KBS1607

On 4/21/2024 at 9:24 PM, DeclanJohn said:

Thank you for the reply. I had a look; it is definitely an EDL. The cruise is on Princess; a rare and one-off itinerary from Seattle that does NOT go to Alaska; after a day in Victoria it heads south all the way to San Diego (but not into Mexico) and then returns to Seattle.

 

Funny enough, I was at my mom's yesterday and asked about her naturalization papers (she was born in Perth to an Aussie nurse and handsome US Navy radioman near the end of the war; she's lived here since she was 2), She went and showed me those very papers, which included a photo of herself at 18; don't think I'd ever seen them before.

 

What kicked off my fear was attempting to book the trip on a third party agency (same price as Princess but some significant perks) and reading the ID requirements they had there...they made no mention of the closed loop exception. But Princess' website was reassuring; I'm going to book the cruise to get the cabin I want now!

I hope you have a great time!  That’s cool about the photo you had never seen. 

We did a a family cruise of seven people in 2009. My father in law thought we would all travel in a big pod. Uh, no. My husband got stuck with his dad on an excursion and it was brutal. Meanwhile I had taken my daughter and her cousin on a lovely excursion in Aruba.

Flash forward to 2019. My husband and I invited our daughter and her husband of one year on a Baltic cruise. I thought mayhem was going to be involved at some point; especially in one dinner in the steakhouse. 
 

Our recent Caribbean cruise with them was much better. 

2 minutes ago, navybankerteacher said:

How slow were those grandchildren?    You’d think that by the second, certainly the third, time she tried it they would get suspicious.

There were a lot of us. We were the only ones who lived far away. 

1 hour ago, Mike B Landlubber said:

I took a Nile cruise in 1988, don’t remember the company. I didn’t cruise again till I went on Voyages to Antiquity in 2011!

That would be a great topic, too. Biggest drought of cruising minus the pandemic. 
 

Wanted to add our honeymoon The Big Red Boat…we were young, stupid AND completely cut off from the world. We arrived home: heard about the hurricane (October) AND a senior VP at our company had been arrested. Good times. 

I, too, noticed the ‘influencers’ on our most recent cruise. Or some sensible reason I saw so many false eyelashes at the beaches. I wish I had actually counted instead of just rolling my eyes. 
 

There was one guy who shared a picture of a lot of cash on his bed. That just seemed to be asking for trouble. 

October 1984. 
 

I think our first three cruise ships are jettisoned somewhere. 

On 3/26/2024 at 3:08 PM, ldubs said:

 

To be fair, no one touched the rhubarb jelly.  😀

My grandmother would be disappointed. She was always trying to foist rhubarb on unsuspecting grandchildren. 

That’s a great idea! Our daughter always loved the kids’ clubs. 

So am I, @lenquixote66  I find the quote insensitive. 

On 2/16/2024 at 7:52 AM, lahlah57 said:

I looked up princess royal on a website of their amenities and said they had self service laundry.

I wasn’t clear: I meant Royal Caribbean.  We went on them last Thanksgiving after only doing Princess cruises. 

On 4/9/2023 at 12:19 AM, cruisemom42 said:

I always look for ways to do my own thing at ports and avoid ship tours as much as I possibly can. I enjoy getting around on my own and seeing and doing exactly what I want to do.

 

Currently I am on a cruise around Japan where a few shore excursions were included my my package. On the first one I remembered why I dislike them so much. Instead of sticking to the program, several entitled passengers started haranguing the guide to “take us to a place we can shop without needing local currency!!!” The guide demurred, saying our cruise line told her no shopping but they continued to heckle and monopolize her attention:  “Tell me where the ATM is while everyone else goes in the temple!” “I need a Western toilet, can’t use these!” “Take me to a convenience store, I need something to eat!”  
 

Honestly, it was a half day tour — there was a facility to change money at the port and they had time enough to shop on their own!!!!  But those 3 entitleds ruined it for the rest as the guide had to repeatedly give them special attention.

This is so true!  I tried to get the other three members of my family to do an independent tour in St Petersburg. They would not agree so I picked a ‘small’ Princess tour of 25. It was awful. One guy had us waiting at the Summer Palace and we couldn’t leave the group even though there were all sorts of tantalizing places around. 
 

They said I was correct later. 

If my husband has the chance, he always does laundry. I don’t get it as I do it at home. He was appalled Royal did not have it. 

Oh my gosh and my travel agent couldn’t believe it when I booked an Alaska cruise in April for that summer. 
 

