JimmyVWine

Oftentimes getting a slot from the Waitlist is a function of there being so many people on the List that they organize another full group. Given that ship-organized groups can often be very large, that can require a large number of people who have demonstrated an interest in the excursion. So it can be a numbers game. If there are two people on the Waitlist, they might stand a good chance of getting in due to cancellations. If there are 10 people on the Waitlist, that won't be enough to warrant another full group so a couple of people might get in due to cancellations and the rest get shut out. And if there are 30 people on the Waitlist, there is a reasonable chance that Princess will try to accommodate all of them by assembling another full group, assuming that is feasible. (A tour of the Vatican should be easy to put together. Ziplining in Costa Rica, maybe not as easy.) So one strategy would be to connect with others on a Roll Call and if enough people "on the outs" band together and all put their names on the Waitlist, a big enough group might form. But if most people accept defeat and only a few put their names on the Waitlist, the chances of success might actually decrease.

I think that pool usage and lounge chair usage are an entirely different matter. If I get to the Lido Deck at 11:00 a.m. and 500 people got there before me and all of the lounge chairs are occupied and the pool is full of people splashing around and having fun it doesn't matter (at least to me) whether the people who got there before me are an organized group of 500, or a disassociated amalgamation of 500 individuals, 250 couples, or some combination thereof. They beat me to the punch and I deal with it. I have a defense measure that I can deploy if it means that much to me, which is to get up earlier. This is very different from a situation where the cruise line ropes off an area for a group or closes an entire venue for a group. This is what lessens my cruise experience as I have no defense against the closure. 500 people beating me to a venue is OK. Having a venue taken away from me is not.

I do not discriminate. I avoid ALL large group cruises irrespective of the common factor that binds the group. I suppose if the WOPN held one of its events on a ship instead of in Santa Barbara I might make an exception. But that's about it. Otherwise, I always do an internet search for my ship and date of travel to see if any group is advertising special rates or booking options. If something turns up and the group looks too large for my tastes, I find another cruise. 800 people would be too much for me to accept.

I too will be visiting Cartagena on a Monday, though not until next year. My research led me to this site: https://puertodeculturas.cartagena.es/agenda.asp You can put in your specific date to see what is open and what the hours will be. It was suggested to me that on days when large cruise ships are in town on Mondays, the major attractions operate, but on a more limited basis. Using the calendar feature on this site, it appears that all of the sites will be open for some period of time when you arrive on the 25th.

We have asked every time we have been on a Grand Class Dolphin Mini-Suite and have never been turned down.

For those keeping score at home, it was a beautiful day in Newport yesterday and the tenders were deployed without incident. (I am not on this cruise, but saw an update and even a video). I'm about an hour away from Newport and the weather here was beautiful yesterday. Looks like no adjustments to the itinerary needed so the lack of communication seems to have been fully justified.

What are you talking about? The ship leaves North America next week. And it will have a whole lot of sea days between leaving from Vancouver and arriving in Australia. Do you think that they are going to helicopter in the video games over the Pacific Ocean? Of COURSE this is a repurposing that has to take place in North America. The logistics of doing it elsewhere are just too much to deal with.

Was not a decision made by Princess. Let's not blame the blameless.

I have never heard this before nor seen it in practice.

All food at the IC is included in your fare, regardless of whether one has a package or not. It is just like going up to the Buffet area on a ship. In fact, much of the food served at the IC is also served up at the buffets during certain times of the day. Just think of the IC as a "mini-buffet." Coffee drinks are another thing altogether. If you have any sort of Package, all of the coffee drinks served at the IC coffee station will be included for you. If you are sailing without a Package, coffee (and espresso, latte, cappuccino, and any other coffee-based drink that has an Italian name) is priced by the cup.

And by comparison, a randomly chosen "entry level" cabin on Regent Voyager appears to have a similar layout to, but ever so slightly more square feet than a typical Mini-Suite on Princess. So if one wants more elbow room for a comparable price, a mass-market suite would appear to grant that. So maybe the real difference is the sense of space one senses outside of the cabin, and the level of food and wine served in the Main Dining Areas.

Seems as if these are getting harder and harder to come by with the new ship designs. ☹️

So "entertainment" puts a checkmark in the column of the larger ships. Makes sense. How does the size of a Princess (or Celebrity) suite compare to a comparably priced cabin on a luxury line?

On non-formal nights, does he not wear pants? 😲

Princess is touting the "Good Spirits At Sea" on Sun Princess as being a leveled up experience and the artist's rendering makes it look a bit more like Vines than the walk-up bar on earlier builds. So my guess, (and it is just a guess) is that GSAS will be the closest thing to Vines that the Sphere Class ships will have, and perhaps, ...just perhaps...those venues will carry a selection of wines that other venues do not have.

