NownZen

Their very generous covid FCCs and the decreased occupancy had to hurt a lot. For the passengers they averaged something like $120/night each. That is a hard number to make money at. The covid expenses and quarantine have to be coming down and that will free up rooms to be sold. They only needed another $30/night to make money. The FCC expiration will also help that number. The cash flow should improve since there will be fewer free days. Oceania's policy on covid is that you should have enough insurance to take care of any medical expenses or trip interruption so we cannot complain about Princess there.

You are unhappy with Princess and want to spread your anger. That is sad. Princess is fine and we are happy with it and the other lines we cruise. Different is not inferior. I am happy that the formal nights are disappearing. DMW was fine for us when we tried it. Hard to get out of it to release a table when we decided we much preferred the buffet. We cruise to enjoy ourselves, not to look for something to be mad about.

The other thing we have heard about is that since the bluetooth part of the medallion has a longer range, it can be detected when you are near the bar and if the crew are not careful, you can get charged.

The hamburger and pizza slices were great. Everyone has different tastes.

The app has entered the state in the life cycle where they are tired of chasing bugs and are instead playing with the graphics. They have done nothing to fix the issues of using it. Journey view is totally useless etc.

Being bored has never been an issue for us. It is rather being too busy to get a nap in.

Do you tip in restaurants?

You have a want not a need. You think you "deserve" special treatment? And you are ignoring the good advice they gave you. Just show up when you want to.

Thank you for the camera information

That is not a decision we make. Our body makes it. If you have that situation you would understand. I do not mind the smoke in the casino as we never go there. I do mind it leaking out into other areas. If the wind is right you can still use the outside smoking area and that is fine.

The nicest boutique cruise we did was a cruise on the original Royal Princess from Rome to Manaus which is 1000 miles up the Amazon river. At that point the river is 6-10miles wide. At the mouth it is 175 miles wide. There are river dolphins which are pink. The river was down about 70 feet because of the dry season and we had some trouble getting the gangplank out at one place. Fun ride on the back of motorcycle taxi. I had a medical issue which threatened to block my breathing just after we left Rome. I was looking at the options for getting medical care on the rest of the trip--Tunisia, Morocco, Senegal, The Cape Verde Islands or a village up the Amazon. We had already brought 23 bottles of wine on board (the rest of the trip was not noted for its wines) and I would not have been able to take them with me so we stayed on the ship. Princess chartered a plane for us to get to Miami afterwards. The stewardess had never opened a bottle of wine before so we had to show her how. This route is not done now since the Princess ships are too large. Oceania does a Miami or Puerto Rico to Manaus cruise.

We did the first half in may. Great trip. We were very lucky with the weather. In Akureyri we did a boat ride to a herring station (I know but it was great). The ocean was like a lake. The captain said that the day before there was a big storm with the worst wind and waves in years. The storm moved on and caused us to miss our scheduled stop in Ireland. Unfortunately many of the continuing passengers started in quarantine while we were having a great time in London. I would love to do the second half sometime.

We were on the Grand earlier this year and had no problems. Then the Island where there were a couple of glitches. One was in getting a proper shower temperature. I think the valves had gotten sticky sitting around but if you ran the shower at full flow it was much better. By the end of the cruise it was working fine without any intervention.

We are not a foe of TD but we just do not like it and eat in the buffet where we can eat when we want, how much we want and take whatever amount of time we want. There are people who enjoy the TD and that is fine. It is just not for everyone.

Every five minutes she came by and started by saying "I do not mean to interrupt you..." Which she obviously just had. She was always slow and did not get servings right. We were always the last to leave the dining room. I cannot eat sweets and she refused to believe that and always brought some cookies or ice cream or such. It was a 21 day cruise and she did not understand that a good server keeps and eye on you but only appears when needed.

The american power does have an earth, the UK system is floating. The fuses are humorous since we have fuses in the devices and breakers in the distribution box. Those breakers are for line fire protection and the device fuses are for protection of the devices. The fuses in the UK plugs do not really do anything. It is odd that people in europe are so terrified of the mains supply that even the light switch for the bathroom is outside the room. In the US you are required to have an outlet on either side of the sink if the counter is 12" or wider. Outdoor spas are required to have an outlet within 6 feet of the spa so you can plug in your stereo or tv. The main problem with UK plugs and adapters is the enormous size of them. The ships tend to have the narrow (even by US standards) plugs so the adapters would cover up the next outlet (and there are only two). Extension cords are your friend.

So when the choice is to fix the nasty problems or change the graphics, you go for the graphics. Still did not fix anything. But they did get rid of that silly boat graphic. Still no way to look at excursions.

If we sail for relaxation, it is Princess. Generally if we sail for itinerary it is not. We like the small ships.

You might check to see where they go in Antarctica. There are some new restrictions coming in and they may not go further south than Elephant Island whereas the current cruises go to the Lemaire channel much further south. We booked to get ahead of this.

You are right. The financials say they are close to making a operating profit. Debt servicing may be another issue.

Cash is king right now. Viking want full payment 12 months in advance. They understand.

My wife will not let me wear a shirt that long. I tell her that with social distancing the socks, shirt and underwear would be good for several more days (credit to whoever first said this). We do laundry every night so then it does not matter how long the cruise or trip is. We are old people but a few years back we did a six week trip with just a backpack (senior citizen size, not the 18 year old large strong person size). We will not do a cruise under 14 days as we are just getting settled in at that point.

The Antarctica cruise is wonderful. We did that some years ago and are doing it this year starting from LA. I will not go on short cruises as it is hard enough to get off the ship after 3 weeks. The Island Princess trip to Iceland is great as well. We are doing the Dubai to Singapore cruise and we get to do 2 of the ten longest nonstop flights in the world. They differ by 5 minutes but at 16 hours that will be a test of these old bones (and we are much older than you).

It would have been a lot better if any of the developers had ever been on a cruise ship to see what both the passengers and crew deal with. There are too many little odd things in the app. Screen usage is appalling. About 80% is wasted. Scroll, scroll and scroll some more. Useless ship graphics at the top, too big a listings. It is sufficiently bad that the Patter is our only source of information.

We pack light and I decided that the tie took up too much room. We will be doing Antarctica with a carry on so Alaska would not be an issue. On a trip the South Africa, they said the game drive would be fine as they had blankets in the cars. After the first day, we literally put on everything we brought with us, Three pairs of pants, three pairs of socks, three shirts, a sweater, and a windbreaker. With the blanket it was ok.