aimee0715

My recollection of the thermal suite on Ruby is that it, like the thermal suite on all the older ships, is basically heated tile loungers, the rainforest showers and sauna and steam rooms. I can't recall if there was also one of those round rooms that is very warm and has a heated tile bench all the way around. I really love the heated tile loungers so for me, the price is worth it. The lotus pool and hot tubs outside and they are surrounded by the spa and fitness center. Like others have said, they're accessible by any adult passengers but I have not ever seen them get used much.

I always book through that certain company. You can't actually book on the website. You have to call and speak to an agent to book. Normally it is the same price as the cruiseline but they throw in some extra OBC. However, I once called to book a cruise on Celebrity Beyond and it just so happened that they had a group of rooms on that ship. I saved over $2500 over the price on the Celebrity website and on their own website. I've been booking with them for years and only lucked into that once.

We bought a MNVV while onboard Resilient Lady for her 2nd and 3rd voyages. I have been seeing the rumblings about the price hikes. This week, I decided to see what looked good for our MNVV. We like sea days so I was looking at a transatlantic. Traditionally, transatlantic repositioning cruises are bargains. I was absolutely astonished at the prices. We enjoyed VV a lot but I'm not paying over $9,000 for a transatlantic in a sea terrace. For comparison's sake, I looked at a similar itinerary on Princess and Azamara. On Princess, we could go for $3,000 less and that was including their "plus" package which includes the gratuities, the wifi, and the drink package. On Azamara, we could do a similar itinerary in a Club Continent Suite for the same price as a sea terrace on VV. On Azamara, gratuities and drinks are included in the price. Looks like I'll be using the MNVV on a cheap Caribbean cruise and going back to Princess, Azamara, and Celebrity. I'm really kicking myself for not just booking our next VV cruise back when we were on Resilient Lady.

Wow! I'm a vegetarian. I've been cruising on Princess since 2005. I am really excited about this menu! I've not ever had to struggle to decide what to order as a main dish because I usually have one option. This is amazing!

We had Cozumel dropped from a NCL itinerary in January due to "port congestion." We found out when we were handed a sheet of paper about it at embarkation. I don't understand how this happens since the schedules for these ports are set so far in advance. Thankfully, we didn't have an excursion planned for that stop and we weren't all that disappointed since we've been many times but still sucks to get a port cancelled altogether. We'll be on Sky in January on this same itinerary. No planned excursions as of right now.

I checked my Princess Visa account online today. When I checked the reward center and selected "statement credit," my cruise showed up on the list of eligible purchases. I decided to check my points to see if the issue of my not getting double points for my Princess Cruise purchase had been rectified. My points balance had increased and I was able to do the math and confirm that they had added another 1,113 points. That issue was resolved. I went back to the rewards center and found that I no longer had any transactions eligible for statement credit. 🤔 I tried logging out and back in several times throughout the day but had no luck. Finally, on my last attempt, the cruise purchase reappeared on the statement credit screen. I immediately clicked "redeem." I was able to redeem 60,000 points for a $750 statement credit. This was quite the experience. I think I'll redeem my remaining points on a gift card and just be done with Princess Visa.

The double points are not the issue at this point. They agreed to fix that. The issue is that the charge to Princess Cruises for $1,113 is not on the list of transactions within the last 180 days for which I could request a statement credit. They say that I'm not eligible to redeem my points for a statement credit because I did not book directly with Princess, I booked with a TA. They say it does not matter that the charge to my card is directly to Princess. I asked them to send me this policy in writing. She said that would take 30 days. I researched other posts about troubles with this card and found people had success by getting Princess involved. I'm going to try that today.

Donwoods, May I ask if you booked your cruise directly with Princess or through a travel agent? I use a travel agent. The Barclays representative is telling me that even though I have a charge from Princess Cruise Lines on my credit card statement, I am not eligible for statement credit because I booked the cruise through a travel agent.

This is very helpful information! I totally did not understand how the statement credit calculation worked based on what I read on the website. Now I do. I have only redeemed points one time before and it was for onboard credit, which was much more straight forward.

Yes, that charge for paying off my Princess cruise is on on my last statement which i have received and paid. The Princess Cruises charge was $1,113 and it shows I received 1,113 points. I will call them about correcting that.

I have the Princess Visa card. I've had it for several years now but tend to let points accumulate. I saw that you can get a statement credit if you use the card for purchases with Princess. Last month I paid for an upcoming cruise with the card. First of all, I did not get 2x the points for the Princess purchase. I checked the website to see if that has changed and it has not. Next I check to see what statement credit would amount to. If I am reading it correctly, for an $1,113 purchase, I can get a 1.25% statement credit. So, $13.91. It is not clear to me how many points I would be redeeming to get the $13.91. When I click on statement credit on the list of redemptions, it says I have no purchases from the last 180 days that are eligible for statement credit. I'm clearly going to have to call them but I am just curious what others' experiences have been with getting a statement credit. It seems that I definitely should have redeemed earlier for a Princess gift card which I could have applied as a payment on my cruise.

You just wear your regular clothes to the spa. When you get into the treatment room, they will tell you to undress completely or leave on your underwear if you're more comfortable with that and get under a sheet that is on the table. The masseuse will leave the room while you do that.

No, I did not see any lockers. We were told that we could leave our bags at the tables and they would be safe. I took anything of value that we had with us on the kayak.

