Sea Hag

We like big, soft rolling duffles that we can stick under the bed.

We hit this insanity on the Ruby as well trying to get into Botticelli. What you say about that is totally accurate. Never, ever again.

I'm not necessarily going away mad, but I am cancelling a September 2023 cruise with Princess in favor of on on HAL. We were on the Sky a couple or three weeks ago, and while we had a good time there were some things that bothered one or the other of us to a greater or lesser degree. I was over losing the internet minutes a long time ago. Moved on from that. But taking away the mini bar swap for two coffee packages was pretty annoying. Added to that, we had a few questions/issues that we needed to go to customer service for. Our questions/issues were never really addressed and actually met with a definite degree of snark. I never realized that part of what we pay Princess for is snark. I've moved on from this, but my hubby is still seething. I never thought he could be pried away from his favorite cabin on the Royal class ships, but he didn't actually need any prying. He told me that he couldn't see any reason to stick with Princess anymore. Don't know what we'll end up doing in the future, but this is where we are right now.

Princess elite here, doing a first time cruise on HAL. My 1* showed up automatically in my account and neither I nor the HAL customer service lady I talked to to get some things done that I couldn't do online could figure out why it was like that. This thread clued me in. 😃 Log in to your account and see it yours is there too.

That is a way better idea than what I was going to do! I booked them separately and was able to get a time for Mendenhall that will work out perfectly for us. Some days I'm brighter than others, so thank you for the good notion on one of my less bright days. 😃

Good to know. We're sort of late to the party on booking, so I imagine the earlier times were filled. We've gone both places more than once, but not for a few years.

Thanks for the reply, but I know this. We used to take the blue bus or white bus or whatever up to the glacier. It used to be really cheap, but not so much anymore. We haven't gone up there in a few years, but since we have the excursion credit and nothing else I want to do with it, I thought we would do this one. 😃

We've mostly sailed Princess in the past, and now we're looking forward to our first cruise on HAL. I'm trying to figure everything out. We booked HIA, which comes with an excursion credit. I looked around here and found that it probably couldn't be used for anything else, so I looked at excursions. The Mendenhall Glacier and Tram excursion is listed at 3:30 pm, which is later in the day than I like. What I'm wondering is if it's possible to split the excursion by going up the mountain on the tram in the morning and then catching the bus to Mendenhall at whatever time it leaves. Or are we stuck with the whole excursion beginning at 3:30? Does anyone know on this?

This is an off-the-top-of-my-head, half-baked suggestion with no math done to back it up. Are you booking Princess Vacation Protection on this sailing? The price of that is based on the total amount of the cruise. So, if you add something that increases or decreases the total cost, then the vacation protection goes up or down.

We've done 5 cruises with Princess since the restart, two of them to Alaska. All were great. We did have club class for 3 of those, and that helps with the MDR, but the MDR food on the 2 without cc was, on average, very good. Not every single item was 100% excellent, but enough of them were to bring the average up to very good. The surprise item on our last sailing on the Sky was the beef stroganoff. I ordered that on a whim, and hubby did likewise. It was excellent!

I haven't had this demonic steak, but I would hope it would come with some nice satanic sides.

My stainless steel "sippy cup" goes everywhere with me. Much better than buying water in single-use bottles.

Princess actually has two now that are billed as that. They changed the schedule of the Discovery Mexican Riviera to be at sea on eclipse day, and they changed the Panama Canal sailing of the Emerald to be at sea also in the eclipse path. I'm booked on the Discovery, but I'm still looking around for options. We had a wonderful eclipse viewing on the old Jubilee back in 1991, so I'm keeping an eye on Carnival.

Or maybe your shower curtain was shy? 😂

I agree with what you say about the coffee card swap not being profitable for Princess. If they can sell people a package with a per person, per day cost. That's certainly more profitable! But I'm not sure why you would throw in the part about people paying base fare and removing tips. What do you base that on? We pay base far, and we've never removed tips. Never will either.

You definitely know the correct way to eat this!

That's what we did, and I think I said that in the first post. Edit: I looked back, and I didn't really make it clear in the first post that we'd done exactly that.

Don't you find it weird that they would take an item that's always been a starter and offer it as a main instead? I, for one, have never seen that happen before.

On our sailing last week on the Sky, the twice baked goat cheese souffle was offered as a main, rather than a starter. We've always gotten it as a starter, and last week we ordered it as one anyhow. It was somewhat larger than the version we've gotten in the past but not that much larger. My hubby said that he would have been very unhappy with the portion size if he'd ordered it as a main.

That's too bad. Mine is the wrong color, and I've been getting around to getting it changed. I hate the thought of having to wrangle this more than once.

That wasn't our experience at all. One line that everyone was herded into. We didn't have a big wait either time we went there, but I'm sure that was one long line sometimes.

On the Sky last week, I called room service. After getting turned down on coffee packages, I swapped the entire mini bar for sparkling water. Not my first choice (coffee) but it was a nice second choice.

Crowne Grill: salted caramel creme brulee cheesecake. We like that so much that on the Sky last week when we didn't make it to the Crowne Grill, we just ordered it through room service.

Here's another minor complaint I have. No more elite/suite line at customer service, at least not on the Sky last week. Minor but annoying. I'm wondering how soon it's going to be that they lock a single internet package to a single device, rather than to one device at a time. That's certainly doable, and since they're shaking us all down for every additional penny, it seems to me that they'd see this as another revenue stream. I'm not all that angry at Princess, just several little annoyances that will factor into whether I continue cruising on Princess or go off and be annoyed by another company.

I've whined a lot about not getting to swap for coffee packages, but I was actually pretty happy with swapping for all sparkling water. That was really nice to have waiting in the fridge on those hot days.