cruisequeen4ever

Interesting; I’m surprised you rated Princess food the lowest.

They better not be segregating with the change in allowing everyone onboard! That goes against their whole welcoming of everyone onboard. If they tried to segregate, they’d have people canceling who wouldn’t be able to dine with their travel companions, and the unvaccinated certainly wouldn’t be feeling welcomed.

I appreciate you sharing your experience; I’ll be going on the Solstice in the spring after a very mediocre experience on Celebrity a few years ago so understand your food rating. Hope the rest of your cruise improves!

That’s good to know! I think that’ll make people more comfortable bidding.

Let’s come up with some ideas for new perks Princess could offer loyal pax and/or paid opps for anyone onboard! Who knows if Princess reads these threads, but if they do, 🤞 they make note of our suggestions, and just maybe we’ll see some of them put into place! My top request would be for the opportunity to have breakfast in Sabatinis/Crown Grill without staying in a suite. After experiencing it when we had a suite, I can still recall the scrumptious flavors of breakfast and have reallllllly wanted to experience it again. I know I would be highly motivated by it being offered as a loyalty reward or as a paid specialty restaurant experience like they already offer for dinner or both. I wouldn’t think it would cost Princess that much to offer it as an Elite perk as they’re already serving pax breakfast anyway. Sure, they couldn’t have 600 Elites showing up every morning, but they could give Elites a voucher for 1 breakfast there per cruise or do a drawing for cruise-long access at the Captain’s Circle party.

Whether or not this is true, some rewards should still be offered to loyal pax as we are the bread and butter and are the ones who will spread the word of how wonderful Princess is. Though every cruise line is making cutbacks, I haven’t read of other cruise lines reducing their loyalty benefits.

That’s great news!

Thank you for all the input. It’s reassuring that Princess’s protocol is to only upgrade those in an accessible to a higher accessible stateroom if a bid is won. 👌

I think on any given ship at any given time you’re going to hear different experiences. The funny thing is that one of my favorite cruise blogs from this Alaska season was the lady from Alaska who sailed on the Spirit with her boyfriend! I wish I could remember her name, but if you read her account, it may help.

Goodness, I remember pre-pandemic the process would be estimated at taking six weeks after receiving everything, and in my experience, it did take that long. Way to be persistent!

Midship staterooms are popular and seen as better on most cruise lines because they’re the most stable in rough seas and they’re make you equidistant to everything. Now that is not to say that is the case in the mind of everyone who cruises by any means. Many have their preference for particular locations all over the ship. That is just a generalization.

It’s nice to see some results here! Thank you to all who are sharing. All of this has made me think of a question. How does it work if you need an accessible stateroom? Does the system detect that you are in one and that you should only be offered one in a higher category if you bid? I hope that someone knows the answer to this or that it’s clear when you go to bid. It would be awful if someone who is in an accessible stateroom were to bid assuming Princess knows they need one and end up in a non-accessible stateroom, losing their accessible one in the process. To the person in the window suite, we had one one time and loved the suite perks of breakfast in Sabatini‘s or Crown Grill, whatever it is on your cruise, the free dinner at either of those the first night, and the extra space. Years ago, window suites were commonly talked about on here as being really enjoyed.

Oh dear; I can see why the value wasn’t there for you. Alaskan seafood should be a highlight on every Alaska cruise and certainly is on Princess, based on my own experience. Thank you for sharing your experience.

I agree that I’d guess it has more to do with the ship difference.

Hands down, Discovery Princess! It’s a 1 year old ship, and the Summit is about 20 years old. The Royal Class ships, of which the Discovery is a part, are gorgeous, have an amazing buffet, and are full of places to relax. We have experienced light years better food and drinks on Princess than we did on our Celebrity cruise. As an example, on Celebrity, my first meal onboard consisted of a watery strawberry Daquiri, a burger that was red inside, and a slice of cake that looked fancy but tasted flavorless. It may be different on the newer Celebrity ships and in the higher class staterooms like Aqua and Suites, but the ordinary food was just not great in our experience.

Thank you; back when it happened, I did contact the Casino department. They told me that they have no connection to the onboard offers and couldn’t honor it without the information from the paper I was given. 😏 Of course maybe I just got an inaccurate answer and should have pursued it with another rep. 🤷‍♀️

Very sad! 😔 I hope the offender is punished and fired!

Great plans!

Exciting! Good luck to your wife!

I’d bet and I hope it’s the hours for the Blue Chip Club phone line. It’d be dumb of them to close the casino before the most popular gambling hours.

One time I got an offer letter slipped under my door on disembarkation morning; I excitedly slipped it into my carry-on and then lost it! 😩 I contacted the Casino department, and they said without it, they can’t offer me anything. I haven’t received anything since. Sigh Don’t lose your offer letter!

Congrats!!

Southampton dock workers don’t expect a tip at all. We were ready to tip even though we had been told no need to, and the guy was gone so fast with our luggage, we couldn’t even catch up to him to tip him. They truly don’t expect a tip there. Onboard, USD is always a safe bet for tipping. If it’s the end of the Southampton season, I’d try to avoid tipping in Pounds, but if it’s summer or spring, I’m sure they’d be fine with Pounds or USD. Euros are also good.

Greece! It’s magical!

That’s horrible! What I don’t understand though is that it would have been charged to their onboard account which would not have hit their credit card until the end of the cruise. Wouldn’t they have checked their onboard statement during the cruise and noticed the blunder and gotten it fixed before it ever hit their credit card?