PrincessPete

Good evening

My wife and I are on the 7 day Hong Kong - Tokyo cruise in April which is part of a longer cruise. We have previously sailed on the DP and made extensive use of the Sanctuary. I would be most grateful for answers to the following queries, please:

Am I right that you can not book the Sanctuary in advance even if you are happy to book for an entire cruise?

Do any readers have any comments on the likelihood of us being able to book safely on-board (assuming you can not book in advance) as most passengers on our 7 day cruise will have been on-board for several days before we embark meaning they may take all the available spaces.

Is the pool just below the Sanctuary (which is "inside" the spa area) just for spa and Sanctuary guests or indeed available to all passengers?

Thank you in advance for any assistance.

Kind regards.

Peter

Good afternoon, we are on a Diamond Princess cruise in April which includes a visit to Osaka. Due to illness we have been delayed in booking excursions and although we have them reserved for the other ports the two tours in Osaka are fully booked.

We have gone on the wait list but we would be happy to visit Osaka ourself if that is easy to do. I would therefore greatly appreciate advice on:

......How far the City is from where the ship berths and, if appropriate, is the journey easy by taxi?

......Is there much to see in the City itself (we are easily pleased and would be happy to window shop, have a coffee and people watch if there were no sights to see, as such)

We have previously been to Nagasaki on a Far East cruise and found that a delightful place to walk round on our own after a guided tour to the Atomic museum. We found the local people so welcoming and gracious even allowing for the language difficulties.

Thank you in advance of any help.

With kind regards.

Peter and Beverley

Good evening, we will be in St Petersburg for two days on Eclipse and are in the process of booking tours. We plan to do an afternoon shopping tour (Nevsky Prospect) followed by an evening ballet visit on day one and then a full day to the Hermitage on day 2.

My question is how far does the ship normally berth from the centre of St Petersburg? If it was quite close I would be happy to incur the costs of Russian visas so we could go ashore on the first morning on our own prior to the tour that afternoon. If it is some way and would only allow the briefest of visits it would probably not be worth it.

Any responses from previous visitors to St Petersburg would be much appreciated and thank you for your help.

Kind regards.

Peter

Thanks for the reply above. I did some more research last night and found cruise Agents with the relevant itineraries on. This showed that we were not calling at Helsinki but the later cruise on 17 July is.

I again checked the Celebrity website which shows the same itinerary for both cruises. Spoke to Celebrity this morning (we booked direct) and they agreed the website was incorrect and have changed us at no charge to the later cruise in the same cabin. The change of date was no problem to us being retired.

So very happy to now have Helsinki on our itinerary!

Kind regards.

Peter

Good evening, I am just wondering if anyone can help me before the office reopens tomorrow morning when I can check (now 1730 UK time Sunday). On Friday we booked a Baltic cruise on Celebrity Eclipse sailing on 19 June 2016, repeat 2016, for 14 nights. On-line it shows the itinerary includes Helsinki but having only now studied the paperwork that came with the email confirmation it does not show Helsinki but an overnight in Copenhagen (instead of the 1 day in Copenhagen which still shows on-line.)

Any idea which is right, please?

Many thanks and kind regards.

Peter

Thanks for the most helpful replies especially the attachment of the spreadsheet. Doing some more research on this issue I looked back to when the package was first introduced and saw on a CC news article that one of the ships NOT having the package was Diamond Princess which is the ship we are planning to go on. Looking at the Princess website, however, it currently refers only to Dawn, Sea and Sun not having the package.

Can anyone indeed confirm that it is available on Diamond, please?

Many thanks again.

Peter

Hi all, we have been on many Princess cruises and are thinking of another next year. I have a question regarding the new beverage package (sorry if this has been asked/answered before).

I think the package covers all drinks up to $10. Could anyone give me an indication of what that would therefore exclude, please - presumably some premium spirits?

