a flight change for our flight home.

 

Our flight is leaving at 11:20 am instead of 12:20 pm. Princess has EZAir as earliest 12 pm departure so our original flight was perfect.

 

I just checked my EZAir reservation and it still shows old time. Went to airline website which shows new time of course.

 

Will EZAir ticket this? Does anyone have an opinion on whether or not we'll make our flight? We dock at 7 am at White Bay. (Also posted this on OZ/NZ section.)

 

Ugh! Just when I thought all work for this cruise was done.

 

 

Edited: Just went to my booking to check on alternative flights through EZAir and got this message

• The flight itinerary you are trying to retrieve is not available because of a schedule change. Your flights will be updated shortly or you may search for new flights.
  

What makes this extremely upsetting is that we had a GREAT fare and current fares on the same itinerary are now DOUBLE!!

 

Hoping Princess will just update and keep the res for us.

I am unaware of flight time restrictions for EZ Air. I know there are flight time restrictions for EZ Check where your bags are sent straight through to your destination airport. Are there really restrictions for EZ Air?

Several years ago when we were looking for our luggage in the warehouse we only found one of two bags. We looked everywhere and even got a Princess Representative to help us. When the warehouse was emptied out our bag was still missing. We were just about ready to fill out a missing bag report when someone returned with our missing bag. They had mistakenly taken it thinking it was theirs. They didn’t realize their mistake until it was being placed into the luggage compartment of a bus. Our bag had brightly colored ribbons on the handle. How can anyone take a bag without checking to see if it is theirs?:(

Your onboard statement you can print from the kiosk clearly shows how much OBC is refundable and how much is nonrefundable.

I just returned from a cruise on the Caribbean Princess. We had our M&G in Skywalkers. I love Skywalkers.

Just returned from a 14 day Caribbean cruise..coffee card had the cruise date and ship code on back..no expiration date.

Had to show the back of the card to get brewed coffee and iced brewed coffee. Punches for specialty coffee from old cards were accepted.

I was on the same cruise as BRANDEE and experienced the same thing. They accepted my old Coffee cards and punched them for fancy coffees and the new cards I received for my mini bar exchange did not have expiration dates.

You could also sit with your friends for the 15 minutes, or so, and board with them. I'm guessing that for a California Coastal Cruise your departure will be from either San Francisco or San Pedro. The check-in/boarding procedure at either of these two is, typically, quite efficient. Now that I've said that, I;m recalling that I took a similar cruise out of San Pedro a few years ago. There were four cruise ships in port, that day--two Princess, one NCL and a Royal Caribbean. That was incredibly unusual. As a result, the check-in/boarding was quite lengthy--hours. I don't think Elite status would have helped, that day.

Exactly, that is what we planned to do on our upcoming cruise a week from now. I’m not going to rush onto the ship and leave my friends behind. We will sit and wait with them.

Several years ago, when I used to sail on Celebrity, there was a similar problem with one of their ships. It was a major repair and had to have a large hole cut into the hull of the ship to replace a bus sized object. I don’t remember if it was a gas turbine engine or diesel engine.

I think I know this already' date=' but I'm going to ask. Can the form and supporting documentation be sent by e-mail or must it be by fax?

 

I have it all in a digital file--easy to e-mail, harder to print out and then fax.[/quote']

You can FAX it or send it by snail mail through the post office. They don’t accept e-mail.

Hey Thrak - since Scottrade just switched over to TD Ameritrade on Monday you need to go in and set up dividend reinvestment. New company will buy .001 fractional shares but you have to enroll in it.

Thank you for the tip! :D

I hadn’t thought about that. I just went online and set it up. (y)

If Princessis still handing out cards with an expiration date of Dec 31, that will impact me. I am going on a cruise in three weeks and another just before Christmas. I was planning on exchanging my minibar for two coffee cards. We won’t finish the cards punches on the first cruise and were planning on using them on the second cruise. The second cruise ends on January 5th of the following year.This negates the last four full days of the second cruise. Is Princess so lazy that they can’t mark the cards for a full year from the purchase date? Have they pre-marked a whole batch of cards to hand out over several months? I hope a Princess Representative is reading these boards. My message to Princess is that I am not pleased with their changing rules.