Pretty much all escargot served in restaurants (and cruise ships) comes out of large cans, fully cooked. They place one piece of meat in each of the wells of the special serving dish, ladle in some butter, garlic and salt, and top with bread crumbs and parsley. Maybe add some Sherry. Then bake to heat the contents of the dish. It's pretty hard to mess up the preparation, and equally hard to elevate it when using the canned snails. In the end, escargot is a "butter and garlic delivery system" and how can that be bad? 🤣

Maybe this is a question that deserves its own thread instead of asking it here, but since a primary focus of this thread is about "Suite Life" on PCL as compared to X, as a non-suite guest myself, I have often wondered...If one is going to spend that much money on a cruise and wants to be treated and fed like royalty, why does one choose a suite on a mass-market ship instead of cruising on a more upscale line like Regent or Oceania? I've always imagined that if my finances could handle paying that much for a cruise, I would pick an upscale line instead of a more expensive cabin on a mass-market line. But clearly there are many here who routinely choose the latter, and I'd love to get a sense of why as I'd love to learn from your experiences.

But the a la carte people are spending new money so they get different rules. Package people have already paid their money, and in terms of net outlay, not very much at that. The Packages didn’t increase in price when the change was made, so from an accounting standpoint, little to no money is allocated to the dining venue’s bottom line. Princess wants to increase revenue so it doesn’t want a person using up a seat with draining a credit or draining their wallet. While you cannot see treating the two classes of guests differently, clearly Princess does. And it can’t be a decision made randomly or out of spite. It is financial.

As consumers, we are looking at this in terms of pizza(s) being the commodity. As the seller, Princess looks at the seat(s) as being the commodity. A seat being used by someone not using their credit and not ordering a la carte is a lost sales opportunity for the seller as that seat could be used by someone either burning a credit or spending cash. So if a person with a Package uses a seat, they have to either use a credit or spend cash.

You will. But those often aren't worth the cost of a Latte. Still, you are entitled to those fees and I have no doubt that you will see them appear on your account at some point.

Here is the forecast for Newport on Sunday: Sun 17 | Day 76° Precipitation Chance 3% W10 mph Sunny, along with a few afternoon clouds. High 76F. Winds W at 10 to 15 mph. Humidity58% UV Index6 of 11

What makes you certain of this? Of course things can change, but as of right now, were the ship to depart NY on time at 5:00 on Saturday, the center of the storm would already be just south of the coast of Maine. The current tracking shows it to be east of Cape Cod at 8:00 am on Saturday, so by 5:00 pm it will be well north of that. By the time you are scheduled to arrive in Newport at 7:00 am on Sunday, the storm will be at the northern tip of Maine, well past the point of affecting Newport. Being from NJ, you know that once a hurricane or tropical storm passes, the following weather is usually clear and calm. Almost eerily so. By the time you are schedule to arrive at Boston just before noon on Monday, the storm's center is predicted to be right at the Provincial border of Quebec and Newfoundland. And by your Tuesday arrival in Bar Harbor, the storm will be well out to sea. So as long as the weather behind the storm is as calm as it typically is, I can't see any reason why you cannot make all the ports as scheduled. I certainly don't see any "guarantee" that a tender port will be missed. Now, no one can predict right now whether the storm will do damage to the infrastructure of the ports that might prevent a normal arrival. But short of on-shore damage, I really don't see the current itinerary and the current storm track as intersecting. And maybe this is the reason why Princess has been silent. It is entirely possible that they don't see a problem...yet.

It appears that all of this is true for regular Mini-Suites. But for the Cabana Mini-Suites, the bedf and sofa do get swapped as those cabins do not have the center stoarge unit. So using the deck plan grab used in the example earlier, if those cabins were Cabana Mini-Suites, 12626 would have the sofa near the cabana and 12624 would have the bed near the cabana. Edit to add: While PCL is touting these new, remarkable innovations, P&O has been using this design for quite a while now and there are dozens of cabin tours on YouTube of the Conservatory Suites. If you look at enough of them, (I have...), you will see that the bed and sofa get swapped. Once you know the cabin number and then go to a deck plan for the ship in question, it is pretty easy to figure out the pattern. I was looking for a Cabana Mini-Suite where the sofa was next to the cabana, and the direction of the bed as well as the sofa in the cabin and the sitting area in the cabana all allowed the users to lie down or sit facing the direction of travel. Wife hates traveling "backwards". I was able to find what I wanted on Sun.

WINNER! Lost in much of this back and forth is that these features cost NOTHING to the people who are buying packages. They had all of these features a month ago, and they will have these features a month from now, all at no cost.

I'm not sure that one can draw a straight line between pushing people to paid restaurants, serving poor quality food and passenger numbers. Ever hear of "in spite of, not because of"?