beg3yrs

Had a situation on the Island Princess last fall somewhat analogous to this. We sailed a B2B2B originally booked in a regular balcony cabin. The upgrade fairy smiled on us for only the first leg and we were upgraded to a full suite (maybe hitting 500 days had something to do with it but all staff deny that). Anyway, we enjoyed Club Class and the Sabatini's breakfast for two weeks and then had to revert to regular service for the next two legs. Needless to say we had been very friendly with the CC wait staff and also made some nice acquaintances with other CC passengers. Several times we were invited by these passengers to dine with them in CC. It always turned out to be a table adjacent to the CC area with the CC wait staff attending to us. That service really is a cut above.

Yes of course. Took BA once in business and won't do that again. Old and tired would be the description for the cabin and just tired for the attendants. Service was marginal and food was dismal (well, it is British 😉). PHX is always considered but mostly doesn't work out for us. LAX does and when it doesn't, DFW typically wins.

I agree with the posters here. We often take the direct flight from LAX to LHR for a cruise. While we start in Tucson and could fly through a more eastern city, we like the direct LAX flight as it's longer and we sleep more! We insist on business class due to the lay flat seats. EZair will get you a good deal. Not only that, you'll get more and heavier bags allowed at no extra charge. We too fly in so we get three to four nights in England before embarkation. And yes, pre-book a private car service if you're heading to Southampton. Nothing like a driver meeting you outside of baggage claim with your name on a sign board who then helps you schlep your luggage to the waiting car. Be sure to let the service know you're cruising so they'll book a large enough vehicle for you. As said earlier, three to four nights works for us to help get over the jet lag. After a day we're ready to explore and get sundries we don't pack because they're large and heavy (Listerine comes to mind here). In Southampton we mostly walk (but have been known to go too far outbound and so we either take a cab or an Uber back to the hotel). It's a nice little town with plenty of shops, restaurants and pubs plus some museums and the ancient city walls still exist which are kind of cool. All this makes sure when we do get on the ship, we're ready to go with very little residual jet lag!

This might be your problem: Screenshot from AARP Rewards Terms and Conditions

I'm not LACruiser88 but was on the Sapphire in January and February for 32 days. Yes!

And then you have to avoid the trail cameras hunters use to track game ...

All those displays in front of every cabin door are in fact, Samsung tablets. Close examination reveals they all have front-facing cameras. So now you know, there are hundreds of cameras in the passenger corridors! 😱

Getting a little judgmental?

I have heard the average redemption rate on gift cards is around 75%. So, selling them at a 90% of list is still a money making endeavor. Of course I suppose members of Cruise Critic are blowing that rate up to near 95%.

Yes! Paid cruise and eZair costs 100% using gift cards for our last two cruises and just paid in full for our June cruise (including eZAir) using gift cards. That said, it was done through our TA, not a Princess staff person.

I think the Pirate Queen should fill in at Bingo at least once each voyage. Call it Cut Throat Bingo. Do it all for a charity. Only issue paper cards at a cheap price so people get lots of them - that'll make it hard to keep up when the Pirate Queen starts calling numbers fast and says not-so-nasty pirate insults to those who bought too many tickets and ask her to slow down. It would be so fun!

Not sure if this applies to other ships but on the Sapphire Princess, the number of steps between 7 and 8 is different from the forward stairs to the aft stairs. Is this ship crooked?

We were on the Sapphire in January and February. While I didn't notice the name change then I can't say I recall it being called the Princess Patter either. For us its main usefulness was the listing of time when venues were open. Secondary was the event overview. What I do remember is that there was a disclaimer that the printed sheet doesn't contain all the events going on during the day but is just a sample of them. The MedallionClass app's Journey View feature is supposed to be the definitive source for all events. I found Journey View to be clunky and difficult to use on a phone-sized device. The big screens around the ship were easier. BTW, I see Danny Rembadi is still on board. He's great! His classical guitar performed in the Piazza is something not to be missed and his performances in the Wheelhouse Bar on a regular acoustic guitar are a lot of fun.

