WAvoyager

Did you try zooming on your phone? Even with my aging eyes, it’s not bad even when keeping to a full column size. I do wish they had used some scalable display option which could’ve resized the columns even when zoomed, but PDF is kind of the easy standard.

Was this offer specific to the Sun, or was it a generic sailing offering, with one of the options being the Sun? just reread your original post and realized I misread that part originally. I checked my offers and the Sun specific offer does say “Free balcony stateroom”. And while the fine print does indicate the non-refundable deposit, nowhere does it state that “free” means $200 to upgrade to the first available balcony category. Im glad you got it sorted out, and I won’t be using this offer due to timing, but it is very poorly conceived.

Yup - totally agree with the specifics. The problem is (for both Princess and its customers) when someone has to wade through cabin codes to understand the offer. That’s when an offer - good or otherwise - starts to create confusion. If you offer an oceanview room, but no oceanview rooms exist, that’s pretty clear. If you offer a balcony room, but “balcony” doesn’t exist, only “obstructed balcony”, “deluxe balcony”, “premium balcony”, and “super duper extraordinary balcony”, it’s gonna be confusing.

For me what’s different in this case is there are Balcony cabins on the Sun - they’ve just added new categories of balconies. I’m very surprised they didn’t account for this. I give them some leeway since the offer included multiple ships/sailings, so they may just have overlooked the detail with a new ship that’s entering service. We’ve been looking at that offer, but haven’t booked yet. I guess we’ll plan for the upcharge, but still disappointing. we also received a different offer specifically for sailing on the Sun - I could’ve sworn that was for a free balcony cabin…. I’ll have to go take a look.

The same for us - I got dressed just for the event, and didn’t think of transferring my wallet and cash into my fancy duds. I was also thinking - “I’m not even sure who/how to tip anyone”. I didn’t remember the same servers assisting us throughout the entire dinner. That very well may have been the case, but we were just so enthralled by the whole dinner, I just didn’t notice. I’ll definitely pay more attention this next trip.

I thought I had read reports of people informing the host that some of the party were non-Reserve cruisers, and the whole party was seated near the Reserve section, and Reserve guests were allowed to order from the reserve menu. haven’t tried it ourselves - didn’t hear about that until after our last trip as a “mixed” group.

We’re 17 miles from the cruise terminal. It would be $6 in gas total. We could take a slightly longer route to go over the toll bridge to get that up to $12. 😁

Phones/pics were allowed in April on the Discovery. No videos. Although my wife is a big dinner documentarian (🤪), there was so much to see and do during the dinner, she took very few photos. It seemed to be a common thread for everyone at the dinner - we saw plenty of people taking pics, but in a very limited fashion.

I would say that is a fair assessment. 😁 But if you blow… err… spend… risk(?) enough money at the casino, maybe you’ll get invited for a feee cruise, and then get invited? They will probably turn it into a paid experience soon - similar to the Chefs Table Lumier dinner. We’ve wanted to sign up for that, but it’s difficult with a 6 year old. But the 360 would worth it for our whole family.

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There are a few other posts with more information, but here’s my summary : the 360 Experience is a specialty dinner which is by invite only, at no additional cost, to guests in a suite, casino guests, and possibly others at Princess’ discretion (for now). It’s a dinner which focuses on cuisine from a specific region of the world (currently the Mediterranean, and southern France). In addition to the 7 (?) course meal, with paired wine and cocktails, there are features to involve all of your other senses. The circular wall is a wrap around monitor which shows a narrated journey of the food from farm to table (coinciding with the food/drink service). Interactive displays are projected onto the circular table, so you can play with related images on your plate and table. I believe they also pipe in scents at specific points of the story, but I could (easily) be confusing this with Soarin’ at Disneyland! 🤪 It was a wonderful experience for my whole family last time - pretty amazing that our impatient, perpetually bored daughter, didn’t utter a single “I’m bored!” For the entire 2 hour meal. We’ll see what my 89 year old Mom thinks about it this weekend.

And they’re very clear about who they are and why they’re calling. I don’t believe there’s any alternative to saying yes over the phone. The rep on the phone finds out when you want to go, makes the reservation, and that’s it. I presume at some point, if they can’t reach you, they move on to the next person on the list, to make sure the seatings are full.