I've been on Caribbean Princess 3 times. I've never had any complaints about the ship. I will say, I'm not really a complainer. I don't go around and look for rust spots or carpet stains or examine the upholstery to see if it needs to be replaced as I see so many on here do. Since Covid, every ship I have been on with the exception of NCL Breakaway in January of 22 and Resilient Lady in May/June of this year (which were both less than half full on our sailings), service in dining rooms has been slow. I think this is industry wide as the cruise industry is still struggling with staff levels.

We had a guide. She took us around Delos and explained a lot of the sites. Then we had about 30-45 minutes of free time. I really enjoyed it. Our guide was very knowledgeable. We had already been to the museums in Athens and learned a lot about that various sites around Greece. I think that contributed to our enjoyment of seeing Delos.

OP, this is you right? This is where you said what I quoted.

Yes, and OP said "Anything non- sexual... no drag queens, no sex themed comedy, etc" There is a resident diva on Scarlet Lady, correct? Maybe you are not aware that some people in America consider drag to be inherently sexual. Based on what I quoted, OP appears to be one of those people. I live in a state that is trying to ban any and all drag performances. It's the latest culture war over here. In my opinion, any one who has a problem with drag is likely to be out of their comfort zone on VV.

We have not been on Scarlet Lady but we spent two weeks on Resilient Lady. Based on what OP has stated here, I don't think VV is going to be his cup of tea. But he won't know unless he tries it.

I just booked a western Caribbean cruise on Sky Princess in January 2024 for my annual girls cruise for my friend and I. I initially looked at interior cabins but when I selected interior for cabin type, it showed me interior, obstructed balcony and deluxe obstructed balcony. I did a little research and watched a Youtube about the deluxe obstructed balcony and decided to book it. I like to pick the cabin and tell my TA what cabin I want. I got the same message as OP that I could not select my cabin. My TA told me that deluxe obstructed balconies are always GTY. She said I would either get the deluxe obstructed balcony or the next category up. She put a note on the reservation that I would prefer the deluxe obstructed balcony rather than an upgrade. My question is, for people who reserved this category and didn't get it, what did you get?

I agree that the lack of map and bridge cam channels on the TV was a let down. I also found it odd that there was hardly ever a mention of the captain. We were on Resilient Lady for 2 weeks and I think I heard 3 announcements from the captain the whole trip. Two were on the sailaway days and one when we had to head to Crete due to a medical emergency. I never saw any of the officers around the ship or at events either. I like to see where the ship is on the map and see the progression and get the daily update from the Captain. I looked at Cruisemapper to see who else would be in port but didn't realize that I could track the ship's progress there. There was a ship's tour offered for $200 on both weeks of our cruise.

There is really not a risk to trying out a restaurant because if you don't like it, you can just go to The Galley afterwards and get something else. My husband was not impressed with the vegetarian offerings at Pink Agave but we went in and tried it with the plan that we could always find something else to eat later if we didn't like it. We ordered all the vegetarian things (which was not a lot) and it was enough to fill us up. We did the same thing at brunch in the The Wake. My husband wanted to leave as soon as he looked at the menu but we ordered what was vegetarian and afterwards we went to The Galley so he could get something else.

We were on Resilient for 2 weeks and heard the waiter in Test Kitchen tell someone this as well. He said Menu B starts on Thursday (which would be 5th night as cruise departed on Sunday).

We booked the tier that was the balcony for two reasons: one there was so much audience participation in the other shows that I started sitting as far away as possible and two I like looking down rather than looking through people seated in front of me. But, I guess there was a lot of space not booked and they asked if we would move to middle tier. Once I saw the seating layout, I was fine with it. But with regard to the front row, you have to move at some point in the show because they reconfigure everything. I was glad we were not sitting there.

I just got off two weeks on Resilient Lady. I wanted to chime in about the thermal suite. I always get a thermal suite pass. I pick cruises based on the thermal suite. It is my favorite place/thing to do on a ship. My friend and I take a girl's cruise once a year and literally hang out in the thermal suite all day every day. The thermal suite on VV is terrible. After touring it, I would not have paid for even 3 hours. However, we had paid for the romance package so my husband and I each got a 3 hour pass. If the Scarlet Lady and Resilient Lady have the same set up, the thermal suite has a small pool with barely lukewarm water and no jets, a small hot tub, two cold plunge pools (but very small like the hot tub), sauna, steam room, salt room, a warm moist room (not as hot as a steam room) where you put mud on your body and then shower off after 15 or 20 minutes, and heated marble benches. The marble bench is not comfortable to hang out on and barely warm. If VV had a thermal suite like NCL Breakaway or NCL Bliss with heated tile loungers and a thalassotherapy pool, it would be a damn near perfect cruise line. Also, I had no idea that they do a status match. We're platinum on Princess. It would have been great to get some of those benefits. We paid for premium internet and paid for laundry. As for the restaurants, our favorite restaurant was Test Kitchen. I'm amazed that people don't like it. We're vegetarians so I had low expectations of everything but Razzle Dazzle. We liked everything except we didn't eat at Gunbae and we only ate brunch at The Wake once. I really thought Test Kitchen would be terrible for us, but we both loved it. We went 3 times in the two weeks we were on the ship.

Is there a way to tell on the website or on the app if your stop is going to be a tender port or docked? We will be on Resilient Lady from May 21-June 4 for a back to back. I know that Santorini is a tender port just from my research. I'm not sure about the others (which are Split, Dubrovnik, Kotor, Corfu, Rhodes, and Mykonos.) Other cruise lines usually indicate on the itinerary if it will require tendering but it appears Virgin does not. I'm just trying to figure out for purposes of booking private excursions.