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Most lodges in National Parks aren't luxurious by any means. They are 2 or 3 stars at most. It's just bare minimum accommodations and it beats being sleeping in a tent or an RV. The government won't allow for expansive development because it goes against the premise of a National Park. Yosemite and Yellowstone are two exceptions that have 4 star lodges complete with amenities. Never been on a Princess cruise tour but have done Denali and other National Parks on my own. You should be visiting to appreciate nature and go hiking and spending your time at the Lodge. I will concede, Denali isn't that impressive compared to other National Parks. I think the allure is the fact that it's in Alaska and that it has moose.

It all depends on how many people want the Kodak moment. If there are a lot of people then there’s a chance that there will be the full waterfall effect. I don’t go very often, but the last time I saw a full on champagne waterfall, was pre pandemic. You can’t blame Princess because it’s a waste of their provisions of sparkling wine. I never seen them serve anyone from the tower of coupes.

There's usually a party when crossing the Equator, which involves kissing a fish. Cruise entertainment staff take sign ups. The theme is usually Greek, meaning togas. People borrowed bedsheets from their cabin stewards.

As general rule: For non-tender ports, all aboard is 30 minutes prior to published all departure time. For tender ports, all aboard is 1 hour prior to published departure time. This is presumably so the tenders can be put away. For turn around ports with continuing itineraries, such as those in the Med, all board is usually 1 hour prior to published departure time. These would be ports like Barcelona, Athens, and Civitavecchia, where a large number of passengers are continuing their cruise and a large number are newly embarking passengers.

Princess will assign your cabin when it's convenient for them, not when it's convenient for you. Don't believe any promises made to you regarding guarantee cabins. All a guarantee means is that you are guaranteed a cabin on the sailing you booked in a category/location that you booked or better. It means nothing more and nothing less. Patience is a virtue. I booked a BF guarantee on the Enchanted last November, and 3 days before my cruise I was upgraded to an S3 Aft Penthouse. I was already in Rome and had to get the hotel I was staying at to help me print luggage tags. Good luck!

Depends on your home airport. I'm guessing you live in Oklahoma. If your home airport is an airline hub like, SFO, JFK, or LAX, where there is a lot of airline competition, EZAir provides amazing pricing. I've was to snag British Airways tickets to SFO to Rome for $800 last year. This year my parents are flying to one way SFO to Athens and Rome to SFO, and they were able to snag British Airways tickets for $820 in August, which is a peak time for travel to Europe. Not to mention if you prefer to fly up front, the EZAir's prices are hard to beat. I will concede, that the trend is that EZAir has competitive prices for long haul international travel and not so much for domestic travel. At the end of the day, passengers really need to do their due diligence on getting the best pricing.

The wow factor of the production shows definitely diminishes as you cruise with the same cruise line over and over. The Princess Production shows such as Rock Opera, Encore, Magic to Do, Sweet Soul Music, etc. don't excite me anymore. It's pretty much the same shows on repeat as you jump ship to ship. They are on repeat, if on a back to back cruise. I attend because the singing is usually pretty good to excellent (sometimes the soprano in Encore is hard on the ears) and it gives me something to do in the evening. To be honest, I'm not sure that even with a plot, I'd be excited to see them over and over. I'm much more excited about the guest performances. I don't think the production shows of a cruise line tip the scale one way or the other for cruisers when choosing a cruise. Not everyone goes to the evening shows. There are other aspects of cruising that people care about such as service, food, accommodation, etc. Some are just brand loyal. In cruising, there's no pleasing everyone. There's a lot to do on the ship. If something isn't pleasing to you, you're free to quietly excuse yourself from that event or activity at any time. There are plenty of people who have walked out of a show in the theater mid-performance.

On the Enchanted in November 2023 to the Med, the food was fine. Executive Chef was Italian and the Italian food really stood out. Arancini is a staple on Princess ships and this was the best. We never had pasta that was overcooked. Not really a fan of the fettuccini alfredo because it always tastes doughy/starchy to me, but not on this sailing. For a 22 day cruise, the variety of food was pretty good too. The service, though, was really lacking. There was a service crew change a month before we stepped on. The problem was that many of them were on their first contract, didn't make the cut, and were sent home. Ours was the last cruise before the TA to Fort Lauderdale for the season and we were told that replacement crew weren't coming until the ship reached Fort Lauderdale, to avoid immigration issues with the incoming crew. Sad to hear that some are still reporting the ship is understaffed.

Princess doesn't want to pay for the rights for copyrighted material. Instead, they hire Broadway producers, like Stephen Swchartz of Wicked fame, to make original shows for them. Having said that, most of the shows use songs/scores that are already well known. Trying to pay someone to compose new material for a few ships costs a lot of money. It's a one time gig for the hired producer; it's not like Broadway where there are ticket sales and the revenue has potential, so the producer probably charges Princess a high one time fee for their services. The Secret Silk is the one Princess show that has a pretty original score.

That’s my point. The members of this board are’t investigators nor do any conclusions made here have any legal bearing. So why discuss it here? Let the authorities investigate if the people affected feel like the offenses, if there were any, are grave enough.

Don't think that this topic should be on blast. Concerns like this should be reported to the FBI. https://www.cruisecritic.com/articles/how-cruise-ships-deal-with-crime-at-sea

If early ticketing was not chosen, then no problem. You have a case against EZAir if they say no to changes prior to 45 days. I hope that you’re are sure about the flights. It can be a nightmare to get ancillary fees back from the airline in case of flight changes/cancelations. EZAir won’t help in this situation because those fees were paid directly to the airline.

