cganesh

The onboard texting was originally free but it was raised to $1.99 per day pp a few years ago.  It really works well but when we last used it, there was no notice for texts received.  I really prefer the system that Princess has where the fob you get to open cabin door, buy things, order drinks etc. because it will find the person you're looking for on the ship.  Each person just authorizes specific people to "find" them and it's really easy to use.  People without phones can even use some interactive boards spread around the ship to find others in their group,  As soon as they use the board to find a group member, that member now knows where the other person is.  They also have messaging that's about the same per day as RC but we found we didn't really need it.   The imessaging does work well to contact others either onboard or back at home who have iphones and no need for internet package.  It won't connect android phone users.

On 11/8/2021 at 6:02 AM, Biker19 said:

Very likely, but this may depend on the capacity of the sailing. Go to the MDR and they'll likely be able to accommodate you earlier, though not likely before about 6:30.

Thanks.  I noticed that 6:30 is when my time diners can go in.  I couldn't find any tines before 7:45 most nights.  I made a 6:30 at solarium buffet for first night.    Do you know when the shows are?  

Nothing is available before 7:45 on our Dec 5th Oasis OTS cruise.  Do they hold back any seats in MTD for walk-ups?  or open up more slots once onboard?

On 11/3/2021 at 7:52 AM, zekekelso said:

Come on folks. We are cruise people. There’s only one way to carry your important stuff:

 

Yeah...I got a larger one so I didn't have to fold by card and that has a little zipper closer like a zip lock bag.  I have a passport holder that has a side to slide something that size into but will probably hang it on me until onboard so I don't have to keep fumbling around looking for it or dropping it.  At almost 72, I keep things as simple as possible.

19 hours ago, tabprincess said:

Thanks everyone for all the comments, information and well wishes!  My sister rarely travels as she has a special needs adult child, hence no passport. I guarantee you though,  if she is ever able to travel with me again, I will insist she gets a passport so neither of us has to worry! 

I am done worrying about this now and all packed and ready to fly down tomorrow.

She'll be fine with birth certificate. The cruise ships have a lot of contractual agreements with most Caribbean islands to exempt US residents from needing a passport. The only recent change is Martinique which just started requiring passports from cruise passengers. I wasn't asked for passport in either Aruba or Curacao when I cruised there 2 years ago and there is nothing on Princess website indicating that a passport is required for US citizens on this cruise for any ports in the itinerary. The only place in Caribbean that I have had to have and show a passport was Cuba. You couldn't even board ship and stay onboard at ports without a passport and all cruise documents plainly stated tgat requirement.

Ours woukdn't work until about 60 days before our cruise that starts 10/28. I found that it is much easier to get a very thing input and linked using ocean.com on a laptop or computer. I was able to complete everything on my booking then link sister who is sharing cabin.  I originally downloaded Ocean ready app but in early Oct it became defunct and had to download Medallion that has all of the apps in one app. I have an older phone so had to update operating system so it would work. See if using the ocean.com website will fix your problem. Once I was complet there, I wanted about 30 minutes opened the Medallion app and all info populated the app. Just had an issue with pic and passport pic transferring into app so just uploaded that to the open and the green check marks appeared and I could see boarding pass, etc.

On 10/4/2019 at 7:45 AM, silversneakers said:

How do you get gift cards through Allstate?  Also, does anyone know if the Princess Visa card points offer a Princess gift card or just Carnival gift cards?

Go online to Allstaterewards.com. set up rewards account and then watch for codes from them in email to earn bonus points. Be sure to order them 30 days ahead if cruise. My current order has gotten delayed and not sure if they'LL arrive before I leave for cruise. If not, hubby who's not going can make a copy of front and back and receipt and nail them to me. Hopefully Princess can take a copy. If not, guess I need to get another cruise.....

On 10/24/2019 at 5:43 PM, satxdiver said:

Since all my stock holdings are held by my stock broker, I have to send in a copy of my monthly stock statement.  For many reasons I am protective of the information and therefore snail mail it to Princess with all the information redacted showing only the 100+ shares of CCL and my name.  Free fax services may be free but one has to wonder what is in it for them.  They have a copy of what you sent.

