WAvoyager

For the Medallion itself, everything seems to work well - it does all the functions it’s supposed to do, unless you end up with one with a dead/dying battery, then there may be issues (Al which a quick visit to guest services will clear up). Most of the problems (delayed/undelivered food or drinks) are probably less of a medallion issue and more of an operational issue. Getting into the rooms, using it to access onboard account, calling up info on the ships screens - all works fine. The Medallion App is much more hit or miss, but we’ve been on 3 cruises since the restart, and the app has done everything we needed it to. A couple of small temporary issues which cleared themselves up in a day or two, pre-boarding. While on the ship, everything seemed to work okay, with occasional outages where we couldn’t pull up the daily activities. You don’t use it to get into your room.

It sounds like a lot of posters are assuming this is just some one off marketing promo, and I’m sure they haven’t been on a VIP cruise. The VIP offers come in all flavors - although we haven’t received an inside cabin offer, I’m assuming it’s like most other casino offers where they have multiple cabin classes available depending on your status with them. Also, I’m assuming that they are sometimes including Princess Plus, and sometimes they aren’t. If it wasn’t explicitly mentioned in the promotional info, it’s not included. We have to spend a lot of time sorting through the various offers we get to figure out which one we should use. Plus, cabin category, slot tournaments, VIP perks, casino credit, and lately even VIP optional selections (hearts, clubs, Diamond options - but no spades IIRC) - each has some value, and there’s always trade offs in the offers - they never give away the farm. the VIP cruises are only available on a limited number of sailings - so they can effectively provide some of the perks, like the welcome aboard party. we’ve never been able to go on a VIP sailing because the sailings are always within 6 months (or so) of the sailing, and we are always booked at least 9 months out. hope someone who has been on one will be able to provide more info. But from the cruise offer you should have a promo code, so I’d call the casino support number (not general support) on the brochure and make sure the promo code is applied to your booking. You can also check in the cruise planner, go to Manage Booking, and then look at the onboard services tab. At the very bottom of that page you’ll see credits and perks which have been applied to the booking. There should be some indication of VIP benefits there.

Bah Humbug! my daughter found one, and we’ve left a couple of dozen. It’s fun for her (us) to find hiding places for them.

Does anyone know - how do you make reservations for the Crab Shack? We wanted to go a few years back, but they stopped doing it on our last cruise on the Crown, and then we went into the shutdown. Glad it’s back!

I hope N. America’s crabs have relocated somewhere too. The collapse in the N. American fisheries has been incredible and alarming. Last year I believe it was Snow Crab that survey counts dropped by 90% - and this year it was King crab. Really scary unless they’ve moved elsewhere

People on vacation often don’t really care if something is reasonably priced or not. If it’s on your checklist of things to do, that often outweighs the price. I can tell you all about it as I continue my planning for Disney World in September! 😢 $70 isn’t too outrageous though. Costco’s selling it for $50/lb right now, so that’s a fairly reasonable price. With the fosheries closed this year, I wonder where they’re getting it though.

If you’re an Amazon user, you can search on “Princess medallion holder” and there are tons of options. on a family cruise last year I ordered the Princess bangle bracelet ($$) for my mom, and the silicon straps ($) for my wife and daughter. Everyone wore theirs for a day and decided they just would use the inexpensive clips I ordered on Amazon. 😳 Since I always wear a watch, I just use one of the silicon holders that attach to a watch strap.

Thanks for posting! we did this cruise last year, when the Crown was having propulsion problems. She didn’t do the inside passage and swapped Ketchikan for Icy Straight Point. And Sabatini’s was vibrating like crazy. Even with the changes/challenges it was still a wonderful cruise. The ship is looking pretty good with the new deck surfaces (astroturf). Cant wait to get back up there in August. For now I’ll just look longingly at pics from your cruise!

