Celeste_SM

Princess pays their engineering team peanuts and gets the quality you’d expect from that. If you want technology to work, you’ve got to pony up for skilled workers. It’s too bad Princess didn’t invest properly.

And that what gives me hope that it is just a practical decision, not a statement about kids and cruising.

I’ve been following this thread with interest as we have a family trip booked in December; three cabins, four adults and a 9 year old. We have long expected that the child would be the determining factor on whether we go or not. Looks like it will be a tough decision when final payment is due, depending on what Princess is saying policy will be by then. I know not to trust it will hold though.

I actually understand this decision. It sucks, and they should have made the call sooner. But Princess, in particular, is a cruise line that caters to older adults. It is not particularly kid friendly compared to other lines and many Princess cruisers actively dislike the presence of children on this ship. By eliminating kids, they make some of their core fans happy, and reduce the headaches of policing children’s mask wearing, distancing, etc. I agree with every point addie19 has posted, too.

I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed on a vaccine for kids.

I don't have proof that I'm willing to give you, as I will not risk  my friend's future employment with the line. It's fine, please feel free to continue with your beliefs that everything is going as good as possible for the crew under the circumstances.  I had hoped to garner some support for the crew, but I see this is not the place for it.

I just want to second the "no pay" comment. My understanding is that they are not being paid and that the conditions for the crew are not great. They are crowded together in crew quarters, the gym is closed, and it's not a happy situation. I am not certain that the cruise line is doing all they can to get these crew repatriated quickly, and they are certainly not treating them as well as they could.  I have a second thread on this topic.  I've got no gripe with Oceania, I just want these folks treated well under these bad circumstances.

36 minutes ago, cruzsnooze said:

I wanted to check my California lotto numbers and that site is always blocked. 

That’s actually done by the site for legal reasons.

My five year old wiggle-worm had a tough time with MDR meals, but the waiters really do try to make easy on them. Ours quickly learned my son's two orders (picky eater) and would ask which one he wanted as soon as we sat down, and would bring his food quickly (while the rest of us were still on our soups/salads), which was key because waiting while hungry was NOT a good plan. Then the other suggestions about having stuff to do. I'll add that my son really loved the kid's club, so he'd come with us to dinner, eat his food (which we were usually either waiting for our main or just have gotten it by then) and then my husband or brother would run him back to the kid's club when it opened at 6pm leaving the adults to enjoy the rest of the dinner at our own pace, with less kid-management. 

We checked two cases of Dr. Pepper on to the Island Princess in Long Beach. No problem.

On 12/23/2018 at 1:48 PM, WrittenOnYourHeart said:

 

Thank you!

 

Do you know if you do Anytime but make a reservation for the same time each night if they will let you have the same table and servers? I prefer having the same servers, but am NOT a fan of the communal tables since I cruise solo and either elicits "Oh poor thing" type responses or ends up being a dump of all the solo travelers. Plus I like to make my reservations for sort of in between the seating times.

Yes, they will. My mom has celiac and has cruised on Princess several times including with (lucky) me!  On our cruise, although we were "anytime", my mom spoke to the headwaiter and we had a reserved time and table for our group. On our next cruise we plan to book that way upfront, but we are a group of 5, so we fill a table regardless.

Here's the bad news. This happened after my mom was accidentally served gluten-containing soup on our first or second night. Both my husband and mom ordered the french onion soup. My mom noted gluten free. There was a trainee waiter working with our waiter. She served my mom's soup first. My mom took a bite and immediately thought something was off. The regular waiter noticed the error when he brought my mom's soup (and saw she had soup in front of her) nearly immediately. They apologized a bunch, but the damage was done. But they moved our table, our waiter, everything the next night and we had top-notch service with extreme attentiveness to my mom's celiac thereafter. Each night they would bring the following night's menu to our table after dessert and the waiter would talk through the gluten free options with my mom. She would pre-order her gluten free choices and have plenty of time to talk through the options. She could always change her order the next night, if she wished (but she never did).

