AE_Collector

New Captain on Royal Princess from at least the April 6 cruise leaving Sydney Australia for Yokohama.

Me neither but the mini bar creates a dis-incentive to purchase the plus package so it is at risk as well. But either of these being eliminated would cause a major outcry as that would pretty much be the end of the Elite Perks. I see it being replaced with a certain amount of OBC per days of cruising which at least would make it so we could use it to purchase what we want. I’m still ticked about elimination of the coffee card swap for the minibar. And some would see the extra OBC as something they could put towards adding the Plus package.

Yes because of constantly changing exchange rates they have attempted to pick easy round numbers that reflect average exchange rates in some cases but they are currently quite far out of line. Typically the Canadian and Australian dollars aren’t too far apart and both on occasion have been worth as much as the US$. But the vast majority of time the $AUS is worth significantly less than the $US but each are set at the same amount, $250 for shareholder OBC on this cruise. Presumably average Australian cruise prices are higher than US prices as supposedly gratuities are rolled into their price. So for certain Australians get less bang for their buck with Princess if they max out their OBC possibilities.

We’re going to Australia from North America for our second time to board at Sydney at the end of the month. This cruise goes to Tokyo and like cruises within Australia, onboard it is operating in $AUS. Then we stay onboard heading for Alaska and finally to Vancouver. This cruise will operate in $US. We pay for the cruises in $CAD at 1.35 times the US price so effectively are paying in $US. The 1-1 conversion of all of our $US OBC to $AUD annoys me as well. Other cruise lines don’t do this. I’ve never cancelled CA in over 50 cruises so far but have been considering it just on the first cruise from Sydney. Of course I’m also ticked at the increase in price for internet onboard without any notice from Princess that we had a 7-10 day grace period to pre-purchase it. I found out on here two days after the window to pre-pay ended. So, not sure what I will do this time….

I just noticed the new remaining cabins in red a day or two ago as well. New feature.

Yes, hard to say whether it’s the Elite Laundry or the Elite Mini Bar that will be the subject of the next “Now included absolutely for Free Only with the Princess Premier Package” announcement.

The last article I read about a month ago showed carnival debt hasn’t even finished growing yet alone started to be paid down.

The Illegal dumping settlement was nothing compared to the debt run up during the Covid shutdown, Carnival Corp debt is almost unsustainable without some serious profit paying it down somewhat over the next few years.

One thing I will say is that I hear many comments about how much the basic cruise cost has increased but I haven’t seen that on the cruises we look at. Considering all the talk of bookings setting new records I am surprised that we’re still finding deals on the actual cruise. But perks being eliminated and increases to add on prices while cruising has definitely taking a toll. But I prefer it this way as anything we can live without can be cut out while we still continue to be able to cruise. I would imaging a gratuity increase will be next as other lines have been increasing rates. We’ve never adjusted or removed that as they work very hard for low pay but learning that their pay stub doesn’t include a “gratuities” amount every payday has made me wonder about this whole system a bit more, especially as our next cruise is Sydney to Tokyo where large numbers of passengers will be opting out.

I’m feeling as though it is. A Long time coming with the other changes so far and we’ve gone from Oceanview cabins (rarely balcony but occasionally) to inside cabins in order to keep doing what we see as long cruises on a fairly low retired budget. It won’t be “the end” of cruising but may well be the end of the longer B2B2B cruises. We don’t cruise to vacation but to see the world and have made a point of going to many new locations over the years.

Sitting here feeling a little ticked but mainly just sad. I think our days of “big cruises” is quickly coming to a “big end”. Only just got back to cruising like we used to before Covid by doing 38 days in the Mediterranean and now preparing for a 43 day Australia to Vancouver via Japan. We don’t do short cruises. I’ve been seeing this sort of thing to justify the cost of the packages for awhile now. The elimination of Captains Circle OBC, elimination of coffee card swap from mini bar and elimination of free package of internet minutes has taken its toll on us. Internet was $5, then $7.50 and now $12.50. We are in the tempted to go without it category but with 80 and 90 year old parents still living on their own and young grandkids who are nice to be able to video chat with and a small business at home that “almost” runs itself, we feel we need internet. Have been sharing one single device plan between two of us to date but see no other options going forward. A 7 or 10 day cruise… maybe … but 43 days x $12.50 x 1.35% ($CAD $US Exchange) means we are probably done. I would have reluctantly pre purchased internet for 43 days but can’t even figure out where to do that now. But it doesn’t matter, reading the comments, it’s too late now. Frustrating since we did a big push years ago to get to Platinum for the free internet which is what pretty much locked us in with Princess. Now we are at 46 cruises and 481 days. Having more than tripled the requirement to make Elite maybe they could have thrown us a bone and made Elite internet a 75% discount (Platinum a 50% discount)? And just imagine if they would break down and create a higher loyalty group.

Some changes to do here from Enchanted Princess…. We had a two year birthday party for the ship in the Piazza this evening. Closer to three years old But two years today from the inaugural cruise because of Covid.

