Paula_MacFan

Looks like the weather is fantastic! 

It let me select a cabana mini suite and then wanted a total of $570 -- $400 non-refundable deposit that would convert to OBC onboard, and $170 taxes/port fees.  By the time I came back here and posted the screen shot above, and then went back to the Princess screen, it suddenly said no rooms were available.  Either they figured it out or everyone here on CC is frantically booking free rooms 🙂 

I'm seeing it too but am too chicken to actually book it 🙂 

14 minutes ago, Incredimom said:

When will this start and is it on all the ships - we board the Sapphire Princess next week and I would love to see this presentation!

Judging from these comments I took it to mean 'all ships/all season':

".....and something all guests sailing this summer with Princess Cruises to Alaska is guaranteed to see.   See the Northern Lights on Every Princess Cruise to Alaska in 2024."

 We are also on the Sapphire in 3 weeks 🙂  Maybe you can report back after next week and let us know!

@Ken the cruiser I'd love to hear any feedback or insight you have into the new features mentioned in this post, specifically the Voyage to the Stars Northern Lights theater presentation.  Thanks!

We're doing a 15 day cruisetour starting May 24, with the land portion first and then Southbound cruise on Sapphire starting June 1.  I'll be following along to get prepped for our trip 🙂 

Looking forward to your reports! 

12 hours ago, cr8tiv1 said:

I don't know if I was dreaming this, but somewhere....I read...that Princess does have an installment plan.

 

Princess EZPay Installment Plan

https://www.princess.com/en-us/plan/ezpay-cruise-payment-plan

I've never used it but have seen it discussed here on CC.  I just Googled 'Princess cruise Installment plan' and it was the first result.

2 hours ago, rocklinmom said:

The excursions for our May Alaska cruise are also currently marked with the 20 percent off "sale" but they are still higher than when we booked ours in February. Glad I booked them early. 

Same here!  We leave in 4 weeks and have had our excursions booked for months.  All of them have gone WAY up in price, and the 'sale' prices reflected now at '20% off' are still much higher than we paid originally.  

23 minutes ago, AZaTaz said:

My frustration level has been through the roof trying to get the things done that you can no long do on website. (Example add Transfers to a booking). Spent 40 minutes on phone trying to add transfers which is or should be simple. You use to be able to do this as an excursion on the web site but now must call. 

Your comments gave me pause so I just logged into my Personalizer and I am able to book my own transfers online just like always under the Flights & Transfers tab.  I clipped the screen shot because I don't want our names on here, but everything looks just like it has in the past.  Did you book direct?  I know if you book with a TA then they have to book the transfers.  

Follow up comment -- we were able to use the United app functionality to order meals, track bags, etc just like normal.

We have United flights booked thru EZ Air for our trip home from our upcoming Alaska cruise and it shows up in our United account like normal.

I just checked my United account. We flew Polaris Class round trip to LHR last fall using EZ Air and we received PQPs.

23 minutes ago, Jetswdo said:

Yes I am very disappointed that the shore excursions people couldn't have extended themselves to contact the provider of the tours to reinstate our names- they can see that we booked these tours months ago.

This doesn't help your problem but my Princess CVP told me last year that Princess no longer has a dedicated shore excursion department.  

20 hours ago, Arkiepig said:

Someone in another board posted they had to cancel their cruise/land tour due to health reasons and rebook for 2025.  Price had almost doubled.   I checked my same booking (August 2024). For the same week in August 2025.   It was significantly more.    Planning on enjoying this cruise😊It may be my last for a while!

Because it's a dreary Saturday afternoon where I live, I decided to use the time to re-price our upcoming Alaska trip.  We are doing a 15 day Alaska cruisetour the last week of May and the first week of June 2024.  To book the exact same trip with airfare and excursions right now would cost us $5,928 more than what we paid.

It really does pay to book early and plan ahead 🙂 

1 minute ago, Itchy&Scratchy said:

I will be able to check that next month! 🙂

When people say "on our last few cruises" I really can't tell how much time may have lapsed. For us it's 2-3 years. 🙂

I get it -- some people go on several cruises a year and for us it's usually two. Also I can't say they NEVER have salads at IC -- we don't sit there 24/7 -- but I didn't see any on our January cruise and remember commenting to hubby about it. They used to have a shrimp salad that I haven't seem in a really long time. 

You can report back with your findings next month 🙂

13 minutes ago, Itchy&Scratchy said:

 

IC had salads in Nov 2022 on Enchanted:

 

Not that I personally care about salads.... Sigh.... This is what I was there for:

 

 

 

these were heavenly:

 

and in the morning they had these small egg muffins, like broccoli cheddar, ham and cheese, and mushroom and cheese which were beyond delicious.

 

Yeah as I said we enjoyed salads in the past too but on our 2023 & 2024 cruises we haven't seen any. I don't disagree they were available back in 2022 😀

16 minutes ago, susancruzs said:

I'm a major IC fan as I don't care for buffets, haven't sailed on the Island for that reason.  I'm happy the Coral has the IC as I'll be on for 23 days April next year.  I get a pastry, yogurt or fruit for breakfast, then a small salad with a sandwich for lunch.  