I am sure my drinks (beers) would all come in well below the $10 mark but would a regular cocktail eg: Cosmopolitan or Margarita also be under that amount. My wife does like those and also white wine which I presume like the beer would largely be under the threshold.

If you have a more expensive drink do you just pay the difference from $10?

Having spoke to Princess the package is around £33.50 per day sterling including gratuity which seems quite reasonable even though we do not drink to excess - the clincher is the coffees and water you can have as well.

Any replies to the above points and other comments about the beverage package would be much appreciated.

Many thanks and with kind regards.

Peter

Good evening

(sorry if this topic has been discussed before but we are just booking our first Celebrity cruise and would welcome some advice, please).

We are very experienced cruisers but have never had a cabin at the stern of a ship before - we are looking at the S1 Sky suites and love the balcony which enables a view of one side as well as the wake.

My only slight concern is the possibility of vibration - not so bothered on arrivals into port but thinking of the many long sea days we have - Australia to Hawaii so about 11 sea days I think.

We will be avoiding these suites on deck 12 as they are under the outside dining area and we have suffered before from noise overhead.

Any tips/comments about the vibration question and anything else about these suites would be much appreciated.

With kind regards.

Peter

Very interested to read Janny 444's review of the 7 day cruise as we are doing the same itinerary on 8 October - just a couple of further questions, please.

You say the first gala night was on the day you left Amsterdam at (scheduled) 0900. Was there another one or just the one formal night?

What were the dress codes on the other nights - what was the "standard" of dressing amongst the passengers. We do like dressing up for dinner but do not want to stand out like sore thumbs if we went over the top!

Also did the dining times change during the cruise or was the second sitting always 2030 (if you can recall that as I know you went to the buffet mainly).

Thank you very much for any further help you can give.

Kind regards.

Hi all, we are shortly embarking on the MSC Magnifica and I urgently wish to clarify a couple of issues with the Shore Excursions team on board.

MSC Head Office were not overly helpful and I wonder if anyone can provide me with the e-mail address for the ship, please.

Many thanks if anyone can.

Kind regards.

Peter

We returned last week after a fantastic Far East cruise on “Diamond Princess” with hotel stays in Beijing before and Singapore after the cruise.

I will be posting a review in the not too distant future which will be extremely favourable – the whole cruise was excellent and the itinerary absolutely amazing. The food was variable though – fortunately it only varied from being very good to exceptionally good!!

There was one issue we had about which we would welcome other comments and that is the production shows. We are big theatre goers in the West End so always eagerly await the production shows on any cruise.

We saw “Words and Music” which, as many of you will know, is a compilation of Broadway and West End hits – and was therefore right up our street.

Purely by chance I looked at my watch the moment the show started – it was great but was all over so quickly. I checked and it had lasted 29 minutes. Is that not ridiculously short? On all the production shows we have seen on P&O and other lines, including Princess previously, they have been at least 45 minutes, sometimes longer. Due to other entertainment we only saw one other production show on the cruise and that was just a few minutes longer but not much.

Anyone else think that 29 minutes was disappointingly short?

Kind regards.

Peter and Beverley

Hi folks

We are on the Diamond Princess Far East cruise in October and have now booked all our excursions. Amongst them are tours at Busan in South Korea and Nagasaki in Japan.

We are not a lover of full day tours with lunch included (we are not big lunch eaters) and then the obligatory stop at a lacquerware factory or similar. We therefore prefer the half day tours and often they include pretty much the same as the full day ones other than the unwanted extras (purely our personal wishes as we are sure lots of people love the lunches and visits to factories.)

Anyway, getting back to the point…….we will be back at the ship in Busan and Nagasaki by late morning/lunchtime. Can anyone please let us know how far we are from the shops or areas to stroll round so that we can plan our afternoons – or are we too far away at the respective ports? I have tried without success to find out online so thought this site with so much knowledge may be able to help!

Any help appreciated and thank you very much.

Kind regards.

Peter and Beverley