 

In about 7 to 10 days the OBC will show up on my personalizer for the cruise.  I have never had a problem nor have I used a "form" to submit the information.  A normal letter with the information and monthly stock statement is all that you need to submit. Nice that Carnival Corp saw fit to extend the OBC for another year.  

They have services they charge for. I use Faxzero and love it. I think if fax is more than 5 pages they charge. Their charge is cheaper than what I could get going to a FEDEX store or office supplies store to send a large fax.  

4 hours ago, tabprincess said:

Crown Princess on Oct. 28, 10 days , Caribbean, "closed loop", so should not need passport.

She may have to finish checkin at the desk. She'll need her birth certificate in addition to DL if no passport. It shouldn't take too long. I think she can still print a boarding pass without having the ID completed.  She might check out ocean-dot-com to see if her birth certificate is accepted there. See both of you soon!!

18 minutes ago, jangor said:

So I had been looking forward to Ocean Medallion.  I felt it could be an interesting use of today's technology, but right now I am so fed up with the app, that I might just request a card.  And, yes, I have contacted them by e-mail AGAIN!

I found out that if I fully completed all information needed using ocean-dot-com on my laptop, everything transferred over to the Medallion app. I have a Samsung phone so did have to get tech support to get password that I set up on ocean-dot-com work properly. Worked great and ready to check in next Monday.  The previous multiple apps are now all on medallion app.

Does anyone know if Princess has any recognition of Platinum and above Carnival cruisers? It would be nice to at least not have a new cruiser classification.

These visual pages were done on Carnival.Com about 18 months ago. I hated it then and still hate it. I go to a discounters that I use from time to time and search there for ports. Carnival left the search process the old way for the TA website. Lots of complaints for about 3 months, then everyone just gave up and found places to search the way they wanted to get and see info. I really hated it when they took away the ability to list all cruises on a specific ship so you could easily see B2B choices. That site ran really slow while they were tweaking it and was impossible to use on mobile devices for awhile. 

Does anyone have a copy of the Patter for the first full sea day for this cruise?  Trying to plan some group activities and hard to know when major activities occur and work around those. First day after embarkation is stop at Princess Cay and following day is the first sea day.   Thanks.

I had this same issue.  My cruise is a casino comped cruise through an MGM casino property.  I called Princess and found that on such cruises, they have to get the casino to agree to us accessing our flight.  Usually the casino doesn't pay Princess for the cruise until the final payment date passes but I agreed to pay for the flight so Princess was able to do whatever they had to do on their side to code the reservation to allow AA to give us access to choosing seats.  I have travel insurance on all trip costs so wasn't concerned that this would probably make the flight non-refundable.

 

Call Princess and see what they may need to do so you can choose seats and fill out any additional information needed for each passenger.

On 1/30/2019 at 6:06 PM, cruisintoddler said:

 

Thanks!

What time were the stage shows?  We got 7:15 also so hoping show schedules make sense.

13 hours ago, imapost2003 said:

I did notice the lotus spa pool.  We did appreciate the stairs and hot tubs.  We found the couple times we visited, it was either too windy or too shady for our liking.  Terrace pool fit the bill each time, other then watching movies.  It appeared to be at a lower water level the duration of the cruise.  This did allow alot of vertically challenged people use of the pool including my wife.

I read a post elsewhere that talked about the rooms on either side of the Terrace Pool getting flooded last year sometime when water sloshed out of pool.  It ran down the steps and into the hallway and the two cabins on each side.  Maybe keeping the water lower helped that issue.  I had looked at booking one of those porthole cabins to be close to that pool but ended up in an obstructed ocean view cabin on deck 8 that has absolutely no obstruction. My lucky day but know we'll have to deal with late night noise from the club but I take earplugs just in case on all cruises.  You're review is great and planning to refer our Oct 28, 2019 southern caribbean roll call to your review.  We have Aruba instead of Curacao and Princess Cays instead of Grand Turk.  Just hoping repairs from fire are completed on Princess Cays before we are scheduled to be there.

