no1racefan1

Agreed.

Only 208 days until we're touching down in AK!

I am the OP and will definitely be continuing this thread through my cruise in May. Probably not live, but maybe live-ish? Haha. Anyways, planning is kind of slow at the moment so I haven't had a lot of updates! I usually check Princess.com for price changes and excursion changes a couple times a week. I check the airlines and hotels a couple times a week to see if point redemptions or costs have changed and if there's any room to save a little bit by rebooking those things.

We always take ours if we're in a foreign country. This is usually a hotly debated topic so I'll just say do whatever you are comfortable with 😁

We have sailed on Norwegian, Carnival, and Princess, and our favorite out of those three has been Carnival--for food, service, and just general vibe. I hardly doubt anybody would name Carnival the 'best' cruise company though. I'm not loyal to any line as I choose based on itinerary/price. 'Best' for me would be defined by: -Going to cool places that I want to visit -In my budget -Good food (at least as good as going out to eat at a decent restaurant) -Clean accommodations and public spaces -Comfortable beds -Easily navigable website and booking engine so I can book on my own -Not having to spend hours of my life figuring out which items are included and whether or not I need some kind of package -Self service laundry available -Cares about environmental impact

We were booked on a 4-day cruise to the Bahamas as part of a large group in April 2020--of course that didn't happen. I was more bummed about the whole trip rather than just the cruise; DH and I are trying to see a game at every MLB ballpark AND we are also visiting as many national parks as possible. So on this same trip I had bought baseball tickets in Miami and Tampa, and booked tours in the Everglades and Biscayne. It was going to be such an epic trip! We got all our money refunded from Carnival (although it took FOREVER) and we got vouchers from United, which we were able to use before they expired. Miami Marlins also refunded all the baseball tickets automatically. However, Tampa Bay Rays NEVER refunded the tickets and we ended up filing a claim with our credit card company to get our money back. Just haven't had the heart/excitement to re-plan this trip yet, although we've done a few small land trips and we're going on our first major post-COVID trip/cruise next year, to Alaska. Fingers crossed!

@TopofWorld I think you have already tried this, but just in case it's a slightly different way of getting in, this is what I do: -Log in to princess.com -Click on My Account in top right corner, which should land you on the Summary page. Don't go to the dining page. -Scroll down to middle of Summary page and you should see this: -Click on Try our web version hyperlink. That takes you to your Dashboard. -Scroll down until you see Dine My Way

Other people have reported having issues (or their TA having issues) applying a large number of GCs all at once. So make sure to have your TA apply a handful at a time, then maybe wait an hour or so before applying more. I haven't ever applied more than 1-2 GCs at a time so I haven't had this experience, but have read it several times on the boards.

Interesting. I don't know, although I suspect, that means there is high demand, i.e. a lot of bids, and they are going to try to capture higher bidders. Thus you likely wouldn't win your bids if enough people are also bidding in the same category. Depends if you really want the upgrade--bid higher. If you're happy either way, wait and see what happens so you can tell the rest of us 😄

Thanks for sharing this website. 5 ships in Juneau on May 22nd. Eek!

Did you look for the OBC on your cruise personalizer? I never received notification that it was there, it just appeared--I think within a couple of days after emailing the info.

I think it depends on what you'd be happy with. For our cruise next year, I booked the cheapest interior I could find, because we're trying to keep costs down. A balcony room is currently over $1,000pp more than an interior. If/when upgrade bidding opens up, I'm hoping there's an option to bid for either an oceanview or balcony room at significantly less than $1,000pp. But if not, we're satisfied with our interior room.

I generally don't keep clothes in my closet that I don't still wear regularly, so this idea has always been a little quirky to me, although I guess I see the appeal. Please don't just randomly leave your discarded items in a taxi or other place for somebody else to clean up after. I've seen time and time again people use donation centers as an excuse to dump stuff they feel 'guilty' about throwing away, and that just means somebody else has to do it for you. You could research the ports and find actual charitable organizations that would welcome donations. For instance, when DH and I went to a Sandals resort, they have a program where they accept donated school supplies for the local schools on the islands.

I haven't seen any of the same kind of feedback about this year, so maybe they figured out the issues!

Excellent!

Yep, I'm sure. It's fine. I mostly wanted to remind people to take screenshots of EVERYTHING related to your cruise and don't rely on Princess to send you emails or documentation, because they won't.

