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Celebrity and Princess both will allow just one person in a cabin to purchase a drink package, no questions asked. Royal’s official policy is no but if you call them most people are successful in just one person purchasing the package. I never purchase a package on Carnival because my husband doesn’t drink and I don’t drink near enough to come out even on two packages all by myself!

I saw this and am really hoping other lines follow.

From this article, Liberty said the company would still test unvaccinated guests, and said he expected to drop testing for vaccinated guests on longer cruises in the near future.

Celebrity has added this to their website.

We have a 5 night on Connie in November. It would be nice not to have the stress of testing.

Yes, RCCL and Celebrity often each make their own separate decisions on protocols but this is coming from the parent company so maybe that will include Celebrity? We shall see.

Buried in Royal Caribbean Group’s financial report is a statement that testing for vaccinated passengers will only be required for voyages 6 nights or longer effective August 8. If that includes Celebrity, it won’t affect many sailings but it could be the start of moving away from testing. https://www.cruiseindustrynews.com/cruise-news/27941-royal-caribbean-reports-q2-2022-financial-results-cash-flow-positive.html?fbclid=IwAR1yWqI2d7DMtlJAqkJyRm3Q6pwHGRGTFDq197mrZXzvl40iaI4chYOLFXU

These menu prices are no longer accurate as this is from before the price changes that happened in late June.

We had a table for 8 on the Caribbean Princess last month. I don't recall if I saw bigger tables than that. They should be able to at least put tables close together.

The Plus wines are now generic wines (Prosecco, Pinot Grigio, Cabernet, Merlot, etc.) which gives Princess the ability to switch out whatever they have on hand. So they may be good or they may not be to your liking. Wines were the biggest hit on the Plus Package when they introduced the new Premier Drink package. I didn't see any small bottles of Korbel on either of our Princess cruises this year. I am not a Scotch drinker but I didn't see as many changes to the hard liquor lists when the new package went into effect. You still do pay just the difference plus 18% gratuity on that difference when you order a glass that is above the price limit for Plus. So a $13 glass of wine on Princess Plus will only cost you $1.18.

We are looking to book an Alaskan Cruise (most likely a northbound or southbound route - We've done the Seattle roundtrip already.). We prefer the cruise lines that go to Hubbard Glacier but have heard so many great things about Glacier Bay. So I'm looking for all your insights on the difference between Hubbard Glacier and Glacier Bay and what makes one better than the other.

The US (and many ports) don't allow you to take fruit, veggies, seeds, nuts, meat, etc. off the ship for agricultural reasons. Taking pre-packaged snacks that you bring with you on the cruise shouldn't be an issue.

For my May cruise next year, it used to be in the cruise planner. Within the last week or so, they seem to have changed how the cruise planner looks and now there is just a note to call to upgrade. At a time when hold times are long because of not enough staff, it doesn't make sense to add one more reason people have to call in.

FYI - CDC’s updated recommendations to cruise lines still include testing and showing proof of that testing at embarkation. That doesn’t mean they have to follow those recommendations but they may still choose to do so. https://www.cdc.gov/quarantine/cruise/covid-19-cruise-ship-guidance.html

There is a B in Caribbean. CP was already taken by the Sea Princess (SP had already been taken by the Sun Princess).

@kcmufanThe experience you share is very similar to many others I heard in May and even in June on the Caribbean Princess (mostly on the Facebook groups I follow). I was very surprised to hear so many issues right after dry dock (especially since many of those issues had also been reported before dry dock). It made me very apprehensive about our two weeks at the end of June on the Caribbean. We were very lucky not to have any problems but I remember the smell as we walked through certain areas of the ship and the lack of AC in so many different areas of the ship (which I think made the smell worse). And every public bathroom I went in had at least one non-working toilet (and often a non-working sink). That ship really needs some maintenance. I'm so sorry you had such a horrible experience and that guest services did so very little to remedy the situation.

I don’t think this true across all itineraries. The Caribbean Princess in the Caribbean is absolutely around full but that is an easy port to get to for a lot of people without a lot of concern for having to quarantine in a foreign country. I think round trip Alaska routes are also doing fairly well. But passenger numbers on north and southbound Alaska routes don’t seem as high and ships are definitely not full in Europe. There still are plenty of people not booking cruises (especially ones further away from home) because of protocols. Taking away some of those protocols may make a few cancel that aren’t comfortable but I think there are a lot more who will book when protocols are relaxed.

