NewSalt

Just a humorous update.

In addition to our Princess cruise in August, we have a Royal Caribean cruise with DD, her DH and their two little ones in July so I also bought the eight-pack of RC luggage tag sleeves, thinking that we would share them. I gave them to DD and she loved them and told me she would need ALL of them!

Back to Amazon to order more!

I pack my carry on as if I will never see the rest of my luggage.... So far so good, I know the first time I fail to do this that my luggage will fall off the pier unnoticed :)

Gee, thanks! A new worry that never occurred to me before. ;)

On our last Princess cruise, our friend really liked one of the cold soups and the next night asked the waiter if it might be available again another night. The waiter brought it for him that night and asked on the next few nights if he'd like it again.

I have to laugh when I see posters say that cheating on the beverage packages will cause the price to rise.

Vendors do a lot of research to price their wares appropriately. Too low and you lose money; too high and you've priced yourself out of the market. It would take a lot of sharing to cause a loss in revenue large enough to offset the loss from fewer people buying the package. Those $14 drinks probably cost the cruise lines less than $2. Even adding on overhead and the princely salaries they pay wait staff and bartenders, the profit is very nice.

FTR, we don't purchase a beverage package and never intend to so I'm not trying to justify sharing.

Thank you all for your help!

Yahoo for Alaska in August! Can't wait! It will be our first time there.

That was fast! Looks like they'll fit.

Thank you!

Does anyone have the dimensions of the Princess luggage tags? I purchased some luggage tag holders on line, but they don't look as if they'd fit the tags as I remember them. (But my memory is not something I trust much any more.)

Having had a daughter who passed at the age of two from an extremely rare brain disorder I can attest to the sensativity of this subject. We had a blue pass that we used when we were taking Allie to appointments etc.... However, if the weather was good we would always park in normal parking spots, as others might have needed them more. When she passed we turned in the blue parking pass. My mom also had one for my father when is brain tumour effected his mobility to the point it became an issue. When he passed it too was turned in right away to the Ministery of Transport, the authorizing agent.

 

In this case the OP speaks of, wouldn't they not have been leaving the ship to head to hospital, if it was a true medical emergency. Instead it appears that this individual had already preplanned their way to skip the tender line; after all why would you need your vechicle parking pass on a cruiseship? It doesn't let the captain dock anycloser to the pier. Not to mention, is their car that they left at port parking or airport parking lot going to be ticked or towed since their pass is on vacation with them? Unless their car was at parked home or in a normal spot where they left it, that is what would happen. Perhaps this "flash pass" might be one of many that they possess for whatever reason.:confused:

 

Who knows the true reason why they jumped the cue, and we will never know. However, having a two family members that have needed them in the past this topic is close to me, and most likely any other CCers who are in the same situation. Either be it directly, or indirectly.

 

 

On a lighter note; when we went to see Russell Peters, the comedian, in the from row there were half a dozen folks in wheelchairs. One of them was wearing the shirt I have attached a photo of. You could only imagine the joking Peters did with them and they were laughing as hard, if not harder than the 15,000 plus people there.

I can't read the shirt, but I'm dying from curiosity to know what it says.

When a relative was dying in a nursing home, her family was with her late into the night. They finally left, but a few hours later they received a call telling them she had passed on. They returned to the home immediately and saw that her rings had been removed from her fingers. They were never recovered.

Not cruise-related but it does illustrate the depths to which thieves can stoop.

My DH left his reading glasses on the Legend in February. We called shortly after we disembarked. They were never found, nor did Royal Lost and Found ever return any of our calls.

We took this itinerary on the Explorer last year and really enjoyed it.

I don't know how old your children are, but on St. Maarten we took a cab to Le Galion, which was perfect for our DGS, who was four. Gentle waves, very quiet, no boobage. If your children are older, they might prefer more robust surf, but it's perfect for smaller kids. It's also close to the butterfly farm, which was very interesting. We took a cab (minibus) with another family, he dropped us off at the butterfly farm, took the other family to, I believe, Orient Beach, came back and took us to the beach, and then picked us up, got the other family and took us all back to the ship. IIRC, he charged about $20 PP.

We took the bus to Horseshoe Bay in Bermuda, but it was a long, hot, crowded ride. We took a cab back. There's a long downhill walk to the beach from the bus stop, but there's a bevy of cabs that will take you back up for about $2 PP.

I can't tell you which route would be better from PA, but here's a link to directions to the port that are very explicit: http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2204763

It's easy to miss the turn because the signage isn't great.

We didn't order the drink package for the first two days, drank a normal amount, and then, based on what we had spent those two days, decided against the drink package. Our bar bill at the end of the cruise was less than half what the price of the drink package was. YMMV. The soda package might not be a bad deal if your kids drink soda, but none of us do so we passed on that.

I hope you enjoy your cruise as much as we did.

What we did was not order the package for the first two days and drank as we normally would. After looking at our expenditures for those days, we could make a decision as to whether it would be a good value to have it. For us, the answer was a definite "No," especially since we had several port days ahead of us, but you may find that it would make sense for you.

