jonnyenglish1

My journey events planner is showing a show in the Arena tomorrow. A Magican/Dancer called Magical Bones.

Has anyone who is booked on the first few sailings been offered the chances to bid for an upgrade yet? I am on the 9th March but not seen anything for my cruise yet?.

Many thanks

A comparison of recent offers;

I went on a 4 day trip in April 23, earned 4000+ points and was offered free interior, for up to 12 nights free princess plus and $150 freeplay.

I have just came back from this free cruise, earned 8000+ points. My CBS offer this time was free interior up to 15 days, $250 freeplay. No princess plus. Early jackpot on the cruise limited my losses to gain 8000 plus points.

Being from the UK, if i can utilise it on one of the sun princess 10 days in Feb/March I may take up to keep flight costs reasonable.

i am interested in people who have multiple princess prizes cruises. I cruised in November 2022, we won multiple $25 dollar prizes, one $250 price and multiple last day draw entries where i won £50.  I was probably quite a compulsive door swiper but over 12 days, probably pulled in $500 in OBC.

My cruise in April this year, same door swapping behaviour, my only prize was a $250 effy voucher. Find something in effy you would like for £250. No end of cruise draw with $5000 prize as well i noticed.

Interested whether other people have seen a change in princess prizes or was my lady luck significantly different!

It will be interesting to see if the expand the casual dining options on ships in response to this. Thinking on the last 2 Princess ships i have been on, Sky and Regal, there is only Alfredos and Ocean Terrace? 

Hi Lynne - can you tell me what fee they charged you to go from an interior to a balcony and for what length of cruise?

I will share my current tale of woe with the Players club later.

Many thanks

Cruises from uk generally in the UK believe have seen some pretty good price cuts this summer (at least for UK bookings across most lines). Princess have done a number of flash sales to fill the Island Princess and some good fares on Regal around Britain. The Sky Princess seems to have held prices higher over the summer I would say. Certainly it would appear to be an effort to fill capacity even if at much lower per diems.

Currently i get sent some really good celebrity offer for Europe this summer, they seem to have many more ships in the mediterranean compared to Princess 1 ship. Princess ship in Europe seems pretty booked up and at high prices.

Looking into next year there will be quite a lot of Princess capacity from the UK - Sky, Regal, Carribean. This combined with economic outlook at least from the UK perspective of high interest rates and high inflation will continue to put pressure on household budgets . I wonder if we will see similar patterns next year?

21 hours ago, azbirdmom said:

 

The cruise that I provided the screen shot for is in June.  Our other one is in December.  Both are paid in full.  I had some issues with the casino reservations area that I had to escalate to senior management and in both cases they sent me a Booking Confirmation showing that the cruises were paid in full.  They also said that going forward that customers would not see a balance due which would solve the whole problem when the casino misses final payment.  Unfortunately that turned out to be the case as they are processing these the old way and as a result causing much angst for passengers (and worse when the casino doesn't pay and everything cancels).  I wish you luck getting it all straightened out!

Thank you for the reply. It is so difficult to contact the players club, and when they do pick up the phone i just get we will escalate with no further reply. I need to find your contacts into senior management there!

Thanks for the replies everyone so far, really helpful. Azbirdmom,  That would have been what I expected to see. how far away is your next cruise? It took me a month to get to this stage and they only took the deposit on Thursday. During one of my numerous escalation attempts I did get an email from a real person at the players club, so will send the query to her and give them week prior to 60 minutes on hold and we will escalate and please call us back in 3 days. I must have gone through that cycle 7 times!

Hello everyone

If anyone could help me with my query, I would be most grateful. On my last Princess cruise I got the final night offer from the casino under my door to come back and play - free 12 day cruise with plus package and $150 freeplay

Excellent I thought and after multiple calls and  unresponded emails, I think I have finally been able to take advantage of it after insisting someone does something now. I say the words 'I think' because the never could find my offer loaded onto the system and after this going on for month and a booking held and still unable to be completed . However last time they did and paid the taxes and the deposit.

However I am from England and have just realised that I paid £200 per person deposit and not the $200 per person. So I must ask about that. But a relatively small issue.

2 things concern me. Firstly it's 72 days to the cruise and there remains the balance to be paid. This is marked up in red as overdue, pay now. From research here, I understand that is not unusual, as the casino normally pays late. Is that correct? What worries me a little more is the deposit is supposed to be made available to me as OBC. This is not shown on my travel summary or booking information anywhere. But the $150 of free play is. Again is this normal or is it linked to the final payment? When the casino pays the balance it will show?

Many thanks in advance for any assistance and answers. My impression maybe wrongly is being from the UK makes some of this difficult and the casino land based team who you have to contact to book these things are challenged when computer says no or supervisors are unempowered.

What a fabulous review. Thank you. I had a broader question for other yacht club users as i have booked the yacht club for the first time this year. All the extra touches and service Pirate has received, the bottles of wine, in the cabin, the waiting pizza delivery late at night, all the little treats every day. Are these normal yacht club expectations i should expect?

Many thanks in advance

thanks Insidecabin, much appreciated. I am looking to book YC for 14 days 16 months in advance so a few % points become important to a tightwad like me!

Thanks Inside Cabin, very helpful. One more thing, what % was then further removed from quoted 15% off price for your successful one so far?

