plethera1

5 minutes ago, cr8tiv1 said:

Be sure to ask the ticket agent to see your baggage tags.  If the end airport is Athens (ATH), you are good.  If the tags say EWR, you will need to pick up your luggage at Newark and re-check them through.

 

How long is your layover time?  Be sure to have enough in your carry on to last you a few days plus all of your medications.

Great advice.  

We have a 3 hour layover which isn't super long but seems pretty good.

SIAP, but we are flying to Athens using EZAir.  The flights are United to Newark and then SAS from Newark to Athens (ultimately.)

When we land in Newark, will the bags be moved to the SAS flight or do we need to get them from baggage claim and re-check them?

Thanks in advance.

1 hour ago, levonfan said:

Anyone have an update on Park 19 opening??? We are scheduled to go in 3 weeks. 

I keep looking around for this information as well.  Whatever is happening, I really wish that Princess would have some sort of way to update via their website or something.  Even if the dates have to change, it'd be nice to know what they are shooting for.

This is my family's first Princess cruise and so far it hasn't been a great experience.  From what they did to the first sailings, to the changes to our itinerary (Kotor to Bar), to the handling of the shows and finally the handling of Park 19.  Just seems very poor overall.  Hoping the actual cruise redeems my opinion. 

22 minutes ago, Sox Fan Cruiser said:

Still nothing.  Ropes course is not open yet (as of a week ago).  One day they were testing out the RollGlider but they were just trying to run the "cart" around the track.  Some were succssfull and some where not with them getting "stuck" on the track.  Maybe that was the test?  But it didn't have anyone on it and didn't even have the swings attached except for one.  Not optimistic.

I get the RollGlider a bit as it's a lot more complex but the ropes course?  What could possibly be taking so long?

Does anyone know where I can get updates on the availability of the RollGlider and the Park 19 ropes course?

I found another thread from early March with the following dates:

• Arena shows will begin rolling out on March 29

• Park19 is open, minus the ropes course, which will be completed March 29, and RollGlider, which will be done on April 27.

I haven't see any references to any of the three mentioned being up and running.  Obviously, this gives the RollGlider date as being in a couple days still.  I was just wondering if there was some sort of status page or if anyone had seen anything.

6 hours ago, Vibe said:

I disembarked the Allure this morning. The ship was clean and in decent shape considering it will go to dry dock soon. Mamma Mia and the rest of the entertainment was excellent!  The crew was very friendly.

I see no reason why you wouldn’t enjoy your future cruise on her.😊

Good to hear.  My family and I have a short cruise next Friday.  Introducing my mother-in-law to cruising.

I'm with the crowd that I felt it looked a lot better than it was....found it pretty slow on the Wonder.  Probably perfect for some younger kids or some older adults though.

2 hours ago, susieq76 said:

Restaurant reservations have opened for our sailing (I have been checking frequently and today is the first day).  If I have a party of 2, I can get into all the restaurants.  My party of six- the only thing I can get into is 9pm at the main dining room- not a single time slot in the specialties.  I really hope this is a glitch.

My family is seeing the same thing for our May 25th sailing.  I have a family of 5 with 3 kids so not sure how to split up.

The non-refundable is the reason I'm back and forth about early ticketing.  I'm not concerned about the price dropping but if we have to cancel it's nice to know I can cancel.

We booked our flights through EZAir to Athens and I haven't been able to choose our seats on the SAS flights.  The domestic flight and the flights back (because they are not using SAS) allowed me to choose my seats.

I understand that this is because SAS doesn't allow seat choice until the ticket is actually booked but I paid our cruise off yesterday including airfare.  I went out to the SAS website and it doesn't give me the same message saying it isn't booked/ticketed as it did earlier.  However, I still can't update my seats on the Princess site or on the SAS site.

Does anyone have experience with SAS and know when I will be able to choose my seats?  I have kids traveling with us so I want to be sure we are seated together.  Thanks.

Ironically, I was doing a google search for something else for another cruise we have in March and this thread came back up.  

I figured I'd give my results.  I don't have the exact numbers.  I kept them for the first couple days but then realized that it wouldn't be necessary.

We paid $72.99/day for our drink package and we easily seemed to get our money's worth.  Just having a couple drinks at dinner and then a couple more at the casino got us more than half way there.  Then being able to get shakes, frappuccinos, soda at lunch, the many waters for the family and a drink or two by the pool put us well over the amount we paid.

As everyone always says it will depend on how much you like to drink.  Even with the drinks listed above we weren't sloshed or anything and it was fun not caring about getting drinks when you want.  We had waiters in the casino making us special drinks and were able to try drinks we never had before w/o regret.  So for us it was well worth the money.  Gonna be hard to not get the drink package going forward.

44 minutes ago, PhillyFan33579 said:

Have you seen this policy written some where? On almost every RCI cruise I have been on recently (26 post COVID), staff to include the MDR Maitre’d and numerous officers to include the Hotel Director have emphasized the importance of 10 ratings on the survey. I find it hard to believe so many officers on numerous ships would say something about how to complete the survey if it was against RCI rules. 

I wonder if this rule was changed so more employees are asking now.