 

Hi,

Thanks for your posting. We are going on an Oceania cruise to Cuba and I have the same question. Can we check off both boxes in the form for Oceania excursions " 515.565(b) Educational exchanges – group people-to-people through Oceania Cruises" and also the box " 515.574 Support for the Cuban people "? Since your cruise was in June, what ended up on your visa?

 

Thanks!

Laurence

 

As mentioned in another response, this is totally to meet U.S. laws governing travel to Cuba by U.S. citizen. If you booked cruise prior to June 16, 2017 you can choose as many of the possible licenses available and it's up to you to document what you do in case of an audit by IRS in the next 5 years. If you booked after that date and are a U.S. Citizen, the rules changed and you should read the updated rules and regulations for travel to Cuba. Just Google "Cuban Assets Control Regulations" and you'll be guided to the tighter law. It doesn't appear than anyone is going to stop you from doing whatever you want, it's totally up to you how specifically you follow the current laws. We booked prior to June 16, 2017 and are doing two full days of touring in Havana with Tours by Locals guide, Oceania excursions in Cienfuegos and Santiago da Cuba, and in free time in ports wandering around and learning more about Cuba. Therefore the categories that we checked are all three listed as 515.565(b) as educational exchanges plus 515.574 (support for the Cuban people). Just print a second blank form and take it with you. If Oceania doesn't like what you chose, you should be able to fill out a new one when checking in.

I don't understand why folks keep beating this dead horse. We have been told that the signs on the doors to the cabins say exactly what Carnival wants the passengers who don't have priority access, either by Platinum or Diamond status or by buying priority per cruise, to see and stay out until the announcement is made that the cabins are ready for everyone to access. For most cruises that's 1:30 pm. The other roadblock to getting into cabins is that unless you have priority rights, your sign & sale card won't be in your cabin mailbox so you can't enter your cabin and staff has been instructed to not let anyone in a cabin without the sign and sail card being in the mailbox. With passengers staying out of the halls the cabins are being readied quicker and with the halls not full of folks wanting to "just store my bags" in their cabin before it's ready, luggage handlers have more room to work & get luggage delivered. On our last several cruises as platinum, members, we have boarded right after wedding parties & Diamond and before FTTF and on board around 11:30 or sooner, check in was very quick, sign & sail cards were in mailbox and luggage arrived by noon. On the recent Horizon TA, half of the passengers were platinum or diamond and their was no FTTF sold due to the number of priority passengers. Amazingly there were few if any complaints that cabins weren't ready or luggage wasn't received shortly after lunch. I'm very happy with assigned boarding times being enforced, having an expedited check in, cabin being ready when we board and luggage received in early afternoon. I have sincere doubts that Carnival has any reason to take any of the current benefits away. They recently raised the prices for FTTF and will probably continue to see what the market will bear. I'm also a very happy stockholder who is glad Carnival has found a way to make more money without having to raise prices across the board. I enjoy the free OBC ,especially for 14+ day cruises, bank dividends each quarter that were just increased and have no intention of selling my stock just because of a little drop. All announcements were positive other than the increasing cost of fuel and that's an issue with all cruise lines and airlines.

The only form we filled out was the affidavit and faxed it back to O. When we filling it out, they told us to check the "People-to-People" license option but now everyone is using the "Support for Cuban People" license. I'm not sure why we had to do this ahead of time because when we checked in at embarkation, we had to fill out another one....but this time they had highlighted 3 license options that we were to check. This affidavit is a US govt. requirement.

 

The actual visa (and Cuban health insurance) is purchased for you by O and the $75 fee is included in your final payment. No need for you to do anything or submit anything. It will be given to you at check in. You will show it to the immigration clerk at each Cuban port, then it will be kept by the authorities at your last port. The visa is a Cuban govt requirement.

