JimmyVWine

In 1976 our family did a TA on the QE2 and one of our two cabins was an exterior cabin that had a porthole that could be opened. But I think only by a crew member. We were on deck 4 and the waves definitely reached our porthole. Looked like a washing machine. On a particularly rough day they even closed the metal covering so that you couldn’t see out. It looked just like this:

Did you have a package? I suppose it is possible that while Britto cannot be booked as an included Specialty Dining option under the Premier Package, the gratuity could be covered as part of the pre-paid gratuity portion of the package.

No. It says right on the app that this venue is not within the package.

When we booked in advance, my credit card was charged $79 without the extra 18% tacked on. Does anyone know if at the end of the meal we will be presented with a bill for $14.22 per person?

Me too. The Covid year took a dent out of my inventory when my daughter was forced to leave campus during her Senior Year in college a move home. One bottle a night became two and the inventory dropped. But it is back to “normal” and holding steady. I told my wife that when I pass, at the end of the receiving line at my wake will be bins of wine and everyone gets to take home a bottle. The first 20 people will get the Screaming Eagle. 😁

If that’s how it came off, it wasn’t intended as such. It was just for illustrative purposes. It is certainly true that many people who sail in Inside cabins (solo or double) live the high life on board, booking the Sanctuary, Thermal Suite, Specially Dining, all with money they save by choosing an Inside cabin. Personally, that’s how I would roll if my wife would allow it. But she will not abide a cabin with no exterior wall.

Some of my favorite winemakers in that group. Mike Smith, Thomas Rivers Brown and Adam Lee. If you ever find yourself needing more than your allocations of Quivet or RM, let me know and we can work it out. I always have extras. A friend of mine who was first a huge collector and then became a winery owner once told me that he pulls out some of his best bottles with his simplest meals. A complex, high-end meal is reason enough for contemplation and conversation without a showy wine getting in the way. And a good ol' cheeseburger won't get in the way of savoring and conversing about a Harlan Cabernet which would be the star of the meal. While I haven't taken his advice quite to the level that he has, (he and I once shared a bottle of Colgin Cabernet while dining al fresco at Taylor's Refresher (now Gott's) while eating cheeseburgers), I will, from time to time, pull out a very nice bottle, (like a Quivet Kenefick Ranch Cabernet) with leftovers or meatloaf and turn an ordinary meal into something way beyond that. All of which is to say that we enjoy taking some of our best bottles with us on Princess cruises even if we know that the cuisine is not 4 star. And often not 3 star. But the atmosphere, company, and the feeling one gets while being on vacation make the meal special and a great bottle of wine doesn't hurt.

I could see the day coming when points/status is determined by the total dollars spent on a cruise instead of counting the number of cruises or days at sea. While it is true that a solo cruiser pays "double", that doubled amount for an Inside cabin is often less than what the per person cost of a Mini-Suite is based on double occupancy. So if a solo in an Inside pays $1,050 and each person in a two-person Mini-Suite pays $1,100, the solo cruiser hasn't really paid "double." Or, more accurately, they have not added more revenue to Princess' accounting department than each person in the Mini-Suite. And if the solo person does not purchase a package and is very frugal on board, and the people in the Mini-Suite buy the Premier Package and book several excursions through Princess, by the time everyone disembarks, the people in the Mini-Suite will have paid way more per person than the solo who "paid double." Airlines are now doing this (awarding miles based on price paid), and I can see Princess doing this as well. It would smooth out the inequity of having a solo cruiser reach 16 cruises after spending $8,800 (8 cruises at $1,100 each with the cruise count doubled and no onboard spending) while the two people traveling 8 times in a Mini-Suite would be stuck at 8 cruises having spent $16,000 each (8 cruises at $1,100 per person plus $560 for Premier plus $340 in excursions each cruise.) My airline miles are now based on spending as are my hotel points. Can my cruise points be far behind?

Many (most) people here will sing the praises of aft facing cabins and certainly their opinions are valid. On the flip side, we have observed noticeable vibration issues in aft cabins (and it isn't our imagination, as you can see the ripples in a glass of water that tell the tale) and as a result, we avoid them. My wife puts her foot down on this issue. That said, we have not been in an aft cabin on any ship that post-dates the launch of the Crown Princess, so never on a Royal or Sphere Class ship. Perhaps the vibration issue is less pronounced or even non-existent. But the wife's view on this has prevented us from testing out the newer ships and risking disappointment with so many cabins to choose from.

2014.

