HBK18412

Sailed during my birthday week last year on the Emerald.

 

Got a $50 spa credit. Used it for a manicure.

Got a $100 credit for Effey. Exchanged it for a nice necklace no extra charge.

Got a card for a free pair of sapphire earrings. I don't have pierced ears so they offed me a very nice sapphire necklace.

Got a $25 credit in one of the gift shops, exchanged it for the Stanley Bear.

I am allergic to Latex and this was noted on my personalizer so was presented with a Mylar balloon by our steward. No balloons on our door.

Was recognized on all 3 ship sponsored tours as the "birthday girl" and received a small "gift" (magnet on 2, baseball cap on one).

Got the birthday cake in the specialty restaurant and the MDR.

Received chocolate covered strawberries and 2 bottles of the Korbel champagne on my actual birthday.

 

Now before anyone says that this was all from my TA I booked directly with Princess so nope.

 

Also as my husband is great in the gift giving department he had already given me my gift before we left, these were not from him.

Yep. We sailed this summer about four days AFTER my birthday. Booked through Princess and didn't mention the birthday at all, other than when I had to input it for data. A couple days into the cruise...

Got a $50 spa credit (didn't use it)

Got something from Effy (ignored it? Can't remember what it was.)

Got a $25 gift store credit which we used on a $50 pair of binoculars.

We were on the first week in July. We checked out the library (all three of us are voracious readers) but didn't borrow anything.

Depends on what you define as well stocked? If you are just looking for random something to read and are open to a wide variety of genres, I'd say it's fine. I could happily have pulled a variety of things off the shelf to entertain myself for an afternoon if I hadn't brought several things on my Kindle app. Same for my daughter. My husband would have had a much harder time, other than the books about Alaska (which seemed plentiful and interesting!) If you have very specific tastes and are looking to find something that fits within them, you might not be happy.

Perfect! We never fly Delta, so I've never seen it that way before. Thanks so much!

Thanks, all! We decided to go with a private company and got one that had good ratings, an online discount, and is dropping off at our hotel. Plus we now have a more specific time range to deal with and made afternoon reservations with a bit less worry. Win-win.

Thanks!!

We booked EZ Air for our July cruise - it was beating all the other fares we could find out of our home airport. So far so good - we have had a number of schedule changes, but nothing that was problematic.

However, when I use the confirmation numbers to log in on the Delta and United sites, I can see our reservations but our names show up bizarrely mashed together. For example, Delta lists me as FIRSTMIDDLEMS LAST and DH as FIRSTMIDDLEMR LAST. United is better - it shows me as Ms. FIRSTMIDDLE LAST and him as Mr. FIRSTMIDDLE LAST. I'm assuming this is just the way their software interpreted the data that was sent to them from Princess. The actual names are all correct, just jammed together into one word but, in the case of Delta, with MS, MR or MISS stuck in the middle as well.

Is this just how it looks for everyone else? DH has run into trouble with minor differences between the way NY insists on putting his name on his driver's license vs. his full name used for airline tickets (he always uses his passport now to get around this problem.) I'm just having a nightmare, based on those experiences, that these mangled names are going to be a problem when we get to check in at the airport and wondering if I should call at least Delta and get the MS and MR out of the middle of our names.

Anyone? Thanks!

It’s difficult to tell for certain. Those with early flights will get the earliest transfer bus assignments. If you are anxious to be there ASAP you may need to consider booking a transfer on your own rather than a Princess one.

Thanks! I don't know that we have to get there ASAP, but we don't want to make a reservation we can't be on time for. I hadn't thought about getting assigned to a later bus since we weren't trying to catch a flight. I think I'd prefer to have a set departure time to work from to make the rest of the day easier to plan. Off to check out the threads on transfer options....

After our NB Voyage of the Glaciers cruise, we are doing some land touring and will be based in Anchorage for the first few days. We've booked the Princess transfer from Whittier to the convention center in Anchorage.

What time would that usually put us at the convention center? We are trying to make some reservations for that afternoon and don't want to cut things too close.

