AE_Collector

The swap for a bottle of wine always had a limit of something like $40 something for the one bottle. It wasn’t close to the value of two coffee cards.

Oh and yes, we’ve maximized the shareholder and Future Cruise Deposits for over 10 years now keeping as many as 6 FCDs each in our accounts at any given time to absolutely ensure we never got into a bind with none remaining available for a last minute booking.

From 2017 on is when I began booking some Princess cruises elsewhere in an attempt to get a bit of additional OBC. Being in Canada somewhat limits this option though we can book with any travel agent most of them don’t want to deal with booking in $Canadian with Princess. Princess always has their own “$Canadian” pricing which is at a set exchange rate that seems to be an attempt to provide a slightly better exchange rate than the current bank exchange rate. This rate doesn’t change every day, it can stay put for months when the true exchange rate isn’t too volatile. And while we are only talking maybe a 2-4% improved rate on average, much of the time it can be more valuable as it apples to cruise price, taxes and fees, gratuities and it can cover all onboard spending for everything by pre purchasing OBC before the cruise. Also, going this route eliminates the credit card company from adding another 2.5% or so conversion fee if we had paid in $US. So while we always kept both US and CDN FCDs on hand, in reality I haven’t used to US FCDs to book a cruise in $US in years. I always felt we were snagging the best cruise price in most cases by booking “last minute” (last 2-3 months). This works for us because we are very flexible about traveling on short notice, want to go anywhere and everywhere in the world, not just the same short vacation over and over and we really don’t care where our cabin is on the ship for the most part. We book a lot of guarantees for the best price and rarely have been unhappy with what we actually got. I would love to find a Canadian TA that routinely booked in $CDN and gives additional perks. The Big Box store I have gone rough in Canada is proving to be more of a hassle for very little extra. Thanks for all the reply and good info @teecee60

They may show in Canadian $ but at par or at 1.35 exchange rate? I assumed that everything from onboard purchases, gratuities and port fees would be converted at the normal (lately) 1.35 rate.

But I only saw one person here in this discussion who said they negotiated a one time OBC while onboard because of the surprise lack of minibar coffee card swap.

Good to know. That was another thing I have heard from others…refared within final payment for a further price reduction. Our PVP has never done anything extra for us. So annoying as any of these enquires could have led to some sort of agreement with us but the dead air is now leading to us looking elsewhere. Thanks for the info.

I’m looking for some info from people who book through a Princess Vacation Planner much of the time. We booked this way exclusively from about 2011 to 2017. They took good care of us but they never provided any extras citing they can’t as it would likely cause problems with other Travel Agents if they did. We are at 43 Princess cruises and 444 days onboard so we did some serious cruising through that time frame. From 2017 on we began to book some through Princess and some through another place that gives us a bit of a kick back. We haven’t been on another cruise line in 10 years. We used to get some amazing cabin category upgrades up until they started selling upgrades which ended that “perk” for us. Fast Forward to the last year as we started trying to get back to cruising again since the restart. Cruise prices are good for now but Elite Perks are vanishing before our eyes. Some of these perks they eliminated seem almost pointless to us, they could have rearranged things a bit to not disenfranchise people like us who have invested a lot to get to almost three times the Elite level with Princess. Yes I know there are people with thousands of days and hundreds of cruises and I know there are those who don’t worry about perks like we do. Princess had the best perks in my mind and that combined with our “go to cabin type” being a relatively inexpensive Obstructed Oceanview kept us cruising on Princess as many as 88 days a year (in 2015) even with everything costing us a third more now than it did 10-12 years ago because of the Canadian / US exchange rate. Finally my question with regards to booking through a PVP. I have realized lately that some people ARE now getting further reduced cruise prices and/or additional OBC given to them when booking direct with Princess or at least from their PVP. People with far less time on Princess than us. I started asking two different PVPs that we’ve used about how this works or why it is happening for others but not for us along with questioning why we didn’t even receive the additional OBC that seemed to be a part of every booking under the “Greatest Sale Ever” that ended March 1. The first part of my question of the PVPs could be touchy but the missing OBC seemed like an easy thing to look into for us. Never the less, I got the silent treatment. Crickets. Virtual silence from both PVPs, and zero response to my Customer Relations enquiry and zero response to both PVP enquires that they said they forwarded to Customer Relations for me. So is anyone else getting anything extra booking with a PVP rather than booking elsewhere? After exhausting all methods of trying to resolve these issues with Princess we just gave up and did something that we have never done before. We cancelled a cruise with them, the only one we had booked currently. We tend to book in the last three months before boarding so we aren’t booking a bunch of cruises to see which ones we will actually do. We book and usually have to pay in full and we’re going. We have always been more than satisfied with our time actually onboard Princess but the combination of steady reduction of Elite Perks, Princess not offering a higher level than Elite (that might have been an opportunity for them to keep some perks but at a higher loyalty level), being jerked around trying to book and actually receive advertised perks associated with various sales has made us realize after 10 years of exclusive loyalty to Princess that we should start to shop around again. Loyalty programs are huge, what business doesn’t use them to hang on to their existing customers. But someone at Princess needs to go back to business school because they are badly dropping the ball in this area IMHO.

