beg3yrs

Set up your house like a Princess cruise ship with medallion sensors every 10 feet or so. Be sure to run all the cabling to a central computer room. Purchase the same computers and software (ewww) from Princess. Hire one of their IT folk (surely one has quit by now because they couldn't stand working with a bunch of klutzes) and then you can locate the medallion just like they do on the ship ... Or just go to the ship without it like others have suggested where they'll make you a new one.

Conflicting reports about the availability of draft beer on the ships is likely because it's only available at one or two bars on the whole ship. Typically it's a bar near a pool. As to the types of beer on tap, it varies. I've partaken of Heineken and Newcastle but not on the same cruise. I've also had an excellent Australian beer (can't remember the name - something to do with horses though) on an Australian cruise.

One visit to the Falklands was beautiful in the morning. Captain Rickard Lorentzen was reticent to start tendering as the forecast for the afternoon was windy, much like yours. Another ship (Crystal Symphony I think) ahead of us started tendering and then we did as well. The captain probably regretted his decision as that afternoon when we finished our excursion, tendering had been "paused" due to high winds and lots of chop even at the dock. It was miserable and even inside the "tunnel" it was awful. We saw one tender attempt to dock and it was blown against the shore rocks bending its prop. Had to eventually be towed back to the ship. Many of us decided early to head to the local pub which was soon packed. Warm inside and cool beer was ok with us. Ship security knew just where to find the remaining passengers when tendering resumed. Even then it was the choppiest tender ride ever. Water was sloshing across the floor, deep enough the people were raising their feet and jokes were being made about seeing fish.

Perhaps the voyage from Trieste to Barcelona will be the media cruise.

The prose under the video says something about the inaugural cruise being postponed "due to the postponement of the delivery of the maxi passengers", whatever that is. Any ideas?

This is a misconception. Neither app actually holds your information, there is nothing to "transfer". The information is kept in databases in some server system located who-knows-where, but not on your phone or in "the app". All the apps do is query the databases to display information to you and then update the databases if you update something. Many of the problems we're experiencing are because the databases are not correct. Sometimes the same information is kept in multiple locations (a bad practice unless for backup) and the app developers can't be sure which location to use.

Aha! That explains many of the incorrect charges. Unfamiliar old people with gray hair all look the same to young people!

Ha! So you actually mean biological facial recognition. Still uses a human to recognize the faces!

Not sure if this is really the case but it's not all that far-fetched. The monitors at each door are actually Samsung tablets. You can even see the opening for the rear-facing camera. The technology is there, just don't know first-hand if they're using FR.

I do not know if the ship can make the special art stickers. It makes sense to me that rather than keep a stock of each kind of medallion sticker on board, having a special printer for blank stickers makes sense. Of course making sense to me doesn't mean that's what Princess actually does. There are likely many more things they consider when deciding the logistics of stickers!

There has to be some other kind of error. Princess phone reps are notorious for making "stuff" up just to get you off the phone. Check on your cruise's Roll Call and see if others on your specific cruise are having difficulties.

Exactly. The only use I know of for facial recognition on Princess is with the photography staff. There it's used to easily identify you and show you all the photos you are in. Even that capability wasn't around seven years ago.

@dides reported receiving the refund and FCC within only a few days after the cancellation announcement. If you're planning on cruising with Princess in the future, getting 50% FCC plus your payment is a darn good rate of return.

Explorers for game show type activities and Vista for Bingo and such.

Not absolutely sure. These cards looked very much "old school" however I haven't personally seen the cards that can be used in lieu of a medallion. It could be there's no visible difference. However, if they are the old card without the medallion NFC tech embedded, they'd be useless to enter your room. We were instructed that these cards were good to get on board and to go right to GS to get medallions.

So as others have said, medallions are made up on the ship, not on shore. On shore we waited for someone to make up old-style cruise cards so we could embark. That took about 20 minutes standing at a desk. Then we boarded and went to Guest Services and stood in the incredible first-day line (even for Elites) and waited for about 30 minutes. Before we got to the front of the line an officer came out and asked all those waiting if they needed medallions. A bunch of us raised our hands. Our cards were collected and then in about 20 more minutes we had medallions.

We were on the Sapphire this time last year. We boarded on January 4 in BA and did a B2B so we saw Antarctica twice. For us it was a good choice as what we missed on the first leg we saw on the return. Technically we missed Cape Horn both times but on the first leg we were close enough to see it in the distance. Anyway, the Sapphire is an excellent vessel in rough seas. It rides better due to it's beam being a bit wider than other ships of its size. We rounded Elephant Island on the first leg and went from calm seas to greater than 100 knot winds and basically had to just point into the wind and go only fast enough to maintain steerage. 27' waves and the ship did well. Oh yeah, they didn't know how much over 100 knots the winds were because that's the maximum reading on the anemometer.

Maps can be substantially wrong! We had an instance of a cruise from Southampton to Fort Lauderdale showing as a round-trip Southampton to Southampton. It got fixed eventually.

This is mostly true for myself as well. However, there is a bit of pride when my beautiful ship is docked next an ugly one as I embark, disembark or am simply taking photos of it from the port.

So with a March 16 departure it seems you're past final payment but before the 45 days where your flights can't be changed without paying a penalty. It is also likely you're not fully ticketed in the airline system, i.e. you have a reservation but EZ Air hasn't yet paid the airline. Before you are fully ticketed you have to deal with EZ Air as the airline won't do much for you. My own experience with un-ticketed flight changes is that only if the changes make it impossible to make the ship will EZ Air make changes and protect your price. It's my own personal M.O. that once I've made final payment and I'm OK with my current flights and don't expect prices to drop, I request early ticketing so I only have to deal with the airlines in case of schedule changes. Dealing with EZ Air in my experience can often be a PITA. Not always but often enough. It sounds like if you want the earlier return flight there is a fare difference of $150 so this isn't a penalty, just a fare difference. If you're not ticketed you still have to deal with EZ Air and if after three tries, you are still getting the same answer, you may be stuck. Then the decision is if the extra money is worth arriving earlier.

Four days before sailing. Unfortunately we departed for the airport in the morning and the medallions were delivered in the afternoon.

I use Firefox and I have the old look.

I'm amused that none of the CG people in these illustrations seem to be older than mid-forties. It certainly won't look like that in real life.

Basic economics at work!

Not necessarily. If the demand for the better product is there, the market will sustain higher pricing.