4cats4me

Please delete 

Sapphire. 

5 hours ago, Knickearth said:

I agree 4 cats.  Princess is nickel and dimming us.

 

how’s your mom?  We called her but she doesn’t answer or ever call back.

 

hope you r well.

yep, nickel and diming for sure. 

Nobody from there has called her since October of last year (maybe November. )
she did call you  back in October and spoke with you for a couple minutes and then you had to cut her off because you were at a meeting, and said you would call her back and she waited and the call never came She felt very hurt by that. 
it took a lot for her to place a phone call especially with all she’s been through
Bonnie hasn’t called since July 2022.  
I can see who’s calling and who’s not

she does not know how to dial out  on Her own. 

she has had a couple more strokes. 

 

1 hour ago, CruizinSusan70 said:

And all three are more expensive than Princess.

Wrong.  I priced it out today and because Virgin includes gratuities, wifi, bar credit of $600 incentive, plus extra bar credit  for booking as (Princess Elite) two discounts, (one for paying upfront)

plus No up charges for exceptional quality of food, and a much better party vibe and level of entertainment ,  it’s a much better deal for us. Better itinerary too. 

I’m well aware of high-end luxury prices gor those other lines.

We won’t have any issues  meeting our cruising financial obligations,  but thanks for your concern. 
 

1 hour ago, Coral said:

I had to quit cruising for several years to take care of a parent. I completely understand. You do not need to explain. Some people have more responsibilities and issues to deal with than others will ever know. Some just don't understand.

Thank you, @Coral

Much appreciated.  
 

Dana

16 minutes ago, startedwithamouse said:

What has been stopping your from cruising the last couple of years?

Some things are personal.  
Do you want to hear all about the cancer or the stroke? 
See post #23. 
 

Just now, memoak said:

No just upcharge fares. Why can’t you cruise now ?  We will be sailing our 6th cruise since restart this month

You’re quite the curious one. 
Let’s just say, it’s medically related and one needs my full time care.  
so yeah, when we can cruise again one day, we’re gonna do it up big, because tomorrow is never promised. 

5 hours ago, GottaLuvCruising said:

Consumers have the power.  I'm speaking with my wallet.  

54 cruises might be enough...

Same here. Once we can cruise again, we plan on sailing with Virgin Voyages, Oceania, and Silver Sea.  
On Virgin the food looks spectacular and everything is included.  No upcharge venues.
And all adults, an added benefit.  😊 

So

Princess’s solution is to charge $15 pp to thwart long lines?
With  this logic, next they will be charging us to eat at the Buffet.  
Yeah, no. 
 

Just now, deltahog said:

Oh that's a close one.  How long are you going to be gone?  Are you going to stop for a snack?  

No snacking, and Husband still sitting in HIS  lounger.  
Wouldn’t want some other woman with a more desirable bod than mine taking MY lounger if I am a slow walker and get back at 32 minutes !

😀

6 hours ago, deltahog said:

I'm quite serious.  You leave the pool area, you lose the chair.  That should be the rule.  Many other posters have suggested the same, with the idea of tracking location by medallion; or monitors employed by the ship.

So if I forgot my sunscreen and have to leave the pool to go back to the  cabin to retrieve sunscreen, should I lose my lounge chair?

22 minutes ago, HaveDogWillTravel said:

It’s a stunning itinerary.  RT SF on the Ruby. Booked my favorite cabin.  It’s not cheap. I’m hoping for a price decrease.  Regardless I’m going as I have never (in my seriously limited time cruising compared to most here) seen this offered out of SF.  

Great itinerary.  
 

2 minutes ago, Sea Hag said:

Alaska. It goes lots of places. 🙂

 

Cats. They're so great, but they do tend to take over, don't they?

That sounds interesting.  I will look at that itinerary for fun, even though we’re not going to book anything. 
 

yep, our cats run the show! LOL

3 hours ago, Sea Hag said:

That's a good sailing, but the one I'm salivating over and wishing I could do is the 22 day roundtrip San Francisco. Would love to do that, but we just can't leave our cat for that long. She's well taken care of when we cruise, but she's very dependent. 

 

I hope you enjoy your great LA roundtrip!

22-day to where?

re: cats, I know the feeling.  We’re in the same boat. 

Maybe it’s time for Princess to do what Royal Caribbean does, make you check out pool towels, and if you don’t return them you will be billed for them.  It would certainly cut down on chair saving, as one person wouldn’t be allowed to take numerous towels and save multiple chairs for their group. 

42 minutes ago, LeeW said:

 

It really isn't necessary for you to respond to every post on this thread.  Would be half the length without it.

Now-now, that Poster has only responded 175 times, thus far, 1 out of 9,5 times.  

