cruisegal415

I received an email today from Princess telling me to book my specialty dining. )We made full payment last week). Went on and logged in and it said you can only make dining reservations through the Medallion app. Ok. Went on the app, clicked on Dining, tried to make specialty reservations, it said it's too early. Then why did I get an email telling me to do it? I thought once you make full payment you can go on and make specialty dining reservations. Recently sailed Celebrity, we were able to buy a package that included 3-4 specialty restaurants in advance, then make the reservations for whichever ones we wanted. I guess Princess doesn't offer that option?

Exactly right. I found another one that is more reasonable but picks up from our hotel starting at 7 am, then goes to Heathrow to pick up passengers there, so it's basically two hours on a bus before they even start the drive to Windsor.

I totally wrote that wrong. I meant, we can take a transfer from our hotel to the port in Southampton (not Heathrow, don't know what I was thinking) that would include a two hour layover in Windsor to see the palace. I am now thinking maybe we should just go to Hampton Court on one day, that way we have enough time to explore as we wish, and then just do the two hour visit on the day we head down to Southampton since it is easier to get to Hampton Court than to Windsor from our London hotel.

We have two full days pre-cruise in London. We'd like to see both Windsor Palace and Hampton Court, and have been vacillating on whether to do a transfer from London to Heathrow that includes a two hour stop at Windsor Castle on the day we embark, or try to see both of them the day before. There are some excursions that will pick us up at our hotel Weds. morning and drive us to Windsor, allow two hours there, then drive us to Hampton Court, and allow two hours there. These are pretty expensive for two people. So now I'm wondering about trying to get to Hampton Court on our own, which I know is doable, but can we take a train to Hampton Court, tour Hampton Court for a couple of hours, and then go to Windsor or vice versa? Trying to get a driver through a company that works with Viator would cost over $700 for two of us, that is too much. Are there cabs or ubers that would take us from London to either Hampton Court or Windsor? What suggestions do you have?

Oh you're right! Thanks for pointing that out!

We are looking forward to our day in Edinburgh as well! Doing our own thing there, looking forward to seeing it.

Exactly what I was looking for! I was wondering if it was worth it to tour the Trossachs, perhaps stopping in Callandar instead? Or by saying tour the Trossachs, could we mean Queen Elizabeth Forest Park? One of the excursions includes an hour ride on Loch Lomand, perhaps skip that?

I am doing a 12 day British Isles cruise in August 2022. Many people on our ship are doing the Loch Lomand, Trossachs and Stirling Castle excursion. Unfortunately, most of these are already booked, so we are trying to find a private excursion. One of the people in our party would like to see Glasgow as well. I looked at a map and Glasgow is the opposite direction. We dock at 8, not sure how long it will take to tender off since I know they give priority to Princess excursions for the tenders, and we have to be back on the ship by 6, so need to be back at the tender place by 5 or 5:15 I would think. So I am thinking maybe a 7 hour tour. Since it looks like we will have to arrange a private excursion, I suppose it is possible to include both Glasgow itself as well as Loch Lomand and Stirling Castle, not sure about the Trossachs then. Does anyone have any suggestions re this? Should we try for a stop in Glasgow itself? Should we skip that and just do the other places? Are there other places we should go instead?

I'm not sure the best forum to ask this, but I thought I'd start here. Let me preface this by saying, we just returned from a 7-day music themed cruise where we were at sea 5 of the 7 days and while we are not big drinkers, we opted for the premium beverage package because we were basically on the ship the whole time, going from venue to venue enjoying the music, drinking frozen drinks, having drinks during the shows, and bottles of water were included, as were fancy coffee drinks which I like. We are doing a British Isles cruise next year, very port intensive. We will be getting off the ship first thing in the am and returning right before sail away. We only have one sea day, and it is not in the warm Caribbean where we would be lying around the pool drinking fruity drinks. That said, our deal with NCL includes a "free" beverage package that adds about $400 in service charges, but when I looked at the beverage packages, the "free" one doesn't include bottled water, which we drink lots of, and doesn't include the coffee drinks. They offer an "upgrade" to the premium plus package, but that would be another $348 per person, including the service charges. So basically we'd be paying about $1100 for a beverage package, which seems quite excessive. Considering all of the above, would it be more cost effective for this cruise to pay-as-you-go for beverages? We would mostly be buying bottles of water every day, maybe fancy coffee once a day for one of us, and wine with dinner most days. They do sell packages of water (12 liters for $36-outrageous when you can get it cheaper on land, but we are flying to London and don't know if we could pick up a case there). Of course, we can just buy a bottle of water at the port/on land, or even bring along our water thermoses and fill them up before we leave the ship. I think I just talked myself out of the beverage package, but what is your experience with beverage packages on a port-intensive cruise?