The tendering stories I read in this thread match my experiences in a variety of lines. Tenders are often not air conditioned. They often wait until full which means sitting in the heat for a while. Weather, tide, and conflicts at the dock (we shared a dock with a ferry at one port) can suspend tendering at any point, often without warning. And at many ports, the port tenders are used (and so all ships of any cruise line in port that day are facing the same challenges). So I don’t think this is a Celebrity issue. I understand why people don’t like tender ports (my husband hates them) but I am one of those few that love tender ports because of the photos and views I get of the ship and of the ability to be dropped off right downtown usually (instead of in an industrial or cruise dedicated port).

Everyone has different preferences and I get that it does provide more privacy. I guess I just don't really need that privacy from my husband and have never had storage issues on Celebrity ships. And we really like having a place to sit down that isn't the bed. Do you book standard balcony or lower rooms on Princess? Or do you normally get a mini-suite/deluxe balcony or higher? For those getting a mini-suite/deluxe balcony or higher, they get both space and the storage/privacy so I can see how it would be the best of both worlds. I think Princess makes it all worse by starting with smaller cabins. When we noticed how small the cabins felt on the Emerald and Caribbean Princess, I looked up square footage. Our premium balcony on the Emerald Princess was 15 square feet smaller than the interior cabin we have booked on the Eclipse coming up. The interior cabin we stayed on the Caribbean Princess was 21 square feet smaller than the interior we have booked on the Eclipse. It looks like Princess's Royal class ships made the cabins slightly larger (but with incredibly tiny balconies) but they still are less square footage than Celebrity's cabins. So taking an already very small room and taking a quarter of it for the closet has a big impact. Some will really like that big closet. Others will feel the closet makes the cabin feel very cramped.

We sailed on the Caribbean Princess last month and the Emerald Princess in February. We have previously been on the Eclipse, Summit, and Constellation. We had a cruise scheduled for next year on the Crown Princess and cancelled it and replaced it with the Eclipse because we prefer Celebrity that much more. Princess rooms are really small. If you want any seating in the room aside from the desk chair you need to book a mini-suite (or deluxe balcony on some of the newer ships). Standard balcony rooms and below have no couch or comfortable chair and no place to put them. Instead, they have an incredibly large walk-in closet that you would never fill (and can't get enough hangers for). We found the food on Princess to be very good overall but with very little variety and they were not great with handling my dietary restrictions. Being allergic to dairy, I struggled to find anything I could eat in the buffet and although they modified meals int he MDR for me, they were often bland as they would just eliminate sauces instead of replacing and the menu had no indicators on it to help me pick naturally dairy free dishes (and the head waiter on both ships, who coincidentally happened to be the same guy, was of no help guiding me when I pre-ordered). FYI - for those in my party with no dietary restrictions and who weren't picky eaters, they generally really enjoyed the food. They didn't allow smoking on the Emerald because of COVID restrictions but those restrictions were gone by our Caribbean Princess cruise and the smoke from the casino wafted into the atrium where several of the bars are. I also agree with someone else who said public spaces feel crowded on Princess ships, more than I have generally felt on the M Class and S class ships. The theater also has less capacity than Celebrity cruise ships. I noticed you needed to get there very early on a Princess ship to get a seat and so I looked up theater capacity compared to ship capacity and Celebrity ships can hold a much larger percentage of their passengers in their two nightly shows than Princess can in their two nightly shows. All that said, we had amazing service on Princess. We did still enjoy our cruises. The itineraries were good. The medallion concept is amazing (although it doesn't always work). Internet is faster on Princess (unless they have a server down). They had some great musicians on board that we really enjoyed. So if Princess had an itinerary we really wanted, we would book again but if there is something comparable with Celebrity, we will likely spend a little more to go on Celebrity.

Yes, there still are the two options: All Included or cruise only. What's missing is the two other options of Elevate and Indulge to upgrade the drink package and/or wifi, and add OBC.

Personally, I never found the color coded system all that helpful because a ship turned yellow with just one single case and it turned orange with only 0.3% of passengers and crew testing positive. Those are such incredibly tiny thresholds that it didn't really give us any transparency. All it told us was that covid was on ships, something I could have told you without a color coded system.

I am pretty sure none of the major ones opted out under the prior system. There was obviously a benefit to them participating in the program and so they were willing to go along with the CDC's recommendations (or maybe they agreed with the CDC's recommendations and so had no reason to opt out). It will be interesting to see what happens now that the program doesn't exist. It will also be interesting to see what, if any, changes to their recommendations the CDC makes.

The color code system is completely gone. There is no opting in or opting out of the program anymore for cruise ships. Previously cruise lines/ships that opted in had to follow the recommendations.

Unfortunately, they do not allow an upgrade to just the drink package and the Plus and Premier bundled fares require both people to have the same bundled fare. Interestingly if you had booked a standard fare, you each could choose which of either (or none) drink packages you wanted and you and your wife could choose differently but that doesn’t make financial sense in most cases with the high cost of the drink packages when purchased separately.