azbirdmom

Dang, I was really hoping for a picture of that "Whole Turkey". Glad your wife recovered and was able to enjoy dinner. And I will really miss the Fettucine Alfredo as well as the various souffles.

I would pick #1 if only because it includes the catamaran to Whittier. It's a shame that you can't get further into Denali but they may not be able to run tours beyond the natural history tour until 2027! Here's the latest: https://www.nps.gov/dena/getinvolved/polychrome-plan.htm . By the way you don't have it as a choice but our favorite is to take the train from Denali all the way to the ship in Whittier. We've done that 3 times and while it's a 9 hour trip it is just amazing to sit back and watch Alaska change before your eyes.

There shouldn't be anything expired. You tried during the allotted time to book this cruise and you definitely should get everything you earned.

We also used them in June. The driver actually waited 4 hours for us when there was a last minute delay for our flight. They also had the best price at the time - I shopped around. Wouldn't hesitate to use them again.

Wow, you are killing it with your Live From! Loving every picture and video, even the toilet.

Yes you definitely should see that if it was done correctly. Here's a sample of the Travel Summary from a past cruise. You should also see it if you scroll down on the "Extras" tab on the Princess website.

Great deal! Make sure your Travel Summary shows your free play and free Plus. At least you have a good email address to use if you need to get that fixed.

Hoping you will do a "Live From" as well! I always enjoy it when you do.

Yay! A live thread from the Sun!! Looking forward to your posts. Have a wonderful cruise.

I ordered a bunch of personalized magnets to celebrate my best buddies big birthday last summer when we cruised on the Regal. All were in good taste and she put a couple on the door and the rest on the walls inside. We also got silly ones that say "Beware: This Cabin Bought the Drink Package". None of us really drinks to excess, we just thought it was funny. I've seen a lot of cute magnets on doors and it would be sad not to see those any longer. Even Oceania allowed door decorations although it didn't seem that there were as many up as we've seen on Princess.

This kind of sums up our experiences on the Nautica February 19th sailing. I really thought that the service and food would be significantly superior to what we've experienced on mainstream Princess but it wasn't. Loved the itinerary but like you we were underwhelmed by O.

We are also on the Enchanted next month and will have a suite. We've tipped the Suite Concierge anywhere from $0 to $40 depending on how helpful they've been in making arrangements for us. There's also the crew who staff suite happy hour to consider and if we see the same person every night it's another $10 to $20, at the end of the cruise. P.S. I have no idea if what we do is within the norm since you haven't exactly had responses to your original question.

You are absolutely right about that Frank! And the experience can definitely vary from ship to ship too. We don't regret taking this cruise as we had the time of our lives in French Polynesia. It just fell a bit short of our expectations given the price tag.

Thanks for confirming but that makes me sad. I sure hope that they don't change the Alfredo's menus for the rest of the fleet.

Yep! And I can't copy here without their name being disclosed since it's tagged to the video.

+1. We can only hope that either there was a page missing from those screenshots OR that this is temporary and they are still working on adding the equipment to make the pastas. The Agnolotti is our go-to every visit. We split one of those and a pizza. It's the best pasta on the ship.

