AE_Collector

Been to both those places on two separate Princess cruises. Glad we did and can say we’ve been there! Both times on the small Princess ships that are no longer a Princess ships unfortunately. Ocean Princess in 2015 and Pacific Princess in 2017. 79.x degrees north! Much further north and we would have been back home in Canada. It was June so summer solstice time. The sun didn’t set for 11 consecutive days out of the 16 day cruise. Very Cool….(but NOT Cold!)

I always felt that Princess would never do anything to “rock the boat”. They had a history of not downgrading much of anything (IMHO). But that was awhile ago and yes now there have been some downgrades to existing. Not that long after we made it to Elite we began seeing the Elite laundry very often taking three days to come back and Princess clearly stated “due to the number of Elite members on this cruise expect laundry to take three days rather than one day”. We are fairly minimal users of this perk but on the other hand we do long cruises and we quite often spend days or a week on land around where we will board the cruise. In these cases the laundry is a terrific perk. We just cruised 12 days round trip from our home port and took enough with us so we didn’t have to use the laundry at all. I always thought that if they created a higher level they could give the higher level the unlimited laundry and change the Elite laundry perk to a reasonable laundry allowance based on the number of days on the cruise. The price list already exists to base this on. A reasonable allowance might stop people from sending in everything after wearing it just once just because they can and it might limit or end people sending all their non Elite friends and relatives laundry in as well. Then maybe Eleite level can get their laundry back the next day like they are supposed to. I know, controversial but it’s frustrating to earn a perk that becomes too much of a pain to use in so many cases.

Yes I have mentioned this 2 or 3 times recently here and have been waiting for the “not required” replies. Recall that in discussions several years ago. But everyone is different. Princess has a good loyalty rewards program but it has been slipping lately. And I know they are hurting right now as well. Had they said it was “suspended until further notice” there would be hope that it or a replacement might be back one day. As I mentioned, there really doesn’t need to be much costly loot associated with an Elite Plus level maybe at 50 cruises / 500 days (preferably just the days part) or what about a nice round 1 year, 365 days. So the number of cruisers actually receiving it wouldn’t be very large but it is something for everyone to continue working towards. They could have turned the $25-$100 Loyalty Credit into this new level so it would be gone now and it’s replace the back once you hit 365 or 500 days. A very significant reduction in the cost of providing the old CC loyalty credit at the same time as creating a new level. I would have said they could include one specialty meal per cruise but yes, that might slightly devalue the new premium package that includes two specialty meals. How many very frequent cruisers slow down on the ship based shore excursions they do? Probably most of us so maybe an extra 10% discount in addition to the new 10% discount for Elite (is it just Elite?). It might just be enough to sell an extra ship based excursion to us once in awhile which maybe they wind up ahead on the deal. Another idea, what about “Stand-by Excursions” at 25% discount to Elite Plus only? If there are available seats at the last minute the Stand-by people help fill the excursion but if it’s full .. it’s full… you can try again next time you’re here since frequent cruisers will likely be back soon. Likely almost free money to Princess as much of the excursion costs to them is likely are based on “per bus load of people”. I guess my point is that there are likely many ways they could provide something for a higher loyalty level that would cost them almost nothing. Clearly they just don’t see any need and maybe they are correct. But I seem to be seeing a bit higher pushback lately against Princess changes and “devaluations”. A flashy launch of a new higher reward level could leverage a lot of Good Will in my opinion.

My wife and I have totally different CC numbers, not just the A or B at the end of all the digits and we never received double CC loyalty $$ on the 20 or 21 cruises we did after initially getting to our 21st cruise. And unlike cruise credits and mini bar set ups we never received additional CC reward $$ on the second leg of a back to back cruise that was booked as one longer cruise though we did move towards the next level by two cruises in that scenario, just didn’t get a second batch of $$.

