pjd65

I'm hoping to find some fun virgin drinks when we cruise.  I'm traveling with my DH and DS25 and they both would like the beverage package.  DS doesn't drink a lot of alcohol, but he plans on using the opportunity to try a bunch of different drinks to find some he likes LOL.

Since we all have to have the package, I will also have it even though I don't drink alcohol at all (I don't react well and often am knocked out with very small amounts - 1 drink can lead to hours of sleep)

Obviously, I will be able to get diet coke but I'm hoping for some virgin drinks to at least make the package a little more "worth it" for me.

Huh - I wonder if Coke Freestyle machines are different it various parts of the country? Here near Chicago, every machine I've used (probably about half a dozen different places) have had Dr. Pepper. I've always kind of wondered about it since I know it isn't actually a Coke brand, but I drink it from these machines all the time.

Since no one has posted that they can't get to/see the album with the Patters, I am going to assume that it is working OK. Please let me know if there is a problem.

I had trouble finding the Princess Patters when I was making plans for our trip, so thought I would make copies of mine available for others who are looking. I have scanned all the pages for our June 10-16th 2018 trip on Emerald Princess. It was round trip from Seattle with stops at Ketchikan, Tracy Arm, Juneau, Skagway & Victoria BC.

I have uploaded all the scans to a public Google Photos album. This is the first time I've tried this method for sharing files, so if you are having trouble with the link, please speak up and I'll see what I can do. (I'd also appreciate it if someone would post if it works as well, just so I know!)

Full Scans here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/4Mxzdh7GvyGF3V838

We used Smiths for Airports on arrival to transfer from Heathrow to Southampton and for the return from Southampton to Heathrow. Would HIGHLY recommend them. Very professional and friendly.

We had an early morning flight arriving at Heathrow, so we had arranged to be picked up from the airport and for a stop at Salisbury to see the cathedral (and stop to buy wine!) before heading to the port. We were a party of 5 and they had a comfortable vehicle with enough room for our luggage (5 regular cases plus various backpacks and other carry-ons).

Our round trip cost in July 2017 (Heathrow-Salisbury-Port & Port-Heathrow) was around 265 pounds (around $350 I think) for all 5 of us. We felt $70 each was well worth it. I don't remember exactly, but I'm pretty sure this was less than round trip cruise line transfers. It was RCL for us last year, but I think round trip was around $90 each ...

Just got back from this cruise on Sunday. We had our 19yo with us. He was too old for the "kid club" stuff and never made it to the "1820" which was in the Patter each night at 9pm (Skywalkers).

He loved the Soda & More package and I'm certain he got his money's worth from it.

Most of the entertainment seemed to be OK for him (although the Disco production show was terrible and he hated it.) I'm not sure if most teens would enjoy the other 2 production shows or not - mine is into music (plays fiddle/violin) so the 2 music focused shows were OK for him. He really enjoyed the comedian and the magician (I don't know if these change from week to week or not). He also enjoyed the "game show" type entertainment - both the regular & late night "18 & over" versions.

We were so busy at the ports, that he didn't really have that much time on board to get bored. Also, as an only child, he is pretty used to entertaining himself. I saw other teens up at the Movies under the Stars, but it was awfully cold up there for sitting and watching a movie. They have blankets, but sometimes it was in the low-50's with wind! For that matter, we saw some kids/teens swimming - my kid thought they were insane :)

My husband & 19yo did zip-lining in Ketchikan, we all did the Tracy Arm excursion and then a whale watching trip in Juneau (Harv & Marv). In Skagway we took White Pass train to Carcross & then a bus back down (Chilkoot Charters). In Victoria we went to the Butchart Gardens. Our son enjoyed all the excursions, but he felt the train one was a little long (total of around 8 hours). He is starting to get interested in photography, so that made the Garden better for him - he has never been a fan before of visiting gardens but he enjoyed this one. The best for him were the zip-lining and the Tracy Arm & Juneau boat trips. (We saw a lot of whales!)

We were on this cruise last week and the formal nights were the 2 sea days (Monday & Friday). Since we were at the Crown Grill on Monday and were too tired by Friday and just went to the buffet, we did not participate in formal nights for this cruise. There were MANY others like us and in the evening at the shows and lounges we did not feel at all out of place. (We do tend to dress a little nicer in the evening most days, so long pants instead of shorts, no tshirts, etc.) but saw plenty of completely casual in the evenings around the ship every day.

