PMGS247

Totally reasonable. It's a fine line between doing the math for what you would have spent and what you'd be happy to have. In a lot of cases, people end up covering the $60 fairly easily with just what they would have bought so it's not even necessary to dig any further. This more stringent math is a better lowest common denominator for most discussions because typical nay-sayers will argue that if they wouldn't have bought it than it's automatically wasteful. As pointed out though, it's not wasted if you enjoy it, and if having the package is what gave you the mental freedom to enjoy it, then there's legit value in that. As with most things, YMMV, but the non-monetary benefits of the freeing mindset you get are a very valid justification if that's something you enjoy. It's just a nuance that just doesn't go very far in a discussion with people who are trying to crap on the idea of packages because they like to have a bare bones vacation and think everyone else should too. I have not read this thread, it's way too long, but given the 9 pages of discussion I'll bet a few of these people have chimed in LOL

On our sailing it was the first and second sea days. That should generally be true most of the time on a 7 day itinerary tho I’m not sure how it works on a 4 port itinerary since Formal night won’t be on the final night of the cruise.

Someone posted the webcam image confirming port side was indeed facing the harbor. The same was true when I was on this same itinerary 2 weeks ago, but I've been stalking it for a while and I can say that when they visited ~3.5 weeks ago based on the same webcam they backed in and starboard was facing the harbor. No idea what drives that decision. Seems like 90% of the time it's done like this with port side facing harbor. St. Thomas and Port Everglades are similar in this way. I think it's how I got in the habit of snagging port side rooms. On two occasions on debarkation day the captain has decided to pull in the other way in port everglades and I've woken up to the terminal outside my balcony, but seems like 9 times out of 10 they back in and you're facing the water.

Interesting! My wife and I just got off the Enchanted a couple weeks ago and were applauding the fact that they had closed captioning on all MUTS. I had assumed that was fleet wide but apparently not. They definitely can do this though.

I don't disagree with any of the ranting/raving in this thread, I don't have anything to add in that regard, but just to chime in on the one element that I don't think anyone's addressed: The delivery date of 6 weeks actually probably does make sense. They tend to ship all medallions for the same sailing at basically the same time, typically arriving ~10 days before the cruise, give or take. Doesn't matter if you ordered 15 months in advance or 4 weeks before the cruise.

This was my gut reaction. Very similar ships. My first 4 cruises were on Grand class ships, and my 2nd cruise, my honeymoon, was on the Emerald. Loved them back then, it's how I fell in love with cruising, but upon revisiting the Caribbean Princess this past October for the first time in a long time and after experiencing a couple sparkling new Royal class ships over the past few years, it definitely confirmed that we strongly prefer Royal class ships now.

Can use OBC if you wait to board. The biggest risk is price going up between now and your cruise. It's no more expensive on board than it is pre-cruise but at some point the package will increase across the board so the longer you wait the more likely that is to happen. On the flip side, if you're purchasing insurance with your cruise, your insurance premium is slightly higher if you pre-purchase since it's considered part of your insured cruise fare. If you purchase on board it would have no impact on insurance. As for specialty dining & medallion shipping, as long as you're willing to float the cost you can still pay for these things in advance and then when you purchase the package on board they will refund your original purchase to your on board account. If I were able to snag a good dining reservation time (a big IF) I'd float the cost and take the refund on board. I just did this a couple weeks ago on the Enchanted after I upgraded to Premier from plus on board. I had to go to Guest Services to get them to apply the OBC, not sure if it ever would have happened without my requesting it, but it took a matter of moments when I requested it.

It is poorly worded. As others have said it is just alcoholic beverages that count, but totally fair to walk away with that perception based on the poor wording in the app.

YIIIIIIKES! Curious how the story of this one plays out.....what caused it, how quickly was it resolved, etc. Good luck. Sorry to see this happen to you!

Totally agree....as the week goes on though I recommend showing up earlier and earlier....people figure out how great the Duo is as the week goes on and it gets more and more difficult to get a spot. When we showed up top try to do Lunch on both of the final 2 sea days right at 11:30 when they opened the line to get in had more people in it than were seated in the restaurant. Someone described this in a Sun Princess video review as "too popular for its own good". Definitely found this to be true...still love it though!

It was 2 weeks ago.

Ran a few numbers on this just for the fun of it, and I guess I can see why they don't ship it to everyone free of charge.... I'm entirely making numbers up here but even if they're wrong the premise still applies to whatever the real numbers are.... Let's say there's 1500 people on a sailing that aren't on plus/premier. Let's say those 1500 people are on average traveling as a pair, checking in together, equating to roughly 750 groups to be checked in. Let's say they save 3 minutes per group. That's 2,250 minutes saved, or 37.5 hours. If they perfectly adjust their staff level for this, at $20/hr, it's a $750 savings. On the flip side, if they paid for these people's medallions to be shipped they'd give up $10 per group since medallions are shipped together, or $7,500 for all 750 groups. With those numbers, even if you adjust assumptions a little this way or that, they'd be massively out-spending their labor savings.