Do you serve real butter?? 😎

I'll take the other side of this argument. We have only been on Grand Class ships before we gained PES privileges (the old days). So we were the ones in Skywalkers enjoying magnificent views of Alaska while enjoying goodies that we brought up from the IC only to get kicked out of the gigantic space just so that about 7 PES people could take up the whole venue to eat waxy grocery store cheese and pay for the "drink of the day". Didn't seem like a fair trade to kick out all of the "regular people" from this viewing area just so that half a dozen people could use it. Seems like there might have been a more suitable venue for that sized crowd. The Library? A storage closet?

You aren't connecting to an AARP site when you do that.

AARP wouldn't have anything to do with being able to check the balance of a gift card that it sold. No different than if you bought a Macy's gift card at your local grocery store. The grocery store would have no way of letting you check the balance once it leaves the store.

Of course it does. (Not sarcasm.) There is no way that anyone can swirl and sniff a wine in Princess' standard glasses. Even most of their Riedels are Sauvignon Blanc glasses and not Burgundy or Bordeaux glasses and are too small for a bold red. Post 122 shows the Bordeaux stems that we bring along and the photo below shows the Burgundy stems. I can actually swirl my wine without wearing it. Tends to taste better in my mouth than on my shirt! 😆

We were using our own glasses.

We tried to have the server at Vines hand over a full bottle to us and take 6 credits off of our accounts (2+2+2) but he wouldn't bite. We explained that we would sit at the bar and have 2 glasses each and drain the bottle so wouldn't it be easier to just hand over the bottle and let us take it back to our balcony, but it was a no go.

And since October falls within that time period, then yes, the cruise would qualify.

It's even better than that. The FAQs specifically say that it DOES apply to already booked cruises.

Not that difficult to figure out. EZAir is capacity controlled and when the limit of discount fares is reached for a particular flight, the discount disappears.

I think you are following the logic. You just aren't using big enough numbers. Imagine flying into a port where three ships are departing on a Saturday. Two hold 4,000 passengers and one holds 2,000. The ship that holds 2,000 sells its cruises so that they "include coach class airfare". In reality, the airfare isn't "free". The airlines are providing the cruise line discounted airfare much the way EZ Air works. It's just done in the background. The other two ships are owned by cruise lines that provide a discounted airfare service just like EZ Air. Not everyone uses it. But many do. In that example, you have 10,000 people heading for a single port for departures on a single day. (Of course, not everyone flies into the port.) If all of the 1,500 guests from the one cruise line, and 20% of the 8,000 from the other cruise lines try to use the discounted airfare services, that is 3,100 people all flying on discounted tickets. A typical aircraft holds around 200-230 people. That's the equivalent of 15 full airplane's worth of people all on discounted tickets. And that's just for Saturday. Rinse and repeat for Sunday. At some point the airlines are going to cry "uncle" and tell the cruise lines: "We'll make 200 discount tickets available per day. But not 2,000."

Not being Elite yet myself, I missed this. Though I do know that I was able to book a Europe 2026 cruise on the first day they were available, ahead of the masses. Didn't meant that much as the cruise I selected is still wide open. But for something unique like the Eclipse 2026 cruise, one extra day would have meant a lot.

We usually see a mix of movies, still pictures of beautiful places that Princess goes to, and concert videos. With the exception of feeling violated by a concert video of "post Steve Perry Journey" we found the mix to be pretty good. It is true that the Grand Class ships have the better design with both a MUTS pool and a non-MUTS pool, along with a Retreat pool and a wake pool. On the Royal Class ships you have fewer options. My wish for the future would be for the "Silent Disco" concept to be moved up to the Lido Deck (and whatever we are supposed to call the deck with pools on the Sphere Class ships that so far just have boring numbers.) Wireless headphones that pick up the audio could be worn by anyone who want to hear Steve Augeri pretend to be the front man of Journey while the rest of us can relax in relative peace.

And "biggest" is quickly becoming synonymous with "only".

The packages are really the only target Princess has left for providing discounts. It eliminated lower prices with the early booking best price guarantee; it eliminated the "Three for Free" option of giving guests gratuities, drinks and a Specialty Dining credit for fee when it introduced the packages. So all that is left is discounting the packages themselves and so far...crickets. Would love to see the $60/$80 pricing go down 10% for Ruby; 15% for Platinum and 20% for Elite, or something like that. At the Platinum level, a 15% savings on Premier would be $12 and would basically give back the half-priced WiFi. At 20% for Elite, that would drive the price of Premier almost all the way down to the current price of Plus. Seems doable, and frankly necessary now that the packages have leveled the field and removed whatever daylight there was between a first-time cruiser and an Elite cruiser.