Are you in first/business? If so, then no because first/business always have free seat assignments. For economy on American, it really depends on the fare you reserved. I’ve found the cheap fare buckets available through EZAir (not even basic economy) don’t allow for advanced seat assignment. Keep in mind the only way that early ticketing can be held against your is if you hit the “Request Early Ticketing” button in the Cruise Personalizer. If EZAir arbitrarily tickets flexible reservations prior to 45 days, it can’t be held against you. As a side note, you can check if your reservation has been ticketed by going opening your Travel Summary and checking if the ticker number field populates your flights in the air section. If past 45 days prior to your first flight departure (not cruise departure) ticket numbers don’t populate, you need to call EZAir and have them ticket your reservation.

Do the venues feel small for a 4000+ passenger ship? They look small for a ship of this size. (Not critiquing your photos. They are great!)

No doubt, Princess has changed a lot since the restart and so have all of the other cruise lines. Princess' product is still fine, but very basic 1990s/early 2000s cruising, except for the fact there are copious upcharges for elements outside of the basic cruise fare. Their ships don't have the new features that RCCL's megaships have, but most of the Princess loyalists don't have a problem with this. I think this is one of the reasons why Princess can't charge more for their cruises; the amenities and experience don't stack up to higher cruise fares. I do wish Princess would give back to passengers, now that their parent CCL is bragging about increased bookings and revenue. Time will tell, but I'm not hopeful. Complaints are part of doing business. There's no way to please everyone. I do think that business should take valid complaints constructively to improve the product offerings. The only way to find out is to try for yourself and form your own opinion.

I always go out of my way to select airlines that will allow for seat assignments prior to ticketing. In my book, American, Air Canada, and Lufthansa are always out of the question because these are airlines that require ticketing prior to seat selection. In addition, Air Canada and Lufthansa charge for seat assignments if chosen prior to the opening of OLCI. If the airline doesn't allow for seat assignments prior to ticketing, then the EZAir website will direct the passenger to contact the airline directly. In this case, the passenger can go to the airlines' website and try and get a seat assignment there. If the airline blocks the seat selection, there then that means that the reservation indeed requires ticketing. At this point, one has two options: One is to request for early ticketing from EZAir. Second is to wait for EZAir to arbitrarily ticket the reservation and select seats after the fact. In other words, there's no way seat selection alone can trigger EZAir to ticket a reservation. It still has to be the passenger that requests early ticketing and this can only be done on through the Cruise Personalizer or through an EZAir agent, not directly though the airline because it's EZAir who is holding the payment funds. Not sure about OPs case because she doesn't seem sure either.

With a flexible airline reservation through EZAir, it doesn't matter whether or not the air has been ticketed. So long as you make the flight change before the 45 day mark, there should be no extra charges. Choosing seats doesn't affect that policy. EZAir, in the last 6 months, has taken it upon themselves to ticket flexible reservations early; I think this has to do with them dropping the ball during the restart and not issuing tickets. The only way you could have requested early ticketing is if you went to the Flights tab of you Cruise Personalizer and clicked on the Request Early Ticketing button. Delta does allow for seat selection prior to having been ticketed by EZAir. Forget trying to have the call center do it. Try to change the flights yourself through the Cruise Personalizer. Before you agree to the changes and the air reservation is changed, the final checkout page will show you the difference in fare (refund or additional payment) and any fees that were levied. If there are fees that are levied then that will mean that your flexible reservation is indeed ticketed and cannot be changed without a fee.

I'm tempted to buy a few gross of said ducks and having a release party in one of the ship's pools. It'll be a field day for the deck attendants.

You’ll never get lower than what you initially booked. If Princess does assign you a lower category, then they are obligated to give you a downgrade offer. Loyalty level doesn’t matter.

I was the caregiver for my grandparents until their passing. I was lucky enough to have family that could take over when I needed a break. Respite vacations for caregivers is one of the best things for mental health. Your cruise is what you want to make of it. You can be as social or as anti social as you want. Scenery on Canada/New England cruises is awesome. Enjoy your cruise!

Music to my ears.

Princess should re-think calling the buffet, a family style restaurant. They need to remember the failure of Share by Curtis Stone, which was that specialty dining's concept.

@jwb3843 Let me preface this by saying, never book a guarantee expecting an upgrade. You should be happy with the GTY category you booked at bare minimum in the event that Princess assigns you a cabin the category that you paid for. What I meant by bid to upgrade being advantageous to GTY bookings is that cabin inventory never really what it really seems. If Princess accepts the bid of someone who picked a "prime" location category, then at cabin becomes open to assign to other passengers, which include passengers who booked GTY. A booked passenger could cancel out of the blue. Only Princess knows the true cabin availability and only Princess can assign your cabin in a GTY booking. I didn't mean that GTY bookings that bid to upgrade are more like to have bids accepted. I don't, bid to upgrade so I can't really speak too much about that. There's a thread on bid to upgrade successes/failures on this forum. What does happen after Princess upgrades you into a higher meta category from your GTY category is that the bids go down for higher categories. For example: When I initially made my booking to Alaska on the Majestic, I booked GTY IF. At that time, I could only make a bid for BW, DW, Balcony and Deluxe Balcony. After I was assigned a BW cabin, I was sent a new bid to upgrade e-mail, with lower bids for DW, Balcony, Obstructed Balcony, and Mini-Suites (can't really compare Mini-Suite bid prices because I initially was never able to bid for this category, but my point is that option appeared). I always think that it's better to play the GTY game until Princess assigns a cabin, hoping, but not expecting, for an upgrade. But this comes from a person that doesn't play the bid to upgrade game.

What does bug me is when travel agencies with groups put signs on group member cabin doors with their agency's logo. The door then turns into a billboard for that travel agency. It's rare, but some agents even have the chutzpa to put business cards in a holder on their door.

It's scary when people say they have trouble finding their cabins without door decoration identifiers or a Medallion.