For the medallion, I’m always wearing a watch, so I got one of the holders that fits onto a watch strap. For my daughter we use one of the clips. My wife prefers the lanyard. Plenty of options on Amazon - just search for Princess cruise medallion holder. I believe one parent can stay with a toddler - I know they allow that when the toddler isn’t potty trained, but I’m not 100% sure about other scenarios. The app (or on ship monitors) can track other members of your party. It’s the most useful feature for us.

You can always stay late for an excursion, and then make use of the short hop flight later…. 🤪

Im totally jealous! We already had too many vacations planned during the school year. Couldn’t even consider the Eclipse Cruises. I would’ve loved to have been signed up.

My daughter (6yo) took a sip of each drink, and immediately said “this is even better than the last one!”. I was impressed that they did indeed have a curated non-alcoholic drink with each course. I got to try each one and they were pretty well paired with the food progression. Full disclosure - none of us were overwhelmed by the starting cocktails / mocktail at the waiting area, so it was easy for them to get better at that point! 😆

I’ve always heard/experienced the call coming the week before the cruise. But DiRonT got his call a couple of months before. You usually will be allowed to choose any night that there’s availability- so if you’re called early, you’ll have lots of options. This trip we could choose any night of the cruise, the first night only one seating had space, the last night had both seatings available. Last trip there was only one night available. We got called on Monday for a Sunday sailing this time. (Wednesday for a Saturday sailing last time)

Right now I believe it’s only on the Enchanted and the Discovery. Princess has indicated they plan on extending it to other ships. It’s supposedly a big investment for technology, so I can only think that they’ll take a while to figure out how to monetize it, and will have to schedule the updates in dry dock. The common understanding is that they invite suite cabins, and casino guests to fill in empty seatings, but no official word on the details from PCL.

Yes, on the Discovery. Last trip Rafa away from the ship, so a young lady was the hostess. I’m horrible with names, so I’m probably wrong but I think it was Val(something)? She did a great job. I’ve not heard of them making the calls that far in advance. I would think it’s more difficult doing it that early in case of last minute changes in people’s travel plans, but maybe that’s not a big issue. Im definite going to get spoiled by this. If/when they start charging, the only thing that will save my retirement fund is that they probably won’t change the program/menu for quite a while, so maybe it’ll be less enticing after the second or third time.

Earlier I was wishing they were ready to start charging for this, so I could just make reservations and take my Mom. This is definitely a nice surprise. Hopefully it offsets her having to tender twice to go on excursions with us. (She understandably dislikes tender disembarkations)

We were given the choice of nights both times. I think it mainly depends on when you’re called. Last time we were pretty low on the pecking order so there were only two time slots available. This trip they said we could choose from any night. I guess all of the time spent in the casino last trip may have gotten me something (besides a big billing statement) after all! 🤣

Yes, the Caller ID info showed “Santa Clarita” both times we’ve gotten the call. The call was from 661-753-2050, which is one of the Princess Corporate HQ numbers.

I’ve written before about the wonderful dinner we had on our previous Mexico cruise. My daughter declared it the “Best Dinner Ever”, and my wife and I were pretty close to agreeing (although we have a much bigger pool of dinners competing with it). on our upcoming Alaska cruise, I was hoping we’d get an invite - especially since my 89 YO Mom is coming on this sailing with us. I figured no chance though - no mini-suite this time, and with two cabins, what are the chances both cabins would get invited? Well, just got a call from a number in Santa Clarita. No need to screen this call! Jumped on immediately, and both cabins were invited! YES!!! Reservations made (7:30 dinner on embarkation day on the Discovery), we’re finally all ready for Sunday! Sorry - had to share that with somebody. 😁 If anyone receives a call from a Santa Clarita caller, 5-6 days before your voyage on the Discovery, please answer the call and say “yes”! It truly is a wonderful experience.

Shoot - sorry, I was thinking of the corner cabins (107/108) - those have the larger balcony, and large odd shaped room with no fold out.

The front facing cabins can get a lot of wind. So if you have a lot of sea days, prepare to usually leave your balcony doors closed most of the time. Many people have reported it’s comfortable sitting out on the balcony, but having the wind blow through the cabin not so great. Also - it’s a long walk from those cabins to and from most of the ship. possibly one other consideration - the forward facing cabins are a 2 person occupancy - there is no fold out bed. a lot of people love those cabins! I get motion sickness, and our daughter prefers to have her own bed to chillax in (even though she still sleeps with mommy and daddy), so I haven’t been able to try these out myself. One of these days.