I think any sort of coffee machine or kettle could well be a problem in a cabin. Wiring may not support the amount of current drawn by things heating water. We routinely have my power bar checked and sometimes confiscated so getting a coffee maker past them could be interesting. I was already miffed that they wouldn’t allow a half minibar and one coffee card. The minibar perk is a drinks related item and the actual minibar could so easily be changed to actually being considered two individual minibars in one for book keeping since there are two of each item included now. Then there would be no reason to not allow the new smaller minibar and one coffee card to keep both people in the cabin happy since they already have to share the minibar even when both are elite. This to me is a perfect example of something they could have changed as a small improvement to offset all the negative changes to perks but instead the entire coffee card is gone now.

I’m sure the reductions in perks is similar across most cruise lines. None of them are making money off the cruise fares considering fuel and food cost increases. Celebrity is most likely where we return to first.

We just did something we have never done before, cancelled a cruise. We have booked and completed 43 Princess cruises totalling 444 days. But, there is a first for everything. We have always been more than satisfied with our time onboard Princess but the combination of steady reduction of Elite Perks along with a bunch of other problems all related to booking with Princess has made us realize after 10 years of exclusive loyalty that we made a mistake. So, we’re starting over looking around elsewhere. No one or two or even three of these complaints are worth this drastic action but I didn’t bore you with all the rest of the apparently unresolvable problems and three attempts to discuss with Customer Relations has led to no attempted contact from them. We are more than disappointed.

You could always swap any alcohol items for any other alcohol items and any non alcohol for any non alcohol. Additionally you could swap alcohol to non alcohol items so since the minibar consists of 10 alcohol and 10 non alcohol items, 20 Perrier is a possibility.

Used to be they wouldn’t process the request if it was made before final payment deadline. They would ask you to resubmit the request closer to the sailing date. But they don't seem to be doing this now.

Look left at my avatar. Now let’s talk phone numbers that until the early 60’s we’re letters and numbers. The original reason was that phone numbers were easier to remember with a name that was abbreviated usually to the first two letters and 4 or 5 digits. It all was converted to 7 digits between 1962-64 as they began to run out of letter combinations that worked for new phone exchanges.

That has been my most likely explanation for this as well. The rule is one per cabin but it gets applied to one persons account. So put some time between sending it in and the6 may miss it. Myself I don’t feel good about gaming the system, I just want what I am entitled to and am beginning to feel that isn’t even happening lately.

I think there is or will be a new coffee package so you won’t have to pay $60/day to get it. But certainly it will be more expensive than the coffee card which is likely why they are cutting it loose from the minibar swap. I really don’t think of myself as a complainer, several times on here over the years I have been a used of being a “Princess Cheerleader”. We’ve always been happy with most things onboard even though sometimes things don’t work out perfectly. But we worked hard at getting to where we are which is 43 cruises and 444 days in Princess. We haven’t been on another cruise line since 2013 and have done 32 of the 43 Princess cruises in that 10 year period. But I can’t help seeing that they seem to disproportionately chopping the elite benefits. The only thing left to work towards after 15 cruises was the Captains Circle loyalty benefit which is gone. free internet from 6 to 41st cruise, then as we approach tripling the elite requirement we have to pay $5 and now $7.50. Pre Covid we were constantly having to wait 3 days for elite laundry to be done, sometimes it was even 4 days. We felt screwed around when they moved the coffee cards onto the medallion as we almost always do backlot back cruises and get the minibar in the first cruise which we can easily stretch over two cruises, used coffee cards we had from previous cruises which were mainly for the punches, then swapped for coffee cards on our second cruise which went “in the bank” for our next cruise. Life was good but that ended with the medallion and sounds as though the coffee swap is completely gone now. Is it just me or are others starting to feel a little under appreciated? There are little improvements they could have made to appease us at no cost to them such as allowing 1/2 minibar with one coffee card and maybe some different internet options. As my wife says, we may have really hit the sweet spot with cruising the 10 years Pre Covid.

