Steelers36

DMW was designed, programmed, and released in a terrible manner. It goes back to before launch of the new feature. Either the business did not properly describe (thoroughly) what was needed, or the key IT resource(s) did not understand at all the full picture of dining on the ships. What Princess was publicly promising the software not only fell short, but indeed could never even possibly accomplish the promise. A whole different business process design would have been necessary - and to a large extent it still is. But, PCL HQ seems to want to limp along with it the way it is. On top of insufficient business process work, what was programmed was full of bugs for - IDK - maybe a year. It seems to do all it can do these days, still far from a perfect solution. I am thinking most of the current functional issues (that is doing what it was programmed to do) are due to data corruption matters or poor initialization. But, all I can do is make some half-reasonable guesses based on outside observations and my IT brain and experience.

It is not necessary to toss the baby with the bathwater. DMW and the TD experience can co-exist. It could be made better, but guests can get a TD experience on request.

It does reflect poorly on them to not have updated everywhere on the website where dining is described. I could equally show you a page or more where Alfredo's is not listed as an inclusion. This documentation issue has been posted about multiple times since the changes were rolled out. I am sure PCL will have a legal out since the website displays are not the official contract with passengers, but it is a terrible poor show. I certainly slag the Ocean IT Team when it is deserved, but I see this as a business user fail. When this project was initiated, someone should have been assigned responsibility to identify and correct all locations on Princess.com web pages that needed updating. Any changes might be given to an IT resource to implement (although these days, a smart user ought to be in place that is knowledgeable as to updating web pages and shouldn't even need IT resources). Now, we don't know the facts of the matter. Perhaps someone was given the job and they just didn't do a thorough job at all. We don't see behind the curtain as to what's what, but it has been clear for a long time that Princess does a very poor job at keeping up online documentation. If they had some decent software and a clever IT person, they should be able to tag their webpages with keyword topics and then be able to display or filter all webpages that mention one or more of those keywords. That is pretty basic stuff. I am not sure whether there is anyone at PCL HQ outside of admin staff and others who are trying to sell cabins.

Still ends up with RS to handle the task.

Deleted after seeing later all fixed. Don't want to look like piling on.

Sure, but that doesn't happen on Princess.com.

Using Ocean Now delivery does include to a cabin and the $5 RS fee doesn't apply. If you use cabin phone to call RS and order food or drink, then $5/order is charged.

Correct, but you want the third person to have the package. So, either order it when booking the cabin, or it can also be purchased on board for the same price (assuming your voyage occurs before Princess decides to increase the price - but there will be an announcement).

Why do you say that? Anyone who purchase the Plus or Premier package gets all the items included.

They want to have first FN ASAP, so yours is going to have to break the normal expectations somewhat. Night 1 should be Newport where you leave at 5pm since that is the earliest departure for the first days. Night 2 will be Saint John since it departs at 4pm compared to 6pm from Halifax. It won't be the sea day since that is your last night on the ship and it is never then. Normally, they try to use sea days, but your itinerary doesn't allow for that. PS - Since you are first and new with Princess, welcome to Princess. Feel free to dress up of course, but you can also dine on FN with Smart Casual wear. There will be a mix of clothing choices at dinner. As soon as you get to your cabin, one of the papers will have the full voyage schedule of dress suggestions for dining, so you will know the designated FN's for certain then.

No, you do not. I am presuming you booked prior to Dec 14 since that covers most of 2022. If so, you paid $50 at most for Plus package and the new items such as casual dining are not granted. You must either pay-as-you-go or upgrade to "Plus 60" for $10/pp/day. PS - Regardless of situation, it was apparent last week that the TS documentation had not been updated to reflect the new package additions. Not sure if that is something being fixed over this weekend or not. No way to know until someone reports seeing it updated, but you won't see it anyway (unless yet another bug occurs).

It isn't really possible although Princess will have a "hidden" fare schedule in their system so that if a cabin does become available, the price will be there. IDK if this is a curiosity thing or what, but say you were interested in a BC cabin and there are none, but there are BB and BD for sale. You could simply average the two and BC will basically fall in the middle between the other two. Another idea would be if there was the same voyage being sold at basically the same pricing on a nearby date and the cabin category you wanted is for sale on that other voyage. The one you look at would give you a pretty good approximation of what expect to pay on the sold out voyage.

These are short forms to indicate whether the guest paid $60 or $50 pp/day for the package.

These posts are twigging something in my mind from reading something a while back. The answer may be to have the VPN on for a laptop (or phone when accessing WWW), and then turn VPN off when using Princess Medallion App on the ship which is internal usage only and no WWW.

Yes, several posts seem to be confirming this. It is unfortunate as the Ocean Now feature seems to be being denuded with the new fee and less offerings. It would seem they are trying to reduce the demand because they either can't staff for it or cost is too much. There are only so many crew cabin spaces on each ship so IDK how they could add 50 - 100 more crew in order to respond to heightened Ocean Now usage.

I see you got an answer. Presuming you are aware by now of these main new changes: 1. $5 RS fee; 2. $15 one-time fee to use Ocean Now order/delivery service; 3. Conversion of Alfredo's/Gigi's from free casual dining to for-a-fee casual dining. None of these are covered under old pricing of Plus/Premier, but are included in the current priced packages. You can read details of new package inclusions on Princess.com. There are sizeable threads discussing whether to upgrade to current package and how accepted or not accepted these changes are.

No, I think you were correct the first time at half-full. You don't fill a wine glass like filling a glass of water, right? 😉

You can generally find out once on board, or a sales agent might tell you there are very few cabins left if asking shortly before a trip. Otherwise, I am sure it is confidential info as they wouldn't want competition to be able to know what sales are like.

Yes, tons of CC members are posting this issue for the past week approx. It is likely the IT team attempting to implement new changes and caused bad side effects. It doesn't seem like it would be a deliberate block. Princess never really admits a bug in a notice to guests, but I gather they are aware of this by now.

The App was not well programmed to handle various B2B scenarios. That was obvious to me from the original launch. Although better, I am not sure they have it right yet.

That is unlikely per your earlier posts. Princess made a change some months ago where the "lead in" category for all cabins from Inside thru Mini is change to GTY-only. Also, the deposit for booking these GTY's is most often Non-Refundable. You cannot book and select a "lead in" (i.e. lowest level) cabin any longer. These are IF, OF (if exists), BF, DF, and ME. ME is the lowest level for a Mini and is the category for the ones you are asking about. I believe when this change came about, there was a lot of complaining here because many folks consider these cabins "gold" even though they are E category for Mini's. I am thinking this is the reason you are not finding them. IDK how a guest can secure one of these specifically (without doing a GTY on the ME). If you were to do that, there is no guarantee Princess will assign you a ME. But most certainly, guests will end up in those cabins. Perhaps someone else will post and indicate whether a TA or Princess CVP can make something happen.

I have read of this happening per a very small number of posts over the past 1-2 years.

That is some other issue. I cannot say what, but I suspect some sort of data corruption in syncing booking from POLAR to the Princess Medallion App.

And a booking customer might be able to make that $50 "loss" up in other ways.

Settings // Apps // Princess // Read the details - scroll to bottom // You can check the latest version by looking in the Play Store (or Apple Store or whatever it's called).