JimmyVWine

I'm no expert in the ways and means of hospitality booking, but it seems to me that the cost to Princess for making these overbooking mistakes is actually higher than finding out that they have a few unsold cabins a week or two before sailing and selling those cabins at an absolute dirt-cheap price to Travel Agents, Drop and Go customers or friends and family. Filling a few empty Balcony cabins from an "undersold cruise" for $300 each at the last minute seems way better than what the cost of these Move Over offers is for "oversold" cruises. How is overselling more financially advantageous than underselling?

Stage One of "The Future State": Order monstrosity. Divest dessert of all extraneous pastry, candy and sugar into a nearby bin: Stage Two of "The Future State": Someone without a Package follows close behind you:

Looking forward to your observations.

I had some rewards points on one of my credit cards and one of the reward options is the purchase of various gift cards. I searched and indeed one of the choices was Princess. I only had enough points for a $25 card but I went ahead and got one to use as OBC. I opted for an e-card. When it arrived by e-mail and I printed it out I noticed that right on the page you print it says that the card can be used on board only and must be redeemed at the passenger services desk. Since my cruise is already fully paid I didn’t check to see if this could have been used to pay down the cruise fare itself. I suspect that it could. But as far as using it to buy OBC, the card itself suggests that phoning to do so would be futile.

Cutting and pasting from an earlier discussion. I just printed out tags for our next cruise, and I tried all of the methods on this thread to see what would work best and to report back. Using Edge instead of Chrome got me the proper size tags and it didn't matter if I printed directly from the screen showing the tags or if I printed them after selecting the "Print Luggage Tag" command, or if I saved them as a PDF first and then printed them. All gave me the long tags with no customization needed. However, if you print directly from the screen instead of using the "Print Luggage Tag" command, your printout will have a header and footer that you may not want. The header is a date and time stamp and says "Luggage Tag: Princess Cruises" in small type and the footer is the URL Coder of the web page. Using Chrome, the tags started out as the short ones irrespective of whether I printed straight from the screen or if I printed after using the "Print Luggage Tag" command, or if I saved them as PDFs. But this can be fixed. Use the "Print Luggage Tag" button. When the Print dialogue box opens, look to see if the Print Preview of your tag is filling up the page, or is much shorter than that. If it is the latter, then in the dialogue box find the dropdown for "More Settings". Open that up and go to "Scale". It is probably set to "Default". Change it to "Custom" and then enter a number that will cause your tag to fill up the length of the page, or nearly so. For me, using the number "145" does the trick. Not sure if this will be the number for everyone, but play around with it until your tag gets to be the size that you want.

It's still a math exercise. As pointed out in an earlier post, it's not as if people who don't drink alcohol don't drink other things instead. As far as I can tell, the No Alcohol package ($39.99 per day plus 18%) + Balcony gratuity ($16) + WiFi ($10) comes out to $73.19 per day. And you can get all of that for $60 per day by getting Plus. If you'd rather save money, get Plus. And if you think that you are only going to spend around $20 per day on non-alcohol drinks, don't get a package. ($23.60 + $16 + $10 = $49.60) It's not as if people who are buying packages are getting a discount on tips and WiFi and you are not. The math certainly supports Princess adding another package at $50 per day, but it's not as if that bundle is going to work out to be a tremendous savings. But apparently it would make others feel more included and heard, so I suppose it can't hurt to do it.

They have one. It is the Zero Alcohol Package.

We were on Regal in 12/19 (Caribbean) and there was a very nice wine tasting of Italian wines for $25 paired with small bites. The wines ranged from good to very good and the event was well worth the price. We were on Regal in 10/22 (Med) and there was nothing at that time that was remotely similar.

I’m not sure I understand your math. If a person does not drink alcohol, then they just spend 5-10 minutes doing the math, estimating what their on board expenditures will likely be and comparing that to a package. If “pay as you go” works out better, do that. If a package works out better, do that. Princess is not “forcing” anyone to do anything other than a small amount of 3rd grade math homework to see where the better bargain lies.