I'm not sure when bike rentals fill up but my instinct says we can wait. I'm planning to rent from Pablo's Bike Rentals in Anchorage. When I did a mock booking last month, it was still available to book just a few days in advance.

**Excursion update!** Things have really been moving and shaking in the excursion world for our cruise. Hubbard Glacier excursion still shows at least 20 spots available. Interestingly, the excursion time changed from 3:30-5:30 to 4:30-5:30. While $299.95 was already pretty expensive for a two-hour excursion (which I've ready is totally worth it by the way, but not for us since we'll have lots of opportunities to see glaciers on other tours) it seems really outrageous for a one-hour excursion. I hope for those people's sakes, it ends up being longer than one hour. Several Skagway excursion times have now moved to starting around 11am or later--I think this will make a lot of people happy as I've seen concerns regarding excursions starting at 7:30am. Most of the smaller excursions seem like they are about half full now. I definitely think that speaks to what other people have said about booking your Alaska excursions early! Half full, and we're still eight months out. Juneau--looks like most of the whale excursions are full or almost full! One of them had 1 spot left and 1 of them is already taking a waitlist. If you're reading this and want to see whales in Juneau next year, BOOK SOMETHING NOW! Maybe they will open up more spots...but I wouldn't count on that when planning! Like Skagway, most of the other smaller excursions in Juneau seem to be about half full. I haven't noticed any time changes for Juneau yet--everything still starting at 7am. Ketchikan--the Lighthouse, Totems & Eagles excursion is the first I've seen at any port that is now offering multiple time slots! Most excursions in Ketchikan are still starting at 10:30 (half hour after arrival) although DH's fishing excursion has been moved to 12:15. He's also still the only person booked on it. It seems like Ketchikan excursions are not filling up as fast, so if you're trying to spread out your excursion purchases, I'd wait and do Ketchikan last (unless you find something you really, really want that looks like it's filling up).

Don't try to do all the activities on board. Don't get caught up spending money on all the nickel and dime things available on the ship. Don't worry about what everybody else is doing. Walk down the hallway to a farther set of elevators on embarkation day, instead of trying to use the same ones as 1,000s of other people. Don't panic or stress out over a non-working app, being in a green lane, blue lane, fast lane, not having printed boarding passes, QR codes, or whatever else they throw at you to be ready for embarkation. I'm 100% confident that as long as I have proper identification and a form of payment, I will be able to get on the ship. Be flexible and make the most out of whatever happens. Sometimes the unexpected turns into the best memory!

I guess not, I think I'm the only one that listed it as health-related, LOL.

@cusematt4 Can you please consolidate all of your questions into one thread and ask a mod to delete the rest? You've posted about a dozen threads on this subject, both here and on the Princess forum. Not trying to be rude, but it's hard to know what you need help with when you keep posting slight variations to the same thing every couple of hours.

This is what I plan on bringing: Prescriptions, daily supplements, vitamins, etc. Airborne and/or emergen-C Eye drops Tylenol Benadryl Bonine Tums/licorice tablets Covid tests Alka-seltzer cold & cough Throat lozenges Mini first aid kit Sunblock Just the covid tests and cold medicine are new additions since last time we cruised.

Wow. Mine still shows $299 for May 2024, but it also still shows at least 20 spots available, so I guess it hasn't filled up yet. I didn't realize the prices would change! Now I'm even more happy I booked all my excursions a year in advance, lol.

I'm somewhere in between, but probably lean more towards minimalism. DH and I each bring one 25" checked suitcase and backpacks as carry-ons. We both like to have 'extra' clothes and shoes options but we limit ourselves to just that amount of bag space. We used to bring bigger suitcases but several years ago DH declared he was never lifting those things into the trunk again 🤣 so now we make 25" work no matter what kind of trip it is. I don't mind doing laundry on vacation. I have a United credit card so we get free checked bags. I HATE bringing carry-on only and having to lug it around the airport, over my head, etc. Actually I'm secretly judging all the people in the plane in front of me when I have to wait for them to get their bags down, LMAO. I've occasionally had to do carry-on only when changing airlines at a connecting airport because I wouldn't have had enough time to claim bags and then re-check them...but I avoid it as much as possible!

If all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you do it too? Just because somebody else makes a different decision, doesn't make it the right decision. Imagine if something happened to that other ship and/or passengers You'd be sure glad your captain made the safer decision. I understand your disappointment and I would be disappointed to miss a port as well, but I've never captained a cruise ship, so I'm just going to trust they know how to make better informed decisions than I would.