Cruisin Oma

So headed out to CA today after the Super Bowl. There was an accident on i10 right as you are coming into the Coachella Valley (Palm Springs) 2 hour delay. Fortunately I was using a GPS app on my smart phone called Waze. It routed me around the accident automatically. Added 30 minutes to trip. But that's better than 2 hours on that steep downhill coming down from Chiriaco Summit. If you have a smart phone you might want to download that app now and get used to it.

Oooohya.....I didnt even think of that....Im in Youngtown....so no traffic really getting out of town....we are going March 13th...my sister just mention DLS was weekend before....didnt even think about Cali changing too....so that helps..

 

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Actually that's bad. When daylight savings starts Ca will be on our same time zone, so you will lose your hour advantage. :(

Ps if your leaving sometime in the next couple months, the time change should benefit you. You will gain an hour going back to LA, so leaving at 6:30 will be like leaving at 5:30. As long as you are west of downtown, you will be going away from traffic so that should help. But even with a 5:30 departure of want to be in Long Beach by 2:30 to get parked, checked in and on board. Remember this is international travel so you have to deal with passports, health travel declarations, etc. It's not like checking in for a simple airline flight. The checkin will take longer. But still , all being said, it is definitely doable. (Have the car serviced before you go - and fill your car here and then in quartzite again. The price of gas in CA is horrendous!!!!!

Happy travels!!!!

This should be the link to the current AZ Cruisers thread. http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2121975

We have to periodically close the thread because it gets to large. (I think every 5000 posts). There should have been a link at the end of the thread to the new one.

Now to answer your question. Is it doable. Yes. But nothing can go wrong. One flat tire and you could miss your cruise. It's about 7 1/2 hours. (From where I live in Surprise) Plus if you've never been you have to find your way to the cruise terminal / parking and then deal with boarding. We have friends that always come in from Laughlin every time the day of. Personally I'd rather not have to start my vacation with that much stress, also, several hotels offer park and stay packages, so some of the hotel cost gets offset by not having to pay parking fees.

But that being said, we all have different responsibilities and I can easily put myself in your place and sounds like your plate is full juggling more than I have to when I leave, so any chance to get away is probably well deserved and something to look forward to regardless of the last minute hoops that have to be performed!!!!

We did sort of the same thing, sailed Princess a lot and then went out and tried a bunch of different cruise lines and just recently came back to Princess. A couple of perks / things added since I last sailed Princess -

International Cafe - perfect to keep that afternoon meal a little on the lighter side after all the heavy dining you do on board.

MUTS - it's another option for your evening entertainment and fun during the day as well - especially for spirt fans.

Internet minutes for platinum and above

I haven't sailed HAL, but I've sailed Princess, Royal, Carnival and NCL and I have to say I prefer the service on Princess. There can always be that one person surly person that you know needs an attitude adjustment, but overall, I like the Princess staff for friendliness, just the right amount of making you feel special and add the teensiest amount of flirtation. :D

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Not sure if this got answered, but on an upcoming cruise, we have OBC for FCC, military, stockholder, and some OBC that was available at the time we booked. So yes:) it is combinable!

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I don't understand how the cabin would become overcrowded. If I stepped in a time machine it would zip me back to the beginning of the cruise again. The clothes part I hadn't thought that through carefully, just pack more and have a big laundry bill.

 

 

 

Jonathan

I really have no idea why I'm responding other than this one had me laughing,but if you travelled in time to the beginning of the cruise, wouldn't it be before you wore your clothes, so they would be clean anyway???

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Me and my friends booked a 12-day Island Princess Mediterranean cruises for next May while on board ($150 each in OBC for the first two passengers and $1,000 fare for the third passenger, pretty good deal.) We had originally planned on doing this one on NCL because the prices on the Princess Mediterranean sailings were so high, but the prices came down enough that we decided to switch to Princess. I suspect the airfare on this one is going to be sky-high, but that just comes with the territory.

Hi Brian -

Nice meeting you. You'll have to let me know what you think of the Island. She's my favorite ship!

Question - wasn't our voyage considered an inside passage voyage?

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Thanks cruiserbruce. I think I may take the risk, if they do not drop there, they do drop at the airport and we will just take a taxi. I know I canlook this up, but does anyone know how far the airport is from HHV

The airport to HHV is pretty far by taxi. If the driver doesn't go there, I'd just request drop off at the hotel closest and take the taxi from there.

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You posted on our roll call to check our per cruise emails. For our Golden 9-13 Sailing it lists Beppe Castino.