There's nothing better than drinking coffee in my pj's on the balcony and reading a book. Unless it's having my DGS join me there to drink his OJ and discuss deep, philosophical questions as only a five-year-old can.

We have sailed twice with both RCCL and Princess, the last time with Princess 1.5 years ago and with Royal in February.

We have two cruises coming up this summer, one each with Royal and Princess. I did the on-line check-in for both last night. It took more than four times as long to accomplish it on Royal. Royal had some of our information pre-populated, Princess had almost all of it. I also found it much harder to find information on linking our reservations on Royal. A search turned up literally thousands of answers, none on the first three pages gave me the information I needed.

Had I done the two check-ins separately, it wouldn't have been as noticeable, but doing them together made me realize how easier it was on the Princess web site.

How do you tip the behind the scenes people, the ones who also depend on gratuities for their income? I'm thinking of the people I see all the time on the public areas of the ship, shining away fingerprints and smudges and cleaning and polishing the hand rails, the pool attendants, the servers/bussers in buffet, and those who work in the laundry that produces the crisp sheets and fluffy towels we use. That last has to be one of the most unpleasant jobs on a ship.

In a perfect world, their pay would come from the cruise line, but my reading of the way tips are meted out, it would seem that part of the auto gratuity goes to them.

So how do you tip them?

We always pass one or two on our way to and from our cabin. We did some on our cruise with our DGSs last year so the older one could "direct" us to our cabin. They were just underwater life ones and made it through the entire cruise without disappearing.

It's your cruise; if it makes you happy and doesn't affect other cruisers, do it.

It is what they anticipate including your cruise fare.

 

http://www.cruisemarketwatch.com/home/financial-breakdown-of-typical-cruiser/

Thanks! I feel better knowing I'm not that far under the average.

So it's mostly psychological, then. Cool.

The subconscious is a powerful thing. If I prepaid an OBC, I'd think that I HAD to spend that much! ;)

Oh Royal, where will it stop? An extra $0.95 per day:eek: To keep on budget, that means people will have to cut back and not buy that one beer on their cruise. Or maybe they will skip the $10 sale and then you will be down $3.35 in revenue.

 

What will you do then? Have $10.95 sales? Have spa specials increase to $139.95? If we believe the statistics that the average cruiser will spend $222.00 a day this year, you just bumped that to $222.95. It sounds like many can not afford this.

 

And just what part of the increase will my assistant waiter get? Twenty cents? That's what, maybe two cents an hour. Oh the outrage.

 

Where will it stop? Where will it stop?

Sorry to go off topic, but I found this statistic interesting. Does this mean that the average cruiser will spend $220 per day above the cruise fees?

If so, I have to have a talk with DH. It would appear that we are serious slackers and need to step up our game. ;)

We have a cruise scheduled for the end of July with MTD so we have already paid for the cruise in full including prepaid gratuities.

Does this mean that our steward will receive $X for handling our cabin but $X+8% for handling the cabin next door where Mary and Joe have traditional dining and haven't prepaid the gratuities? Seems like an accounting nightmare, and I have a hard time believing that the employees are really going to see all the benefits of this increase.

After our first cruise, we did bring a lot of singles. We never use room service when we travel, but it was so convenient and pleasant to put the hang tag out at night and have juice and coffee while sitting on the balcony in the early morning and while we dressed.

Will the window clings stick to the doors?

Yes. I put under-the-sea themed ones on his door last year so our 4-year-old DGS could find his room all by himself and show us.

Of course, the CEO isn't reading the thousands of emails addressed to him. IME working for a Fortune Fifty company, there was a person, often an admin, who forwarded the correspondence to the appropriate department head under the CEO's name with a request to "Please handle." The department head then sent it on to the person who actually dealt with those issues. Since there was a good likelihood that an insufficient or unsatisfactory reply would generate another contact with the CEO, those problem received an immediate response and one that, if it was at all possible, was positive.

If the person screening the mail saw that one area of operations was receiving a disproportionate number of complaints (dining reservations? web site problems?), this was brought to the CEO'S attention and the appropriate department head was told to "Fix this." In some cases, an incidence log was kept with trouble areas being identified in a monthly report.

So, far from being an imposition on a busy executive's time, complaints to his office can actually help him address issues before they become major problems.

And what is a minor inconvenience to one person can be much more than that to another. When we checked into our rooms on one cruise, we found a peanut that had not been vacuumed up tucked next to the leg of the desk. In most cases that would be a minor thing -- pick it up and toss it in the garbage. However, we were traveling with our toddler grandson, who is highly allergic to peanuts. Had he spotted it and popped it in his mouth, it could have been fatal. (We did report it but didn't take it as far as the CEO.)

Hair straightners get very hot. And so do some curling irons. I wonder if those will be banned next.

That's the day I and most women I know stop sailing.

But I do think you do have a very good point about curling/straightening appliances being just as dangerous as steamers.

The bottles should be in your carry-on and not in checked luggage.