wowzz

But the price of drinks are the same if you eat in the buffet or the CG.

This is common when the ship is close to full capacity. But, you can book say, a certain grade of cabin in a specific location, so a deluxe balcony, aft, for example. But, not all available cabins are shown on the Princess web site. We booked a Princess cruise on Saturday for July - hardly any cabins available on the website, but our TA was able to give us lots more options.

$20 tip on an $80 bill, when gratuities are already included ?

That would be us as well. We tip extra to those members of staff who go the "extra mile" rather than give out dollar bills to all and sundry.

Me too !

Where do you get the $100 figure from ? CG is now $39 each, so well short of your $100 figure.

Given the "interesting" position regards paying taxation by the likes of Celebrity and Carnival, what reason would any government have in suppporting the building of new cruise ships ?

I'm a geat believer in Vim !

She already does, as I'm the one who makes the mess, allegedly!

Removing table cloths will place the MDRs on a par with Wetherspoons, or a factory canteen. Nothing wrong with either of those, but they do not pretend to be fine dining establishments. And has anyone noticed that in those places where table cloths are not used, the table tops all have a "sticky" feel to them, caused by the build up of anti-bacterial cleaner ? Yes, spray with cleaner after each use of each table, but the occasional rub down with soap and really hot water wouldn't go amiss. ( Hark at me writing like Mrs Hinch !)

So why not just give the individual involved a cash tip ?

No, that is wrong. John is talking about new ships, not inter-line changes.

Book a suite at twice the price of a balcony cabin to save $40 each ! Interesting economics. If you can afford a cruise, $40 for a speciality restaurant should not be a problem. It's not as if it is compulsory to eat there.

We had a minisuite on Regal in May/June this year. Unfortunately, as with all forums, those people who are happy with their food/cabin etc do not post. But the 0.1% who do have an issue post on here, sometimes on numerous threads, and that gives an entirely erroneous representation of the true facts. In the interests of transparency, yes, some of the meals were not as good as others, but our overall experience was fine. There are 3000+ pax on Regal. Two or three people have said they were unhappy. 2998 were happy !

Why? We were on Regal and had great food !

Yes, we get the message ! No keep to keep posting your opinion again and again!

Sky Princess, departing Southampton on July 8th. Limited availability, as it is so close to departure date, but we got a Superior Deluxe Balcony cabin, with Princess Plus package at only £350 pp more than a standard balcony on Britannia.

Actually, the itinerary is quite poor. Only 5 ports in 14 days - which is why we switched to Princess, with 4 additional ports.

The September 1st cruise has not been scheduled to visit SPB for months - I should know as we were booked on it ! However, we have now switched to Princess Baltic cruise, due to it being a better itinerary.

Flight back to the UK leaves about 5:30 pm, and you still can eat on board. Transfer to airport is included.

If you are vaccinated you could have been cruising for the last 18 months!

Although, as has been pointed out, the "pool" in some cases is fleet wide, and the distribution of the pool is never clearly described. It would be interesting to know exactly how much your steward, for example, gets from the typical $15 pppd auto gratuity payment. Given the number of people in the tip pool these days, I'm guessing not much.

But some mass market lines (P&O, Marella -TUI etc) have removed autotips, so it can be done.

Personally, it has no impact on me if a person is vaccinated or not. But, if someone is unvaccinated, going on a cruise would seem to be unwise, given the level of close proximity to so many oeople.

The other alternative of course, is to roll the autotips into the fare - then the cheapskates cannot remove them.