Riley_Mon

live and learn

at this point I'm so soured by the whole cruise and travel experience, I'm just going to put it behind me

It was 4 months ago and I don't have the motivation to try other avenues even though it probably would pay off.

Just wanted to give others here an FYI

fwiw, just to clarify I did book the airfare thru Princess and going by their advice, I flew in a day early to make sure I would give myself plenty of time to make the cruise. I just booked the hotel on my own.

Honestly I probably would have had it covered if AON and other cruise travel insurance companies weren't getting killed with the return to cruising and the multitude of issues that are associated with it.

They are probably bleeding money at the moment

this isn't a complaint, its just an FYI

I'm sure if I had read the fine print more closely I would have known, however

I booked a cruise with Princess in early June. Ship left on Saturday so I booked thru them, Airfare to arrive on Friday. I planned on  arriving early, spend the day hiking and booked a hotel for that evening.

cut to the chase, the travel was a nightmare, ended up spending the night in the Atlanta airport Friday night and barely getting to Seattle on Saturday to make the cruise. Hotel I booked , rightfully so, charged me for the booking and had a 24 hour no refund policy.

Based on my perception of how travel insurance worked, I figured I would have been reimbursed for this cost incurred. I thought I was doing the right thing by arriving a day early and booking a hotel at my expense to insure I had plenty of time to make the cruise , which in most cases would work to the advantage of the travel insurance company. Being east of the Mississippi and with covid still causing travel havoc, it made sense to arrive a day early and was actually recommended to me by someone at Princess.

Filed a claim in mid July for $220. Just heard from them today, November 29th, 4 months later my claim was denied. As far as they are concerned, I got a flight and I got to the cruise on time, its not relevant that I started at 4am on Friday and arrived at my destination at 2PM on Saturday and any cost incurred between then is on me.

To be honest, I'd actually forgot about it

Not a good look for travel insurance in my estimation, but again, I should read the fine print and not make assumptions on my part.

Hope this is a PSA for anyone in this position in the future. Maybe its common knowledge thats how it works and I didn't know any better.

cruise ended on the 25th. Received our folio statement yesterday

8 hours ago, Wakepatrol said:

Why didn’t you go to Ice Strait

point, without even trying?

 

Our Captain did not try to get into Key West this spring because it was

blowing Forty Five knots 

they announced ahead of time, about 3 weeks before our cruise that the boat wasn't able to go to Icy Strait due to generator issues, and this was after announcing the boat wouldn't go to Ketchikan and they were substituting Icy Strait about 5 weeks before.

sounds amazing, I will book mark this thread to reference your suggestions when I am planning our vacation in the near future.

44 minutes ago, JeffT237 said:

@Riley_Mon I can only speak from my experience and what I did and what we were offered for our May 7th Crown cruise.  I filled out the post cruise survey, contacted guest relations and customer solutions as well as e-mailing the executives.  Some of this was on the advice of CC posters as well as Princess guest relation representatives post cruise.  Chats were quicker, phone calls led to 2-3 hour wait times, my main frustration and I saved the emails and chat transcripts, were Princess reps giving me a date in which I would be contacted by someone with the authority to grant or deny my request and  each time came and went without contact.  I did not appreciate that, I realize they are busy but if they say 7-10 days or within 24-48 hours and not follow through with that then that's just dishonest or bad business.  I finally got a response when I went through the Better Buisness Bureau, although Princess is not accredited with the BBB they do respond to them and have several complaints filed against them.

 

My advice just be professional and clear with what you are requesting and why.  I acknowledged clearly my satisfaction with the crew and the good parts of our trip as well as the disappointment and why I felt a 50% FCC was fair considering the circumstances. In the end Princess agreed. Our timeline was June 21st Customer Relations called me and notified us of the increase to a 50% FCCpp and we received our refund for cancelled excursions and OBC on July 11th.  

I appreciate the info.

The May 7th people had a much worse cruise than any of the following cruises so I can see a different level of expectation with those, but as I understand it, the latter cruises in May, which were the same as ours, no Icy Point, late to Juneau were offered as well. Based on threads here,  a 50% FCC unprompted.

Maybe I'll be motivated to call them next week, I'm just still in a frame of mind that I shouldn't have to initiate this discussion.

20 minutes ago, USCcruisecrazy said:

Sorry to hear about your dream Alaska trip being disrupted.  I recommend adding a "do-it-yourself" Alaska trip in the future.  We just got back from 2 weeks of traveling around the state and it was awesome.  We stayed a few nights in Talkeetna, Hatcher's Pass, Anchorage, Girdwood, and Seward.  Good luck!!

yep, I'm actually considering something similar.  I know a couple of people that went there last year, hopping on small planes to go from destination to destination. They loved it.  I think we are considering an extended vacation in Alberta/Banff next year but I would definitely like another shot at Alaska without being at the mercy of a cruise ship. Our shore excursion guide drove from Colorado to Skagway and I've thought about that several times over the last couple of weeks. We've also talked to people that took the ferry out of Seattle. I would also probably plan on not being in the direct path of people leaving a cruise ship on the locations I chose.

Maybe in a couple of years.

I wouldn't say ruined. There was certainly enjoyable aspects to the cruise. 

but I would say that the way it was handled, it was essentially a bait and switch.  We paid for a specific cruise and got something different. Its been rehashed multiple times in other threads on here.

However, Princess admitted as much for earlier cruises in May who they offered 50% FCC, and our cruise was the exact same in terms of missed ports, reduced times as theirs.