Another site I looked at, after entering my voyager number brought the cost down to 4.4% below the quoted price from the site we are discussing. They did want a service fee which consumed roughly 1% of the difference.

Many thanks

19 hours ago, insidecabin said:

Not been on CC for a while but been looking at MSC cruises for this year got our eye on June iceland.

For UK booking always check if they are offering a deal with drinks at time of booking.

Current deals have the premium package between £11 and £30pppd on most cruises which is a lot cheaper than doing it after booking.

(for this week there is a valentine special as well)

The current run of 7n cruises have started at £310pp for the 7n which is a bargain add premium drinks £170pp more. 
Balconies have been £399

 

Look for TA's offering 15% discount and if your status matched should get another 5%.

Thanks for this, so if look at a certain TA which has just extended its 15% for a month. I could get a further 5% from my diamond matched status. I went through the booking process with this TA right up until confirm, but could not sea a place where to enter my voyager club details. I scanned everywhere.

Has anyone got experience of this?

How will MSC spot me, other TAs i enter my voyager club number and i can see the price change.

Many thanks

Hi Everyone

I believe i know the answer to this question as i have done it for my last cruise with the premier package.

Simply you see a sign that says you have a dining credit, book with it. it comes up in the APP and it utilises the Premier included dining and no charge.

However, i did this again for a cruise in April, probably 3 weeks ago. Looking at my credit card statement i noticed 2 new charges from Princess for the speciallty dining. I had not allocated and approved this card for this next trip, nor when i ordered the dining it was noted i would be charged. It was very clear on the APP i was using the credits!

Has anyone else experienced this issue?

Interestingly the APP seemed to have forgotten my details, so i had to re-link my booking from my cruise booking reference (it would not accept my login details. I suspect this is the cause of the issue. However i am concerned that Princess can charge a card i haven't approved for this cruise, nor in the process of booking the dining it was identified that this would be charged. What was identified during the dining booking was i was using my pre-purchased credit.

I spoke to Princess and emailed them, and they told me Premier package holders cannot pre-book the specialty dining credit on the APP,  a charge to the credit card will always be generated. This is clearly untrue from my November cruise.  Has anyone else experienced a similar issue? 

I get frustrated when Princess reps say somethings which are patently not correct despite direct evidence.

many thanks in advance if anyone has experienced any similar issues.

Jonny 

I just got back from a Regal Princess cruise. I enjoy wine and for these purposes i bought the premier package. Across the ship i managed to find enough Premier wines for my perspective as a UK citizen to justify the additional £20 per day, especially if i included the 2 free specialty dinings, princess prizes, where we did quite well, and the photos.

If on plus my issue with wine would be the generic wine list in MDR, and in other bars lack of clarity on 12 dollar or less pricing beyond generic. i mainly drink red so helpfully many bars had lined up what was available so you could ask questions what price was wine as many were not on menus. My fear on plus packages would be that you could easily end up with some generic cheap Italian wine worth £5 a bottle in UK prices. I got a little frustrated when servers/waiters seemed to think this was an appropriate substitute for premium wines which are more in the £30 per bottle range. 

For interest of the original poster, Hilton Barbados showing for me on the Silversea website today for the 3 night pre-cruise stay. Test match tickets also available still, 4.5km walk from the hotel!

Hello. Keen to hear of any recent experiences with Silversea Simply hotels as i am on this cruise as well and probably got the same 3 day pre-cruise stay from the same travel agent as the original poster. Cricket Test March starts on the 16th March so i also expect the hotels will be very busy with many of the English Barmy Army as well.

Thanks for the replys. It does seem a little unfair and disingenuous by celebrity. Your perks are protected (except free flights which we dont mention). I wonder if celebrity get some refund? The least they could do would be to offer some obc as a replacement. 

Yes free flights courtesy of celebrity as an advertised perk

Dear all

May i ask on peoples experiences with lift and shift. 

I booked a cruise, uk booking, which included free flights. 

Celebrity have offered a lift and shift alternative, however the perk of free flights as advised by my travel agent are not included. Has anyone else experienced the same issue? 

No where in the lift and shift faq i can see do the mention that flights are not included. It is one of the perks why i booked the cruise! 

Any advice? 

Thankyou in advance 

Yes I completely understand. Your previous post implied that the employee was not paid their guarantee, which was the distinction which your post implied.

We were left with a view from your posts they are left with $50 a month. Clearly this is untrue, agree?

Gee, I bet you were ace on the high school debate team.

How can you have a guarantee in your contract and not be paid it? Of course it is paid. They are signatories to contract, employer and employee backed by itf agreements.

Yes the pay rates are low compared to western standards. Just like your iPhone and the salary for the worker who assembled it in China .

The key question on this is if everyone pays their tips does the waiter/steward take home the minimum guaranteed by contract of $1000 or $2000 per month?

If $2000 they are clearly benefiting from the arrangements, if not cruise companies are offsetting their legal obligations.

I note how all companies base themselves outside of the UK/USA for tax and regulatory purposes.

Note, I haven't commented on my views on tipping. Just the facts of their contracts.

http://www.itfseafarers.org/demanding.cfm

Worth a read. Back in 2004, 800 dollars guaranteed and paid by cruise company.