Don_In_AZ

So once I logged in with my booking number it keeps me logged in for most part. I say for the most part because when it comes to payment for shore excursions and dining I'm still getting 'session expired'. I logged out, and logged back in and still got 'session expired'. So I went and logged on to the website using my PC, logged out and was then able to log into the app again and finally pay for my shore excursions... so there are still a few bugs with login. It's probably some kind of global account flag that isn't getting reset upon login to the app, but does get reset upon login to the website... Just a guess. I think it's an improvement overall, I just hope they can prioritize getting some of these last few bugs fixed in the coming weeks.

Can't login with username and password. Pretty evident that pre-release testing was minimal, if any. I assume from what others are saying that you can login with your booking number. That's not exactly convenient however. You would think login might be one of the things they chose to test before releasing.

So I will be cruising with my daughter and son-in-law (both first time cruisers) and my two grandaughters ( 8 and 9 years old). I'm not sure what the SOP is for the kids club onboard. Does a parent need to accompany them in the kids club or is it meant to be supervised so that you can drop them off and pick them up? Are you allowed to leave the ship? How are you contacted if need be? Do they get to do activities outside the actual kids club area (i.e. mini golf, or ball sports, etc...) When we went to Hawaii on HAL, there were only about 10 kids on the whole ship and the crew dedicated to the kids program kept them all busy morning to night, allowing the adults to kind of do their own thing. Occasionally, we'd even see them parading around the ship (mambo train style) wearing whatever self made attire (pirate hats, etc) they had crafted that day. Any info is appreciated.

I plan to make frequent use of the Speakeasy Cigar Lounge on our upcoming Emerald Princess cruise in April but have since learned that in no way am I allowed to bring any of my torch lighters on the flights to/from the cruise port (even in checked luggage). Does the Speakeasy lounge provide lighters (or at least matches) for guests to use? If not I will have to make a trip to a Fort Lauderdale cigar shop prior to boarding to purchase a lighter...and I guess I'll have to donate it to a local before flying back.

"the ribeye was just a bit too big a steak but cooked properly" I'll count that as a plus!

The website says to use the app and the app says check back closer to your cruise date. We are departing on Apr 30th.

So we are cruising with my daugther and son-in-law who only last night found out that their childcare completely fell through. So they asked me (as the trip coordinator) to just upgrade them to a 4 berth cabin and add my 2 granddaughters (7 and 9) to the booking. Didn't seem like it would be a big deal. I was much more concerned with getting them added to our flights as those were looking full 3 weeks ago when I made the original bookings. To my releif, there was not only space available on the flights, but we even get the low fare...so next up was to call my TA and amend the cruise booking. My TA was out today so I was put with a supervisor to make the necessary changes. He found everything we needed and put us on hold to contact Princess and lock everything in. So we held...and held...and held. Finally the supervisor comes back on the line and says he's getting pushback from Princess. Apparently Princess was asking that we cancel and re-book. We are fully paid so that would mean forfeiting the original non-refundable fare and rebooking the larger cabin. However the TA assured us that whomever he was talking too was probably new and wasn't grasping the situation, so he was waiting to talk with a supervisor...back on hold. Holding...still holding...getting a bit nervous...more holding... Finally the TA comes back on and says they are insisting we forfiet the original fare and re-book if we want to change. I said we would not be able to afford that. It so happens that the travel agency we are working with is one of the larger ones in the U.S. and my TA said he could probably get in touch with a more senior manager at Princess and explain the situation because it just didn't seem right. All we really wanted to do was upgrade to a more expensive cabin (one which was available) and then add a 3rd and 4th guest. That should not be a cancel and re-book. About 2hrs later, he called back and said that he was indeed able to get ahold of a senior sales manager who was able to get the changes made and it would even be $100 less than the TA had originally quoted for the upgrades. HUGH SIGH OF RELEIF! Thank you to whomever that manager was at Princess and thank you to my TA for fighting for us!

We booked a guranteed outside and according to my booking on the Princess website, we're in category OF which is at the front of the ship directly underneath the main theatre. I'm going to look into upgrading with my travel agent tonight, but was wondering if anyone here has experienced being underneath the theatre and could comment on the noise level as well as approximately how late the shows typically run.

Thank you to everyone for your input. I'll probably just chance it.

...or I can just assume the risk. Dunno...gonna have to think on it for a bit. I'm curious if anyone else out there books more than one excursion per port?

I just got off the phone with Princess and was a bit surprised when I found out that if you have more than one shore excursion booked for a single port (and I'm talking ship sponsored shore excursions here, not 3rd party) and let's say you leave yourself an hour in between, if the first shore excursion is 90 minutes late, and causes you to miss your second excursion, Princess will NOT refund the price of the second excursion. In fact, the rep said that the cruise line does not recommend booking more than 1 excursion per port for this very reason. This seemed a bit odd to me since they make a lot of money on those excursions. I had planned to take multiple excursions in several of our upcoming Eastern Caribbean ports. Oh well... now some hard choices have to be made.

So I have had a little better luck with using Microsoft Edge instead of Chrome. I haven't tried Firefox yet.

It's vey hit and miss to even be able to log in. Sometimes it recognizes my password, sometimes not. When I do get logged in there are additional bugs. I spent about 20 minutes selecting my excursions and when I went to pay for them, it said my session was expired. No amount of logging out and logging back in would allow me to view my excursion cart...it just kept presenting the session expired message. Then on my 3rd attempt it no longer recognizes my password. A search of the message boards revealed people having similar issues last July and as recently as October. Not sure what the problem is but I hope they get it figured out soon. It's quite frustrating.

I was only going by the referenced Wikipedia article.

She will obviously be the largest cruise ship ever built but according to Wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_ships_by_gross_tonnage she will be the 2nd largest vessel (of any kind) afloat. Only the massive crane ship Pioneering Spirit will be larger at a whpping 403,000 tons. Icon of the Seas will also be the 8th largest ship ever built according to this list. But since the 2nd - 7th largest ships on the list are listed as scrapped, that leaves her holding the #2 spot among active vessels.