Trying to determine formal nights on this years Crown Med itinerary

Trying to figure out when formal nights will be on my 14 dayCrown itinerary (also sold as 7 daysegments) as I would like pre-book and pre-pay for specialty dining thosenights. I get that we can do it onboard but we like to pre-arrange and pre-payfor as much as possible (especially since I can prepay in Canadian Dollars atan excellent exchange rate). Here is the itinerary:

Week 1

Sat Aug 18Athens –boarding dept 7pm

Sun Aug 19 –Santorini – dept 7 pm

Mon Aug 20 –Sea Day – I assume 1st formalnight will be this night

Tues Aug 21 –Kotor – dept 3 pm

Wed Aug 22 –Messina dept 8 pm

Thurs Aug 23– Naples dept 7 pm

Fri Aug 24 –AtSea – no formal as last night of thissegment

Week 2

Sat Aug 25 –Barcelona (embarkation and disembarkation point so no formal night here) – dept10 pm

Sun Aug 26 –At Sea – I assume formal night #3

Mon Aug 27 – Gilraltar – dep 5 pm

Tues Aug 28 –at Sea

Wed Aug 29 –Marseille – dept 5 pm

Thurs Aug 30– Genoa – dept 9 pm

Fri Aug 31 –Livorno – dept 7 pm

Sat Sept 1 –disembark

Interestinglymy personalizer states there will be 3 formal nights. However given this summer the Crown is mostlydoing 7 day segments, or multiples thereof, shouldn’t it be 4 – (2 each week).

Formal nights #1 and #3 are easy to figure out. I figure Aug20 being a sea day would be #1, perhaps Aug 23 would be #2 even though wedepart Naples at 7 pm?? And then Aug 26would be #3 as it is another sea day. Would they likely have another formal night two days later during thenext sea day, or three days later since we leave Marseille early at 5 pm?

I would love to hear from anyone who has completed these sailings this year, or some really good educated guesses!!:D

 

Interestingly my personalizer states there will be 3 formal nights. However given this summer the Crown is mostly doing 7 day segments, or multiples thereof, shouldn’t it be 4 – (2 each week).

 

Ah, the wonders of computers.

A true 14 day segment would have 3 formal evenings and since you booked it with a single booking number it told you 3 and it has not been programmed to know it is really two 7-day cruises.

So you are correct that there should be two formal evenings each segment.

The second formal night on the first week has me stumped, and we have cruised Princess quite a lot. The second week I would bet on Marseille. But, since we cannot be sure, my suggestion is make reservations based on your best guess and prepay. You will have the prepay part taken care of, and as soon as you see the patter waiting in your stateroom for each segment, you will know for sure. Make any changes in your pre-booked reservation on embarkation day for each segment, and all should be well. You've prepaid so no on board charge, and you know when and where you are headed....on the appropriate nights.

We like to sail in suites, and so we have the comped specialty dining the first night, and we also sometimes get a second comped specialty dinner as part of a promo. Those second comps are reserved for us - but it is no problem to call and change whatever reservation has already been made. You shouldn't have a problem either.

We just returned from this exact itinerary. As odd as it seems Princess can't just tell us how many or when the formal nights are. We assumed as a 14 day it would have 3 formal nights. In reality we had 4.

Once we were aboard we quickly realized that they treat these cruises as 7 days - 7 from Athens to Barcelona, 7 from Barcelona to Rome, and 7 from Rome to Athens. There were people embarking and disembarking at all three (which kind of made it easier since not everyone was getting on or getting off at once).

So back to formal nights. We had the first on the sea day after Santorini. The second was the day we were in Naples. The third was the sea day after Barcelona, and the fourth was the sea day after Gibraltar.

This was a great itinerary by the way. We loved Kotor and Gibraltar and if you like to get some exercise we walked to the top of the fortress in Kotor and did the Mediterranean Steps in Gibraltar. Make sure if you want to go to La Sagrada Familia and to Parc Guell in Barcelona that you get advance tickets. Some people thought they could just get them when they arrived and were disappointed.

Enjoy - we sure did!!!