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Barcelona wants to limit the cruise ships that are docked in town. To facilitate this, a new cruise terminal is being built in Tarragona, Spain, which is slated to open in 2024. This new cruise terminal is supposed to be an hour outside of Barcelona. If your cruise is in 2024, I would wait to see if there will be a change to the port assignment. I'm guessing RCCL's mega ships will be the predominant users of this port. If you embarking from one of the terminals in Barcelona proper, it's a quick taxi ride and the taxis are abundant at BCN.

This is Princess' current e-mail spiel about having Medallions pre-shipped. Pretty desperate for $10, in my opinion. We didn't "trust" Princess and picking up the Medallions in Civitavecchia added a minute to our check-in. There were no lines at check-in for any color lane at 11:00 am.

I think you will be surprised when you reach Kusadasi. Was just there a week ago and no such thing. There are protests in the U.S. lots of pro/against both sides in the USA. Do you not leave your house because of this? Also, why does one need to make their religion known while on vacation? I would understand if one were on a religious pilgrimage, but a Princess cruise is not this.

Paranoia! Princess may or may not cancel Turkey. As long as the current conflict says within the confines of Israel/Palestine and Ukraine/Russia, there should be no reason for the cruise lines to cancel Turkey for the 2024 season. The world doesn't need WWIII.

Ephesus still full of people. As the local guide told us on our tour, Americans should really stop using CNN as a primary source. The war is between Israel and Gaza; Turkey is not involved. Excursion to Ephesus ends in a carpet shop, you can walk directly back to the ship if you don't want to walk around town. Not sure why you wouldn't want to walk around Kusadasi afterwards. Paranoia for no reason. Ship wouldn't stop here if Princess felt passengers would be at risk. (On a side note, Princess cancelled a bunch of Turkey calls in 2017 on the Royal Princess because of government unrest.)

USPS tracking should populate any time now. Princess uses a freight forwarder to get the Medallions to the US. The Medallion tracking e-mails are sent once the package hit the US and are sorted by the freight forwarder at their warehouse. It's a matter of when the freight forwarder will tender the package to USPS for the trip through their network.

The cruise line determines the risk. If one of their rules aren't strictly enforced, then it means that the risk is low. The weapons ban is an example of a rule that is enforced because of high risk. In Ketchikan on the Majestic Princess this summer, a kid bought a slingshot as a souvenir and it was confiscated and stored by ship security. Meanwhile, the 12 pack of soda I bought at Wal-Mart in Ketchikan breezed right through.

When it doesn't pose a risk to passenger safety, such as the dress code or bringing beverages on board, enforcing the "rules" just cause conflict. Cruise lines can't limit liquids brought on board, all passengers would revolt because that would mean that their toiletries would also be affected. As far as the rules for carrying liquids on board airplanes, those rules are set by the ICAO, the airlines could care less.

To the contrary, port security doesn't make a fuss as to not hold up the security line for embarking passengers. This would cause even more delays to embarking passengers. If liquids were of concern, then Princess would not allow passengers to bring their own beverages on board at all. It's not an airport. Where I think you hit the nail on the head is the concession part; Princess can't sell you beverages or packages if you already brought them on board. Having said that Princess is the most lax of all the cruise lines on the amount of beverages you can bring. There are written rules, but they are hardly enforced.

Call me rebellious, but some rules are meant to be broken. Princess' rules in this case are guidelines but not set in stone. No different than the "dress code" that isn't enforced on Princess ships.

I know that in the fine print of EZAir that it says flexible fares aren't guaranteed until paid for. Having said that, I've never had them ask me for more money before cruise final payment (fares were locked in) or before my air reservation was ticketed.

Yes you must fetch the bottles of water yourself. There isn't any specified limit on the number you can ask for. I've asked for 5 at a time and the bar tenders never had a problem giving them to me. I take extras to my cabin for consumption there. Tips in excess of Princess' mandated Crew Appreciation are given in cash. There's no way to charge those on your folio. Never been stopped for carrying non-alcoholic beverages at embarkation or while in port. My friends have carried 2, 12 pack cases of Diet Dr. Pepper and were never stopped. When I don't have a package, I taped a 32 pack of water from the big box store, taped on a luggage tag, and it showed up at my cabin. You can also restock while in port. Ship/port security won't stop you. They really only care about alcoholic beverages and even then many times they will slide. YMMV on that one.

I agree with you on this. Not sure why the panoramic elevators and the regular elevators midship on Royal Class ships have different call button controls. Someone should re-program so pressing one button activates the call on all 6 elevators.