I have heard that before and assumed they would have fixed it by now… which in a round about way … they have. I don’t think that the shareholder benefit worked that way though. We had owned 600 shares but dumped 400 of them just as the Covid share price plunge began… still at about 2.5 times todays share price.

Are you certain you are referring to the Captains Circle loyalty credit that began on your 21st Princess cruise? I ask because you mention $100 per person per cruise. It was always a maximum of $100 per cabin not per per cruise for us. But yes it’s gone. We had just completed our final $50 credit cruise in the fall of 2019 so our first cruise since restart at the beginning of this month would have been our first at $75. I still think Princess needs another loyalty level even if there isn’t anything all that valuable included in it. I had always hoped that they would do this possibly by rolling this benefit into the cost of providing a higher level. Instead, this perk is now gone. I know that not everyone agrees but finding myself with absolutely nothing left to work towards on the loyalty front removes one incentive to just grab that quick cruise here or there because if for no other reason, doing so would move us one rung higher up the ladder. Loyalty/rewards programs are huge and I personally think that Princess is dropping the ball here.

That is what stands out to me as well. They could have made it as you say, tied to the number of formal nights or just said one specialty dining booking for every 5 days on the cruise etc. This reminds me of how silly the coffee package has become for some of us with 15 specialty drinks no matter whether it is a 3 day or 30 day cruise. This was reasonable when you could finish using punches on your next cruise but that is gone with it being tied to the medallion now.

There is nothing I know if that is as supply/demand driven as cruise pricing. It is always all over the place. I cant believe the deals I am seeing on cruises for west cost of North America right now so probably everywhere to some extent. They are just trying to get things going again. They are losing a bundle on every cruise but would be losing even more if the ships remained at anchor. If and when things finally get back almost to normal prices are going to get a lot higher, especially if fuel stays anywhere near these prices.

I think that means you are crew. Let us know if your cabin seems a little smaller than you remember and if you have to do dishes and change your own linen! (Just kidding of course)

We too were in the May 2-14 Royal Princess round trip from Vancouver to Alaska. Our first venture out very far after two years of laying low but far from our first Princess cruise. An easy cruise for us since we live 20 miles from Canada Place pier. Overall we were impressed. Crew was great as always. We found the food to be excellent onboard. No Covid for us during or after. We religiously wore our masks onboard in public areas until seated for food or drink. And we weren’t alone… I did several surveys of people wandering the ship and every time came to a figure of 60-70% wearing masks. I really think they should have stuck with so called “Mandatory” masks inside though some would still push it I’m sure. Bottom line is that Cruising is risky for Covid transmission. We would consider doing another soon but not sure what we would do if once onboard almost no one could be bothered to wear masks inside.

I’ve been away from cruise Critic for awhile and I can’t recall if posts like this are appreciated or not or whether it should be put here or somewhere else in the site. We are at Downtown Vancouver for a couple of days “Cat Sitting” for our daughter so first order of the day was to walk the four blocks to see which Princess ship was at the pier. Yes I know I didn’t need to even go outside to figure this out but it’s a nice day here…. Finally! We did our first ever cruise on a Royal Class ship disembarking Royal Princess right here just one week ago. Our reaction to the Royal class ships is mixed but neither that nor Covid nor the loss of a few more perks stopped us from enjoying the 12 day Alaska round trip from Vancouver.

Just home yesterday after the 12 day Alaska round trip from Vancouver on Royal Princess. Our first cruise in 2 1/2 years and Royal Princesses first revenue cruise in 26 months. I took a quick look at our account in the medallion app around half way through the cruise and didn’t think to check again at the end. And no paper statement was received overnight on the last day. Part of the printed paper reduction presumably which I’m in favour of. Or did we just miss finding a delivered statement? Is there any way to get this info online now that the cruise is over or does Princess email it after in conjunction with the credit card being charged? In our case we always buy a bunch of OBC before the cruise and then the surplus gets refunded afterwards as long as we didn’t use it all up. It’s nice to have a rough idea where we stood at the end.