I haven't been on a cruise in a long time but have one starting Sunday.  I don't mind them mentioning this once but every day will get annoying.  

I wonder if they would stop if you said you'd drop their rating a quarter point ever time they mention it.  hahaha...probably not as they wouldn't remember you said it.

I think the idea is that they are constantly cleaning the public areas of the ship every day.  So it never gets to be a problem.  So that just really leaves the rooms which are likely just "hotel" cleaned.

33 minutes ago, Ourusualbeach said:

Click on the person icon.

 

Select a different sailing

 

Select ship

 

Select date. 

 

Thanks so much.  I missed the "Select a different cruise" because it was small and I think I thought it was another cruise I had booked but you can choose whatever sailing you want.  

2 hours ago, Ourusualbeach said:

Look in the app at the current weeks sailing and you can see restaurants and open hours. 

How do you use the app to look at the current cruise?  I don't see anything.  It just has information on our cruise.

2 minutes ago, Kathscof said:

Not much experience for me, but could the 0% obstructed be because the room didn't exist yet?

 

Also, are there no other rooms of your specific category that are better options? (like 4N, 7D..just made those up haha)

This is a good point.  It may be an indicator of how much obstruction your room has and since a room wasn't assigned it was 0%.  I'd be interested to know if the OP was told it was 0%.

Yeah, I've been watching the water park for a few months hoping it would go down but it has stayed above $160 per person unfortunately.  I guess people are paying it or it would go down.

1 hour ago, topnole said:

Report back.  Curious if or how many get lost so I can plan for it.   😂😂

 

Have fun.  Great ages for cruising.  

hahaha...Will do.  

Thanks.  We are really looking forward to the cruise.  We had one schedule the weekend the quarantine started so we've been waiting a long time.

18 minutes ago, topnole said:

Let the older one hold their card.  Just keep the others in your possession and give to them if needed.  My oldest is about your youngest.  I keep all 3 of their keys with me.   Not sure what age that will change.  At some point they will have to learn responsibility.   Losing a ship key is a pretty low level concern to me, but they won’t know that.  Good time to test that trust and responsibility.  

I think this is likely what I will do.  However, I do like the idea of giving the younger two their own card to teach responsibility as someone else mentioned.  Maybe I'll do a mix of those two solutions.

Thanks to everyone for the replies.

I've cruised before with my kids but my kids are older now (8, 11, 15).  I was wondering how people typically manage their kid's sea pass cards.  Specifically, is there any reason for them to have the cards on them or can we just leave the cards in the room since they'd be with us?  We did get the beverage package for them so that may make it more necessary for them to carry the card.

I know the teenager will want to have his as he will be around the boat on his own but just wondering if the little ones need to have a card on them.

I ask as I was wondering if I should buy something like a lanyard for them to wear to carry the card. 

17 hours ago, Happy Cruiser Girl said:

You can ask your cabin steward for it. They can bring it to you twice a day if you prefer. We kept ours in the cooler (not really a fridge) and it kept our drinks that were in there cold and the ice lasted longer.

This is a great idea.  Thanks for sharing.

33 minutes ago, Concord Slim said:

No we're in Ohio as are the others...  It says in the email they will cover costs for flights and hotels as well...  As others mentioned it doesn't seem like a guarantee if you sign up, and we are flying down early to spend some time at the beach so that would have complicated things.  No clue what the criteria is for who gets the offer if more people sign up than they need?  Probably, based on revenue per room and how much they'd have to compensate for the room and credit for another cruise.  Just my guess...    

I guess this goes to show how much they are making on these rooms if they can afford to pay all this to move someone.  Otherwise, they wouldn't overbook the boats.

Would be disappointing if they forced you to eventually take one of those but those last couple options are pretty sweet if you can move.  Is this something that only happens for GTY rooms, I assume?  Doesn't seem to make sense if you know your cabin that they'd sell it again.  I guess they can offer it to everyone still and just put a GTY in your room should you take it.

@Fouremco I don't know if it would really mean anything to anyone else if I gave my results but I'm happy to do so.  (If I can remember - sailing is May 28th if anyone reads this after and wants to remind me 🙂 ).

How much you drink is so personal which is why these drink package threads often break down into fights.  😜

At the risk of this thread devolving into that situation, I'll say what I did do so far.  I put together a spreadsheet together where I guessed how much we'd use the package by breaking down each day keeping in mind that we'd likely not use it nearly as much on port days.  I had two scenarios.  The first was a slightly conservative guess on what'd we drink and another less conservative.  The more conservative one came out to be almost exactly what we paid and the less conservative came out ahead by a couple hundred.

I figured this would be the case but was interesting to see it come out that way.  I'm sure what we actually do will vary from my guesses though as we've never had the drink package before.  I figure it may even out with us drinking when I didn't think we would and not drinking when I thought we would.

Honestly, I'm thinking my wife may get our money's worth getting bottled waters as she drink them a ton.  

9 minutes ago, nolimits said:

One thing to take into consideration is sometimes multiple drinks don’t all get rung up. If you sit in bar for a while they know you have package and don’t always hit the Register especially if there busy 

Good point.  That makes total sense.  If they get busy, why do that when they know that we have the package.