Vexorg

A few years ago when we did an Alaska cruise on Golden Princess our sailing happened to be hosting the World Bingo Championship, which meant the Vista Lounge was occupied by that group for large portions of the sea days on the cruise.  Fortunately the cruise staff seem to have planned well for this and were able to move a lot of things to the Explorers Lounge or the main theater, and the impact on the other passengers was minimal (having a few hundred people spend large portions of their sea days in the Vista Lounge probably also made things a fair bit less crowded elsewhere as well.)  Probably the biggest visible impact was the fact that the casino was jam-packed in the evenings.

I'm not aware of any sailings that go from Seattle to Hawaii, although I have seen a few that go from Vancouver.  For all intents and purposes conditions would be basically the same from either Seattle or Vancouver.

Thanks for the thread, I'm going to be boarding on Saturday (same cruise but with a reversed itinerary), and it's nice to have some up to date info.  It's interesting to see that the ship is still getting overbooked, we actually took the January 25th sailing as a move over offer from the November 30 sailing.  Not sure why, but these Royal cruises seem really popular.

The email I got initially for the offer said to move to any 5 night cruise, but when I called (it took a day or so to get a response back from them) they said we could move to any 7-night cruise leaving from a US port (presumably because options for 5 night sailings are very limited.)  We opted to move to a 7 night Mexican Riviera sailing, which we are actually going to be sailing away on a week from right now.  When we took the offer they moved us from an interior cabin to a balcony cabin and applied the fare we paid (minus taxes and fees as OBC to the new sailing.  a shore excursion we had prepaid was refunded to our card immediately, and we had to submit receipts for the airline change fees and the hotel reservation we had to cancel (we got back the stated $150 per passenger; we ate part of the cancelled hotel night but it wasn't a big deal.)  A check to cover those expenses was mailed to us roughly five weeks after we took the offer.  I expect that any leftover OBC at the end of the cruise will be refunded the same way.  

I couldn't tell you about how they would handle wanting to move to a 10-night cruise though, since we didn't try it.  You would have to talk to the person who coordinates to find out if that's an option.

I travel down in that area for business on occasion, and generally don't have trouble getting Uber or Lyft in that area.  I have had occasions where the app had trouble finding me a ride during Rush hour, but most times of the day it isn't a problem.

Another option you might look at is Quick Shuttle buses that can take you directly from Sea-Tac to Downtown Vancouver. It's probably not going to be quite as scenic as the train, but it might save some hassles.

The location isn't exactly next door to the cruise terminal (it's about 30 miles away) but the Salish Lodge in Snoqualmie is a very nice "off the beaten path" choice, located right next to Snoqualmie Falls.  

Thanks for the review.  I'll be boarding the Royal Princess next Saturday for this cruise (albeit with the ports in the reverse order to avoid a 4-ship day in Puerto Vallarta.)  Looking forward to it.

Some of the older RCCL ships still do muster outside.  My cruise on the Vision of the Seas had its muster drill on the Promenade deck.

Just out of curiosity, which nights were the formal nights?  I'm assuming the second night (first sea day before Cabo) and the second-to-last (Sea day after PV) but wanted to make sure.

Going to be on board for this cruise in two weeks (same ports but in reverse order to avoid a four-ship day in PV) and really looking forward to it.  Happy to hear that Nick Nash is the captain right now, he's one of my favorites.

Most of the time it will be on sea days, but I have been on sailings where the formal night was on the Princess Cays day when that is the first stop.  

Apparently this is enough of an issue that Carnival just added an explicit ban on offensive clothing to their dress code:  

https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/carnival-cruise-line-bans-offensive-clothing-trnd/index.html

I recently did a road trip from LA to Las Vegas and back.  There was nothing going from CA to NV, but there were inspection stations on I-15 heading back into California.  There were signs saying all vehicles needed to stop, but when we went through the station was unmanned, so we just kept going.

The main reason that a cruise line might want to sail out of port overnight would be to open the casino (since they presumably can't do so while in port) but the 5 night itinerary with only one port call presumably means there would be plenty of other opportunity for passengers to gamble.  Not sure what the port tariffs would look like in Cabo (especially since the ships don't actually dock there) but I would assume the port authority would rather keep the ships (and their passengers) in port for as long as possible and not make it prohibitively expensive to do so.  I'm sure there's accountants at CCL who run the numbers on these things and figure them out, but if the ship stays anchored and operating tenders overnight then there's probably a good reason for it.

I've also seen cases where both members of a married couple worked for the cruise line.  On one Princess cruise (don't remember exactly which one) we had a waiter in the MDR who said that his wife worked in the same dining room, albeit in a different section.  