The Island does unique itineraries so if you want to go to those places then that's the ship, IC or not 🙂  Also on our last few cruises we haven't seen any salads in the IC.  I used to like the salads there too but haven't seen any in awhile.  On our last cruise (January, Regal) the offerings appeared pared back from what we've seen and were primarily sandwiches and desserts.  

22 minutes ago, Guera53 said:

Ah ok was looking at the Island Princess and it doesn’t have an international cafe, thus the question!

That is correct -- the Island doesn't have an International Cafe but it has never had one to the best of my knowledge.  We sailed on that ship last fall and it was one of the few things we missed 🙂 Otherwise we really liked the ship and didn't have any problems finding food at other venues.  

1 hour ago, coldweather said:

We are looking into a cruise tour to Alaska this year (2024).  I am struggling to understand what is different with each tour.  Can you please help me understand a bit more about what is included in the Connoisseur Cruise Tour? 

We have an Alaska cruisetour booked for next month and in addition to posts here on CC (both this Princess forum and the Alaska forum) we found this Princess page helpful:  https://www.princess.com/en-us/faq/cruisetours

This page compares all the different cruisetour options in chart form:

https://www.princess.com/learn/cruise-destinations/alaska-cruises/cruisetour-options/cruisetour-finder/

The attached Princess Alaska PDF also has good info.  

alaska-cruisetours-overview-what-to-expect.pdf.coredownload.inline.pdf

5 minutes ago, BDevilCruiser said:

I typically search using my computer rather than phone (I can view things easier!)

 

Using Google Chrome, the option is not there on the web site. Likewise Edge and DuckDuckGo.

 

I just did a search using Google Chrome and it looked the same as usual to me.  

5 minutes ago, no1racefan1 said:

I was printing out all of our various travel confirmations and caught something interesting. When we originally booked the cruise, these two days were as follows:

 

Glacier Bay 9:15am-7:30pm

Skagway 7am-8:30pm

 

They are now listed as:

 

Glacier Bay 9:15am-6:15pm

Skagway 5:30am-8:45pm

 

I don't know when they changed as Princess never sent any kind of notification about a change in itinerary. I noticed the Skagway thing a few days ago so decided to review the rest of the itinerary. I saw somebody's post about a different Princess ship shortening their time in Glacier Bay, so maybe its just going to be a thing.

 

Not going to affect us at all, it's just interesting to see what all changes might be a surprise to people who aren't reviewing things regularly. You might remember we also didn't get a notification when shore excursion times changed.

Ours changed too with the exact same times (we're on Sapphire June 1) and we got a Booking Notice email from Princess a couple days ago on 4/17.  It didn't explicitly say 'hey here's a change in the itinerary' but I looked it over and compared it to our prior documentation and noticed the change.  

I was actually very happy to arrive earlier in Skagway as we have a Jeep rented and with 3 other ships in port arriving at the same time we were hoping to beat the crowd.  Now we should be able to with no problems.  And the Glacier Bay time change was only about an hour shorter, so that doesn't bother us too much.  Especially given that other sailings have times of 6am - 3pm or whatever -- I'd much rather have our time of 9 - 6 🙂 

1 hour ago, Editrix said:

 

This is also my experience. I booked all of my excursions through Princess for once because, although this will be my 8th cruise to Alaska, it will be my first as a solo and I wanted assurance that Princess staff would know where I was at all times.

 

I paid for my excursions last year. Since then, the prices have increased significantly.

 

. $130 more for Ketchikan excursion

. $100 more in Juneau

. $260 more in Skagway

. $40 more in Victoria

 

The four excursions I booked last year, pricey enough, would cost me a total of $530 more now. For one person!

 

 

I just looked at our excursions after your post.  We booked Hubbard Glacier for $299 and it's now $475!  

Others have increased as well, but none as much as that.  It pays to book early.  

Here's the one we got in February 2024.

We missed a port in January on the Regal.  We've had this happen before as well and have always received a credit to our onboard folio.  I would recommend double checking your final statement to verify you didn't get credit while onboard.  If at the end of your cruise you have a credit balance in your account, they will mail you a check.  If it's been 2 months you probably should have received a check by now for any credit balance you had on onboard.  

59 minutes ago, Bridget2 said:

I do hate that we don't get the statement before we leave the ship anymore.  I wonder if it's because there's less disputes if passengers don't see it for a week.  I wouldn't mind having it emailed if it was done promptly.

One of our favorite features of the app is the ability to check our folio any time, without having to go to Guest Services. We check it frequently during cruises and take a screen shot on the last day. On our last cruise we got our folio emailed very promptly as well. 

2 minutes ago, Paula_MacFan said:

We considered using the Princess transfer from Southampton to LHR last fall, but the excursion notes said it was for passengers with international flights leaving after 4:30pm, and our flight left before that so we just took the regular Princess transfer without the Stonehenge stop.  If you can see the transfer in your Personalizer you might check the notes and see what the flight cutoff times are for your specific cruise.  When I look at the general excursions listed on the Princess website it shows a flight cutoff time of 5:45pm (see attached screen shot).

 

Since the transfer didn't work for us after the cruise, we instead used International Friends transfer with Stonehenge tour at the beginning of the cruise.  I know the OP didn't ask about pre-cruise transfers, but we would highly recommend International Friends in general for any transfer or tour.  

Edit to say I just saw your subsequent post about your flight leaving at 5:30 🙂  Sorry!