Yes just saw that. Multiple videos posted today, some with enough detail to definitively say they were taken on the Sun. Here's details copied from the post, unfortunate indeed! "Sun Princess – Inaugural cruise Grand Med – 02/28/24 to 03/09/24 Flooded stateroom Deck 4, 10, 11 Absolutely nightmare on the Sun Princess. My vacation is completely ruined!!! My wife and I are having mental break down and beyond at this point changing 4 different rooms in 5 days. For privacy reason I don’t want to state my room number. I kindly ask PLEASE don’t ask me any questions. You can see all the videos and pictures for yourself. This will clarify everything from all the previous post from other groups. Sun Princess Deck 10 Aft, Port Side Feb 29, 2024 (Day 2) – 10:25pm We came back to our DD Balcony Stateroom and it is flooded. There were crew cleaning up in the hallway, but there isn’t any Princess Rep onsite to assist. We had to pack quickly and exit. I had to go all the way to the front of the ship for Customer Service, waited 10 min to see a supervisor to address the urgent situation. 11:30pm moved to an Accessible Mini-Suite Stateroom. I’m not sure why they put us here in accessible room. I have a hard time adjusting. The table is too high and the bathroom have water everywhere from taking a shower. Your feet will get wet and slip every time you step in. Furthermore, we couldn’t sleep at all because there are loud noises coming from the walls (twisting and cracking) all night long. We have no sleep at all. Mar 01 (DAY 3) – Move to another room. A bit better, but still have minor twisting and cracking noise from the wall. We need to sleep. Mar 02 (DAY 4) – Advised by Customer Service that we can move back to original room because it is now repair, wash, clean and dry. We moved back since we didn’t like all the other temp stateroom. Mar 03 (DAY 5) – 8am (technically 7am because move 1 hr backward). There is a series of loud banging noise coming from above Deck 11. I went upstairs and there were crew repairing the stateroom. I ask them why are you hammering at 8am in the morning? There are people still in bed and they knew we moved back in last night. I asked the same question to their supervisor and he have no answer. I’m so mad. I have escalated this to customer service. They rush to repair the stateroom to get them ready, but it is not ready. The carpet got wet again and starting to get smelly. Mar 04 (DAY 6) – Move to Mini-Suite Stateroom. Finally no issues with this room. As of now March 5, 2024, no one from Princess Management has approach us for any follow up or to see how we are doing. Shame on them."

And it appears this is the case fleetwide - just copied this from the O website:

Nope! At least the Nautica wasn't. I believe those two areas I mentioned were the only places that smoking was allowed. Glad I wasn't on the starboard side as we may have experienced whiffs of smoke on our balcony and that would have made me very, very sad.

You're welcome! One thing I didn't mention was about smoking. When we first boarded there was a strong smell of smoke in our hallway. We were very near the forward elevator / stairway and it turns out that there were two smoking areas above that. The first was a small area in the corner of the pool deck one deck above. And the second was a glassed in area of the Horizons lounge that was two decks above. The smoke didn't seem to be as noticeable in the hallway after embarkation day but there was always at least a whiff of it when we used that stairwell. Although that was our closest stairwell we tended to just go aft to use that one instead to avoid the smoke.

No need to apologize! This thread title pertained to a Princess cruiser sailing on Oceania and your additions are entirely on topic. I'm getting more of a sense about how inflexible O management is by your examples and also I've read more recent reviews today that oddly didn't show when I looked before. My official review was published and I clicked on the link in the CC email - there they were right below mine. A couple of the reviews mentioned something I didn't say in my write-up as I had heard about it on the ship but not from crew so I wasn't sure if it was accurate. Two cruises before ours the ship missed 4 out of 6 ports (or 5 out of 7 port days) due to weather. I can't even imagine that happening as this is one of those bucket list type itineraries (at least for us). O gave everyone a $250 FCC, that's it. Sounds like a lot of those will go unused!

Interesting that you mention Windstar. The Star Breeze was anchored alongside us in Bora Bora and also disembarked in Papeete the same day we did. Its homeport is now Papeete. The ship held roughly half of the passengers than the Nautica did. When we were at the Intercontinental Hotel after disembarking we talked to a lot of folks who were on that ship and to a one they all raved about Windstar. The praises continued from those we talked to at the airport. If we ever decide to return to that area we may look into Windstar.

I completely agree that most kids would be bored. There was a startling thing that the mom of the sole child onboard told me. She said they had no life vests for her child. At first I thought she meant that they didn't have one to use in the pool and she said no, they didn't give her one to keep in her cabin. I thought that was odd but that's when she was told that they don't usually have children onboard. It's second hand info so I didn't include it in my review but it seems like if that's true and not a misunderstanding on mom's part that they would be out of compliance with whatever laws / rules govern them. The ship is flagged under the Marshall Islands but I'm not sure if there are other maritime rules governing safety items like this.

Yes, it is an R class ship. We never did get to sail with one of those Princess ships. We put off taking the French Polynesia itinerary with Princess and then when we wanted to do it they stopped offering it. Then they brought it back and Covid happened then they sold the only ship that could go to those ports. We will definitely give other lines a try in the future if there's an itinerary that big ships can't do.

They weren't strict at all when we went in December but things can change. We were waved through with wine every time.