VibeGuy

1 hour ago, Greysandy said:

I just booked that 28 day cruise on HAL today. We have done 3 Alaskan cruises, one was the land and cruise, and the two others were the 14 day cruises which were my favorite because of the unique ports other than the standard Ones. 

you just *know* HAL is going to have complaints about how it gets dark too late/bright too early.  
 

make sure you plan to have breakfast ashore in Nome.  The *best* Eggs Benedict you’ll ever eat. Everyone knows there’s no place like Nome for the Hollandaise. 

Look at this itinerary on HAL and drool with envy.   It’s spectacular.  
 

https://www.hollandamerica.com/en_US/find-a-cruise/A4L28A/W438.html

The Royal-class ships just can’t do the Seymour Narrows, and in any event, it’s not like you’re going to get a daylight trip along the east side of Vancouver Island while you can see anything.  

I don’t personally see the 2023 season as being more than what the market would bear.  It’s a lot of capacity, but there’s a lot of demand.  
 

I am somewhat surprised that Vancouver has resumed the 7-NT round trip, given the expense and perceived difficulty of getting to Vancouver from the Lower 48.  They must have evidence that it yields more than a midweek sailing from Seattle would.  
 

I used to think homeporting a ship in SF for the Alaska season was ridiculous but as I’ve sailed more from SF, I’ve come to understand that marketplace a little differently - the local catchment area of people who come by car or coach is massive, affluent and pretty loyal.  
 

Historically, Princess has had *more* ships in Alaska.  At one point they had two Grand-class ships doing Seattle 7NTs, an R-Class doing Seattle 14NTs; two Grands and Island/Coral doing Vancouver linehaul 7NT to Whittier and the 7NT round trips on a Grand.  By making Seattle Royal-class vessels, they pick up some capacity with fewer ships but that 14NT went for a fortune per day.  

ABSOLUTELY NOT BOTTICELLI. 

Oh, that was my outside typing voice, the one other people can hear?  Apologies. 
 

I’ll be the first to admit I generally dislike the dining rooms on 6 Aft, but I really strongly dislike Botticelli on Ruby.   When the ships were designed, they intended these particular rooms to be used for Traditional Dining.  Two seatings, everyone knows their table number, no waiting in line. 
 

The demise of Traditional Dining means these aft dining rooms now need people to queue to be seated.   And there’s no flat space to queue them.  They end up backing up the stairs.   And the elevators empty into this mess.   It’s even worse on the first night because of the usual settling-in chaos and guests who worry they may starve to death if they don’t start eating before 6:30 pm. 
 

Save yourself some aggravation and choose DaVinci or Michelangelo midships. 

Certainly not the experience I’ve had at Good Spirits. 

I am a fly-in-the-morning-of cruiser with enough miles and status to make the airlines be nice to me when the stuff hits the fan, and I would absolutely not try to do this.   Here is a list of things I would sooner do:

1) Eat marked-down gas station sushi

2) Skritch  a grizzly bear cub between the ears while Mama Bear watches

3) Get involved in a land war in Asia

4) Wear white shoes after Labour Day outside the gym

5) Serve Merlot with Dover sole. 

Oh my god, no, cruise prices in the 70s are about the same as today *in 1970s dollars*.  I’ve got an ad for the 1978 Princess season out of LA, and per-night in an outside (no balconies) was more than you’d pay for a January MexRiv sailing today.   
 

Drinks were definitely cheaper.  I distinctly remember a Manhattan made with Canadian blended rye being like 75 cents because one of them and a Shirley Temple for the lad, with tip, was $1.  Being a five year old that could sign for drinks was some heady stuff.  

Yes.  The term of art is to ask for a “route deviation”.  Super easy and almost assured to be granted for Le Havre. 

Yes, of course.  The bartenders are happy to make anything they have the ingredients for, and a B-52 doesn’t have anything weird in it.  It should fit comfortably in the standard package. 

Pleasant dinner conversation really is a lost art.  I’m not sure whether to blame the drive-thru window, partisan cable news, social media or the decline of finishing schools.  
 

I grew up cruising with large-table first-seating dining.  It’s never seemed weird to me.  My widowed aunt who brought me along was a gregarious sort, and about the only concession she made to travelling with a precocious nephew was that we would alternate on which side of her I sat, so she could chat with a fresh tablemate.   If he was single, decent-looking, liked to dance and wasn’t a “confirmed bachelor”, sometimes the swap would happen between the appetizer and the soup.  
 

Some people want bar waiters hovering over them in constant circulation.  Some people are annoyed by that.   The Princess app (f/k/a Ocean Medallion app) solves for both.  There’s always someone right there to take your bar order and bill it to the proper account.  It’s you.  You place the order.  When it’s convenient.  Not in the middle of a really good story or a really key movie plot element.  
 

The app makes Princess as responsive as a cruise line costing 5x as much.  Really. 

6 hours ago, MissP22 said:

I enjoy almost every Princess menu item but would love to see them present something new for a change.