Yet I frequently heard that two unrelated people (even if they were related but had different last names) could both apply for the shareholder benefit as long as they each owned 100 shares. Being married with the same last name and owning 600 CCL shares, some in joint names and some in our individual names yet we only qualified for one shareholders benefit.

I compared the Tax and Port Fees on the cruise we have booked for April. The cruise price is about 8% above par but Tax and Port Fees in Canadian are unaffected by the better exchange rate. They are 35% more in Canadian than in US and 1.35 is the current Princess exchange rate. Just like anything else prepaid or pre purchased before hand such as pre purchasing OBC or prepaying gratuities etc. What I didn’t look at was the Plus and Premier add on prices under this offer. My guess would be that only the base cruise price is being reduced.

You pack lighter than we do for a cruise!!

They were always so flexible with the substitution possibilities …almost as though it was an Elite Perk and they valued Elite cruisers! That said, I could never understand why when two passengers had to share the Elite Minibar Perk there was absolutely no way they would let you chose a half minibar and one coffee card. A couple where one enjoyed coffee and the other cold minibar drinks seemingly wasn’t Princess’ ideal couple. A no cost substitution to them and dead easy to do since the initial minibar is made up of exactly two of every item in it. If they need to simplify the process, as others have said… let us indicate what we want before we ever board! With all the perks they have removed lately, allowing a bit more flexibility in the remaining perks where it costs them nothing to do would go a long way to calming is all down.

Buying a block of data rather than minutes would seem like a better method for those who need nowhere near unlimited internet. I always got by with my free minutes using it based on the average number of minutes I had per day. So if we could buy 1 GB or 5 GB to use over the cruise I would presumably be happier (depends on cost per GB) than I am having had free internet minutes from our 6th through 41st cruise, then having to pay $5/day for our 42nd and 43rd cruise and now trying to justify $7.50/day on our next cruise. And of course multiply all these numbers by 1.35 to get it to Canadian $. Is the extra price reduction for purchasing before boarding a thing of the past now? I know that $7.50 is the rock bottom price, so I should say does the price increase to purchase on board? Or is this one of the before boarding or embarkation day and after that it goes up further in price? I believe I noticed that there is an option through the cruise to purchase it for all remaining days and of course it drops in price each additional day of the cruise. But not sure how that compares to the $7.50 per day rate. It won’t be less per day but will be less in total if you can get by for part of the cruise without it.

Oh for sure that’s a great exchange rate but it isn’t “at par” so there are multiple things going on at the same time. Princess sets their Canadian exchange rate at for example +35% as it is now and it doesn’t get adjusted every day with bank fluctuations. They only make a change when things get too far out of line and tend to be trying to keep the Princess rate a bit less than the actual exchange rate. When the Canadian dollar rate is moving quickly (unlike the last several years) I have seen the Princess rate considerably below reality. And once you’re booked if you booked in Canadian $ the rate stays put for all onboard account or pre purchases related to that cruise. Just being billed directly in Canadian funds saves about 3% extra the credit card companies add on top of the true exchange rate. You probably know all this but others may not.

We (in Vancouver BC) haven’t received anything ourselves from Princess about $CAD at par but clearly it’s out there for some cruises. Just booked another Vancouver Alaska round trip for less than two months from now at a great rate but not at par. Inside cabins listed at $599 US or $648 CAD. So if there is an “at Par” rate I’m not sure where this “at +8%” rate is coming from. I am a detail person and as such am a bit frustrated at lack of info on available at Par cruises. In your initial post @frbob you attached a list of included cruises that I can’t open in my iPad. It says it is zipped. Has anyone found a list or way to search for them on the Princess web site?

It is frustrating as a Canadian cruiser that around 10 years ago our dollar was around par with the US$ so a US$1000 cruise cost us CAD$1000. But we’ve basically been around 1.35 for years now making that $1000 cruise cost us $1350. And it doesn’t end there, port fees and taxes times 1.35, gratuity times 1.35, all other onboard spending including excursions times 1.35. It really adds up.

The coffee card/package became silly once the package became attached to the medallion and unused specialty coffees couldn’t be used in the future. So the number of specialty drinks becoming variable based on cruise itinerary does make sense but why not let us choose from 0/5/10/15/20/25 specialty coffees included so we can decide whether 1 every other day or 3 every day works or no specialty coffees works best for us? As for the Elite mini bar…. How long until it is gone as obviously recent changes are to make the Plus and Premium packages more appealing. And $47 a day Non Alcoholic package must be a variation to the Plus package thus including internet, gratuities and all drinks other than alcoholic drinks I would think?

Are you sure there is a drydock in 2024? Just because they show two floor plans that doesn’t usually mean there will be a drydock but rather just some adjustments to the category levels of some of the cabins in my experience.