Pacific Princess had a nice little mini sofa in every cabin! Our favourite Princess ship. We are so happy to have done so many cruises on Pacific Princess and her sister Ocean Princess.

That’s what we did! Except…. We flew in, loaded a transit card at the airport and took the train to our hotel near Circular Quay. After 5 days of using the transit system which included train trips and boats/ferries to locations all around the very large harbour… we finally boarded Emerald Princess and headed home which took 32 days to disembarkation at Vancouver. Another great cruise!

Another vote for restoring or coming up with some new loyalty perks. And add one or two more loyalty levels… like the main competition to Princess 10 years ago (Celebrity) did, they added TWO more levels late in 2013. I thought for certain another one or two levels would have been added soon after at Princess. Loyalty/Rewards programs WORK. That’s why almost every business has one. Whoever at Princess decided that the loyalty program was sufficient topping out at 15 cruises or 150 days is still operating in the 1980’s. At least one could consider the Captains Circle Loyalty OBC starting at 21, then 32, 42 & 52 cruises as additional levels but…. they removed that too. I am shocked how often I’ve heard “we made it to Elite on Princess so with nothing else to work towards we’re starting to cruise with another company”. But I’m in this camp as well. We’re starting to book elsewhere after a decade of nothing but Princess cruises.

Lol, the chocolates on the pillow. Celebrity decided to eliminate them back in about 2015. It didn’t take long for the outrage to make them cave and bring them back again. But, maybe they got rid of them again no after Covid like Princess did, no idea. But my favourite story about this was that we cruised to Hawaii one way on Princess and stayed for a week or so in Honolulu before flying home. We used to have a habit of keeping most of the chocolates and taking them home to remind us of our last and next cruise while at home. We had friends who cruised to Hawaii on Celebrity right when they had eliminated the chocolates. Celebrity frequently would cruise to Honolulu and overnight there before continuing on around the islands. So, we met up with our friends in Honolulu for two days in a row when we were finished our cruise and they would be continuing on with theirs. So when we heard from them about “no more chocolates” and all the complaints from other passengers on Celebrity we promptly sent our bag of well labelled Princess chocolates with them to take onboard and hand out to other incensed passengers. I’m certain that Celebrity appreciated that!

That is getting a but ridiculous as we always kept between 4-6 FCDs EACH just to be sure we would never run out. As someone said (maybe it was you), they buy several per cruise and then cash any excess out or you could just let the oldest ones expire. Just what they need though, more make work projects for people buying more, refunding old or surplus etc! Shouldn’t matter how many you have, make them reset for one year after each cruise you complete. Then allow you to renew them just one time if you happen to go through a period of one year without cruising. We took just over a year off when both daughters had their first born about two months apart.

And you’re elite, correct? If so I would ask to swap to coffee cards rather than just asking to swap to OBC. But as mentioned, this is probably already on borrowed time. If I had a booked cruise coming up I could tell you EXACTLY what day the swap to OBC would end on! 🙂

I wasn’t griping about some of the early cutbacks to the perks as I know they had a terrible time getting through Covid without going broke and it isn’t over yet. So I cut them a lot of slack there but the cuts just keep coming and of course it is mainly the higher levels that have more to lose. The captains circle loyalty benefit is presumably the $100 perk you mentioned that is gone. It’s the one that started at $25 and steps up to $50, $75 and finally $100 when you were over 50 cruises. We were to step from $50 to $75 on our first cruise after restart but instead we had to return to go and didn’t collect anything. Things like this elimination of the minibar swap to coffee cards just seems pointless to me. That’s one they could have easily found a way to leave alone or even improve it slightly by allowing the swap of half the minibar to one coffee card.

My guess at the $40 OBC would be that $40 is about the limit for the swap to a bottle of wine.

We just cancelled our first ever booked cruise with just over a month to go and we had Princess Vacation Protection. We had booked with FCDs which did not go back into our account with the rest of our FCDs. The $100 each from the FCDs factored into our partial refund and partial Future Cruise Credit we received. Another reason to always have several FCDs on hand.

I recall it dropping from 4 years to 2 years before you get refunded if not used. But I have t heard they are now good for just one year? Correction to OBC amount received. It ranges from $15 to $150 per person, not $300. $300 maximum from two people in cabin.

Princess allowed flights out booked through them beginning at 11:45 AM on our last cruise to LA in November. Of course there was a direct flight at a good price at 11:40, 5 minutes too early and there was no way it could be booked through Princess.

Shortest Princess cruise we’ve done was a 4 day reposition that we grabbed as our 5th cruise so we would be Platinum with free internet on our next cruise which was a 14 day cruise. We enjoyed the free internet for many years until they decided that 43 cruises on Princess no longer was enough to receive any free internet time.

Yes the most common errors made with $ conversions done on the fly…. For example if $1US is $1.25 Canadian then $1 Canadian must be 75c US. NOT. Oh for the good old days 10+ years ago when $ = $!