JamieLogical

I have seen pasta stations on MSC ships in the buffet, but never actually tried them. Looked like they had various noodle types, various sauces, and various toppings and they would mix them all together for you?

Here's a video of a similarly located OV cabin on the Virtuosa, which is a Meragivlia Plus class ship:

CruiseDeckPlans is always a great source for videos and photos of specific cabins. Be aware that even if they don't have photos/videos of a specific room on the ship you are booked on, you can check out the other ships in the same class, as the cabins are typically very similar between ships in the same class.

There should be a link at the top of that page called "Cruise Details" that will have your stateroom number listed if/when it is assigned:

It's definitely not random, but it is complicated. Every upgrade is actually a chain of upgrades and what matters to them is which chains will net them the most money. So if I am booked in an Interior and bit the max on a Balcony and then I hear about someone in an OV that bid the minimum for a Balcony and won, I might be pretty miffed, because I bid way more than that other person. But the fact is that someone else in an Interior probably bid on an OV and the combination of moving that person into the OV and the OV person into the Balcony netted more money. I promise you, every business is in the business of making money, so there is no randomness involved. They will absolutely, without fail, award bids based on what will net them the most money. That's why any question about what you originally paid or loyalty level should not factor in AT ALL. They already have all the money from everyone's original bookings. What you paid for that is completely irrelevant. What matters at the time of awarding upgrade bids is how much MORE you are paying NOW.

Yikes! I hope I don't have to wait that long to find out my room assignment... how do you print luggage tags in that case?

I started the Live thread for my upcoming Enchanted Princess sailing for anyone here who cares to follow along:

Cruise prep is underway and we have only 12 days to go until our Enchanted Princess sailing to the western Caribbean! My husband and I will soon be making our (triumphant?) return to Princess. My first and only sailing with Princess was on the Emerald Princess through the Panama Canal over Christmas and New Year's of 2022/2023. It was and still is the worst cruise I have ever been on for a multitude of reasons including woeful understaffing, horrible service, inedible food, bad entertainment, and poor ship design/maintenance. You know it's bad when both the F&B Manager and the Entertainment Director tell you they wouldn't blame you for never sailing Princess again. Fortunately, the cruise was saved by the wonderful itinerary and traveling with two of our good friends. At the time, I swore off Princess despite many people telling me that my experience was not the norm and that I shouldn't judge the entire line from that one terrible experience. Time has passed and I've calmed down. The stars have aligned and so here we are. My husband and I had planned to do a road trip this Spring, but after pricing it all out, it just didn't make sense to spend all the money and go through all the hassle of coordinating the logistics of that when we could just go on another cruise! Initially, we were looking at a return to NCL (another cruise line I had previously sworn off) on the Joy to Bermuda, but the pricing was more than we could stomach. We had ruled out MSC because their sailing out of NYC for the week in question was an almost identical itinerary to the one we had just done in September. MSC's sailings out of Miami and Port Canaveral were totaling up to more than we wanted to spend with flights and hotels. Then, while keeping an eye on Joy prices to see if they would come down at all, I received a postcard from Princess Player's Advantage offering 35% off and $100 of OBC. I was initially tempted but then decided to go back and re-read my entire Live Blog from my previous Princess Sailing to refresh my memory about why I had sworn off Princess. It definitely reminded me of a lot of things I had forgotten, but I ultimately re-read the posts from people swearing that Princess is usually a great experience. I thought that going on a newer ship might resolve some of the issues I had with the Emerald. I also figured that booking a mini-suite would help since I hated the lack of a couch and teeny tiny shower in our balcony cabin. So, I priced out sailing on the Enchanted Princess in a mini-suite with my casino offer and the math worked out. My husband was willing to give Princess another shot as well. We initially booked with the Plus package but decided to upgrade to the Premier. Since one of our biggest issues with the Emerald Princess sailing was MDR food/service, we figured we would hedge our bets with two specialty meals and unlimited casual dining. We booked a GTY mini-suite and still have not received our stateroom assignment, which is pretty disappointing considering we have seen many people getting upgraded from balconies to mini-suites in our roll call. One would assume that they would assign rooms to the people who actually paid full price for them first and then assign the upgrades to the "leftover" cabins, but it looks like it's us that are going to end up with the leftovers. The sailing has been sold out for weeks, so I am not really sure what they are waiting for in assigning our room. I am really hoping that this cruise will wow us and get us to consider more future cruises on Princess' newer ships. We have been very happy sailing MSC lately, but it's nice to have options. We are actually already booked on the Enchanted's August 10 repositioning cruise, but final payment isn't due until the day after we come back from this sailing, so we will use this experience to decide whether or not to make that final payment. Here's the link to the Live Blog from my Emerald Princess sailing for anyone who wants to know more about everything that went wrong on that sailing:

The fat holders are the ones you want for MSC.

It matters a lot! The number of guests can impact the price so if you want to sort by price, doing so with the default of two guests is not an accurate reflection of prices. Some sailings have lower solo supplements. Having to click into every single sailing to find out what the solo price is would be incredibly tedious and time-consuming. It's the same reason other filters are available. If you were looking for a balcony cabin, wouldn't you want to weed out the sailings where no balconies were available? Wouldn't you want to be able to sort by price for balconies rather than the default of interiors?

https://www.aarp.org/rewards/redeem/#sort-by=default&type=filter_travel

I can't speak specifically to Princess, having only done one Princess sailing before, but it has been my experience generally that, even with cruise lines that cater more to teens/children, repositioning cruises and longer cruises don't have as many children on board. My suggestion would be to look for online groups for this sailing, including the roll call here on CC and ask other passengers if they are brining their teens onboard.

This one I have mixed feelings about. I do think that people serving themselves is unhygienic and honestly just try not to think about it too much, because when I do, it really grosses me out. However, having sailed on several sailings post-restart when staff were serving the food in the buffets on all the cruise lines, I found that I wasted MUCH more food. I had gastric sleeve years ago and can't eat more than 5-7 oz. in a sitting, so I take one or two bites worth of the foods I want to try when serving myself on a buffet. When the staff were serving, even when I would ask for "just a tiny bit" of something, I would end up with half a plate-full or even a whole plate-full.

Congratz on being the 3rd person to correct me and now we have a 4th! I think this was resolved 4 weeks ago when the others corrected me?

Considering I recently got an offer for a free British Isles cruise through Player's Advantage, I am pretty sure they expected me to gamble onboard!

The mall I went to last time I was in St. John is definitely closed on Sundays according to the mall's website: https://www.brunswicksquare.ca/general

Yeah, I don't like that they force it to be specific restaurants now. I also think it is super dumb to waste a specialty dining credit on Hola!, since the prices there are so low.

The one time I canceled, I had my refund in under 48 hours.

Yes, you don't need a dining package to book Specialty Restaurants. You will have a choice to pay for the dining experience menu or pay a la carte. If you get a free specialty dinner for being Diamond, that will be the dining experience menu.

Yes, when TAs (typically big box or large-scale online TAs) don't participate in the Upgrade program, anyone who books through them simply is not eligible to bid, even on their own through the cruise planner.

That means your TA participates then. Those who book through big box TAs that don't participate in the Upgrade program will not be able to bid at all.

This is the area where you wait for Ubers/Lyfts. It extends quite a ways past the left of this photo... all the way to the end of the sidewalk:

Yes, but it is just a covered walkway and can get a bit crowded. I was there waiting for an Uber in the pouring rain and managed not to get too wet. As you walk out of the terminal and across the crosswalk, there will be no shelter, but there should be shelter as you wait.

That sounds like an excellent philosophy!

This link will give you a sense of the drink prices: https://profcruise.com/princess-bar-menus-and-drink-prices-2024/ As others have said, if you order a drink over $15, you just pay the difference, plus the gratuity on the difference.