MacMadame

I'm guessing that the staff would figure that out soon enough. At least I hope so because my goal on our upcoming cruise is to try every vodka martini they have. 🤣

Canceling reservations should be a matter of selecting all the cruise bookings with MDR reservations and then updating the database to remove them. This is a simple script that can be written and tested in less than a day. It might actually be less work than doing it cruise by cruise. That said, from what I have seen of Princess IT, I have no expectation that canceling our reservations won't be a total mess. 🤣

Sunsets.

I just checked mine an hour ago and they are still there.

Since CVPs are considered TAs by Cruise Critic (Personally, I consider them Premium Customer Service), I can't give you the number but you should be able to find it on the Princess website or by Googling There is also a form to "request a CVP" though that hasn't worked for me. You may have also gotten an email from a CVP when you booked and it might work to call them.

Try calling the CVP line and see if they will move you to a different cabin rather than relying on the bidding process. Even if the cruise is sold out, you might get a solution from them as sometimes cabins are held back and don't appear online. (I'm assuming you didn't book through a TA or CVP because otherwise, you wouldn't be asking here but making them fix it. 😄)

After researching at CC, I decided to only book Princess tours if they were to areas that were far from the port or combo tours (i.e., you'd have to book 2 independent tours and figure out how to get between them to get the same experience). Which turns out to be all but 2 ports on our cruise. 🤣 🤣 🤣

I thought I was the only one who didn't like coffee, wine, or beer!

The younger generation will be 20 years older and sailing on Princess. 😉 I can. Once they knew that they wouldn't get the ship in time to get more of the amenities up and running, they should have canceled the first couple of sailings. Sailing within a week of getting the ship from the shipyard is crazy IMO. The delay of the Star Princess is another matter. And Princess seems to be handling this much better by canceling those sailings much farther out rather than waiting until the last minute and canceling when people were on their way to the ship.

How about getting a shadow box and putting *something* for each cruise in it? You probably have something you saved as a souvenir for most, if not all, of them. For the missing ones, maybe print out something from the website (the desk plan or a picture of the ship or your favorite venue) for those ships and add them as a background picture in the box.

Our 35th is next month. I never thought I'd be married that long let alone for 50 years. For one thing, I thought we'd be dead before the 50th. 🤣 But now it's only 15 years away and I'm not anywhere near death! 🤸‍♀️ 🤸‍♀️ 🤸‍♀️ Anyway, I intended to work until 70. Then I got laid off last Fall. I thought I'd be back at work by now but right after that a bunch of tech firms also had layoffs. So the market was flooded with people with my skill set right around the holidays. I'm still getting callbacks but the interview process for software developers has changed a lot since I last looked for a job and I find myself freaking out at what they call the "coding interview" and not getting past that point in the interview process. I'm starting to wonder if I'm too old for this sh*t (to quote Detective Murtaugh from the Lethal Weapon franchise). So I think I might be involuntarily retired. Thank goodness I've already saved up the money for our Panama Canal cruise. 😄

For my first cruise (also to the Caribbean), I booked it on a whim about 20 days out from departure. I, too, was treating myself. For the next two, one was a honeymoon and one was a 10th anniversary so I booked them as part of planning for those events. So maybe 6-9 months out? But all of that was before cruising became so much more complicated. For our Panama Canal cruise, first I researched the best way to see the PC. Then, I researched which ships and itineraries I was interested in and how much they'd cost. Once I found the cruise I wanted, it was 17 months out. I would have been happy to go a bit earlier but I wanted that cruise and was willing to wait. In your case, it seems like you are flexible about when to go and are going to a popular destination with tons of options, so I say, find a good TA, start planning, and see what cruises and timelines pop up. Good luck!

I can see that, if there is something you will do because it's included in the package but wouldn't do it if it's not included, you might want to assign it the value to you. But if you aren't going to use it no matter what even if it's included, then it doesn't have a value. And if you are going to use it, whether it's in the package or not, it has the value that Princess charges you even if you don't think it should cost that much.

Can you get a cabana for half a day?

Yes to all of this. Including the sleeve! LOL I love buffets because I can have a bite of everything and don't have to pick one thing. This almost always requires serving myself as servers just don't understand what "a tiny bit" or "just a bite" means.

But the balcony on Princess doesn't have a couch and it does on RCI. So the direct comparison is a balcony on RCI and a mini-suite on PC. Or Oceanview on both. Do both! 😄

They do sometimes have cruises where they invite a lot of "media' including YouTubers. So maybe not *no* normal other guests but I bet it's enough to stand out and possibly even be annoying. 😄

The Caribbean Princess is going to be refurbished in Fall of this year so it will be a pretty fresh ship in March '25. Also, the Reserve Dining room has upgraded service and included menu items not available to the rest of the passengers. I mention these things because reviews of the ship and the food are impacted by them.

They aren't.

This is great information but YIKES that's early. Our son is picking us up at the port and there is no way he'll be up by then. 🤣 Oh well, I've wanted to visit the Walt Disney Family Museum for a while now. Maybe we'll have him pick us up there. 😉

I'm paying for my cruise with Princess gift cards. I can only buy a certain number per month so I'm buying them as I go. If I was paying with cash, I wouldn't do that but I want that 8% discount!

I've been following the "Ultimate" World Cruise and the people I follow report that they are getting cuisine inspired by wherever they are as well as the normal fare. So I think there is going to be more variety on a WC that does that (which I think is most of them?) vs. a normal shorter cruise. Though the cruise I am taking next year says they do food and events based on where the cruise is going. I guess to distinguish it from their cruises that go to other parts of the world?

My understanding is that it's the immigration officials who check those things at embarkation. And even they make mistakes as happened when a bunch of people were let onto a cruise with fake visas and got stuck later on not being able to get back to the ship when they tried to use them.

What can I say? The older I get, the earlier I eat. I haven't become one of those people who eats at 4:30 pm though. Yet! 🤣

The whole point of a fleet-wife pool is to make it fairer for all the crew so staff you don't see who help the people we do see get tips and so crew on ships with majority low-tippers don't get punished vs. crew on ships full of us tip-happy Americans. (Yes, we're crazy.) So maybe it used to be that way or maybe it's that way on other lines but it's not that way now according to Princess (and people who have talked to crew about it and reported back). Is it double-dipping? I can see arguments either way. But I don't see it that way. I see service charges on stuff that I used to tip as I went. i.e., I used to give the bartender a tip for each drink ordered but now there is a service charge so I don't have to. I see crew appreciation for everything that is included. It replaces the tips we handed out to our cabin steward and our staff in the MDR at the end of the cruise. So I don't see an overlap there.