geoherb

My Patters from 2019 had a set time on the first afternoon for "dining enquiries." The ones since the restart and the switch to "Dine My Way" have not. I have sailed solo on three cruises since the restart. Most of the time, I shared a table with others. Occasionally it was just with friends who went to dinner with me at the same time. Most of the time, though, it was a shared table with random people also willing to share. I found that if I went too late in the evening, no one else was requesting to share a table. I've gotten used to eating alone in such situations. (That also happened to me when I had traditional dining and none of my tablemates showed up a couple of nights on my southbound Alaskan cruise in 2019.) For my upcoming cruise in August on the Caribbean Princess, the app is not allowing me to reserve a reasonable set time for sharing a table. It has shared tables showing up as available before 6 but not after. Nothing is available between 6 and 7.

A large number of our vaccinated friends have had Covid. Out of 11 on our row at hockey, 8 had it within the past six weeks. I know of a dozen people who caught it at a regional bridge tournament last month, including me. The American Contract Bridge League conducted a study of the spring national tournament and concluded that 10% of people attending tested positive.

I was quarantined before Covid for three days. I did not get tired of the room service menu. There was enough variety for me. I've read that they're allowing quarantine Covid patients to order from the regular dining room menus as well when the dining rooms are open.

It's still giving me this erroneous message: There are no passenger staterooms available on this deck. For my upcoming cruise, it's saying that no excursions are available at the moment and to check back later.

I'm going to Greenland this August on a 16-day Princess cruise. I hope to be able to post a live thread on the Princess board during my cruise. I did not book my cruise until last week. All of the excursions through Princess are sold out. I plan to study up a bit on the ports and walk a lot to see some of the highlights in each. The three Greenland ports on my cruise are Nuuk, Nanortalik, and Qaqortoq. By August 24 and 25, when my ship will be in the last two Greenland ports, the sun will set around 8:30 p.m. and rise around 5:30. But civil twilight, nautical twilight, and astronomical twilight continue for several hours. There's just a brief period between 12:15 a.m. and 2 a.m. of true night--where the sun is at least 18 degrees below the horizon. I plan to look at the aurora forecast on this website before and during my cruise: https://www.gi.alaska.edu/monitors/aurora-forecast One of the participants on the roll call for my cruise posted the port guides from her cruise three years ago. It's on this page: https://boards.cruisecritic.com/topic/2765243-caribbean-princess-august-15-2022-nyc-canada-greenland/page/36/

You need to look at every cabin in the category you booked and every higher category to see. Technically, you could book a Cat BF cabin and be upgraded to a Cat DV, DW, or DZ. Because they are deluxe balcony cabins, Princess considers them to be higher categories even though they have solid steel railings instead of glass or overlook lifeboats.

I booked my upcoming cruise (August 15 to Greenland) through the 3-day sale yesterday. The price was the same as on Princess, but it included $360 in onboard credit. That worked out better than the price quotes I received from several other agencies that regularly discount cruise prices.

And if you look at the August sailings, the website still has the original itinerary listing 10 hours in Juneau, 11.5 hours in Skagway, Glacier Bay for 9 hours, Ketchikan for 6 hours, and Victoria for 5 hours.

Don't hold your breath for a response to a snail mail letter. I haven't heard anything in response to the one I sent in January. That said, I did book another cruise today for August. My onboard experiences have been much better than dealing with Princess reps. I booked the cruise today through one of the large online travel agencies.

Wow! I just booked the 16-day Greenland cruise for August for a lot less per day.

I suggest looking online before buying anything. The artists that Park West carries are prolific producers. It's easy to find how much things are selling for on the secondary market. The thing to check is the list of sold pieces on eBay and not the current listing prices.

I spoke to one rep in January who insinuated that what a previous rep had told me was wrong and that the rate I was seeing on the website was just a glitch. She told me to make the booking online (but she did not have time to wait for me to do so while she was on the line). All of the reps I spoke with that day (nine different ones) were native English speakers.