If all the participants brought their wine to a designated person's cabin and this occurred there, I don't see this being a problem. Otherwise, I've never seen a privately organized wine tasting in a public space on Princess. Per the instructions on the luggage tags, wine/champagne is limited to one per person and is supposed to be consumed in the room. Anything else is subject to corkage. Maybe if everyone was willing to pay the corkage, something like this would be permitted in a public space?

Does your itinerary have more than one stop in Vietnam? If yes, the E-Visa for Vietnam will not work. The Vietnam E-Visas are SINGLE ENTRY. You will exit Vietnam, go to sea, and re-enter Vietnam at the next port. TBH, $56 is cheap, and you save the hassle of having to deal with the visa process.

Can't afford? Don't go. World Cruise segments always price higher than stand alone voyages.

Every sailing is different, but for the most part the breakfast at the buffet is a zoo between 7:00 am and 9:00 am. It can get busier earlier on port days and busier later on sea days. Specifically, on the Sky Princess out of Southampton on sailings where Brits were the majority of the passengers, the buffet breakfast never really gets busy as Brits like to stay up late and don't really go to breakfast.

Buffet wins if using variety as criteria. MDR wins if using seating availability as criteria--unless you go to the buffet within the first hour of it opening. IC is nice for a quick breakfast, but the lines can be long as well.

This situation happened to my parents on the Regal Princess on 10/24/23. The ship arrived into Fort Lauderdale a few hours late because of miscalculated currents and weather. After the captain made the announcement of late arrival, it was stated in a letter sent to passenger cabins that anyone with air reservations through EZAir would be rebooked at no extra charge. The new flights are at the discretion of EZAir. My parents were not notified of their new flights until 10:00 p.m. via letter delivered to their cabin. According to my parents this occurrence caused a frenzy at Guest Services and none of the crew in that department got any rest/breaks the entire day. Below is the letter sent to passengers.

If you go to Cruise Personalizer > Travel > Manage Flights There will be a box in the upper right hand corner showing the air fare. In that box under the airfare price, the final date to make changes to your air reservation appears. You can make changes to the air through this date. If the new flights net you a refund after final payment, it will show a negative balance in your invoice. Your TA/CVP or you (depending on how you booked) will have to get Princess to initiate a refund. Make sure you save a copy of your Travel Summary reflecting the negative balance because the invoice will show zero immediately once refund is initiated. In case, the refund doesn't go through, you will have proof that you are due a refund. If you owe more money, EZAir will prompt you for payment on the spot before generating the new air booking.

By booking with the big box TA, your booking becomes ineligible for any cruise line's bid to upgrade program. The cruise line however, can upgrade you at their discretion as they see fit (comped upgrade) or you can pay the full difference in the fare to upgrade to a higher category. You just can't participate in the bid to upgrade programs. I was told this was to preserve their commission. With bid to upgrade programs, the TA doesn't get the commission for the upgrade; their commission is pegged to the original category that was booked, so the TA loses money. It's even disclosed on Princess' Bid to Upgrade FAQs that some TA's have elected to not have bookings made through them eligible for the program.

Unless there is a glitch with Princess, the big box TA does not participate in any bid to upgrade programs with any cruise line that they make bookings for. It's written in black and white in the Help Center section of their website.

Don't waste your time. Princess will assign you a room when they are ready, not when you are ready. Such are the terms of booking guarantee. When Princess assigns you a room, it will reflect in your Cruise Personalizer and on your luggage tags. Princess can assign you a room all the way up to embarkation day morning; rare but I've read on this forum that it happens. (The latest I've received a cabin assignment is the evening before embarkation.) If you are leaving early (pre-cruise stay in embarkation city), bring a laptop (gain permission from hotel front desk to save as PDF and email to them and have them print it) or a gain access to the Internet and a printer. If you can't do this, remember your cabin assignment from the Cruise Personalizer and on embarkation day, tell the porter with luggage tags to manually write in your cabin.

The Medallion development HQ is in Fort Lauderdale near Terminal 2 and 4 (terminals Princess uses most often) of Port Everglades. The suite lounge is here and as far as I know only Port Everglades offers this service for suite guests.

Princess will either assign you a cabin or give you a move over offer before embarkation. I've had my guaranteed cabin assigned in as little as 12 hours before embarkation, usually before. Check your Cruise Personalizer on the Princess website the night before boarding the ship. Princess usually also e-mails you a new Booking Confirmation with your cabin assignment once it's assigned. It's not unusual for the "boarding pass" in App to show the Deck and Cabin number as pending the day before up a few hours before boarding.