LOL 

Wondering  if the 14.99 medallion activation fee will be a one-time charge per entire cruise,  or per cruise segment  on

back-to-backs ?

57 minutes ago, Steelers36 said:

No... the one time $15 charge is to allow use of the Ocean Now feature to order and receive drinks where you are... not room service.  Has to be separate thing.

 

And to all.. let's skip the penny BS by PCL and call it the $15 it is.

WHAT???

I was so focused on the Alfredo thing, I missed the boat (no pun intended) about an initiation fee of $15 to activate that thing to get a drink??? LOLOL

LOL

LOL

LOL

O M G 

5 hours ago, Princessfan20 said:

All this justification for some by allowing Princess to gouge its' customers.  Princess has made many changes in policies recently which have taken benefits away that passengers had earned based on their Loyalty Program.  Also it made it so Veterans are not entitled to the Shareholders OBC program.  No other group is excluded from stacking their OBC's on Princess.  Then they come out with all these new upcharges unless you buy a product you do not need.  Princess has also raised its' prices substantially.

It is not even close to going out of business based on the performance of CCL stock.

 

All that has happened is there has been new management come from the Carnival side of CCL to run Princess.  We see no reason now to be loyal to Princess with their new direction of greed.  This is just the beginning and I am sure they will have a whole new group of upscale products next year that use to be free.  They really just helped us move on to Viking, Oceania and other lines that do not nickel and dime their passengers.   We have wanted to do it for awhile but had remained too loyal to Princess.  This does not even take into account the UPGRADE they have done to their new off shore call center which is so efficient it is saving their loyal passengers immense amounts of valuable time.  🙂 We are no longer interested in their new programs of the month which are turning into a blatant ripoff.

I couldn’t have said it better myself.  
This is where we’re at, too.  
We have a lot of credit on the books with Princess and at this point I’m willing to let it go. 
Within the next year or so my husband will retire, and we were looking forward to a future of longer cruises,

30-60+ days, 

but instead we will most likely go on shorter,  high-end cruises,  on small ships.  

Just now, cali-croozer said:

I don't think they care. It's not about getting our $14.99. It's about getting us to buy a package.  Many do so, again, they don't care about us standard fare folk.

 

It’s obvious they couldn’t care less.  But what corporate needs to know is catering to an older princess demographic, we are not the ones likely to buy their stupid packages. Yeah yeah I know we’re all gonna die off only to be supplanted by a younger group who they think will buy all these packages but that younger group will also age out eventually. 
as I indicated earlier, I don’t care at this point they can start charging $100 per person in a specialty restaurant because we’re done

Anybody else remember when they tried to Charge $10 pp to eat at Alfredo’s back when the Royal was brand new? It included one glass of wine, but everybody was so upset with the surcharge that Princess had to rescind the fee  within a week or two,  and go back to the old way of complementary dining. 
my interpretation is they will try to charge $14.99 to dine at Alfredo’s and if that’s the case we’re done with Princess. 
we’re not big drinkers and would not be inclined to pay for the plus package, whittled   away our hard earned benefits,

, yes, i get that they lost tons of money during the shut down and that they need to look at other ways of creating revenue but having to pay for specialty desserts,  and now what was formerly free , it’s just not going over well with me. And now I’m hearing that it cost five dollars for room service, too? I prefer they just jack up the price of the fare  for everyone and pretend like everything’s included for free. 
I realize that it is a business and they need to make money, but we customers also have our personal limits. 
Lately, the princess press releases are all starting to read like some thing from The Onion. 

On 7/19/2023 at 8:31 AM, memoak said:

These irate passengers are probably the same ones who didn’t want to wait for a table in the MDR and tried to argue their way into the reserve class dining room since they saw empty seats. This happened every night on the Discovery over the 2 weeks I sailed her in June. I might mention that these cruises had a huge amount of first time cruisers but some were very insistent and rude. Some actually tried to push past the hostess

Yikes!! You mean non Reserve Class just thought that they’d seat themselves in your section, OR they pushed past hostess to seat themselves in regular section? At any rate, wow, just wow!

2 hours ago, DHP1 said:

Picture taken 3 days ago

 

Uh-oh, those recessed balconies will make for poor sight lines. 

I need a foot stool. 
I hope they don’t remove footstools from Caribe deck and all larger balconies.  
Otherwise, I will be bringing a blow-up beach ball onboard to use as a foot stool (when I get to cruise again one day)

1 hour ago, CynCyn said:

It’s really not a red cake.  It’s red cocoa spray- which has been all the rage.  It’s definitely not cheap.  If you like raspberries and chocolate, you will like this.

It doesn’t appeal “to me.” 
I have never cared for fruit - chocolate mixtures, 

and the red color is off putting.

 
Mayonnaise is all the rage, too, but I refuse to eat it.