Did you look at Holland America? They are the primary Carnival owned line in Alaska. HAL also use the train to transport people from on land tours to / from the Yukon, so that might be a primary reason for the purchase.

Nope - I have no idea how Holland America names their ships. The Carnival and Princess ships were obvious from their names. Even throwing in some HA ships, its unlikely they could totally fill the train with just their cruise guests. I think a typical ship has 3000 - 4000 passengers. Only a portion of those will be booking the train excursions. (For that matter, only a portion book any excursions at all - some cruisers like to just explore the port & shop and never book excursions at all). For rough numbers, lets assume 20% want to go on the train, so that would be 600-800 per ship. Even if they have 3 ships there every day (and in reality, there are days that Skagway only has 1 or 2 ships total in port) That would still only be 1800-2400 people, so not even half the capacity of the train.

I certainly would expect that Carnival might tweek the schedule to work best for their ships, but it would be very bad business to exclude the general public, other line's excursions & tour companies from using the train.

I posted this in the thread on the Alaska board, but it seems relevant here also:

Does Carnival/Princess even have enough ships/passengers to fill the train? I wouldn't think so. I think the news stories I was reading about it being closed last week said there were about 500 passengers at a time and up to 12 runs a day. That would be 6000 people per day which is more than are on a single ship - and not everyone want's to do this excursion. Also, does Carnival/Princess have a ship at Skagway every day of the week? Seems unlikely.

OK - I just Googled to see what was usual. Using next week (June 10-16), There was 1 day with ZERO Princess or Carnival ships, 1 day with 2 Princess ships and 5 days with 1 Carnival or Princess ship. There isn't any way they could fill the train with just their guests.

If this is an excursion that regularly sells out, then I suppose Carnival could block out more reserved space for their guests leaving a little less space for everyone else but I doubt they will close it to the general public.

Does Carnival/Princess even have enough ships/passengers to fill the train? I wouldn't think so. I think the news stories I was reading about it being closed last week said there were about 500 passengers at a time and up to 12 runs a day. That would be 6000 people per day which is more than are on a single ship - and not everyone want's to do this excursion. Also, does Carnival/Princess have a ship at Skagway every day of the week? Seems unlikely.

OK - I just Googled to see what was usual. Using next week (June 10-16), There was 1 day with ZERO Princess or Carnival ships, 1 day with 2 Princess ships and 5 days with 1 Carnival or Princess ship. There isn't any way they could fill the train with just their guests.

If this is an excursion that regularly sells out, then I suppose Carnival could block out more reserved space for their guests leaving a little less space for everyone else but I doubt they will close it to the general public.

Mine works fine now. Seemed to be a glitch for a day and a half for me. Hopefully your's is working now too.

Nope, still doesn't work. Since it hasn't worked since we first booked it a month or so ago, it probably wasn't the same glitch. :(:(:(

I assume your TA gave you your six-character Princess booking number. With that number, you should be able to sign in to see your cruise.

Yes, that is how I am going in to book excursions, etc. It works, it is just a bit less convenient having to enter First Name, Last Name, Date of Birth & Booking Number every single time I need to go in. We have 2 rooms, each with its own booking number, so I seem to be constantly typing all this in to go back and forth between them.

It would just be easier if it would just show up when I login to the Princess site. Oh well, its probably not enough of a hassle to bother calling and waiting on hold and trying to explain and so on.

Thanks to everyone for the comments/info. Someone asked above, and yet the email used to setup the login account on the website is the same one the TA used for booking the cruise. Clearly, this did not automatically link the login to either of the bookings.

We have booked our first Princess cruise to Alaska this summer. After we booked it with a travel agent, I started using the Princess website. I created an account there, but I can't find any way to link that account to our booking. When I want to view the cruise personalizer, I see the following message

There are no bookings associated with your sign in. You may still access your booking by entering the information on the next form on this page.

I can access the personalizer by entering First name, Last Name, Date of Birth & Booking Number, however it is a pain to enter these every single time. I have looked around, but I can't find any method to just tell the Princess website to link my existing booking to my website sign in account.

Any ideas?