4 hours ago, vacationlover_mn said:

On a related note- we also had Uber/lyft driver confusion in Miami this month!  The one taken us there kept taking wrong turns at the port area, and I finally had to guide him in (using signs, since I haven’t been there in ages).  At departure, we waited an hour for our guy, and he finally called saying he couldn’t figure out how to find our terminal (I had watched him on the app for over 30 minutes, circling around, like a mile from us), so we finally just took a shuttle to the airport.

My daughter had to direct him and even then, he drove over a median!  

Is it easy to get the on board credit?

 I had heard somewhere that Royal was hard to get the credit from and haven’t been using my card. If fact, I didn’t even pay for our most recent cruise with it.

We had trouble getting to the Miami terminal on the Sunday before Thanksgiving. Our Lyft driver was very confused and there was something going on with traffic at the terminal.  We left in plenty of time but ended up boarding later than we wanted. 

Even with that, we didn’t have any trouble making reservations for our small dining package. 

On 11/2/2023 at 11:14 AM, Buck Turgidson said:

There are some great youtube videos on all the cruise ships out there.

The videos helped us a lot when we were getting ready for our recent cruise on the Oasis. We were still overwhelmed and there were parts of the ship I never saw. 

We found service just as wonderful as our last cruise in 2019 on a different line. 
 

I thought the main dining room food was excellent and we had great service there, too. 
 

On 12/2/2023 at 1:05 PM, shipgeeks said:

A novice cruiser mentioned to me that she felt obliged to order a drink in any lounge she went into.  She loves music and dancing, but hesitated to sit, or to barhop, without buying more drinks.  Not true!  No obligation at all.  Typically, if a server offers and you decline, he will place a little paper napkin on your table; this is a signal to other servers that you have been asked.

She also said she was told by another passenger that everyone must vacate the ship in every port, and that no food of any kind is available while in a port.  Also not true in the least (although some food venues, usually main dining room, will not be open for lunch).

Have you come across other misconceptions?

I think the person who said everyone must vacate the ship and no food on the ship while in port was being malicious. 
 

We have looked at Oceania but we don’t drink alcohol and wonder if it would be worth it to us.

10 hours ago, grandgeezer said:

Two years ago I fractured my ankle and using crutches was not a good idea. My neighbor recommending renting a knee scooter from a medical supply company. It was one where you put your bad leg on the pad and pushed away with your good leg. It had hand breaks just like a bike. Worked really slick and was a life saver. It was $40 for a month. It was light weight a narrow enough, and light enough that you could go anywhere. It fit easily in the back seat, but I don’t know about flying or anything major. If you do decide to go this route, make sure you get one with a basket.

My husband fractured his ankle and had to have hardware in it. The knee scooter was a lifesaver for him.  We didn’t travel with it but on Oasis we saw a few people with them. 

It’s not just on cruises. A friend and I were in Denver and she could smell pot through the connecting door. 

I wish I could travel with my cannabis gummies. I have a medical card in Illinois but that doesn’t mean anything any where else. 

22 hours ago, BecciBoo said:

I've been looking at Youtube reviews since she moved to Texas....how'd you like her?

Oh I didn’t know she was in TX!  That’s exciting. We loved her. It helped that it was my dream cruise (Baltic) and our son-in-law’s first cruise.

The problem we have is Princess taking the chairs out of the cabin. It looks like you need a mini-suite to get the sofa we had on Royal. That’s a drawback for me. Also, the balconies are cantilevered which leave some really exposed to the sun. Since I’m basically a vampire that’s a drawback, too, especially on a Caribbean itinerary. 
 

She had the Medallion which is wonderful. Although once the medallion showed that I was in some random cabin and freaked my husband out because I get lost a lot. 

On 12/1/2023 at 2:14 PM, OnTheJourney said:

Amazing for sure, and neat article. Somehow, though, I have zero interest in sailing on that big a ship. Largest I've ever been on is the Adventure. I wouldn't mind trying Oasis class at least once I suppose.

We did the new, bigger Regal Princess in 2019

Then we did a Thanksgiving cruise last month on Oasis class. I’m glad we did it but we had to travel when our daughter and son-in-law could so that meant a very crowded ship with lots of kids of all ages. 
 

We would like to try Oasis class again. 

It’s the Sailor Jack post talked about earlier. Thank you.

My husband had a hard time on our Thanksgiving cruise. It was full, it was the Caribbean and we didn’t fully understand the big ships as it was our first one. 
 

All in all, he enjoyed it but if it were just the two of us, we would do a different time of year.