beg3yrs

I had completely forgot about this thread until someone "liked" on of my posts. Since then we've booked the Island Princess for the March 2026 54 day cruise out of San Pedro in California. Got a great deal in a great cabin and now y'all have given me something to worry about. Granted that it's at the bottom of my worry list, but it's there...

This is similar to what we use except ours has eight plugs. We call it "the octopus". On the Grand Class ships it lives on the shelf where the old televisions were. Just live this particular design as no matter what you plug in, it won't block the adjacent outlet and of course, it will fit in those desk top outlets without blocking anything next door.

It's the same policy fleet-wide. Training of the crew is likely to be similar as well.

Two additional memories of our Northern Lights cruise. Standing in the rock quarry at night looking at the lights, first I spotted the Big Dipper constellation and used it to find the North Star. It was directly overhead! Then I pulled out a trusty compass and it was pointing to where the sun had set! Things are different above the Arctic Circle ...

I believe @Thrak took his cruise in 2019. We were on the Northern Lights Cruise in 2022 on the Island Princess. It was stormy on the way north along the coast of Norway. The captain sacrificed a stop in Stavanger so he could sail "between" storms. We made the rest of our ports OK. Our experience with the lights, our first time, was amazing although after the fact, it could have been better I've heard. Nevertheless we heard the announcement in the hallways late one evening that the lights were visible. Out onto the balcony we lept (with warm robes and heavy duty slippers of course) and they were barely visible to the naked eye. We finally found them in the distance and once located we were enthralled by the changing shapes. Once we reached Alta (I believe this is Thrak's goofy bus port) for the overnight the lights put on a better show. Much more visible to the naked eye. We took the late night excursion to the rock quarry and the lights were reasonably bright even with a full moon. I have an older camera but was able to catch some beautiful shots with a tripod, a wide field of view and a long exposure setting. Others however, with iPhones 8 or higher were able to get some amazing hand-held shots with no problem at all. I understand many of the newer Android phones can do the same thing. Unfortunately we had iPhone 6 and that didn't do much at all (we've since upgraded). The next night sailing out of Alta, the Lights made another showing, this time even better. Set against a backdrop of islands they were very visible to the naked eye. We could see the curtains and even flares. We enjoyed this trip so much, we're booked again in 2025 on the Emerald Princess. Looking at the sunspot cycle, it's supposed to peak this year so as long as the weather is good for you I think it's a good bet you'll get a spectacular display.

AFAIK, the direct phone number has not been published. Nobody IIRC has posted such a number. The only access seems to be through a front line representative. Often they will not even let you speak to an EZ Air person but will act as a go-between. It's a very rare situation where you end up speaking directly to EZ Air staff.

Disabling location means that your "shipmates" can't find you via the app or the on board screens. The crew won't have that restriction. It also could be the battery died in the medallion. It does happen.

Regarding room service under Plus 50, it's not that there's no room service, it's that there's a service charge for room service ordered by phone. I can't recall at this (senior) moment if the charge is $5 or $15. Room service ordered through the app has no service charge regardless of which package, if any, you have.

Not only is it not unique to Princess but most major unique construction projects of any sort (roads, one-of-a-kind buildings, new aircraft models, etc) end up behind schedule. That said, everyone will be exceptionally pleased if the Sun Princess goes into service on time.

This is quite true up until the reservation is ticketed. Then the airlines will work with you. If you are sure of keeping your trip, this is a good reason to request early ticketing once your Princess booking is paid in full.

Thanks for justifying what is likely to be my obsessive compulsive checking of my travel itineraries almost daily. Cruise summaries AND airline websites, making sure they all match and haven't changed from what it was the day before. More than once have I seen this kind of problem and was able to get a resolution long before it became a travel emergency.

Just starting to collect Social Security and I just learned there's a requirement to report being out of the country for over 30 days. It seems the purpose is to arrange for payments to be sent elsewhere. But, if it's just a long cruise, say less than five months and all my banking will remain in the USA, is this really required? Will there be repercussions if I don't report this? Asking here because I want to hear actual experiences with this rather than wait hours on the phone to get an official set in stone response from a bored government call center employee.

Welcome to Cruise Critic. We've been on the Emerald several times and our experiences were quite different than yours. Many experiences are subjective so I hope you find Celebrity more to your liking.

I didn't know that myself until I saw a crew member working on one. It really makes sense to go that way. Probably a lot lower cost than trying to "roll your own" developing the hardware as well as the software.