Thanks!

Fantastic! This is exactly what I needed. Thanks!!

We'll be on the Coral to Alaska this summer and I'm just trying to get the beverage thing straight. Our last cruise was almost 20 years ago on Princess and clearly lots of things have changed - and I keep reading different things different places!

We generally drink water, juice or milk with meals at home. Soda is an occasional thing, mostly when out to eat. I drink coffee once or twice a day but only if it's highly adulterated. :) Only one of the three of us drinks alcohol. So we didn't get any of the beverage plans. I did get a coffee card and some bottled water. My questions are:

1. If we don't have a beverage plan, that means we can still have water and lemonade most times and places, and milk and various juices at breakfast, free of charge? And this would apply to anyplace we might get a beverage onboard? Am I understanding correctly?

2. The coffee card is good for 15 specialty coffee type beverages. Does that include hot chocolates or other non-coffee beverages? The kiddo will often get a steamer or hot chocolate when I get my latte or chai tea. I can see the two of us using the whole card, if she can get a little something with me. I did see someone posted a menu from "New Grounds" earlier this week, but wasn't clear if the non-coffee beverages being sold there counted on the card.

Thanks!

Yes if the prices for the fare are truly the prices once sale goes live you guys would be better with new sale so I would wait til 9/5. That fare sheet did say fares could change...rarely has but wanted to make sure that disclaimer was mentioned...but would wait til the sale begins. Please post back to let ys know if it did work out for you...hope it does

 

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It did work! Overall fare total for the three of us went down almost $400, we kept our same cabin, and got the prepaid gratuities too. When she put it in the computer, the prepaid gratuities went through for all 3 passengers, not just 1 and 2 like it said in the fine print. (The Princess person putting it in the computer was surprised as well.) Hoping that little glitch stays but we come out better even if it doesn't.

By swapping out the S + S we did lose $75 in total onboard credit and the free soda package for the child that doesn't drink soda. :) Even so, this was the better deal for us.

I had been worried about making payment in full because some of the fine print implied that your EZAir fare could change up until the time you had made full payment and that was stressing me out. We got a better deal through EZAir than either direct through airlines or through any of the aggregators, and fares have just been continuing to go up. After people in this thread were encouraging me to wait on final payment I did some more looking and found threads here saying that as long as I didn't rebook the air, it should stay at the same fare. Thanks for all the collective wisdom!!

Yes if the prices for the fare are truly the prices once sale goes live you guys would be better with new sale so I would wait til 9/5. That fare sheet did say fares could change...rarely has but wanted to make sure that disclaimer was mentioned...but would wait til the sale begins. Please post back to let ys know if it did work out for you...hope it does

 

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Thank you!! I read through the fine print again to confirm I'm understanding correctly, and we're going to wait until 9/5 and see what happens before going ahead with the payment. I do know we are considered "Summer 18" as we're in July. Will update....

OK. Trying to make sure I understand this properly. I thought I did until the fare sheet was posted. :) Not working with a TA.

We are currently booked in a Summer 2018 Alaska cruise, BB balcony cabin, with the Sip and Sail promotion. Since we don't drink, we took the OBC and got $300 ($150 each for person 1&2 because 7 day cruise, third passenger got no OBC for turning down the soda package.)

Looking at the fare in the sheet that was so kindly posted, the fare listed for a balcony on our dates for person 1 & 2 is about $150 less than our current fare. There are still non-premium balcony cabins available for our cruise.

Three for free would give us that lower fare for person 1 & 2 but no fare change for person 3. We'd get the prepaid gratuities and $75 OBC (7 day cruise) for each of the three people in the cabin.

So, if I ask to take off the S+S and swap for 3 for free, I should be able to keep our same cabin (not a premium cabin and there are still balconies available for our sailing.) We would lose the $300 S+S OBC, but lower our fare by $300 PLUS get the prepaid gratuities and also get $225 OBC?? Am I missing something?? We were about to make payment in full this week just to have it over with but now I'm thinking I should wait until after 9/5...

