sunviking90

We have found filling out the “how are we doing?” comment sheets left in our cabin the first few days to be surprisingly effective.

I saw a comedian booked on the patter.

Sorry to hear your cruise was so disappointing. We have been pleased with most of the service and food on our princess cruises since the restart. We have found that food and service, etc can vary even on the same ship within a few months due to chef and crew changes and contracts though. We’ve also heard from crew over the years that Alaska is NOT a favorite of theirs. Lots of large groups, short 7 day cruises, not much of interest (from their perspective) in the ports, etc. Perhaps you experienced the effects of staff burnout. Hopefully the Sapphire will turn it around.

Totally agree with this. It’s only pending for now. See what “sticks” then deal with it. Your CC company likely won’t deal with it while pending either.

I submitted a bid 3 days ago for our cruise in 2 weeks and heard back the same day, but that is likely because it was so close to sail date. There is a thread that has a lot of info:

3 star and I am not seeing these prices. Checked under DH’s account too. This is the not unusual scenario of HAL loving newer cruisers more, lol! I’d grab that Neptune if I were you!

That probably explains her upgrade! Enjoy your mini cruise!

As I thought. Thanks!

On Royal Class ships, Deluxe has a sofa. Premium will have the sofa as well as a larger balcony. Grand class ships don’t have deluxe balconies ( no sofa unless you go up to a minisuites) but the premium ones will have a larger balcony.

Would OBC be retained with the refaring? I see our cruise next year has gone down a total of about $200 CAD, but we booked with $600 usd OBC, so I’m not sure.

Thanks for your report! It pretty much matches our experience on the Crown in June/July. We felt the food in the MDR was good to very good, but the buffet was pretty poor, including the staff up there. Very surprising as we usually find the crew in the buffet to be wonderful. We were in the 11 day itinerary and really enjoyed this different than the usual 7 day itinerary. I’m sorry to see it looks like Princess isn’t doing it next year (that I can see). We never get tired of Alaska. You say you used the dine line to book dining. Did you try the app all? We found that worked well for us prebooking.

Then the short answer is no.

If there are cabins available in the same category that you prefer, pick a few options and call Princess. You may have to do a mock search for 3 people for the available cabins to show up these days. I did this today and in 5 minutes they had switched my cabin. I didn’t mention anything about a “bid” or “upgrade” so as not to complicate the matter. I just said I wanted to switch my cabin to another location, same category. No problem.

Following along. I really hope the weather settles down for you and appreciate you taking us along with you. I’m also wondering if @Roz made it the ship. Hoping she did and is enjoying herself too much to report back.

Technically yes, but I was able to have my PVP change ours to another cabin in the same category in our preferred location. YMMV.

Emerald Princess also has Plank(ribs, etc) and Steamers (seafood) open about every 3rd night rotating at the back of the buffet. They are $14.99 pp and if you have “plus” one of your casual dining credits can be used for them.

Yes, you’re assigned a cabin immediately.

We are easily able to replicate the traditional dining experience by making reservations ahead of time for the same dining room and time every night. We are given the same table and waitstaff every night this way. I do think Reserve might be nice to avoid the waits at breakfast and lunch though!

I recently held a cruise and the hold was for 5 days. Another one I held was only for 1 day. I’m not sure why. Both were past final payment. (Making sure we could get flights on points before finalizing).

No worries. My comment wasn’t directed at you personally, but at the directions this topic always goes. Keeps me amused.

I watched Dallas as a teenager and I remember they made an announcement as to “Who shot JR” during our high school pep rally! No worries about spoilers as almost no one had VCRs yet, and we knew we were missing the episode. It’s hard to imagine now with so much streaming content, etc out there, what a cultural moment it was.

These coastal repositionings do go cheap, but we usually find the sweet spot on these to be about 4-6 weeks before sailing. The best deals are also on the ones requiring a flight home from LA. A few factors make me think yours won’t go down: 1. You are 3 which limits your opportunities for the bast deals, as not all cabins can accommodate 3 limiting the availability. 2. You are so close to the sailing date, that I don’t think they’ll bother changing pricing before they close it out for sailing. 3. The short YVR-SEA, or short loop cruises from either are popular with people who just want an easy trip home, whether by train, bus or rental car without worrying about flights. As always, if this is the cruise you want to do, and the price is agreeable to you, book it.

The $250 in the email should be the minimum.

Even just to move from a balcony to a minisuite, I would do it. We don’t see a lot of value in Reserve Class, but at that I would jump at it and bid the minimum.