beg3yrs

Great review, thanks so much. The warnings regarding embarkation and disembarkation are appreciated. You've got lots of useful information in there. Just wanted to ask about the Premium package and unlimited specialty dining. Did you really mean the casual dining venues like Alfredo's? AFAIK, the Premium package gives you unlimited casual dining but nothing with the specialty restaurants. Suite guests, IIRC, do get their first night onboard free in a specialty restaurant and that's often honored other nights as on the first night the specialty restaurants are all booked.

Wow! Something definitely fishy. We're on the Discovery for the April 3rd sailing and had the order of two ports swapped for "Scheduled engine maintenance" too.

https://boards.cruisecritic.com/topic/2873458-short-notice/

AFAIK, all Princess Plus at the $60 rate gets all the published Plus perks, even the newest, regardless of when booked. It's the $50 (and $40) packages that are limited. The Travel Summary has often been lagging as to what perks are included. The only downfall of booking Plus onboard is that the number of packages are supposedly limited and if they've already been sold, you're out of luck. That said, I have not read of anyone having that problem - yet.

It is possible to use gift cards to pay for excursions ahead of boarding. First you must select the excursions online and place them in your cart. You have 24 hours to pay for them before they drop out of your cart. Once they are in your cart you must call Princess to have gift cards specifically applied to those excursion bookings. I have done it multiple times but sometimes I have had to hang-up-and-call-again (HUACA) to get a phone agent who is sufficiently knowledgeable to apply them to excursions in my cart. As you and others have pointed out, gift cards can be used for OBC ($1500 per person max btw) but that OBC can not then be applied to excursions before boarding. Of course once on board you can book excursions and that OBC will apply.

MTP is the Most Traveled Passenger lunch. Typically for the top 40 most traveled passengers based on cruise days with Princess.

Just a couple of weeks ago we used Uber to and from LAX. It wasn't to a ship but we can tell you about the transfer to the LAXIT. Near each terminal there's a specific spot to wait for a shuttle bus to the LAXIT point which is just off the airport property. It's much like a car rental shuttle and has places for luggage as well as a low entry making it simple to get your bags on board. Once at the LAXIT point people call for Ubers and Lyfts using the apps in the usual way. What's nice is the drivers have their own waiting area so they typically arrive in a few minutes. I've used the uber.com website to make mock bookings (hmm ... I wonder where I learned that) to get an estimate of the cost for Uber journeys. Lyft probably has similar functionality. IIRC with a Princess transfer, there's a representative at the baggage pickup areas. They use poster boards and hand-held signs so they're easy to find. You grab your bags off the delivery carousel, make sure they're properly tagged for the ship and the rep will keep them in a designated area. They'll also let you know where to wait for your shuttle bus. It's an advantage that you're done schlepping bags but can be a while waiting for your bus.

History says that Princess taking bookings for ships doesn't mean they won't be sold during that time. Take the Pacific Princess for example. I had two bookings on her when her sale was announced. All Princess did was cancel our bookings and refund the deposits.

There is at least one contradictory post so your confusion is understandable. You can certainly use your phone to communicate via WiFi. That's been my experience as well as the majority of responses.

If you've booked direct with Princess, you can access transfers at the very bottom of the Travel page when logged into your account and looking at that particular booking. You should be able to see the pricing there. If you haven't booked with Princess but with a TA, your TA has to set up your transfer. Now, getting to your specific question, last time we used a transfer from LAX to San Pedro it was $29 per person. That was a few years ago so I'd expect an increase. Other posters on other threads have commented that if you have two or more people, Uber, Lyft and other transfer services can beat the Princess price.

OK folks, it's the golden ticket. It means Do Not Disembark, you get to cruise for the rest of your days at no extra charge. Don't we all wish ...

That is an excellent tour. If that had happened to me I'd be on the phone to Princess mad as a wet hen (how mad is a wet hen anyway?). If you've got the original tour description and it matches the newer one, I would insist the honor your original booking.

Note that although OP is booking online, those of us who use TA's do not have this transfer option. Transfers must be booked through the TA.

Thanks so much for the aft photo! I looks to me like the aft balconies in the center are not yet complete as there's no center dividers visible and no glass in place either. I suppose they've got lots more to do before February.

Be aware that excursions in your shopping cart must be paid for within 24 hours otherwise they disappear. If it's an excursion that may sell out, I would pay for it right away and if I changed my mind later, cancel it for a refund.

I'm wondering if the delay is due to there being one MDR on three levels with each level having a different 'style' of service, i.e. slow, medium and fast. At least that's what I got from watching the videos. Could be that with that kind of arrangement the current method Princess uses to 'load' dining room configurations for a ship won't work for the Sun Princess. Heaven help us if the crack IT folk have to make some software changes.

What hasn't been mentioned about early disembarkation is that those planning this must also be prepared if the ship misses the port for whatever reason. Weather, equipment issues, etc., it's happened before.

It's a small accounting difference but your folio contains all charges and credits, even those that were incurred before the cruise starts. The don't really "give back" your funds in the original form of payment as that would cause them so much work to try to determine just where those funds came from. What they do is simply remove the excursion charge from your folio and all balances out.

Maybe this is a bit pedantic but the don't actually add refundable OBC to your folio. That would cause problems if you initially paid for the excursion with non-refundable Shareholder's Credit for example. What they will do is simply remove the excursion charge from your folio.

Sea trials must be interesting. Lots of back and forth, hard turns and so on.

Now that I've thought about this, dry dock isn't required for interior work although that doesn't rule out that interior work is being done. Something must be going on with the new azipod propulsion system or maybe the new bubbles through the hull system. Could just be something that has to be done after checking it out during sea trials but I have zero expertise here. @chengkp75???

Is that primarily the work being done in Palermo? I'm very curious.

You're definitely showing your age because strippers don't take one dollar bills any more ... a friend told me this. 😉

Would love to see some higher resolution shots of the stern. So far the only one we've seen is kind of fuzzy. Also would love to know if she's fully fitted out during the sea trials or if there's more work to be done at least externally. And finally (for now), she's been sitting in Palermo for three days now. Looks like on the satellite images she might be getting more work done because the location looks like a dry dock. Anybody know for sure?

Need a clarification here. I assumed by prepaid gratuities you were referring to the Plus or Premier packages which include gratuities. If you're speaking of paying them yourself ahead of time, I have no first-hand knowledge of how they do that accounting. Personally I would not pay gratuities ahead of time if I didn't have a package regardless of the accounting. I try to hold onto my money until it must be paid out. I do understand that there are some folks that for various personal reasons would like to pay in advance.