I don’t disagree. They must have decided the time savings wasn’t worth the actual cost of paying everyone’s shipping.

Seems like for the most part it's a few minutes, max, but a small percentage of experiences where it is more significant. So really it's entirely personal preference based on your risk aversion. Not a big risk, but it's not nothing. I always have mine mailed but I also always get at least plus so it doesn't cost me $10. I would probably pay the $10 for peace of mind if I didn't get plus, but that's just me. I enjoy getting them a few weeks ahead time...vacation gets very real when they ship/arrive. There's also something uniquely satisfying absolutely flying through check-in..it almost feels like you don't come to a complete stop. I feel like the time saved is much more valuable to Princess than it is to the individual. Even if it's only 2-3 minutes of your time, if a ship carries 3,700 passengers, the amount of man-hours saved on the check-in process starts to add up real quick.

Yeah that happened pretty regularly on my sailing. Having said that it usually eventually did arrive. The "status" feature isn't very good. Sometimes it would arrive while it still said preparing, other times it would arrive 10 mins after "delivered". There are also definitely "dead spots" around the ship where the location tracking doesn't work very well....one of these, of course, where DW and I spent most of our time on board. We learned quickly where the system thought we were (same spot but on the starboard side rather than port) and we'd keep an eye out for a confused crew member with a tray of what we ordered looking for us over there so we could flag them down.

fair. I’m just typically not in much of a rush when I’m leaving so if it takes them a while to get moving I just don’t care. If I had a flight time where I was pushing the envelope on getting there in time I would probably go another route. As-is I just appreciate that I don’t have to put in any effort to order and locate an Uber driver in the sometimes hectic terminal. Always had perfectly fine luck with the airport drop off part.

Everyone on the sailing with receive a boarding time window in their app and/or travel summary but it will be the same for everyone and it will be the entire boarding time window; typically says 10am-2pm.

This. I've never messed with Princess transfers pre-cruise, or even hotel-based transfers for that matter. Uber is comparable in price, often cheaper, and you have much more control over when you go. Post-cruise is just the opposite for me....assuming I'm going straight to the airport I always get transfer through Princess. Uber would probably save a few bucks but the bus is just waiting outside the terminal, it's very easy to just hop right on.

As of the last time I sailed on a ship with them, no….we had to call on board….but that might have changed.

The good news is if you spend enough time here on CC and watching YT videos you'll probably walk onto the ship expecting your vacation to be a full blown catastrophe and the bar will be set very low. Reality will not even come close to living up to all the CC and YT drama and you'll have a great time. As for dining reservations having read a lot on the topic and dealt with a few issues in person, for the most part people seem to have significantly better luck booking on board than finding available times on the app in the weeks before sailing. I'm pretty well convinced they keep a significant portion of the total time slots from ever being offered on the app. Call the dining line or go to the restaurant after boarding and in all likelihood you will have much better luck and a fairly wide selection of times to choose from. Semi-related note, just last week on the Enchanted I switched from Plus to Premier on board. I had pre-paid for 3 specialty dining reservations prior to sailing. The crew member who upgraded me insisted I didn't need to do anything, that I would be credited for the 2 specialty dining to which I was entitled. I kept an eye on my folio and nothing had happened by day 5, after we'd eaten 2 of the meals and had 1 to go, so I went down to Guest services when they weren't busy and they applied a credit to my on board account no problem.

yeah having been on this exact sailing pictured in this patter I can confirm the St. Thomas night nothing was different from any other night. The only other thing I could think of would be 80's night but that was the night before and in reality just a lido deck event...certainly not anything impacting dining room dress codes.

Yep I got nothing.

Nope….Monday 4/8 and Thursday 4/11. Was there another patter calling out dress to impress or formal? If so, I’m confused and don’t know the answer to your question lol

I feel pretty safe saying these are the same thing. I feel like DTI is the newest term used by Princess but plenty of people still use the original “formal” terminology. I feel like this will take a long time to catch on, and probably never for many people.

I just sailed on the Enchanted out of Port Everglades this past week. We arrived at the port at about 9:40. Stood outside for about 20 minutes until they opened up the doors to go through security at 10:00am. By 10:15 or so we were through the security line and had checked in via green lane. The separate lounge at Port Everglades houses Platinum, Elite, and Suite guests. Being platinum that is where we were sent. It didn't matter much though because we only spent about 5 minutes with maybe 15-20 other people who'd gotten there that early and then they told us to go ahead and board around 10:20 or so. Anyone arriving after that point that was Plat/Elite/Suite wouldn't have a lounge to go to, they'd just be directed to go directly on board. I gathered from reading what people said who boarded on the sailing after ours that it played out the same way. YMMV, that is easily the earliest any of the events I describe above have happened, historically my experience has been security starts closer to 10:15 and actual boarding of the ship closer to 11-11:15, but they seem to be operating like a well oiled machine at this exact moment, so your odds are good that if you show up at 10:30 you'll walk into the ship boarding line. Luggage we had by 1pm. Again, YMMV, but in my 10ish Princess cruises I've never had luggage show up later than 2-3pm.