Wow- Thanks to everyone for all the thoughts/ideas/information! I hadn't even thought of paying a taxi to just wait for us. Going to go over these thoughts with the rest of the family and see what the consensus is. Thank you so much for taking the time to respond :)

I'm not sure this is the correct place to ask, but we will be visiting this port on our Alaska cruise this summer. We will be there with the Emerald Princess on June 16th from 7pm to Midnight. This seems like a really odd time/stop for this cruise, but we are really excited to see the Butchart Gardens if we can possibly make it work. Our family is 5 adults (ranging from 19-78). According to the garden website, they will be open until 10pm that night (Starting June 15th) but the fireworks will not be happening until later in the summer.

I'm looking for the best way to get the 5 of us to the garden and back and give us the most possible time to see the garden. We have 3 VERY avid gardeners in our group and 2 who at least enjoy visiting gardens. My son is probably the least excited about yet another garden, but even he is used to spending hours at gardens when we travel and I think he will be interested in the lighting they use in the evening.

I would really prefer not to do the ship's excursion. They only provide 1 hour 45 minutes at the garden and I suspect that some of that would be wasted waiting for everyone to get off the bus when arriving and boarding everyone back on the bus when leaving. Ideally, I would like us to have at least 2 full hours there.

Would taking a taxi be a reasonable way to do this? How difficult would it be to get a taxi at the cruise pier and, more importantly, how difficult would it be to get a return taxi from the garden?

It looks like the usual "shuttles" that run to the garden during the day will not be an option. The latest one I could find leaves downtown Victoria at 7pm and we are only just arriving at 7pm. Even if they were to add departures, I am concerned that we would waste too much time getting to the shuttle, waiting for everyone to board, etc.

Would a car service/limo make any kind of sense? It would have the advantage of running on our schedule and being pre-booked (unlike a taxi) but I suspect the cost might be a little crazy for this purpose!

We used texting on Independence earlier this month. We had 4 of us with the internet package and used Verizon Messages+ which does WiFi texting. We were in airplane mode with WiFi turned on. Mostly it worked well - biggest problem was that the ship WiFi would get dropped and NOT auto connect. This usually happened when we were moving about the ship - mostly going up/down between floors. If you didn't think to check that you were still connected you would miss texts the others were sending. It was an annoyance more than a show-stopper.

Generally, if you stay in one place the connection was fine - all night in the cabin it would stay connected or throughout dinner, but as soon as we started moving about we would lose it and have to re-select the network. Most of the time it would just connect - sometimes it made us do the full login.

I know I'm a little late on this, but I had trouble finding much on this itinerary when planning so wanted to write something about our trip for future over-planners out there. I tend to get long winded, so this will probably take a few days to complete. Part 1 is here. The other parts will follow along in the thread as I get to them.

Ugh - just discovered that cut/paste from Word messes up some of the formatting - trying to fix it, but I will probably miss some. If you find words run together, that is the reason :(

Some quick background info

We traveled as a family of 5: My husband & I, our son(18yo) and my parents. The trip was a gift from my parents to my son (he is an only grandchild). They have been taking him on a major trip each year for about 10 years. Usually,it is just he and my parents, but occasionally they include my husband andI. For some reason, the planning and organizing of this trip ended up in my lap. My parents travel a lot – usually 3 or 4 international trips each year and are in very good shape for their age (mid-70s).

We have all cruised before. My husband, son & I have been on 7 Disney cruises (3 Western Caribbean, 3 Eastern Caribbean, 1 Panama Canal transit). Way back in the early 90’s, my husband and I went on 2 Carnival cruises. My parents have been on Disney with us 2 times and have done a few other cruises including a Baltic and several river cruises. They have also cruised on smaller ships around Greece and Croatia. None of us have ever cruised on Royal Caribbean before this trip.

Travel to the ship

We have a family business that makes traveling together a little complicated. This particular cruise was selected because it was over the Independence Day holiday and it was easier to close the office down while we were away. To reduce the number of days we were closed,we were not able to fly in early or stay a few days after the cruise.

We booked the cruise in January and then watched airfare for4-6 weeks. The best we were seeing was a little over $1000 per person from Chicago to London round trip. My travel agent suggested we take a look at RCI’s Air2Sea and we were surprised to find much better pricing. We ended up booking our flights through Air2Sea both for the better pricing and for a little bit of peace of mind that they would get us to the ship somehow if our flights were delayed/canceled.