I have enjoyed cruises on both, but given a choice I'd go with Sapphire.  Sapphire (and Diamond) were built in Japan by Mitsubishi (unlike all the other Princess ships built by Fincantieri in Italy) and they have some interesting quirks that the other ships in the Princess fleet don't have, the most notable being the wider promenade deck and four smaller dining rooms where most Princess ships have two.  

On the one RCCL cruise I took, the captain (Marek Slaby, a captain with an excellent reputation among passengers and crew)  made it pretty clear that any late arrivals to the dock  (passengers or crew) would be having a chat with him when they arrived back at the ship.  I suspect these kids won't be laughing when they have that chat...

If I recall correctly, the Emerald Princess cruise ending on February 1st is a one-way Panama Canal cruise departing from Fort Lauderdale.  

We've done 3 adults in an interior cabin on Golden Princess before, it was a bit crowded (par for the course in an interior) but doable.  The biggest issue we ran into was getting ready for formal nights since everyone needed space to get ready. 

Princess sent another update clarifying the itinerary change: The short version is that the itinerary included with the original notification was correct, with PV on the 28th, Mazatlan on the 29th and Cabo on the 30th.  

Also, it looks like shore excursions have been updated.  The one we have scheduled (the "Cabo by Land and Sea" Princess excursion) is still there, but now shows times of 7am to Noon, which isn't going to leave time for much else.  I expect that there will be late arriving Princess excursions so the ship isn't going to leave at 1 as scheduled.

This thread describes my recent experience with a move-over offer on a cruise we were supposed to be on at the beginning of December, but ended up switching to a cruise at the end of January.  The short version is that we went from an interior on a 5 night Cabo Getaway cruise to a balcony on a 7 night Mexican Riviera cruise with 100% of our cruise fare (minus taxes and fees) being applied to the new cruise as refundable OBC.  They also paid us $150 per person to cover airline change fees and partially cover a non-refundable hotel room (we ended up eating some costs on that but it's not too big an issue.)  We had to submit receipts for the airline change fees and hotel, and got mailed a check back for those costs about 5 weeks later.  We were told that the remainder of the refundable OBC will be mailed as a check 4-6 weeks after the cruise.  Any OBCs you had on the original cruise also carry over, and since we used FCDs to book the original one the OBCs for those actually went up from $15 (5 night sailing in an interior) to $50 (7 night sailing in a balcony).
 

As an added bonus, when we switched to the 7 night sailing, I told my parents about what happened and they booked the cruise that we moved to. 

A couple other details to note:  

• The offer we were given was to move to any 7 night cruise leaving from a US port.  We considered switching to a Caribbean cruise, but airfare was going to cost a lot more if we did that.
• My sister-in-law was sailing with us in a separate cabin, with her reservation booked at the same time.  Since her reservation was linked to ours they included her automatically in the process, and on the new sailing they put her cabin next to ours.
• When we called I had to leave a voicemail and it took about a day for them to call back.  We operated under the assumption that we would be going on the original sailing until we had our confirmation on the move over.

It's pretty clear that the change was made mostly to avoid having four ships in PV on the 29th.  With four ships in port it seems likely that Emerald Princess (on a one way Panama Canal sailing) is the one that would end up tendering so its probably easier for Royal to move its schedule a bit.   On the new itinerary I believe Royal Princess will be the only ship in each of the three ports (assuming no changes to Carnival Panorama's itinerary, since it was scheduled to be in the same three ports on the same three days.)  If I had to pick a stop to shorten I'd probably prefer Mazatlan though. 

We had the Princess "Cabo by Land and Sea" excursion booked for Cabo, but my guess is that with the early arrival and shortened port call it ends up cancelled.  My parents are on the cruise as well and already decided that they will most likely just stay on board that day. 

2 hours ago, Bwana Tom said:

My updated itinerary from 'My Princess' website shows the change in the PV and Cabo port of calls, but shows the 26th and 27th to be sea days and PV on the 28th and Cabo on the 29th. Not sure which itinerary is right but I suppose it will eventually get worked out. I hope they let us know.

Tom

The text of the notification seems to be incorrect, but the updated itinerary in the email refects this (there are now two sea days before PV and one after Cabo.). This is what the Cruise Personalizer shows:

Apparently this isn't going to happen now since I just got notified by Princess that they are changing the itinerary for this cruise to swap the PV and Cabo port calls so on this cruise we will be in PV on the 27th instead of the 29th.  It is possible that Carnival Panorama (on the same itinerary as Royal Princess this week) may be swapping as well, but I can't tell from the info I have.