RebeccatheGeek

18 hours ago, Italy52 said:

If you don't mind me asking, where was your ship embarking from and what was your sailing date in July?

18 hours ago, Italy52 said:

If you don't mind me asking, where was your ship embarking from and what was your sailing date in July?

 We were set for the Coral Princess out of Vancouver on July 15th. Ours was a Cruisetour as well. Not sure that made any difference or not. 

Wow! So glad people posted in this topic. Our Alaskan cruise set for July was cancelled April 14th, and I looked today and they had put the money back on my individual gift cards. Well, they put money back on the first 9 cards, but when trying to check the other 4 cards the website seems to not be working. 

In April, I had called and emailed to ask that they put the amount on one new gift card, which they obviously didn't do. Will try the last 4 at another time and hope their website is fixed at that point. 

They have also refunded $300 of the $400 we paid with credit cards. 

Now if I could just sell these gift cards without losing a ton of money, I'll be happy. 

Our July Alaskan cruise was cancelled April 14th, and we chose option 2. We didn't have any emails from Princess after the cancellation notice. 

I looked today and they had refunded $300 to our cards, out of $400 that we paid. The rest of our cruise was paid with many many gift cards. I requested they be returned on one new gift card in April. Today I checked and they had simply put the amount back on the 13 individual gift cards, but didn't alert me. You would think they would want to tell me that they finally gave me my money back so I wouldn't complain and cause more work!

Honestly, a little surprised I got it back. If anyone wants to buy some gift cards at a discount, let me know! 😉 

I emailed to ask for them to send it back to me on a new gift card after talking on the phone with a couple of reps. I had used about 12 electronic giftcards and had thousands paid on them. Just crossing my fingers they actually send me a physical card (or two) at some point. I'm pretty much resigned to the fact that all that money is gone. 😞

So glad other people are talking about this! I paid for our cruise with over a dozen gift cards, and that cruise has been cancelled. I would love that back in cash, but I'm not hopeful. Just crossing my fingers that I can get it back on one gift card and not the dozen I used. 

I'll try calling this week to see what I can get. Thanks for the updates everyone! 

They are probably keeping that in mind, and depending on what the legalities of things are. If there is an outbreak on the ship, are they at high liability now? Where will the passengers go? Will anyone take them? Will the islands let them dock?

And since they have sent a lot of employees back to their home countries, they might not have enough crew to staff the ship. 

I'm in a similar boat. I've paid over $6,000 in gift cards for a July cruise. Got 5% off via Target, but I'm really regretting not just paying with a card in case the cruise is cancelled. 

To be fair, at the time we booked "There's no way we won't go on this cruise!". Sigh. This would be our first Princess cruise as well. 

Those are really interesting stats! We've never taken Priness before, but decided they were the ones to take to Alaska, so here we are!

I always imagined the really long, interesting cruises would sell out rather quickly. But then, you have to be able to be gone for a long period of time.

I'll probably just keep checking the Alaskan itineraries as we get closer just to see details. I imagine that the Coral would be the best selling ship, but people might go for new/shiny more than I do. 

I keep looking to see how many cabins are still available for my Alaskan cruise this summer, which had me thinking: what are the most in demand itineraries for Princess? Is it the once in a lifetime longer cruises like Antarctica?

And ignoring when a new ship joins the fleet, are there certain ships that sell out more than others because people like it more?

I would absolutely love to see stats, but I have a sneaking suspicion Princess might not want to release those. 😉 

Thank you so much everyone! I'm glad I know not to waste money on those canapes. Alas, I had a feeling they might not be great. 

We'll probably do Bayou Cafe on our anniversary (one free specialty dining night). I think I'll get her the chocolate covered strawberries too! She loves those things, and at $8 one of the cheapest things as well. I just wish I liked strawberries. 😉 

I'm tempted by the balcony dinner/breakfast, but I think it might be too cold for her in Alaska. We'll see if I can convince her otherwise when we get on the ship. We're crossing our fingers for the Chef's Table as well!