Rumour has it that the menu revamp inspired by the appointment of Rudi Sodamin as Fleet Executive Chef is starting to roll out.  

It has most assuredly happened before on at least three ships in at least two ports.  Most of the shipboard management is smart enough not to, but there are always outliers. 

The answer, like many things on Princess, is “it depends”.   
 

For the most part, the MDR menus are common across the usual US/Canada/UK/Europe departures and ships homeported there.  One glaring exception is Alaska, as of this year, got new Alaskan wild seafood dinner starters and mains.  When they have ships homeported in Japan and China, the MDR menus have additions for local tastes.   This includes breakfast and lunch menus, which are otherwise about the most homogenous across the fleet. 
 

There is some ship to ship variation across these standard dinner menus - often a different species of fish, or a substitution due to ingredient availability.   Normally this is about 5% of the dinner items across any given  week. 
 

Itinerary length is still another source of variation.  Naturally, days get inserted or deleted from the usual seven.   This is more a rearranging than a different menu - the Italian Night menu is still the Italian Night menu, even though the ship hasn’t been near Italy since it was built at Fincantieri, and almost all sailings get one.  There are menus from 14- and 15-night sailings that never make it into the 7-Night rotation. 
 

After all that, we come down to the differences between, say, a 7-night Mexican Riviera and a 7-night Eastern Caribbean.   Once the nights are rearranged to fit the formal night schedule for example, and we’re comparing apples to apples, they’re virtually identical.  There may be one or two different entrees and/or starters with some connection to the itinerary, but you’d really have to look for them.  

One way Princess could make this better is to put *one* elevator in each stack into staffed mode for two hours during disembarkation and run it nonstop from a given deck to deck 7, no up-to-go-down, rotating it through all cabin decks in that stack, and having a placard that says first priority for guests with mobility devices, second to those with luggage.  It may not be the fastest path off a given deck, but knowing there *will* be room the next time it shows up would take out a lot of the frustration.  
 

They should also stop ever using the MDR on 6 aft for disembarkation breakfast because of the extremely limited vertical conveyance there, but I’ll put that on my Christmas list right there with a unicorn and the Best WiFi At Sea. 
 

The joy of being a big and tall baritone is that those who would rush the elevator and cut off mobility-impaired passengers get to hear my sonorous tones reminding them that there were people waiting and they need to let them board.  It’s quite the treat for them, I’m sure.  

I think cruiselines have elevated profiles for environmental regulatory risk relative to the rest of the shipping industry because they’re seen as discretionary activity rather than vital connections between producers and consumers.        
 

I agree with competitive pressure as well.  Havila’s new-build program, as an example, gives them both actual environmental leadership (on emitted carbon/passenger mile, pm2.5 and noise) and some very nice marketing points against an extremely ingrained incumbent.   They operate in a pretty specific environment - I don’t know if you can make the same play in the 7NT Eastern Caribbean market; but someone is going to want to have the cleanest fleet in Alaska, and brag about it. 

There’s both the thermal suite in the Lotus Spa forward and Izumi far aft. 

Rich Passage and the navy vessels at the shipyard make the Bremerton run superior despite taking twice as long.  You’re also more likely to see marine mammals. 

The industrial views are good and the narration is interesting on the Argosy harbor tour, but for more natural beauty and much lower price, take the Washington State Ferries on the Seattle-Bremerton run and back.  For under $10 adult and $0/kid you get two hours of cruising the Puget Sound, great skyline views, the very real possibility of seeing whales and porpoises, big Navy ships and more.  It’s the best value on the water. 

Cardiac problems revealed by a stressful travel day and more physical exertion than usual.  After sitting down and resting, they finally realize they still feel like death, or, more likely, their wife thinks so.  Also, trips and falls in new environments. 

There’s a name for someone who behaves like that, but it isn’t used in polite society outside a kennel.  
 

call “911”, go right ahead, I love watching the entitled get told no. 

You can select a terminal arrival time prior to boarding under the Documents section of the app.   It’s available somewhere between 10 and 60 days prior to departure.   If your documents are in order and you have your medallion, it’s a quick passport check at the pier and you’re done. Very slick.   
 

The muster process improvements have been the best thing to come out of The Unpleasantness.  If both medallions are in the cabin, watching the safety video on the TV marks that step complete.  Otherwise, watch on the app.  Then, before sailaway, visit your muster station and tap your medallion to record your attendance.  It is *so well done*. 

Beware.   Requesting it in advance has triggered a request for the (rather detailed) medical form to be completed.  

The rate they use doesn’t necessarily have much relationship to the actual exchange market.    The corporate treasurer makes a recommendation and if it’s justifiable on the surface, it gets adopted.   It’s just part of the deal. 
 

Princess knows year to year (in normal times) how much CAD they’ll need to pay for things in Vancouver and Victoria and to a lesser extent in Maritime Canada and Quebec.  There’s some value to them in holding CAD natively (that isn’t subject to currency fluctuation) even if they’re technically buying it at a discount when it comes to revenue impact.