NownZen

If you want an amusement park, that is not Princess. There is so much to do that we have trouble getting a nap even on sea days. I do not understand the "nothing to do" comment. He is bored but does not do kids club and you seem to not want to do much in the way of excursions. Even then, there is a lot to do. Or just sit and watch the ocean go by.

The Grand has them.

My experience with the 250 minutes was that it was so slow that it kept me from doing much and having more time for the bars. It was painful so I would just check email and log out. When the new stuff is working, it is tolerable. Then, there are the days when there is no internet.

How was that guy to know that the restroom was not on the other side of the railing?

Those used to be called extension cords.

Princess is not giving anyone an excuse that they did not know about the testing requirement. I got two emails overnight, the phone call and a text message and a reminder from my TA. Plus we just passed our test. On the website cruise personalizer, under important notices, the first two paragraphs are contradictory. One says no test needed the other says a test is needed. The app has a place to enter in a picture of our self test results but no place to enter the proctored test.

It is clear that math is not a strong point at Princess. Not only are more people on line now they are asking to do more on line. Is there "enough" bandwidth in the satellites to deal with all the cruise ships?

You could always drink some more to make up for the slow internet. Amortize it one way or another.

Tell your travel agent what you want. Let him/her deal with Princess. TAs also have a different comput booking system.

The masks required cruises I have been on on Princess had the "except when eating or drinking". Some added "actively". They tried, without much success for "sip and cover". Many people sat down in the bars with a book and took off their masks. Also the buffet.

I traveled with a person who only took his oldest rattiest clothes. Then when they were dirty he would throw them away. The only person I know whose suitcase got lighter as the trip went on.

A birth certificate is not an immigration document. I feel sorry for them but by saving a few dollars on the passport, they lost a lot more. I am paranoid about having all my documents done right and in multiple copies, checked many times. The passport office may have said that the card was all you needed for A cruise but that does not mean ALL cruises.

If it is a visual issue, it will not affect you in bed as you cannot see anything that moves. It would if you were on the balcony but that is another issue. Also, the OP could put the pillows at the bottom of the bed and sleep in that direction.

You also want the cabin stewards to use cards to open the cabin doors. There is no need for them to unlock every room as they walk down the hall.

There will be a lot of finger pointing. The TA certainly should have known better. But why would they even consider not bringing their passports.

All people on your booking should be accessible on the app. If he is on the same booking you will have entered a photo and details for him. I see both my wife and myself and just tap on one or the other to select and fill in the information. My wife does not even have the app on her phone as it is not much use with the phone locked in the safe.

Blood sausage? Wait, you did say crucial. Of course, to some, English Breakfast is a tea.

You are right. I think Princess did not do the numbers for the internet use in a rational way. They did the same with hiring kids who had never been on a ship (or programmed before for that matter) to do the app. I have written apps and I was appalled by the amateur hour efforts made. They spent a lot of time on silly things like showing the ship lights coming on as you left port while ignoring functional problems. It is hard to get an app approval level of under 1.5. The latest update seems to have removed the ability to enter covid test results. True that there are only a few cruises requiring that but we are coming up on one. In the HItchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation products were described as "you were blinded by the uselessness of their products by your sheer joy in getting them to do anything at all. That is, their fundamental design flaws were obscured by their superficial design flaws". We saw a lecture by Douglas Adams a few weeks before he died, unfortunately titled "Last Chance to See" about some conservation efforts.

I am curious about the motion issue. The ship motion is the same whether you are facing forward or aft. It is symmetric. I would think that there would be more issues with a ship far away from the midline or higher up where there is much more motion. A mid ship cabin on deck 6 or 7 would have the least motion.

The medallion's bluetooth has a service life of a few weeks due to the battery. The NFC part is powered by the reader and has an indefinite life. If the bluetooth is not working, you can access the room using the medallion in NFC mode at the short range reader. The medallions from a year ago still read fine on an NFC reader. That part of the medallion is a separate circuit from the powered bluetooth section. See the patent. But the dead batteries for the passengers does make a lot of waste. Or you can put them on the refrigerator or cut them open to see what is in them. A passenger did a dissection a while back and posted pictures of the insides. Looks a lot like the patent.

Tracking is done on the internal computer system network and does not use the external internet. So there is no effect there.

Thank you for posting this useful information. I think this is part of Princess's cunning plan to wean us off of depending on the internet. It will bother me on our upcoming cruise but Mrs Zen seems unaffected. On an Iceland cruise we were without internet for several days. Someone said they would refund the internet cost but nothing showed up so I went to the PSD and asked them to refund the money. They did so with no hesitation even though we had the Plus package. We got back $9.95/day per person. DW never noticed the problem. However, there is a reason she is the Zen part of the pair.

If there was money in the pocket it must be mine. The fact that I was not on the ship is irrelevant.

Viking is nice but very expensive. Ignore the app. Just show up with your documents. The Love Boat show was cancelled after four episodes. Bad idea. White and gold is a joke. We were told we would have a christmas breakfast where we should wear our christmas PJs. They do not want to see mine. Bad idea. I do not have to pack an extra suit for White and Gold as I never bring a suit or a coat. John Padgett came up with the medallion (his name is on the patent even though he did no work) and got promoted. Bad idea. But we had a wonderful time on our cruises this year and are going on another this week. Princess is our go to cruise for relaxation and (occasionally) the itineraries. When there are places Princess does not go (like Egypt and India) we have to go on another line. They are fine too.

The data is stored on the servers at Princess. Your phone is just a display device. On the internet, the phone number is not used.