The new muster drill or lack thereof. Watching the video while unpacking and then visiting your station for a quick medallion tap sure beats everyone traipsing to their stations carrying life jackets and then sitting through the "lecture".

Yes, your name, the ship's name and the embarkation date are on the medallions picked up at the terminal. Even if you have to get a replacement on board at Guest Services, it will have the same markings. Obviously each ship has the facilities to add stickers and lettering.

In the United States, regulations require a zero passenger count on turnaround days. In your case, for both your Fort Lauderdale visits, you will receive information a few days in advance where to meet on board for "In Transit" guests. In most other countries this is not required and turn-around day is just like any other port day. When the time comes you will be escorted off the ship through immigration and then to a waiting area. At this point you can leave the port to explore Fort Lauderdale and come back later. You will have an "In Transit" card to show in the terminal which will allow you to bypass all the new passenger check-in processes. If you just want to get back on the ship and have a virtual "sea day", you will be notified when you can re-board. It will be before all the other new passengers board. If there is a ship excursion for in-transit passengers, you will be given separate instructions if you've signed up for it.

Our medallions lasted for last year's B2B2B for the full 38 days. This year's 32 day B2B, DW's medallion lasted 25 days and mine went the distance. Your medallion is printed with your name and embarkation date. There's no disembarkation date on it.

If there are two of you and you each have your own email address, you can purchase 10 GCs every month.

Yes I've considered that as well. However the subsequent text describing Zoom calls, streaming videos, fast downloads and so on makes it clear they're referring to Internet access.

Everyone has their own priorities. You don't know ours and I don't know yours. However I'll share one of ours with you; we find it's important to be respectful of people.

We cruised Alaska in June of 2022 on the Royal Princess. Speeds were definitely too slow for Zoom calls but email and some browsing, while slow, was feasible. There's a page buried somewhere on the in-cabin TV menu that indicates the speeds/quality you can expect on the voyage. It tells you that in the area of Victoria and Vancouver and south your speeds will be good. Don't believe it. The crew uses WhatsApp for texting and my experience was that it seems to work better than regular texting when the Internet is poor. Facetime also tends to work at times when other apps fail when the Internet is slow. As an aside, we just did two trips to Antarctica on the Sapphire Princess. Both times we received notes in our cabin telling us the Internet would be non-existent once the ship went south of Cape Horn. For us that wasn't the case. The Internet was still usable, even down to almost 65 degrees south, but definitely not fast.

We were on this same cruise from Santiago to Buenos Aires with Antarctica on the itinerary. We were also on the one just before from Buenos Aires to Santiago with Antarctica as well. We were not on Dolphin deck but on Aloha the first leg and Baja the second leg. So we can't speak to issues on the Dolphin deck but can say that our mid-ship cabins had no problems and the HVAC worked well both in the chill of Antarctica and the warmth of Buenos Aires and Santiago. Seems to me the problems are isolated to the areas previously mentioned. We met a lot of folks on these two journeys and nobody ever complained about their cabins. The Sapphire Princess and her sister the Diamond, are IMHO the best Grand-like class ships in the fleet. They don't have the extra Riviera deck and have a slightly wider beam than the others. This gives the ships an excellent ride in rough seas (believe me, we experienced over 100 knot winds and 27 foot waves near Elephant Island). You also get a slightly wider outside Promenade as well.

Nope, you have lots of company feeling this way, including yours truly! Coming off the last cruise this was my main complaint in the post-cruise survey. I really don't know why some attorney hasn't started a class action lawsuit. Of course it's big bucks for the attorney and the class members don't get much. But, maybe it would force Princess to stop lying or at least fix their Internet.

Yes but I saw them demagnetized many times, necessitating a trip to the GSD!

As PacnGoNow said, you have to find the right agent, a unicorn, who knows how to do it. We recently found a unicorn who placed gift cards on our account as OBC. He also found out that there's a $1500 limit of OBC that can be place ahead of time!