The kids club areas are the dedicated spaces for the particular age groups. There are no other areas that are specifically allocated for children (such as an arcade) though there certainly are areas that kids would enjoy while supervised such as pools, sports courts, putting green and on occasion, organized activities in the Piazza. That said, some of these things that I mentioned may not be what a 4 1/2 year old would be interested in as much as he would be in the offerings in the club. Also, as you know, Alaska is very port intensive and even the sea days are designed to be highly scenic and wildlife focused. A 4 1/2 year old will be plenty entertained by the cruise itself with the club serving as a sufficient alternative.

Even without a formal night you can still break out your finest duds.

Ordinarily I could never imagine capping out on my 15 drinks per day on the Plus Package. But in your circumstance, I could see 15 drinks being a little light! So glad you made it. Enjoy!!

Heavens no. It is supposed to be made with tenderloin (same cut as Filet Mignon).

See post #23 above.

I think you are misreading what I posted. Invert it. If all others are tied for first, they are tied for “first worst”.

Well, with well over 50 cookbooks on my shelves, I only found one with a recipe for Beef Wellington and that book is from the early 70's. And I wouldn't follow that recipe on a dare. It called for roasting the tenderloin in the oven to an internal temperature of 130 before wrapping it in pastry and baking. So the meat is overcooked before it even gets wrapped! And it omits the duxelles completely and uses canned pate as the coating layer. No ham. But no amount of even the finest Prosciutto could save this recipe. It was from "Better Homes and Gardens."

Princess has the second worst internet at sea. All other cruise lines are tied for first. Their claim may be true, but that is sort of like being the fasted turtle in the race.

Same. It’s a tough dish to scale up for 700 people. Best for a small dinner party.

This is correct. Though with recent issues involving the ethics of foie, the pâté is not nearly as common as it once was. As for the Parma ham, I have to say that I’ve never seen that. Lousy weather this weekend so maybe I’ll spend some time with my cookbook collection.

This is the traditional way of making it. I know of no other way even if it is being scaled up for a crowd. Could be that the tenderloin is blasted in a really hot oven or broiler in large quantities instead of pan seared before being encased in the pastry.

It is a mixture called duxelles which is a minced mixture of mushrooms or mushroom stems, onions or shallots, herbs such as thyme or parsley, and black pepper, sautéed in butter and reduced to a paste. Cream is sometimes used as well, and some recipes add a dash of madeira or sherry. The cooled paste is laid on the rolled out pastry and then the seared beef tenderloin is placed on the duxelles. The pastry gets wrapped and folded around the meat and baked. The Italians??? Hmmmm. Who else frequently uses pork in cooking? Portuguese. Spaniards. Germans. Chinese. Hawaiians. Vietnamese. Nigerians. Go anywhere in the world and you will find pork used for cookings. “The Italians” aren’t trying to slip anything past you.

Also, while not a full blown meal, the International Cafe will have some savory foods available. Maybe a panini or two. Or shrimp salad or chef’s salad. Avocado toast. Stuff like that.

Depends from whose perspective you are evaluating the good/bad idea. Great idea for Princess. Bad idea for customers. Provide people with grats, drinks and WiFi for $50 per day—good for Princess. Provide grats, drinks, WiFi and toadstool sandwiches with arsenic sauce coupled with root canals for $60 per day—even better. It looks like the customer is getting even MORE for their money, but if no one partakes in the sandwiches and dental treatments, there is no overhead and the return on investment for Princess is pure profit. Now, more people will bite on the desserts and fitness classes than they would the toadstool sandwiches and root canals. But not by much.

Maybe you did this, but we found that you have to put in some steps to get what you desire. Where many bars reported being “out” of certain brands, other bars had what we were looking for. (Regal 10/22). The Wheelhouse Bar always had Hendricks. In fact, when looking for higher level spirits, the WH was always the best place to check. Followed by Vines. The outdoor bars were the worst.

I don’t spend any time reading any other cruise line boards on CC but out of curiosity, are there any lines where the loyalists are routinely posting: “I’m so happy that there haven’t been any cutbacks since the restart”? It might be that you will have to pay luxury cruise line prices to get what the mass market cruise lines used to provide. For some that will be a good trade. For others, paying mass market prices still works even if the Fettuccine Alfredo has now transmogrified into Lasagna.