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By the way, if you enjoy cruising, we have a large group of cruisers from this board called Arizona Cruisers. We get together in the Phoenix area (sometimes Tucson) about once a quarter.

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1979324&page=110

Stop by and say hi!

My sister and I live in seperate states, her in MN and me in AZ, we have NEVER done anything just us, its always been a "girls trip" with others or "family vacation"...so we have decided to try a cruise which neither of us has done before, we have picked a short 3 night trip from Long Beach to Ensenada on Carnival Inspiration in March 2015 (her Birthday weekend) just to get our feet wet in this cruising thing...due to us both being new mommies and work/daycare issues this weekend getaway works for both of us...I have found so much great info on here already...I havent booked yet because I noticed that prices drop a bit if you wait until about a month or 2 out?? What are thoughts on this? Should I book sooner rather then later in case rates go UP?

Book early to get the room you want, and then watch the prices. It's not like the airlines, where you are stuck with the price when you book. My husband and I booked a cruise to Hawaii 6 months out last year, and in think we had 6 price drops by the time we sailed.

We cruised NCL to Alaska in a suite at the front of the ship. The day we did Tracy Arm was my favorite cruise day in all of my memories of cruising. The views were incredible. (And you get both sides at the same time). That being said, you couldn't use your balcony the rest of the trip though. Too windy and cold. (Still would do it again in a heartbeat on an Alaskan Cruise).

My only other comment re NCL was I didn't care for anytime dining. I thought the service was poor compared to MDR traditional. There may be ways to circumvent this if we hadn't been a newbie to NCL.

There are five in my party as well, so we opted for the Hampton Inn. They have two bedroom, two bath suites with a living room and kitchen. Plenty of room to spread out. At just over $300 a night, it was way more affordable than trying to find two rooms for a comparable rate in the same area. It has great reviews too! Definitely book early though cause these rooms sold out fast.

 

 

 

We'll be getting City Passes and mostly visiting the Space Needle and Pikes Market areas as well.

 

 

 

Happy planning, whatever you decide. :)

Let me know how those work for you. I'm looking at the same thing for our cruise.

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quite another to refuse to tip when your actions are now impacting the wages of others.

 

 

 

Why should people from other countries be responsible for making up someones wages in the USA? surely it is for the employers to pay a decent living wage.

 

 

 

After all those people can choose how to spend their hard earned wages.

The way it is done here in the US is that a servers wage is a combination of a very low salary and tips. And in fact, the IRS (the taxman) automatically assumes 8% of a servers sales are wages. So by the time you take the cut for taxes, the cut for the busboy and various other folks, there isn't that much left off of a 15% tip. (My minimum tip, even for bad service)

In addition, when I've travelled overseas, I find the restaurant prices are high compared to our own. But since the servers wages are part of the price charged for the food, that makes sense. You pay it one way or another, in your total tab, or in tip, you need to follow the custom of the country.

A tip based system encourages your server to do a better job. I tip according to the level of service.

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You do know it's not just Americans who have difficulty adjusting to other cultures behaviors, right? How many Brits have you read about who don't believe in tipping, even when in the US, because it is not part of their culture.

 

 

 

:)

Huge round of applause to you!!!! I think it's quite one thing to have to make an adjustment to what goes in ones own mouth and is impacting your own taste buds, but quite another to refuse to tip when your actions are now impacting the wages of others.

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Wow, thank you all for the information. My dad is currently walking around his house without wearing his boot cast... I adore him but he can be very stubborn.

 

 

 

I think we are going to have to wait until we are on the ship to see what he can and cannot do. He still works 50+ hours a week and says he would be perfectly happy just sitting on the balcony drinking cocktails for 8 days:)

Andoria:

You might want to suggest a compromise with your father. Rent the collapsible one to take with you, and if he is able to get around fine without on the ship, he doesn't need to use it. But better to have it with you if he finds that all the walking becomes to much for him.

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I was just wondering if Princess had gone out of business myself. No phones working and no web site. Geez, their IT department really needs a major overhaul!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! There's a little thing out there called redundancy, High availability and Distaster Recovery.

I still have the "Tee Many Martoonis" cards that I purchased in the gift shop. :)

I have mine too. I want to get more as gifts. (Just had a funny boo-boo, I meant to type as gifts, but on my IPad I hit the "a" twice so it ended up as "more AA gifts" :eek:). Thank goodness for CC edit function. Someone might of thought I'd had tee many martoonis, or a really crappy sense of humor.

