Earthworm Jim

It doesn't have to be all or nothing. Try the MDR one day and the buffet another and see which you like best. Or mix and match depending on circumstances. A relaxing sea day might suit the slower paced MDR. While if you're in a hurry to make your morning excursion, you might want the quicker buffet. We do some mornings at each since my wife prefers the MDR and I like the buffet.

Finding trip insurance online is easy, and you'll probably get better coverage for the same money that way. I use The Trip Insurance Store, which if you aren't bothered by their amateurish but excellent website, gives you excellent customer service if you have questions or problems. And they prescreen all the companies for you and give you a side by side comparison. Other people prefer Insure My Trip, which I suspect is fine too.

Looking at it a slightly different way, the Plus Package costs $60 a day, but $16 of that you're going to pay in gratuities anyway, so it's really $44 a day for drinks (incl. coffees) and wifi. I'm ignoring the other little stuff you get because I don't value it, though one could argue two visits to Alfredos has some value. I wouldn't pay for wifi separately if I didn't get the package, but I like having it. Without the package I might have 2-3 drinks a day. With it add about 1 or 2 because I'm likely to have wine with dinner in that case. So I'm probably losing a little money by getting it, but I get it anyway.

I see you're from New York. I believe us New York residents can only purchase Princess' At-Ease Waiver Program. "At-Ease Waiver Program. The program offers a cancellation fee waiver as well as baggage protection in a single package, as neither may be purchased separately. This program is not trip interruption insurance and only covers cancellation fees and guest’s baggage while on the cruise, cruisetour or Cruise Plus.*" The regular Princess Vacation Protection that most everyone else can buy we can't get: "Note that Princess Vacation Protection is not available to residents of the state of New York, British Columbia, Quebec, Puerto Rico, or Mexico."

The sign did say "all other wines", so I think you had a case if you had wanted to make a stink over it. The announcement in July wasn't a good excuse. It's not like they can expect every passenger to keep on top of such announcements.

With 4 in cabin the balcony space is invaluable just to have a place for some people to be out of the way while others do something in the cabin (get ready for dinner, pack or unpack, get ready in the morning, etc ). Not so much for all 4 of you to hang out on the balcony at once though.

Hey, the more people watching bingo, the fewer people are crowding whatever part of the ship you like to spend your time.

My interpretation of Tedferg's comment is if you have the package and order the Fixed Price (salad, pizza, and dessert) there is no charge. But if you order a la carte, say, just the pizza, you would be charged.

Well, not anywhere. It would have to be to a category Princess considers the same or higher than what you booked.

How are the "No Sugar Added" desserts? I see the menu has Key Lime Pie one day, which I enjoy, but it's no sugar added. Which makes it sound like it could be unpleasantly tart with no sugar. Are the "no sugar added" desserts good enough that even people who aren't restricting their sugar would still enjoy them?

OK, fair. How about "Already incidentally paid for in the past"? (Incidentally because you didn't pay for all those past cruises in order to get the Priority boarding perk. It was just a side benefit.)

The most important difference between Priority and FTTF is free vs. $60 to $100+.

We recently got our passport renewal back 3 weeks after we sent it in. And one of those weeks was the time it took our application and old old passports to get to the passport office. So it is theoretically possible the OP could still get it in time if they only need a renewal. But I wouldn't want to gamble my vacation on hoping to get it that fast.

Well, I think ships do take on municipal drinking water from a port at times, so it could have been that water with slightly higher sodium content than the desalinated water the ship produces. In chengkp75's defense, he didn't really offer any opinion to be different than yours. He just presented some facts. Yours was more a (admittedly reasonable sounding to us uninitiated) supposition of cause based on your anecdotal experience.

That $100 here and $100 there can just sit in your bank account and pay your bill just as easily after the cruise. Though given today's paltry savings and checking interest rates, you're not losing much by paying in advance either. Though you avoid the step of cashing out the remainder with a slot machine if you leave it in the bank..

I feel like the current oil prices are already built into the cost of the cruise. It would take a sudden spike to make them implement the surcharge.

If your implication is that Superstorm Sandy was nothing more than a thunderstorm overhyped by NY media, you are badly misinformed. Per Wikipedia: Hurricane Sandy (unofficially referred to as Superstorm Sandy)[1][2] was an extremely destructive and strong Atlantic hurricane of late October 2012. It was the largest Atlantic hurricane on record as measured by diameter, with tropical-storm-force winds spanning 1,150 miles (1,850 km).[3][4][5] The storm inflicted nearly $70 billion (2012 USD) in damage and killed 233 people across eight countries from the Caribbean to Canada

The excursion to Venice was included. The tour part was pretty basic. More of an orientation of where the highlights are. And then you had free time on your own.

Your own post from Tuesday showed a Carnival link saying "Save up to 10% off", so I used the same language. Are you implying someone buying a $10 item for $5 is saving 100%? Because no one would construe it that way.

Tips being $16 a day, you're effectively getting your 15 drinks a day for $44 with wifi thrown in for free. Though to be fair the Princess cruise will probably cost you more than Carnival to start with.

The fault in your math is comparing the difference between prices to the discounted price rather than the full price. By that approach an item that is normally $10 on sale for $5 would be saving you 100% rather than the correct 50%.

A guess: The suites were all sold, but they overbook assuming they'll have some cancellations. If you're one of the overbooked cabins, they don't have an available cabin for you to choose since they don't know which cabin(s) will cancel.

Hence the "If you're coming from a local hotel..." qualifier. I guess I should have more precisely said "If one is coming from a local hotel" rather than said "you", because I intended it as a general comment, not specific to your particular situation. And further added "and don't have a car"

If you're coming from a local hotel, what are you supposed to do between hotel check out time and your late arrival time? Wandering around town with both your carry on and whatever bags you might leave with the porters is worse than having just your carry on with you on the ship. Besides, being on board early when not many other people have boarded yet is the most pleasant ship time of the whole week. Who wants to miss out on that just to avoid having your carry on with you?

But from Princess' point of view, they might not care. Say you're a standard passenger who doesn't drink enough to make the Plus package worthwhile. I'm not privy to Princess' accounting, but perhaps they only break even on the cruise fare for such passengers. Or maybe they even lose money? Maybe they view standard passengers as a drain who by take up cabins which could otherwise have been sold to more profitable passengers. That said, a standard passenger could be spending enough gambling, or on shore excursions, or in the shops to make them more worthwhile to Princess.