Not just hundreds but possibly thousands. If you look closely, the cabin door displays are in reality Samsung tablets encased in a housing with a medallion sensor (similar to the ones used for Bingo) just below the tablet. Inspecting the tablet you can see the opening for the tablet's camera. While I don't have first hand knowledge, my speculation is that Princess has access to the tablet cameras via the ship's Intranet. Whether the data is used and for what purposes we can't be sure but ... those cabin hallways can be monitored with video too.

Hopefully it's Fincantieri or one of their subcontractors that have written the engine management, navigation, communication, climate control, etc. software and not Princess IT!

Wow, 12:20 to 12:30 is cutting things extremely close, too close IMHO. Trains everywhere are subject to delays for multiple reasons but in Alaska it could be a moose or bear on the tracks just sauntering along. That with DH being in a wheelchair taking a bit longer and Princess check-in possibly being closed up by the time you return from the tour, I personally wouldn't do it. Besides, is it really "wasting a day just to board the princess..."? I suppose we all have different values but to me, getting on board and enjoying the ship isn't a waste. Plenty to do the first day on board - watch the safety video while unpacking and organizing the cabin, visiting the muster station, getting a drink (likely the first thing) and so on. Doing all that after leaving the hotel, getting on a train in the AM and then checking in, I'm done!

Or not within 75 days of boarding. I've completed everything but am 94 days out. No boarding pass tab as expected.

So while we've all got our panties in a bunch about Radiqal Gaming, I've got a dining reservation glitch to share. Booked on the Discovery Princess on April 3rd. Already made MDR dining reservations under the old App. Same time every day in the Ketchikan dining room Decided we want to make a reservation for The Catch on the first sea day. Used the new App and all was going along well. It warned me that making the reservation would cancel my MDR reservation which was OK. Hit the final step where my card would be charged and got some obscure error about not having a room number (I've got one) and it bombed out. Going back into my existing reservations, the first sea day reservation for the MDR was gone but all the others were OK. I saw there was an option to reserve the same time in the same MDR for all days and decided to give it a try. It worked but ... I now had TWO reservations at the same time for all days except for the first sea day! Seems booking SD will catch conflicting reservations but booking the MDR for all days will not. Thank you Princess IT.

Jealous? For this retired person it's not too much time rather not enough budget!

Nineteen days and this thread is still going. Not hard to believe. It would be interesting to know what the longest lived formal night dress code thread has been. Not that I'm willing to do the research ...

DW has celiac (gluten allergy) so we've been through this many times. We also traveled with another couple, one of which could not have salt which I think is similar to your issue with sodium. We follow all of the previous advice, it's good. You calling them may have helped too. We go to one of the MDRs during embarkation. Finding a closed one is often the best. The doors are never locked and if there's staff at the reception area, they're usually handling phones for the dine line. DW lets then know she has celiac and asks to be placed at the same table every night. This way, like @Ombud has said, you get staff that's familiar with your needs. Because it's a medical need, our request has always been honored. Not only that but you'll get to know the head waiter (now the dining room manger I think) throughout the cruise as that's the person who will get your meal order for the next evening. This process also worked very well for our friend who couldn't have salt. Not an issue at all. Buffet may be an issue for you. For DW, one of the buffet staff, usually one of the chefs is happy to give her a tour each time to let her know what she can and can't have. Not sure what that may entail for a sodium restriction.

We had a similar problem last year. Medallions were stuck in Carson, California since around December 14, 2022. Others have told me that's a US Customs processing facility. Anyway, they finally starting moving in the mail system around the 28th of December. We flew out of Tucson for Buenos Aires on December 30 around 11AM and our medallions arrived at our home at 1 PM the same day. Needless to say when we returned home in February we had two extra personally customized refrigerator magnets in a box. The embarkation staff in BA expected us to have medallions so there weren't any prepared in advance for pickup at the dock. This is where things get really crazy. Old-style cruise cards had to be prepared so we could board the ship. This took about 15 minutes. We were then instructed to go to guest services and exchange the cruise cards for medallions. Can you imagine the length of the line at GS on embarkation day? That took about 45 minutes. We vowed from then on we'd just pick up medallions at the port regardless of getting free shipping. That extra step takes only a minute and it's one (well really two) less thing to remember to pack.

We all know how terrible it is to miss a meal while cruising. Oh the horror! Not only that but IIRC, the actual meet-up time for excursions is at least 20 minutes before the official start time.

Not really sure as it was simple enough to print the first page which has the gift card image and PIN plus some of the fine print. The other pages with more fine print I didn't print as to me it was an even bigger waste of paper. They didn't ask for the extra pages so I figure it was all good.