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675.00 onboard credit- I think I know whom you booked with... you know some agencies now reduce the fare and give minimal obc.. that's what I did..:D............................

Not sure I understand what you were trying to say? I'm booked with a private TA, she gave me $75. Princess gave us $100 for booking during the Red, White and Blue sale in July, my DH gets $250 vet OBC, and I get $250 shareholder OBC. I know folks cruising with us that are only getting the $175 OBC. It has nothing really to do with the TA, except her answering the questions we posed regarding shareholders benefit.

The TA did give us a nice discount off the rates we would have gotten from Princess. But $600 of our OBC is from Princess.

With all due respect to your TA, who doesn't seem to know much about Princess so I'm using the expression very loosely, she's incorrect. Princess's onboard accounting system just accrues one's total beginning balance into one lump credit and then subtracts all one's onboard expenses as they are charged. One look at her bill had she ever actually sailed them should have told her that.

 

And buying and selling stock that quickly sounds to me like it'll cost you more in trading fees and possible stock price drops than it would in OBC. Sounds like she's as savvy a financial planner as she is a TA . . .

 

I went and looked it up, as we are going to have $675 in on board credit, and while I doubt I will have a hard time spending it, I'm currently not drinking, so unless I spa it up, its going to be up to the DH to drink his way through it.

The bullets below are from the form you have to submit with your proof of ownership.

• This offer is good for only one cabin occupied by the shareholder. Only one benefit OBC can be applied to a cabin, even if there are multiple shareholders in the cabin.

• This offer can only be applied to bookings under deposit.

• This offer cannot be used for casino credits/charges and gratuities.

• This offer is combinable with most cruise fares. Some restrictions apply.

• This offer is combinable with most onboard credit offers.

• This offer is non-transferable.

• Applications to receive this benefit must be made no later than 14 days prior to the cruise departure date.

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Also from the Carnival Website Shareholder Benefits page - This benefit is not transferable and cannot be used for casino credits/charges and gratuities charged to your onboard account.

http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=140690&p=irol-sharebenefit

So looks like she steared me wrong on the get it out of the casino, but she was correct that it cannot be used for gratuities.

By the way, she wasn't trying to give investment advice, the question was posed by another person, "If you bought the stock for the OBC for our 15 day cruise, do you really get $250 OBC and could you sell it when you got back?" She answered the questions asked of her.

This is a new form for 2013, so this may be new info that wasn't part of the old form you are used to.

All that being said, when I first saw her email, my first thought was how are they going to keep track of that??????

Yes, it can be used for anything.

Ummmm not sure about that. Recd the following from my TA, this was important to us as we get $250 for our 15 day cruise and we are only booking one excursion with Princess.

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You only have to own it while you are on the cruise - then you can sell immediately. You can transfer it as soon as you get back from the cruise with absolutely no problem.

Yes, Pat was correct. You would receive $250 onboard credit from the Stockholder Benefit.

Unfortunately, you cannot use this onboard credit towards the gratuities. HOWEVER, you can visit the casino and withdraw the money to play with and then not play. Then you can take the cash and place it towards your bill. Sometimes, there is a 10% fee or standard fee when you take out money in the casino. If you are a regular player inside the casino then on most occasions the fee is waived.

Thanks for tip on mini bar set up. this is my lst attempt on cruise critic. We found out that the coffee card is good for wonderful hot chocolate but you can only get that on the original cruise. After that it is good only for coffee. I'm trying to find out how to access the upcoming cruise on Princess Pacific leaving Oct 30th from Athens to find out about the shore excursions. On other trips, cruise critic has had wonderful shore excursions. How do I access that info.

Hi Bunkiearlette:

Cruise Critic itself doesn't arrange excursions. Folks here get together and research excursions and share their information, sometimes you need a minimum to book, and in that case people on a roll call will get together and book together. The best was to find out about excursions is to go to your roll call for your sailing - go to roll calls, I am assuming you are on Princess, find your ship, and then scroll thru until you find your sailing. (The order will be the last time someone psted to the thread, so depending on how active your thread is, you might have to scroll a while.) Read thru the thread and see what others are doing and if there are openings for other couples to join them. GOOD LUCK!

Since I would be the one opening the refrigerator door, opening the can of soda, pouring the soda, and disposing of the empty can, do I get to participate in the gratuity pool and get some of the 15% gratuity paid back to me?:rolleyes: In a self-serve environment, who, besides the passenger, is doing any work to justify that charge?

Pretty funny! But alas you are not the one stocking the refrigerator. :D