We flew from Chicago -> New York --> London and then the return was London -> Minneapolis -> Chicago. Our flying karma has probably been used up since every one of our flights was on time or early and everything went smoothly from the moment we left home! The flights were all Delta, but the New York-London flight was operated by Virgin Air. We were able to pre-select our seats for all the Delta flights, but there was a fee to select seats in advance on Virgin. We were trying to decide if it was worth it (didn’t really want to be scattered allover the plane for a long transatlantic flight) when we realized that we could purchase the “extra room” seats for only a little more (I don’t remember exact numbers but I think it was $15 more than the fee to just select a regular seat.)and part of that purchase was selecting your seats. That seemed like a great idea, so we had 3”more space on that flight and pre-selected seating.

I believe even with the extra cost for the Virgin Air seats,our flights cost around $670 per person round trip.

We landed at Heathrow and discovered that going through British customs was far worse than our past experiences. My parents have been through there many times and my son & I were there a few years ago – never before have we seen lines like that morning. It took us over an hour and 20 minutes from when we got in line to making it through to baggage claim.

Our flight touched down around 8am, but by the time we taxied to the gate, disembarked, went through customs and collected our luggage it was around 10am. We had hired a car service (Smiths for Airports) and they were fantastic. My husband has never been to England, so we wanted to stop and see something on the way to the port. My father’s favorite cathedral (and he has seen a LOT of cathedrals) is Salisbury and since that was convenient for visiting on the way we had arranged to make a stop there. Due to the airport delays, we had less time there than we had hoped but we spent a solid hour at the Cathedral and seeing their copy of the Magna Carta. We tend to be detail people, so a little more time would have been nice, but we saw most of what we wanted to see. Our driver then stopped at a supermarket so we could buy some wine to take onto the ship with us. We purchased 4 bottles (2 cabins on the ship) and then drove to Southampton.

The car service round trip cost for all 5 of us was 273 pounds (around $370). RCI Transfers from Heathrow to Southampton and back would have been around $1000.

Embarkation

We arrived at the port around 1:30pm. By that point we had all been awake for about 24 hours other than some napping on the airplane. Checking in was very fast and easy. There was no wait in line for security or to get our SeaPass cards and we were then able to walk straight to the ship and find our staterooms.

Staterooms

My parents and our son were in an Outside on deck 3 near the Romeo & Juliet dining room (3336). My husband and I had an Inside on deck 9 (9677). The ship was mostly sold when we booked and balcony staterooms were very expensive. Originally, there were no Outsides available and we were all booked as Inside. Our travel agent kept an eye on it and when an Outside came available snagged it. It was only available for 3 people, not for 2, so my parents decided to take my son in with them so they could have the Outside room. My husband and I were fine with the Inside for the 2 of us.

Given how port intensive this cruise was (5 ports, 2 sea days) and the Northern location, we didn’t really mind not having a balcony. Since the weather for our 2 sea days wasn’t that great, I don’t at all regret the decision.

The rooms are small compared to Disney ships, but there was plenty of storage and we were all comfortable. The mattress was good and although I didn’t much like the pillows, the room steward brought me an extra that was quite a bit better. Everything worked as it should and there was plenty of lighting in the inside cabin. We were surprised that the upper berth bed my son used was left down the entire cruise – for some reason we all thought it would be put up during the day and brought back down in the evening. It made that room feel a little smaller, but wasn’t a huge issue.

The Ship

I had read that the ship was getting “tired” and needed its upcoming drydock ASAP, but I didn’t really see much that was that worn on the ship. Yes, not everything was absolutely perfect – but the little wear I noticed was not anything that would impact my trip. I honestly don’t know if I would have noticed if I hadn’t read about it on Cruise Critic.

In general, I don’t really like the look/design of great big white blocky ships. Part of what I enjoy about Disney cruising is that the ship itself is beautiful. However, the look of the ship really isn’t ultimately that important to my vacation.

The part of the ship that surprised me was how I didn’t really feel like I was on the water at all. I don’t just mean that it was very stable and we were only able to feel the ship motion occasionally – I feel like the ship is very inward focused. Everything was centered on the Royal Promenade and there were very few windows or walkways where you saw the ocean. Some of that may have been due to the weather – it was chilly most of the trip and the two sea days had some rain. There was very little reason to go up to the pool deck or hang out on the walkways on Deck 4. Some of this may have been due to having an inside cabin, but the rest of the family agreed and 3 of them were in an outside cabin. Obviously, if I wanted to see the water, I could find places to do so – I just feel that the ship is focused inward away from the water. From what I have read about the newer, bigger ships, I suspect I would feel this even more on those.