15 hours ago, jwattle said:

Did they give you onboard credit whilst on the cruise?

yes I think it was $200 in total

39 minutes ago, Sea Hag said:

Have you called them and asked? I know calling Princess these days is a super daunting task, but it's always said that "them that asks, gets."

I filled out the surveys. If anyone pays attention to them, they'd be reaching out to me

20 minutes ago, cruzsnooze said:

It's not clear to me why you're holding out hope of an FCC if you don't plan to cruise again. Didn't you get some sort of announcement / explaination/apology when you were onboard?

FCC wouldn't be my first choice , its the only realistic expectation in this situation.

It was closed during our cruise.

After reading about people getting a FCC of 50% from May cruises on the Crown, to be honest I was expecting something from Princess on ours.

The June 18 cruise, while not horrible, did not go to Icy Point (they didn't even try) and was late for Juneau resulting in all shore excursions canceled. Reading the "we failed to live up to the standards Princess sets for cruises" in earlier remarks for the May cruises, I thought surely our cruise would fit that category as well.

But we are in mid July, almost a month past and no communication.

From the little exposure I had to people on board, I know that everyone I came in contact with was upset with the sailing schedule, so I would assume that was reflected in the survey.

Anyways, I'm not sure what I would do with an FCC, I don't really plan on cruising at the moment, this experience was so frustrating in combination with travel and covid that I don't think cruising is worth it at the moment, but I'd like at least some admission on Princess' part they screwed up my bucket list Alaska vacation.

it was noticeable in Sabatini's too - 16th deck and the room is vibrating

 Think about people that were covid positive that spent 2-3 days in your room and left  just 3 hours before you arrive, and a room steward has 2 hours to turn over whatever - 15 rooms?

2 hours ago, ChimneyTenders said:

So we got back yesterday. 

 

Made all the ports. Juneau was 1.5 hours late. Skagway, Icy Point and Victoria were about 30-45 min early

 

Both of us tested positive for Covid when we got home. Re:Covid, if you dont have it when you board, you will get in onboard. People were clearly sick and went about their trip. 

 

Their covid bubble is an illusion. 

 

We are booked to Mexico next year. Thinking that's not a good idea based on how they handled Alaska. 

yea, that's my perception as well.  You're going to come into contact with the BA.5 variant on board which is easily transmittable and it appears that past protection has little fight against it.

Slightly different take than your first post about being on the Crown  I noticed.

2 hours ago, memoak said:

Did you ever look at the deck plans ?  Many Princess ships do not have a sit down pizza venue although a few use Sabatini’s in the afternoon on some days

no, mostly from just watching review videos from youtube.

I was expecting an Alfredo's as well

Based on reading I just assumed all Princess ships had one, and while slice was very popular and the line moved fast on our cruise, it was just meh pizza.

3 hours ago, Userclown said:

Trying to get real information about the Arrivecan app. Can you share?

 

the only time the arriveCan app mattered on our cruise was during check in. I filled it out a couple of days before, the arriveCan app gave me a number with a QR code. I showed that during check in, someone wrote it down and I was never asked about it again, even though it was mentioned several times during the cruise. I don't even remember showing my passport after check in.

The medallion seemed to cover everything onboard/offboarding security check.

I have a group training event going on at work. 50 people coming into the office every day, sharing car rides, going out to dinner.

We're averaging 4 covid positives a week since the second week. The training has been going on for 4 weeks now.

I don't know what being careful is to be honest in this environment. We are following CDC guidelines as required by our HR department and an almost 10% infection rate is ridiculous, IMO.

2 hours ago, broker1217 said:

The whole point is that most people are not following the measures Princess calls for.

Therefore, they are choosing to ruin it for those of us who signed up for Princess knowing masks were required.

 

And anyone who has not yet cruised---just know that the majority of people are not going to mask and they will possibly infect you. So have a plan in the event you get sick.

My take away from my experience is that Princess is not for us---majority of pax don't mask and don't care who they cough on. They are inconsiderate. That's not the demographic for us.

 

 not sure you'll find a large cruise ship that has many people that are

every time we ate in the MDR, we were challenged to be social distanced. Private table didn't matter, they would sit us arms length from other people. We didn't make a big deal about it, however we stopped after the second time. Crown Grill and Sabatinis wasn't an issue, at least for us.

The buffett was pretty easy because of the other buffet areas that aren't serving,. You could sit there and they still had wait staff serving you.

I said this after my cruise on another thread. If you are cruising you need to be prepared to be around Covid positive people….probably a considerably higher number than you would normally be comfortable around by the end of the week.I think the number of people getting Covid is vastly underreported on cruises and the reason why is that the symptoms aren’t much more than a bad cold for most. Just like some one else reported, my bus ride to the airport was full of people coughing. 
 

I don’t think many people are interested in taking a cruise, testing positive and then being isolated to a cabin, so they don’t say anything. That is also probably true in non cruise situations but the difference is you don’t have to interact with those people everyday for 6 says straight like you do with Covid positive cruise passengers.

I don’t blame princess or any cruise line, it’s just the nature of things. 

when we ate in the Crown Grill, prime rib was a feature item on the menu but it was out. 

I wonder if there are two levels of prime rib as we had it in the MDR the night before

consistent 20 knots was not my experience. There were periods when we would be moving along quite well and then periods where the ship felt like it was barely moving,. I'm not sure if this was because they were trying to hit a port at a specific time or not but we missed our arrival time in Juneau and had our shore excursions canceled. This was last week.