beg3yrs

On our previous Island Princess cruise in October and November we cashed in something like 12 gift cards at $500 each for a total of $6000. If there's a limit, it's higher than that!

I completely understand that it's not always possible to fly in a day or two before your cruise departs but this situation illustrates yet another risk of flying in on the day the cruise departs. Personally before this I had only considered the possibility of delayed flights causing one to miss the ship. Now here's another reason to try and arrive a day or two early. If the airline changes its schedule, you've got plenty of flexibility.

This ^^^ You're not the first to worry about this name mashup but it's been around for quite a few years now and seems to be the way most airlines do it these days.

I would have thought the Heart of the Rockies cruisetours would have been released with the Alaska cruisetours for 2024. So far nothing. Anyone have a clue as to when and if they will be released?

Maybe in the UK but it's nowhere near that bad in the USA or in Rome from where we started. We had to go through this screening in November transferring from BA in T5 to AA in T3. It was awful. Yes, lipsticks, chapsticks and such all had to be out. That's not the case in the USA nor was it the case in Rome. And, to make things worse, all the passengers who were not aware of these more stringent requirements had to spend time "sanitizing" their bags. Those who missed the smallest item had their bags placed into another queue for a more detailed inspection. Then that queue would back up and the primary screener would stop screening ALL bags until the secondary queue had more room. It was an absolute nightmare. An hour and a half to do this is ridiculous.

Ooooh nice! Can get even more every month! Thank you so much!

Possibly but I think my travel agent is THAT GOOD. I've done that more than once.

I have used Princess gift cards to pay the insurance, the cruise itself as well as EZair.

For us yes, heavy jackets or at least layers. It's Fall and above the Arctic Circle and the sun has been down for a while. Yes, it's cold. Bring gloves and a warm head covering too. One side of the ship better than the other is really unpredictable. That said, we were on the port side and for several nights we had good viewing from the balcony. Prediction of the lights is like forecasting lightning strikes. You know they'll happen but just not exactly where. That said, here's a good site for getting an idea of the likelihood you'll get a good show: https://www.gi.alaska.edu/monitors/aurora-forecast Even though it's based in Alaska, they show the forecast for Europe as well. I felt it was a darn good website. While at sea, if the lights were visible, an announcement from the bridge was made into the public areas. Typically this was in the wee hours of the morning (1 to 3 AM) and if you were sleeping and your cabin door wasn't close to a hallway speaker, you'd miss it. We just slept with our drapes open.

That cruise was the first of a B2B2B we just finished last month. Alta was a two night port as it's the northernmost and best for Northern Light viewing. There's an overnight excursion where you are glamping (glamorous camping) in your own luxury tent/hut thingamabob. It's pricey and was immediately sold out. If it's available and you can afford it jump on it. If the overnight isn't your thing, we did take a night excursion into a rock quarry for lights viewing. It was great. There were several outings at different times, we took the earlier one and actually had the best light show of all the various times. We didn't take many excursions as we'd been to all the ports except for Alta. Viewing tips: If the particles from the sun aren't very strong, you can still see the lights, they're just fainter. Mostly for us they were very faint and grayish to the naked eye and only at times did we get stronger flashes of green. But wait! The human eye is the least sensitive to green which was the predominant color. Turns out that modern digital cameras see green much better than we do and folks were getting amazing photos when the eye couldn't see them. So, be sure and bring a digital camera or phone with a camera. A note here is the older iPhones (below 8 I believe, we had a 6) aren't sensitive enough.

Not really sure what that means exactly but ... debark tours typically drop you off either at the airport or at a Princess post-cruise hotel. For those with flights, each debark tour has a requirement that flights must be after a specified time. I suspect that's what is being referred to, your flight must be departing after a certain time to take the tour (and make your flight).

My TA has commented that the current software provider is owned by a relative of Mickey Arison... Don't know if that's true but there it is ...

This method works if you've booked directly with Princess. If you've booked through a TA, it's not available.

Not only is it per calendar month but per person. If you have a spouse, register them with a separate email address and you collectively get up to 10 per month.

Off the Island Princess less than three weeks ago. Yes they have Coke and Diet Coke. It was in our mini-bar setup, i.e. cans.

Just a nit here but the fire doors are not locked. They may be closed but they aren't locked. That wouldn't be safe. You can push them open if you want. Oh yeah, we've never had a problem with bags being delivered (knock on wood as well). Some have given us a scare as they were delivered an hour or two AFTER sailing but we've always received them.

As d9704011 said, you can book them through the Princess web-site. It's not always consistent when they're available to book but generally they're available pretty much as the itineraries come available for booking. That said, sometime they don't show up for a couple of months and ... sometimes excursions get added as time goes on. Conversely, there have been reports (and I've experienced this first-hand) that it's rare but sometimes excursions get cancelled because the tour operator drops out.

I'm beginning to understand why there's both. The medallions on the crew allow them to be located (I doubt ewaste is a significant factor here) and the NFC cards allow access to restricted areas and such.

I agree with rocklinmom. I've never seen prices drop (I used to track them) and the closer to departure the higher the price for some. I've seen increases up to $50 per person. Not all excursions increase but many do. For myself, if I have the cash or OBC to book early, I do it. Not only do you insure yourself against a potential price increase, you're now protected from an excursion selling out.

Not sure why you say this when I see much of the staff running around with medallions attached to their uniforms.

Was just on the Island Princess in the Med. Shows were at 7:30 and 9:30. We had dinner seating at 7:20. It was easy to make the 9:30 show but often there were games and such at 8:30 and those were difficult to make eating at 7:20 (we don't hurry through dinner). Next cruise we're booking the MDR for 6:20 for more flexibility.

Well, your on board spend might be tracked for internal company purposes although I don't have first-hand knowledge of this. Seems in today's business environment, metrics such as this is simple to capture and tuck away for analysis by the bean counters. However, I agree with Shelly97060 that unlike other lines, Princess currently doesn't give passengers any perks for their on board spend. I wouldn't be surprised in the future if Princess did implement some kind of program that did reward on board spending (probably after taking away something else...). It's a business trend that's been going on for some time in airlines, hotels, multiple cruise lines and other businesses.

Only part of the cruise is in Antarctica. Buenos Aires, Montevideo, Valparaiso and the adjacent regions should be quite warm.

I haven't read the patent but ... as a retired electrical engineer I'd submit that a design where this device is always transmitting is very poor indeed. Rather a device which has to depend on a battery should always be in listening mode as a receiver has much less drain on a battery than a transmitter. In listening mode, once an appropriate signal is detected (like a ping), then the transmitter could be activated to respond with the chip ID.

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