At the IC, the headwaiter will walk you through the options at each mealtime and point out what is and is not gluten free. My mom has a corn allergy as well, and so they were also attentive on that. I'll say they were much more on top of it as compared to Vegas waiters. They understood that high fructose corn syrup = corn, for example. 

My mom loves cruising with Princess because she feels they are very attentive to her needs as a person with celiac. 

We are headed to Alaska in July and there are quite a few zip line excursions available, sometimes more than one at the same port.  Can anybody recommend and describe the ziplines they thought were best and why?  We are a group of an athletic 71-year-old, three "kids" in their 40s, and one 7 year old.  We're all pretty adventurous and previously went zip lining together in Costa Rica.  I would welcome any recommendations you have!  

We will be stopping at Skagway, Juneau, Ketchikan, and Victora. But feel free to recommend ones at other ports so this thread is useful to more than just me!

Sorry, perhaps an admin can delete my post, since it is no help.

You can see the folded back door, being pinned open by the table on our balcony here.

You can see the open door behind my husband. but not the low crossbar over the top. My brother hit his head about a thousand times on that thing.

Sorry, not great pictures, but it's what I've got. This was the Island Princess connecting two mini-suites. The door swung into our space but didn't really bother us at all. The low crossbar was the only issue because it was just low enough that you had to pay attention going through if you're taller than 5'7.

I just read this whole thread and I feel so terrible for you. This should be a fun exciting time getting ready for vacation and you're stuck juggling this decision. My only advice is to try to get the office info for your sister's doctor and work through the admin/nursing staff for her doctor. That's usually the most efficient way of getting paperwork from doctors... not going straight to the doctor.

I would also suggest that you take a moment to be quiet with yourself and think about what you'd really feel best doing. Take money out of the equation. Where do you want to be? What do you want to be doing? Then make your decision and do your best to minimize any financial losses as a result. It's really a bummer, but you will be happiest in the end if you do what your heart really wants, with less consideration of costs. And trust me, this is coming from someone who is excessively concerned with finances.

I have purchased this package for our upcoming cruise but am wondering how it will work if I am travelling with kids. I have myself and one child booked in my room and mom and second child booked in another room (in reality, both kids are in my room). Does this mean that my other child won't be able to get any individual shots included in the package?

 

Thanks

My experience was that it was no problem at all... mostly. I traveled with my mom, my brother, and my husband and son. My son was booked in my brother’s cabin. I bought the all inclusive and got all the pictures of anyone in our group, including individual pictures of my mom, my brother and my son. Until the final night when they refused to give me one of my brother, because he was in a different cabin. I pointed out that I’d already received pictures of him. They were firm. They said policy is only if the picture includes the people in the cabin that purchased the package were included. I mentioned my minor son, and they said “except minors.” Anyway, for your kids you’ll probably be fine. For adults, depends who is at the counter.

I just looked at my personalizer for my July 2019 cruise and there is no all-inclusive package offered.

On the cruise I was just on, I heard the staff being firm in declining a similar request. However, the two kids rooms did quite a bit of informal crossing over, from what I observed.

I'm just off the Island Princess with Captain Tuvo on a Panama Canal transit cruise. This was my first cruise and I was amazed the captain was so visible and personable! He was great.

Just off the Island Princess and the pool bar on the Lido deck was open until 11pm unless there was really bad weather. The indoor pool bar (Lotus bar) closed at 5pm.

Thank you so much! That was super helpful!

I would love any advice anybody has about the kid's clubs on Princess. I read here somewhere that it's a good idea to bring your kids the first day, as friendships are formed early. Does that mean the day you board? Do you need to tip the kid's club staff individually? (Ok not NEED to, but does it help if you do?)

I've never cruised before, nor has my six year old son. I want him to enjoy the kids club and make friends, as he's very into playing with other kids. Any tips are appreciated.

If you see it, grab it. I saw it in my personalizer, but wanted to think about it for a few days. I came back to buy and the price was back to $199

I've tried to summarise the key facts in my blog post, if it helps!

 

Sandra

Thanks, that was helpful to me!