It's my understanding that which boxes you check depend on when you booked your cruise. President Trump made some changes for US citizen travel to Cuba effective June 16, 2017. If you booked cruise before that date you can check everything applicable but after that date you can only check people to people. We booked long before the date things changed so know we can basically do anything we want as long as we keep a diary of what we did, who we met, who we purchased things from, etc. Nobody does anything with all of this but the US government has a right to audit your visa compliance for several yrs after the trip. Here's the info on Oceania website. I can't find the forms but think I found them on another cruiseline website. https://www.oceaniacruises.com/faq/#Cuba

 

Sent from my SM-N910V using Forums mobile app

With all the false information, innuendo and the like in this thread, along with repeated posts from JH on that other site that include quotes from senior management that this is false....can I kindly ask that this thread be closed.

Here's the link to the real benefits that show no changes from what we've been getting. Definitely time to close this topic. https://www.carnival.com/loyalty/benefits.aspx

 

Sent from my SM-N910V using Forums mobile app

The platinum and diamond perks have nothing to do with FTTF perks thar passengers pay for. The perks for platinum and diamond still show up in the VIFP status charts so no reason to think that is changing. I have cruised twice in the last 4 months and neither time had any issue getting into cabin immediately and getting luggage within 30 minutes of being on board. The signs were changed so that passengers who don't know that others may have early access to cabins din't just open doors and start looking for their cabins. On last cruise, during the boarding process, staff was at elevators guiding Plat/Dia/FTTF folks to two elevators that were going to all floors and all other elevators were set to only open at Lido deck. JH posted a notice from upper management today that there is no change to the current plat/Dia perks. Also for those who made comments that an unlimited number of FTTF passes are sold is very wrong. Each ship has a different number available and based on how many Dia/Plat are on the specific cruise. There are cruises where there are no FTTF passes available. Let's stop the rumors that are being spread. If you don't like the system then maybe it's time to move along to another cruiseline and see if you can have better cruise experiences. Most of us have cruised on other cruiselines and each has different issues and some have the same type issues. Life's just way too short to complain when there are alternatives available.

 

Sent from my SM-N910V using Forums mobile app

I am a shareholder, a consumer, and a Diamond member of Carnival. I do not feel that they have taken a step down for any of those segments. They have developed 2.0 features for their new ships and have been adding them or parts of it on every class of ship in their fleet. And many of the things in 2.0 are NOT additional costs. And they have added some higher end dining options that are additional cost. I will take those changes and enjoy them as opposed to complaining about "cutbacks" like getting rid of cheap chocolates on pillows, not putting razors and lotions in the bathroom because the manufacturers decided to stop giving them free for that purpose, pretending that you can only get your cabin serviced once a day, pretending that there are no robes anymore, and constantly ragging Carnival about things that every other cruise line worth its salt have been doing as well. If you call those things letting the product slip, then you need to just pack up and go somewhere else. You obviously would be much "happier", but you may also realize that your expectations of those other lines will lead you to complaining about them just like you are complaining about Carnival now. Happy hunting.

Well said...

 

 

Sent from my SM-N910V using Forums mobile app

Here's a phone number other than the toll free number. 305-599-2600. I'd call. If you have a booking number in your correspondence with TA that will help them look it up. Choose the "already booked" option. This is worth paying for the phone call.

 

Cherie Ganesh

Memphis, TN

She is scheduled for a major drydock before being repositioned from New Orleans to Norfolk, VA for several cruises then on to NYC. No formal announcements have been made yet about what's being done in her drydock but I wouldn't be surprised to see her being "sunshined".

 

Cherie Ganesh

Memphis, TN

Hey,

We managed to get a cabin for the May transatlantic from Barcelona after it appearing sold out.

Our booking showed up on the carnival website but now I am a little concerned as its showing up as "this booking is cancelled" when I go into manage my booking on carnival.co.uk.

I booked through an online travel agent who has assured me all is ok, that it's a system error. I've contacted him again cos I'm really worried. Tried contacting Carnival but no response yet. I have no number to call from Ireland/UK.

 

This happened to anyone else?

I just called my PVP at Carnival to see if there's a phone number you can use. Did you make full payment? If not that could be the issue since final payment date was around Feb 8th for the TA for Horizon.

 

Cherie Ganesh

Memphis, TN