SCX22

Exactly. Even if people stray, they will be met with the same charges, unless they move to a niche cruise line that have fares that are exponentially more. Once they see what the others have to offer, not all that are crying foul will dismiss Princess altogether because of the changes.

Time to start being loyal to another cruise.

No different than the interest and perks of credit cards which can be changed at any time and you’re at the mercy of the bank.

First world problems. Oh woe is me, can't afford a cruise! Cruising, or going on a vacation for that matter, is a luxury. Don't see how any one is stuck with with the Room Service/OceanNow/Alfredo's/Gigi's charge; if you can't afford the charge, don't use that amenity. Plenty of other places to eat on the ship. Oh woe is me, no one will bring my food to my exact location!

Guest Services actually reads the Disembarkation Questionnaire and times the Princess Transfer groups based on how they are able to group passengers based flight times, and in cases like Heathrow, terminal. Not a perfect science, but it works. Times won't be the same for all cruises. There's a disembarkation schedule that will be printed on the back of the disembarkation instructions paper. If there's a more suitable transfer time for you, you can always go to Guest Services and see if there's room on that time's bus.

That's not a cruise vacation. That's a ferry ride. In all seriousness, EasyCruise, related to Europe's EasyJet, tried this concept. They didn't last very long.

Because I don't want to hear about the complaining about the changes on the cruise that we're going to on. It kills the vacation vibe. Not only that, I feel sorry for Guest Services/Alfredo's/Gigi's/Room Service. They are only the messenger but will no doubt be the front lines of the complaints.

As far as I know, how Princess implemented this is standard practice in the industry--choose an arbitrary date and blanket implementation across the fleet. If a passenger's cruise was no longer 100% refundable, tough luck. Perhaps consider booking after final payment of sailing so that it will be less likely for a Princess to make a change to the experience. If the change irks you so much that you've lost all trust in Princess, let your wallet do the talking. Dollars and cents, or the lack there of, makes companies change their ways. Princess is ensuring Room Service/Ocean Now/Casual Dining with the change. None of these were taken away from the Princess cruise experience. All are still available. Passengers can upgrade by paying the RS/OceanNow fee and/or pay the cover charge or order a la carte at Alfredo's/Gigi's.

My cruise is loading on the App on my iPhone, but it takes a while for it to load.

That's what Princess is doing. Everyone that purchased Plus at $50, still gets everything they paid for or can upgrade to Plus 60 and get the extras that were added after the fact. Same applies to those to purchased Premier at $75.

There was an update to Version 4.13.1 for Apple users a few days ago. After Princess fixes things on their end, also check to see if you're using the latest version. Not sure about Android.

Princess has hold harmless clause in the T&C of the packages. By purchasing a Plus/Premier package, you are agreeing to "Packages and their parts may be changed or revoked at any time...." Perhaps don't purchase the Plus/Premier with the cruise fare x number of months in advance where Princess can still change the parts and and instead purchase them on embarkation day when the parts can no longer be changed?

This is just me, but I would propose somewhere that was special to both of them. If both are very into cruising then, by all means a cruise ship is the best place. Otherwise, I would pick somewhere else and somewhere where it doesn't cost $795 to ask a question.

I agree with not cancelling the hotel stay, refer back to my post in reply #4. If you have to be in Seattle, then you need a place to stay. There are however areas to be avoided, like in any big city. It's just reply #19 came off as hasn't happened to me therefore safety concerns are unfounded.

YouTube. There are so many vlogs about the cruising that are more informative than what a TA has to say. Many are first hand experiences and show the actual ship and experience behind them. The cruise lines endorse them since some are given free cruises to make video content. You can't say it's biased information since the TAs make commission off of their bookings as well and some will sell the newbies stuff they don't need in order to boost their commission.

Re read your reply in post #19. We were reacting to that. The gist of it was you don’t feel unsafe in Seattle. No mention of not cancelling a hotel stay.

Forget talking to a live agent or being assisted by a human. Make cruise bookings like the airline bookings where nearly all functions can be done online or through the app. I’ve bypassed a few long rebooking lines by rebooking myself on other flights through the airline’s website. Self assistance is the trend with travel, and cruise reservations have a long way to go.

I’m going to throw out a very unpopular opinion… I would like to see all cruise lines, not just Princess, go to direct booking only. Cruising is the last travel segments to not adapt to this. The airlines deal with many more passengers and are able to handle it. The airlines did this a long time ago when UX/UI was developed enough for bookings to be manipulated 100% by passengers online and allowed for and it decreased airfare prices because they no longer had to go through a middleman, the TA, who had to get paid commission. It helped that IATA made electronic tickets compulsory so the airlines were able get rid of physical airline offices and the manpower required to run them. Getting rid of the TAs means no more commission to be paid and would trickle down to lower cruise fares. It would take a larger initial IT investment, but would pay off in the long run. Only stating this because many are giving opinions on how they don’t want to pay more, but aren’t offering suggestions to cut costs.

Words only do so much. People’s wallets will do the talking. If/when bookings drop, Princess will pivot as will the others. Take the restart for example, all the cruise lines dropped fares to entice bookings.

Both.

Tough times call for tough measures.

Why wait for something to happen? Just because you personally haven’t experienced it doesn’t mean that there isn’t a problem. The first step to solving a problem is admitting that there is one. Don’t mean to pick on you, but many of the metro cities on both coast (SF, LA, Portland, Seattle, Denver, NYC) are having increasing safety problems. Now a days you don’t know who has a gun and the strangers who surround you’s mental state that could incite violence. Thieves will randomly mug people or clean out a store. You have to be cautious of your surroudings.

Cruise lines aren’t registered in U.S., so they don’t have to abide by U.S. contract law. They don’t pay taxes to the U.S. and are very loosely governed by U.S. law in general. The U.S. government can’t choke them into following laws like the domestic airlines that have passenger bills of rights and regulation by the DOT.

Airfare has never been 50% more expensive for any of my Drop and Go bookings. Book at around the 80 day mark for sailings with a 90 day final payment. Also probably won’t have to deal with as many airline schedule changes because it’s so close to departure.

This would mean none of the mass market cruise lines have good customer service because all of them engage/have engaged in the same practice. The choice would be to move to more niche cruise lines or ride it out.