None of us are that interested in gambling so the casino just feels like a huge waste of space, but I did like a number of the other spaces. The 3 level dining room is very elegant and we liked the openness of the area. The Pyramid Lounge seemed well designed and the theater had decent sight lines and acoustics. The ice rink is a cool concept but it does make getting around the ship from deck 3 a pain –having to go up/across/and down again to get to the theater was annoying. I liked the little seating area near the elevators on our floor that overlooked the promenade and I spent a little time on a sea day in the Library reading. The pool spaces look good, but other than using the whirlpool a couple times, we didn’t do much up there.

We took a look at the spa & gym areas the first evening,but never got around to using that area. 5 port days in a row is exhausting and none of us felt a need to workout.

Since my son is 18, we didn’t have anything to do with the kid areas. He tried rock climbing once,but it wasn’t open very much. On the port days it was only open for a couple hours in the late afternoon and we weren’t always on board. Whenever there was rain, it was closed. The flow rider had similar issues and he never got around to it.

The Promenade tended to be noisy and crowded which is not really our thing. We’re also not into shopping. However, we did like the café and went there a number of times for tea, coffee & scones. I thought of visiting the pub, but it was always so crowded that we never got around to it. My son bought an ice cream at Ben & Jerry’sand was not impressed. It had clearly been melted and refrozen – it had ice crystals and gooey bits and was pretty nasty. When a teenage boy throws out most of an ice cream you know it is pretty bad! We never got around to trying the pizza at Sorentos. No one was ever hungry when we were nearby and as Chicago natives we tend to be suspicious of most other pizza LOL!

We just returned from a trip where we used Air2Sea. I watched airfares closely for a couple of months and it was clear that round-trip from Chicago to London wasn't going to get below $1000 per person. With 5 people that is a big chunk of change! My TA suggested I check Air2Sea (the TA I use doesn't do air which is usually fine as I'd normally just book it myself - usually Southwest within the USA). I was shocked to find reasonable flights for around $625 per person. Since we were unable to fly in early for this cruise, there was also some extra comfort in the idea that Air2Sea would get us to the ship somehow if there were problems. Fortunately, there were no problems at all - I've probably used up years worth of karma with how smoothly our flights went. We flew ORD (Chicago) to JFK (New York), JFK to Heathrow and the return was Heathrow to MSP (Minneapolis), MSP to ORD. We had at least 1.5 hours for the connections and since flights came in early, we actually had even more time. 3 of the segments were Delta, 1 was Virgin Air. We had 1 free bag per person. We upgraded the Virgin Air seats to have more room & to get assigned seats (Virgin charges to do them in advance - taking the "extra space" seats was only about $10 more each than the cost just to get an assigned seat. I think that added about $45 per person, but we still flew round trip for under $700 per person.

Really enjoying your live blogging of this cruise :) We will be on IoS in early July and am really appreciating the uploads you have provided of menus and such. Since there is no cruise before ours with the same itinerary, I'm just watching threads like yours to get an idea of what to expect. We are new to RCL (several DCL cruises in the last decade or so and a couple Carnival in the very distant past) so I really appreciate all the information you have provided. Thanks.

IMy last cruise I had to use the insurance because my flight was scheduled to go to Ft Lauderdale, but due to the terrorist shooting at Fort Lauderdale, I was diverted to Orlando. I was reimbursed for hotel expenses, taxi, car rental to drive to Ft Lauderdale the next day and tolls.

A little off topic, but this was most likely not a terrorist shooting. The guy claimed that "government mind control" was putting voices in his head and telling him to shoot people. The last I read, the FBI had found no links to known terror groups.

Way back in 2008 - 15 day Panama canal (LA to Orlando) on Disney Magic. To this day, still the best cruise we've ever been on :)

Whoa! Air2Sea doesn't guarantee anything. Read the fine print. There is nothing that says they guarantee you'll make it to the ship. Granted, if you don't, they'll try to work with you to catch up to the ship, but that is not the same as guaranteeing you'll make the ship.