Thank you everyone! This has been a treasure trove of purchasing experience. With so many positive comments about Citizen Eco-Drive watches, we will definitely look for those on the ship. :D

Thank you all for such great information. It sounds like we should buy my wife a watch on the cruise. Also, there seemed to be indications of sale pricing on the first day. We will check out the Citizen Eco-Drive watches before the cruise to have something to compare to the on board watches.

I purchased a Philip Stein watch on Coral Princess. I had been eyeing it for several months and knew what it cost from the manufacturer and other online sources. It was considerably cheaper onboard so I bought it the first evening. And incidentally, I own a ton of EFFY jewelry, most bought in EFFY stores, a few pieces from dept. stores, and a couple of rings purchased last cruise on Carnival. I have never had any problems with anything. First purchase was in Grand Turk in 2010. EM

Yes. I bought a Citizen Eco-Drive drive watch on board a Princess ship about three years ago. The price was slightly lower than the same watch from Amazon - I checked Amazon's prices before the cruise. So I saved a few bucks, and saved the state tax I would have had to pay also. The watch has performed as advertised - no issues.

 

And yes, I had a lot of non-refundable OBC to use up, so it worked out well for me.

Thank you for your input!

Exactly! Almost all of the OBC is non-refundable. I also have pre-paid gratuities from the sales promotion. We don’t drink so that won’t deplete the money. After a couple of excursions and a couple of specialty dinners I’ll still have loads of OBC remaining.

So, I still have the question, does anyone have experience purchasing a watch on a Princess ship?

I have read horror stories about Effy jewelry purchased on Princess ships. Now I’m wondering about the quality of watches sold on the ships. Does anyone have experience with purchasing a watch while on a Princess ship? On my upcoming cruise I have a large amount of OBC and I thought that my wife may be interested in getting a new watch.

Same ownership, but different business practices.

 

Chevrolet and Cadillac are both owned by General Motors. How similar are their offerings?

It does seem like Princess is different from the other Carnival Corporation companies, but I have a comment about your General Motors analogy.

Several years ago, when they were still producing Pontiac and Oldsmobile cars, I purchased a new Oldsmobile. A short time later I found out that my car had a Pontiac engine in it. I also heard of a person who purchased a new Cadillac and was livid when they found out that their new Cadillac had a Chevrolet engine in it. General Motors did a lot of part swapping. I don’t know if this still goes on.

I'm sorry for your husband's condition but hope his health will improve.

 

As for Princess, I am not sure they will do anything because of the lack of insurance. HOWEVER, have you ever heard of Christopher Elliott? I read his column all the time in the travel section of our Sunday newspaper. He has a website elliott.org . I just went to it. Look near the top and click on contacts. He has a whole section devoted to how to contact company executives and state your case etc. I would read it thoroughly and go from there.

 

Let us know how things do or do not turn out for you.

I agree and this is whom I would contact. Here is his list of Princess contacts http://www.elliott.org/company-contacts/princess/

 

 

Contact his people here: http://www.elliott.org/help/

 

Good luck!

“dickinson” and “Orlando Vic” have given you a great contact in Christopher Elliott. I read his column every week and he has helped many people with difficult to solve cases.

First of all make sure you email the Princess higher ups so you have a paper trail to follow. If you can’t get things resolved this way you can then contact Chris Elliott to see if he can intervene. I don’t know if he would take on your case but he has many times been successful getting companies to come through for humanitarian reasons.

Good luck and I hope your husband does well.

At lunch in the HC lemonade is available for no charge, but you have to ask for it.

We have had the sideways rooms a couple of times and we prefer them to the usual rooms. They are a little wider, maybe close to two feet. The desk top is much longer. MrSchwump is correct about the downside of the bed being visible to the hallway when the door is open.

Curious...anyone ever book hotels at other locations other than Florida at valuetrips rates? Can’t seem to get any other hotels to load for other states...thanks

 

 

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Good point.

I just tried Phoenix, Los Angeles, Chicago and Boston.

None of them worked.

It’s good that all I wanted was the Hyatt in FLL.

Princess has tours available that include transfers to the airport.

Several years ago I was considering taking out the Princess insurance so I called and talked to a Princess Representative. When I asked about the insurance covering pre-existing conditions I was told that it would be determined when a claim is filed. Needless to say, I did not take the Princess Insurance. I went with a nationally known insurance company with an excellent track record.