We're doing our first Princess cruise (Alaska) for our anniversary this summer and I was looking at the "Culinary Delights" section of my cruise planner. I see things like canapes, deluxe canapes, and a cheese/fruit plate. I assume these would be delivered to the room. I was thinking this might be something nice to get for my wife for our annivesary.

Has anyone tried these? Are they good? And are they worth it? I assumed that these weren't things you find on the buffet, but not having sailed Princess, I wasn't sure. 

Our plan is to do a dog sledding excursion on a glacier via helicopter, either in Juneau or Skagway. What is the best time to do one of these excursions? 

I know that the weather can delay or cancel the flights. Would it be best to take the first time available in the morning in the hope that things are just delayed by an hour or two? Or is it best to do it in the middle of the day? 

My experience has been that NCL's food is much better than RCCL's in the main dining rooms. For reference I've sailed on the Breakaway and the Gem and found the food to be great at best and mediocre at worst. I expected the same when I sailed on RCCL's the Anthem of the Seas. Sadly, I found almost all of the food in the main dining rooms bad to inedible. I'm afraid the buffet wasn't much better. Though that could've just been that ship!

I found the food in the specialty dining rooms magnificent on both NCL and RCCL.

Background: I consider myself a foodie though I do have an appreciation for food that is horrible for me but tastes fantastic.

That's appalling! I'm so sorry. I'm hoping you didn't have a horrible experience with it. I can't believe they would do that.

Sent from my iPhone using Forums

I got really excited when I found this topic and told my wife only to find that she's already been here!

I'm getting so excited for our cruise and am just a little bit obsessed! I'm so glad there will be some other LGBT folks on the cruise. Especially since my wife said she would go crazy if I was the only person she talked to for 2 weeks. ;)

Sent from my iPhone using Forums

If it were me, I would take a cruise from Miami. I live in New York and cruise out of there because it gives you more vacation time compared to travel time. I leave my house and can be on vacation in an hour. If I cruised somewhere else I would have to deal with all of the flight stuff which adds up.

Sent from my iPhone using Forums

Great review! Thanks for all the info.

Sent from my iPhone using Forums

Partially out of excitement about my upcoming cruise, and partially because I've had a hard time finding information, I wanted to start this thread about virgin drinks. With many different reasons that people can't drink alchohol I thought it would be handy for them to have a list of possible drink orders on Norwegian ships.

What virgin drinks suggestions do people have?

Here are the few that I know of:

Pina colada

Strawberry daiquiri

Peach daiquiri

Banana daiquiri

Sodas

I absolutely fell in love with the peach daiquiri's on my first cruise last summer, and plan to drink tons of them on my upcoming cruise. However, maybe it would be nice to vary it up a bit.

We just got off the Anthem a few weeks ago so I might be able to help. Alas, other people will be able to speak to the Breakaway better than I will because we won't be sailing out on her until November.

We thought that the build and plans of the Anthem were fantastic so would recommend one of her sister ships. There are lots of great features like the Solarium, the music hall, TwoSeventy, and the iFly. We actually never felt crowded with was surprising with the amount of people on her.

However, we had MULTIPLE problems with the service on the ship. The worst being that we showed up for our dinner reservation about 8 minutes early, and spoke to the hostess about 3 minutes til. The hostess then proceeded to not say a word to us, while we were standing there, for over 10 minutes. When she finally spoke to us, it was to tell us to go and share a chair over at the side to get us out of the way. No one ever apologized. Of course, my wife was more upset about their laissez-faire attitude to me finding plastic in my food.

I'm afraid we're a little convinced that the ship is cursed. We were on the sailing where they had their second fatal drowning in the course of about a month.

Combining my experiences with the ratings of the two ships on the site (Anthem has 48% who loved it, and Breakaway has 60%) I would think Breakaway would probably be the better option.

Last summer was my first cruise, which was aboard the lovely Gem! It really got me hooked on cruising.

Ever since then, it appears that I have accidentally been stalking it. As a New Yorker, I'm down by the water occasionally and it seems like every time I'm near the water, I see the Gem!

Yesterday I was on the Staten Island Ferry and got a great view!

I'm so jealous of everyone on board.

I fell in love the virgin peach daiquiris on the Gem last summer! I've been going crazy trying to find a place that makes them at home.