 

 

As for weather, there are plenty of weather delays in the summer, due to thunderstorms. More common in the south, where they occur on an almost daily basis, but if your aircraft or crew are coming arriving in Chicago from Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, Orlando, Charolotte, Atlanta, etc. etc. you could easily have a weather delay. Whether directly or indirectly, weather anywhere in the country can affect a flight virtually anywhere else in the country. ;)

I am aware that weather delays are possible in the summer - I have been flying out of Chicago for years. In general there are FEWER in the summer. Yes, there are thunderstorms, but they usually do not have the same sort of impact as a lake effect blizzard. I would be far more worried in winter. O'Hare rarely is shut down for more than an hour or so for a thunderstorm but a blizzard can close the entire airport for a day. Even the issue of storms elsewhere delaying the incoming plane are less severe in summer - yes, there are delays but it is rare that an entire airport shuts down completely for summer storms. I have absolutely no choice - we CANNOT fly in early for this cruise - so I am doing my best to mitigate the problems, but that certainly doesn't mean I won't be worrying until we get to Heathrow!

The Air2Sea page promotes the following:

WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF AIR2SEA?

Whichever city you're flying from. Whichever port you're headed to. Whatever carrier you prefer. You'll get the lowest priced fare on your choice of airlines, or we'll credit you back 110% of the difference to spend onboard.

When your vacation comes around, you don't want to miss the ship because of flight delays or cancellations. Book airfare through us and we guarantee our travel experts will get you to your cruise.

Vacations should be all about enjoying your time. Air2Sea by Royal is simple and easy to use. So reserving your perfect flight is a breeze.

Enjoy complete flexibility with your choice of flights on your preferred airlines. Just pick the one that works for you and let us take care of the rest. We'll even filter out the flights that won’t work for your cruise.

With air specialists available 24/7, you don’t need to wait until you get to the ship to leave your worries behind. Air2Sea by Royal is here to ensure your air travel is as smooth as your vacation, so you can start enjoying your vacation right away.

I'll be on my first RCI cruise this summer so I can't really say much about Air2Sea from personal experience, but from the research I did before booking, I found that people who used it for INTERNATIONAL flights seemed happy with it and people who used it for DOMESTIC (USA only) flights seemed to have issues. We are flying from Chicago to Southampton (England) and due to our family business, we cannot fly in early. We booked Air2Sea for 2 reasons: They were MUCH cheaper than any flights we had found after watching for a few weeks and they "guarantee" we will make it to the ship. We were able to select our specific flights, so unless the airline changes the times (outside RCI control) I would be very surprised if they changed our flights on us down the road. We are getting into Heathrow at 8am which leaves some fudge time for delayed flights. (Also flying out of Chicago in June is much less likely to be delayed than the same flight in the winter!)

Is it possible to make a request for a table near a window in the main dining room for the 1st night of the cruise? We have My Time Dining and a reservation for 6:30pm that night. My husband has missed a LOT of first dinners on cruises as it takes him a little while to get his sea legs. He is often fine until we are sitting in the dining room (and can't see outside) and then he gets nauseous and needs to leave. I was hoping that if I stopped by the dining room right after we board and made the request for a table near a window, that it might help him make it through dinner! We are sailing from Southhampton and sunset isn't until around 9:30pm at that time of year.

Has anyone tried this? I know that MTD doesn't have assigned tables, but will they take a 1 night request like this? We have never sailed on RC before and have never had anything other than regular set time dining before. I'm looking forward to the flexibility, but would just like to have hubby make it through that 1st dinner for once!

I am trying to understand how the internet packages work. We have 5 adults traveling and at least 3 of us have to at least have access to email. (We have a family business and although we are closing it :eek: for a little over a week - thank god the holiday for the 4th of July is in there - we cannot just be completely out of reach for our customers) As long as we are going to have the 3 of us connected, we figured we'd add my 18yo son so we can more easily keep in touch around the ship using wifi texting. We have 2 cabins and need a 4 device plan. If I purchase the plan, is there a problem with having 2 people from the other cabin each using one of the devices? Or do all the people on the plan have to be in the same cabin? It is slightly cheaper to purchase 1 plan for 4 devices that 2 plans for 2 devices each. (and definitely cheaper than an individual 1 device plan for each person.)