Thanks!!

Are you a member of a big box store that starts with a "C"? If so, their Travel Agency gives you about 8% of the cruise fare back as REFUNDABLE OBC. I just booked 10-day Alaska (PH Suite) with Princess on 12/1 then transferred it to the BBS-TA who gave me $805 OBC. Have talked to others who have done this and they said they received a check back from Princess for the unspent credit. Just tell the Purser's desk to use the Non-Refundable OBC (e.g. FCCs) first.

Oooh! I am *not* but have considered it, as one was built near us recently. Worth investigating! Thanks!

Before worrying about your above questions.

I would determine the following

1 - Budget for the cruise

2 - length of cruise 7,10 or 14 day.

3 - embarkation port ( Vancouver , Seattle or San Francisco)

4 - read up on what you want to see and do

5 - which month

6 - do you want a cruise tour

 

That are somethings to decide before you even start looking.

Keep in mind excursions are more expensive in Alaska.

We've done almost all of that already after extensive research - that's how we decided on that specific cruise date and itinerary.

1. This is where we are still debating some things, could go bigger or smaller depending on what we view as the value added by various choices. We don't have an unlimited budget, but we have some leeway. The balcony we have a temporary hold on is within our budget, comparable flights have been priced out over the last two years so we know what to expect there, we have an idea of the cost of excursions, but each decision tends to come down to things like "well, is it worth $100 extra per person to not have the red eye flight", etc. There's flexibility to make the trip better, but we're not just throwing money at it.

2. 7 day, that's why we picked this sailing

3. Vancouver, one-way, NB, that's why we picked this sailing

4. We already have very specific ideas about what we'd like to do again, what we'd like to try new because of DD, and what we're interested in now that we weren't back then. That's how I know some of the excursions we'd like to do will fill up fast, and that I want to book some not through the cruiseline for various reasons.

5. July, tied to the July 4th holiday to minimize use of vacation time for DH. (Last time we went last week in June.)

6. No, no cruise tour, DIY land tour like I mentioned in OP. Again, lots of research has gone into that decision, although we'll still have lots of choices yet to make.

We've really done a lot of research and planning on what we want in the actual cruise...almost two years worth. I've been reading here and other places for a long time, read various books, followed trip reports, etc.

Where I know I'm seriously lacking input and experience is in the actual booking of the cruise, and in what people see as trends in availability of cabins, upsells, promos, etc. and advice about using a TA, and that's what I'm trying to reach out to this group for.

Our first and only cruise was to Alaska with Princess in 2000 and we've been planning to go back ever since! We are finally ready to pull the trigger on Alaska for 2018.

We are decided on the July 4th sailing of the Coral Princess - NB Voyage of the Glaciers. We'll do a DIY land tour afterwards.

We have a temporary hold on a balcony cabin while we finish making up our minds about which category to book, but would love to do a mini-suite instead. The price difference now is pretty small at the moment, but balcony demand is clearly higher than mini-suite demand, just based on how many cabins have sold since they opened up for booking just a few days ago.

Here are my questions:

1. Does it make sense to book a balcony for now, keep an eye on the mini-suite availability, and cancel/rebook if promos come out? With the lack of interest in mini-suites, is it likely that an upgrade promo or sale would come out that would make it worth our while? Or do we just want to snap up a mini-suite now and stick with it? Or is there some other thing that can help get a better deal in the long run, without missing out on a good cabin?

2. Travel agent - we used one last time, but as it was an extended family cruise and we were new to traveling, my parents made all the arrangements. I've read a lot of the advice for and against using travel agents, and it seems like OBC is a main benefit. I am wondering if OBC would even be useful for us - we're not big drinkers or spa people, and the excursions we want to do we know we will need to book well ahead of time before they fill up (and some we won't book through Princess). Is there something I'm not thinking of here? Is there really a way that someone who isn't an already established customer of a particular agent can get a deal that makes it worthwhile??

I know I have about 37 other questions for people experienced in booking cruises, but these are the 2+ I can articulate right now!

Thanks!