We recently were on the Discovery in R416, which is the bumped out room/balcony, directly under the skywalk, and we were worried about the same thing. No concerns for us - we barely noticed the skywalk above us. 335’s farther away from the skywalk so I can’t imagine any issues at all. One skywalk negative I can think of is that from the skywalk you can look directly down onto the balconies below. It’s even more pronounced with the Majestic and the Royal where you can look directly into cabins on the Marina deck through the open space between the skywalk and deck. But on the later ships they filled in the gap - making the skywalk less impressive (scary), but giving the Marina cabins back their privacy.

I think that’s part of the security benefit. Merchant charges the Princess account, so Princess is the buffer. Also, then Princess can provide a discount (and take a cut of the sale).

I would hope in the current air travel state we’re in (pilot shortages, air traffic controller shortages, reduced number of flights) that everyone plans for an overnight before their cruise. with that being said, I don’t know about Anchorage hotels, but Vancouvers gone through the roof. We used to (pre-pandemic) drive up to Vancouver frequently for long weekends. All of the hotels seem to be charging 2x-3x the rate now. Haven’t been able to find anything reasonable in the last 6 months of searching.

It definitely sounds like a staffing or capacity related issue. Our cabin stewards have always introduced themselves, and provided their business card so we’d have their name and the number to reach them at if we needed anything. We do mini-suites half the time, and they have to come by to drop off the welcome drinks, but IIRC, it’s been the same in standard balcony cabins as well. And while I’ve often seen drinks at the hot tubs (honestly people, can’t you find a better place to leave your empties?!) I’ve never seen a buildup of more than a couple of drinks. But we’re always at the main pool / hot tub areas, which are pretty well staffed. Don’t know how the more isolated hot tubs fare. Sorry you had a less than ideal experience- it hasn’t been the case for us. Thanks for the great comparison review!

Was there a separate line for medallion pickup? Usually they just grab your medallion as you check in, so no separate line for just that. When we’ve cruised out of Seattle we’ve had our medallions delivered, so I never noticed how they handled pickup.

That’s only the case for certain terminals though - San Pedro has separate lanes, and Seattle doesn’t (at least I don’t remember any.. it’s been a year and my memory is pretty much limited to last week most days 🫤). Last cruise we were on, the blue lane had no wait (tons of waiting agents) and green had a wait (4 people ahead of us).

Sorry! I didn’t take any pics of the patters. I will check with the wife to see if she saved them. I am very jealous about the solar eclipse cruise! If we could’ve planned for taking days away from school I would’ve booked it, but we have too many trips planned next school year already. 😞

On our first cruise with our daughter she wasn’t able to use the pools or kids club. We were able to take her to the kids club and she could play as long as one parent (and only one) stayed with her. So I remember spending lots of time in the kids club, walking around the pool in the water overlap area so she could splash her feet, paying hide and seek on the upper deck at night, eating ice cream, and rolling golf balls around on the putting green. No splash pad, or toddler specific facilities, but still plenty of great things to do.

If you want to get Stanley bears for your kids you may want to order them (via the cruise Personalizer) before your sailing. On our recent Discovery voyage (4/15) they were not available in the gift shop, so if you didn’t order one beforehand, you couldn’t get one. After two sailings with no Stanleys we pre-ordered, and my daughter dragged him everywhere on the ship. She got tired of people stopping us to ask where we got him!

Too late now, but did you check for flights home from Vancouver? There should’ve been more frequent flights, and the transfer from Seattle to Vancouver’s not too bad.

Ah - good point! I forgot that the casino team probably has a limited number of cabins available, so it also depends on how many they’ve used on a particular cruise.

Yes, you can. I was speaking specifically to the discounted upgrades that are available. Some upgrades (to full suite for instance) may be at full upgrade price, while others will be much less than the actual upgrade price. When we’ve inquired about upgrades there is usually a range of cabin categories where the upgrade is 30-50% of the full upgrade value, and other categories (full suite for instance) where the upgrade cost is exactly the difference between the categories - no discount. We get about 10 offers per year, anlways free balconies now, and (due to time constraints) cruise on 2-3 offers per year. It’s been the same experience on every cruise for us. But everyone’s mileage may vary. Were your upgrades done at the full cost for upgrading between your comped category and the suite category, or was is discounted?

