AllAboardatSea

Hey Paul and Tim! It was great meeting you guys on Seascape, I'm sure our paths will cross again at some point. Great job on the reviews! -Chase & Greg

I’ve experienced this annoyance several times as well. I booked a second person as placeholder and called a week or two later to have them removed from the booking so I would be solo at that point. Haven’t had any issues, it’s just an extra hassle.

I Don’t care about the reduced service per se (but it does lessen the experience for those that have been used to 2x in the past), however their timing was phenomenally stupid. They INCREASED the gratuity amount by a significant amount around the same time they REDUCED the level of service that gratuity was going towards. I point this out to the hotel director on each cruise now. Yes I do complain about it, but no I don’t adjust the gratuity amount because I know where the money goes and it is what it is, but still. The optics and implementation are 10x worse than something Carnival would do.

I’m not entirely sure what happened today while we were docked in Mazatlan. The crew were doing the mandatory drills for the week, then I heard Oscar Oscar (man overboard). Look down and saw a lifeboat in the water overturned. The cruise director came on and explained the situation briefly and said there would be an update later. Still waiting here in port though. I got a closer look at the boat and it is heavily damaged where it hit the water. So with Navigator being full full this week, It should be interesting what happens next…

My Discovery Princess sailing this weekend has been ‘sold out’ for months, but I put in one (and only one) bid at the minimum amount for a deluxe balcony. It cleared about two weeks ago, so to answer your question it is certainly fairly likely to be accepted.

I don’t think that’s entirely correct, in that it doesn’t have to be a cruise listed under a current casino offer you have. I have done refundable Next Cruise bookings in the past in which it gets assigned to Club Royale automatically (since the cruise I booked it on, CR was the ‘agency’ of record for that comp). Then when the Signature offer (or Prime) annual comes out, they can add it and zero out the booking. This is because the annual one applies to any sailing 7 days or less that’s not holidays, which is probably not going to be under what you currently have offer wise. You just have to be careful when booking with Next Cruise that you are booking a vanilla, no frills cabin category. With balconies it can be tricky because they have a ridiculous number of them, and most are considered ‘upgrades’ from CRs point of view.

Having done this many time in JS, and Oasis twice, you should be fine. It comes down to how the CK maitre’d handles things, as it can be wildly inconsistent. Some will say no problem, same time every night, others will tell you to call them every day to make a reservation (🙄), and some will book you to come later the first night as it’s busiest, but give you your choice the remainder of the week. I don’t like the inconsistency but it is what it is when in a JS. Bottom line is, if you get a hard time from them or don’t get the time you want, just show up whenever after around 6:30p. I’ve never had an issue or wait getting a table apart from the first night.

On Oasis this week, and I do have to say I’ve noticed some very poor changes have been made at WJ. There is a section that doesn’t change, lunch and dinner both, where it’s just chicken tenders and fries. Previously these were on the grill section (and they are still there too), but I’m talking a section on one of the islands that remains static with the kids selections. It means fewer variable options and it certainly didn’t go unnoticed by me. I’ve NEVER done dinner in WJ until the new menu debuted last month (I was on Symphony then) and I’m just overall very disappointed with what they’ve done to the main dining concept.

This is awesome news, as I’m one of those that has been working from ships since the restart. For the naysayers, here is my result I just did two minutes ago (I’m on Oasis of the Seas currently): I was on Symphony last month as well with it and can honestly say Starlink is a game changer for the most part. I will say the Celebrity approach is concerning and hopefully Carnival won’t go that path. Even with Starlink, Celebrity severely throttles the basic (included) Wi-Fi to being worthless to force you to upgrade, and it’s very expensive. I’m on Celebration in a few weeks so here’s to hoping (Carnival has always had bad wifi unless on the premium variety, and even then…)!

Having experienced all the major casino brands except NCL (I refuse to pay the garbage fees), Princess is unfortunately the worst by far. I’ve given up on them at this point, they are just so incompetent. Even though their reps are stateside (unlike RCCLs) they aren’t given the power to do ANYTHING to fix their self-inflicted booking issues that always seem to come up. It’s always escalating to supervisors, emails “up the chain” and hours wasted on the phone to get things corrected. They don’t monitor the previous email address anymore either, so there’s no way to have a paper trail. Until they fix their chronic IT and booking process issues, I’m out.

EZAir is essentially a travel agency arm of Princess, and use the Sabre GDS when booking flights. What happens when you book flexible flight options is the segments are sold and confirmed, along with a ticket time limit where the airline expects payment and a ticket by X date otherwise the reservation is cancelled. Cruise bookings use negotiated rates, and relaxed ticket time limits. The problem is when schedule changes occur. The airline communicates to Princess with a segment status (WK) saying there’s been a schedule change, and leaves the original segments in a changed status state (UN if the flight booked is cancelled, for example). The booking originator (Princess) has to clean up the PNR, acknowledging the WK status by turning it to confirmed (HK) and removing the UN segment. If that doesn’t happen, you’ll receive errors on Princess’ website when you go to view the itinerary or make changes. Bottom line is Princess EZAir does not work their queues regularly in my experience, and despite what their phone recording says when you call outside of 72 hours, always call and speak to someone if the 45 day mark has passed and the booking isn’t in sync or not ticketed.

I bought a travel adapter with an extra USB port on the side, which works well for the terrible setup IP has. Agree that the two outlets are basically useless for most regular adapters these days (like my iPhone one shown).

The 15 drink max was not due to ‘sharing’ the package, it’s just a carry over from Carnival’s rules (where those guests look at the 15 as a personal challenge 🙄).

I was on the Aug 28 Ruby Prestige. As others have indicated, they provide airport pickup before and drop off after the cruise (or parking if driving) which is a nice perk. I chose the Diamonds package which included a bunch of drawings that you had to be present for, yet I was never called once for anything (they kept culling the same names out several times for people that weren’t present, which was obnoxious). Received a nice bottle of red wine, various chocolate things, and a gift package the final day of the cruise. Of note, the Diamond ‘slot tournament’ was very poorly handled. I’ve been on several tournament cruises with Princess over the past year, so I know they understand how to organize these things, but this one was just a mess. People had to stand in line over an hour as they were just registering and doing the rounds as they went; it came across very disorganized and I heard a lot of complaints. Anyways, this particular sailing had 110+ Prestige cruisers but I’m not sure of the exact number. I wouldn’t do another one unless it was limited more exclusively.

Perhaps I can give you some perspective on RCCL vs MSC as I did somewhat of a similar thing as you. I matched to MSC in 2018 to black (now diamond) and I don’t even remember what I matched from it was so long ago. I remember there being the silly (but quite smart from their POV) restriction on having to take a cruise every 36 months to keep it. Low and behold I never did a cruise on them but received an email earlier this year warning me I would lose it if I didn’t go. So I booked them, not knowing what to expect. It was certainly interesting, very different from the usual royal, carnival, Norwegian experience. Very reasonably priced with drinks and Wi-Fi included in the initial purchase. Their Wi-Fi is beyond bizarre and annoying as it registers to one device only, the dining is set time only if you buy their cheapest Bella price package, and everything has a very European feel to it. The cabin steward was non-existent/visible, which I found out is also a European preference, and I didn’t mind that at all. The food was bland like something I couldn’t believe. They season nothing, with anything. That was the oddest thing I experienced. But as far as the loyalty program, it’s pretty great. I enjoyed the private party, and the free specialty dinner at the steakhouse, chocolate ship, and bubbly delivered to the room. MSC’s steakhouse is by far the best I’ve experienced on a ship, I was so surprised. So if you can get the match to diamond is certainly worth giving them a try.