That seems unusually high. Did you contact the casino support team, or did you just call the standard reservations line? The casino team usually has upgrades available at a casino discount. These upgrades are usually up to a balcony mini-suite category. I’ve never upgraded from inside cabins, but oceanview to balcony, or balcony to mini-suite is usually only a few hundred dollars, we’ll below the regular upgrade rate.

They could all go in a single line together …. The blue line. Can they go through the green line? Yes, and while it probably won’t be an issue at all, it’s really not the correct thing to do. The process in the blue lane is they’ll check through all of the required items for each passenger, and make sure everything is complete and that you get through as quickly as possible. The people manning the blue line expect that everything’s not ready, and are prepared to help with anything that needs to be worked on. In the green lane, they’re just planning to check your ID and grab your medallion, and get everyone through quickly. It’s really like going through the quick checkout lane at the market when you know you have more than 15 items, but you’re in a hurry. They’re no bag person to help, so they’re really not set up for a large quantity of items. You can do it, but it still doesn’t make it the right thing to do. On our 4/15 cruise from San Pedro the line for blue lane was actually completely clear, while green lane had a short wait to get to the counter (2-3 groups waiting). They had a TON of people to assist in the blue lane, and only half (or fewer) people helping green lane. So (at 11:15 am) it didn’t really matter which lane you went through, and I’m sure they could support people either way, but why not help Princess and your fellow passengers, and do it the way that Princess has planned to provide the best service to everyone? I know I’ll probably get flamed for this post, but I’m really saying this from 35 years of Operations experience, and not from some morality view. Each line is not arbitrarily set up, or set up purely from a “class” perspective. Green and blue are different lines because the operational needs for green vs blue passengers are different. Going through the wrong lane just makes it more difficult for everyone (except maybe the person going through the wrong lanes).

That was the case for us on an April 15th sailing. The items were in the cart, and the cart showed a shipping charge, aven though we were plus. We upgraded to premier, and the charge was still there. But then it looks possible that even though the cart showed a charge, we may not have been billed it. I think it’s unlikely though as there were other charges in the cart as well (customized medallions), so I can’t see them not charging for anything. We changed it to pick up at port, just in case. I hate spending time waiting in line to fix someone else’s issue.

Not that it would necessarily change anything if this were different, but MUTS has to show fairly family friendly fare. These days, I’m not so sure you could do that, and show any more than 2-3 different movies at a time if you were targeting new shows. I would’ve loved this list on our last cruise. Instead, my daughter and I saw 3 fairly brooding dramas while we were playing in the pool. Could’ve just been the luck of the draw - maybe we saw the equivalent of “Greenland” and “Tammy Faye”. (Although every other movie on the list would’ve been better than what we saw)

There are many threads where people have mentioned issues with non-casino support agents making changes to a comped booking, and the booking getting messed up. The issues range from some casino comped benefits being lost, to the booking getting cancelled completely. We’ve had it happen twice - once with all of our added benefits (casino credit, and excursion credits) being removed, the other time with a cruise being cancelled (although they didn’t trace it back directly to a change made by non-casino support, the cancellation happed right after the general support line was helping with a cabin selection). If you’ve made a change through the general support line, just make sure your onboard credits and things all still show up in your Personalizer. The big risk (non-“payment” of required payments by the casino) is most likely not an issue any longer, since they’ve changed their accounting process. The comped cruises used to have the deposit paid by the guest at time of booking, and then the final “payment” was remitted at the payment deadline by the casino group. That final payment no longer takes place (or doesn’t wait until the deadline at least). Some of the reported issues were probably due to a change altering who was expecting to pay for the final payment, and the cruise being cancelled due to non-payment.