20165

I think i need to be a little more specific with my initial question. We always tip the cabin steward and the MDR wait staff extra at the end of the cruise for excellent service which they always have provided for us. My issue is this particular cruise, we will probably only eat in the MDR once or twice because we are going to try as many speciality restaurants as we can and are signed up for the 360 experience. So what do you tip those folks at the end of dinner since we will only be there once? Also, the concierge is always a mystery for me. I have tipped by the request on some ships and it seemed was odd given no one else was, and ive tipped at the end of the cruise in one lump sum and that also didnt feel right. Any thoughts on this as to when and how much to tip? thanks

Yes, another tipping thread, but the one i was going to reply to was closed... Since most of our dinners are going to be in a different venue every night, what do people tip the wait staff for that particular night they eat in that restaurant? Also, do you tip the concierge daily or at the end of the cruise? I usually do it at the end, but on on last NCL cruise the seemed to want it daily or at least we saw others doing it as they requested something. Thanks and sorry, i know this is a touch subject but wanted to brush up on the norms...

Did you do expedited or regular service? Thx

Great, thank you. I was missing the dec 1 criteria... Thanks again

Ive read conflicting info on this, but from what I have gathered, the 360 Dining experience is not included if you are a suite passenger or part of the premium package. Correct? thanks in advance.

I dont think the original poster was questioning the value of the package but rather some of the challenges they were having with charging multiple drinks to one person, drinks that were over the limit, etc. I think its a no brainer that the packages make sense, even for light drinkers.

Is this really that common? In our 30+ cruises, we have never been upgraded other than one where we put in bids for upgrades. We have been traveling with 2 cabins, on for us one for our kids for the last 15+ years, so maybe that lowered our chances of being upgraded?

Its not a matter of coming out ahead for us but rather not having to stand in the guest services line every days to get charges corrected like we did on MSC who screwed something up pretty much daily. If there are ways to avoid that on princess, we are all for it.

Wow, glad i read though this thread because we would have definitely had an issue on our princess cruise in April. We werent aware there was a 15 drink limit on princess and when we order drinks, we usually only give the bartender 1 card, i guess medallion in this case, so we would definitely go over, especially sea days. So it sounds like my wife and i need to order our own drinks which probably isnt that big of a deal, except for at dinner because they typically ask me for 1 card so we will need to make sure they take both of our medallions. Also, that 15 drink max per person its easy to find on the princess website. If you read through the plus/premium descriptions it doenst mention it. It is in the FAQ section though.

Thanks everyone, kinda a freakout moment. I did check online and the options to defer to another date are 2 years in the past... I think ill also send in the paperwork just in case because their system seems a bit buggy. thanks again

Well, i got a jury summons today for the middle of the week we are suppose to be cruising. Trying to get it deferred so fingers crossed. Anyone else have this situation and were you able to work it out to get it deferred. We are only about a month and a half out and i thought we got more notice than that for these things. Guess not... We did purchase the insurance, thank god, so i think i can reschedule it if for some reason they wont defer it, but would really rather not because out next window of opportunity will probably be toward the end of this year. Talk about some bad luck. What are the chances of this happening?? thx

Thank you and thats exactly our thinking. We are trying to figure out what upgrades are really worth it to us. I think we decided on the owner suite and penthouse aft facing to bid on. Other than that, our current cabin is perfect. We had a similar one on NCL and it was wonderful. Super big and the location wasnt an issue for us. Probably a benefit for us to get a bit of exercise to the different areas... thx for the info

Sorry and duh, of course cancellations. I realized that shortly after posting my response... Very happy with our current cabin, but we dont consider some of the cabins that we are allowed to upgrade to to be an upgrade to our current cabin. At least in our opinion. Would rather keep our forward premium vs. a side penthouse. However, we are interested in the aft penthouse so we are figuring out our new bids. thanks

Thank you, nice loooong read. But what i didnt see, and admittedly didnt read all 83 pages verbatim, was how any upgrades are available if you cant currently book them. For example, when i i called a couple days ago, i told them i wanted the highest suite level, with the exception of the sky suite... The best they could give me was the forward premium suite which i took, but how would anyone get upgraded above that given thats the highest level that was left when i booked? I did put in a bid for the owners suite and penthouse aft facing, but it seem moot given you cant book them. Am i missing something?

thank you and we didnt realize the owners suite was above the nightclub. Been there done that on other ships and we could hear the thumping most of the night, im sure this ship has better insulation, but not going to chance it. Especially since it looks like the aft penthouse suites look very similar in size and location. You hit on our main debate point last night with the penthouse suites that are along the side of the ship across from the lounge vs the forward premium suite we currently have. They actually look smaller than what we have although much close to the lounge. Thanks for the info.

So we upgraded to a premium suite, S5 forward facing cabin, B102, and the upgrade offers went way down so we are debating if we want to put in another upgrade offer. The penthouse actually looks a little smaller than the cabin we currently have with the exception of penthouse aft facing. Does anyone know if those are wrap around balconies? If so, that may be worth a bid for us. Also the owners suites also look pretty much the same. Any thoughts on putting in a bit for one of those vs. just keeping our S5? The balcony isnt great on our current suite, however, the balconies on the penthouse and owners suites dont look that good either with the exception of the aft facing one if that is truly a wrap around. Any info is greatly appreciated because the bid prices are so low now, we are worried about winning something that may not be as good as what we already have. Thanks

Thanks everyone. 11ish would be perfect and we arent overly concerned about the room being ready, just dont want to sit in the hotel lobby or the terminal for 2ish hours... Thanks agian

Wow, huge difference. Example, the max bid to go from our current premium suite to a penthouse is $95 per person. To go from ours to an owners suite max bid is $650pp. I dont remember what they were prior to us upgrading our current room, but it was in the thousands. Especially the owners, i think the max bid was like $2500pp.

We are traveling on Enchanted princess in april and read that suite passengers have gotten on as early as 10:30. Has anyone had recent experience of this? We are thinking about staying at a hotel that i dont have a good status with so late checkout may not be available. It would be great just to get on the ship around 11 when we have to check out. Thanks

I cancelled them this morning then went back in to see if the offer amounts changed to give me better chances and they haven't yet. But it also shows me being able to make offers on cabins below my current level so my guess is it hasn't updated with the new cabin info yet. When i booked a few weeks ago, it took a little over 24 hours to be able to get into the system to make offers so my hope is that it will update by tomorrow and ill try again. However, when we did upgrade last night, we got the highest that was still available, S5 so everything else above that may already be booked. We are only about 2 months out from the cruise. Thanks

Hi, we recently upgraded our mini suite to a premium suite but we already had bids in for upgrades. Do we need to do that again now that we have an upgraded room? I want to give it a day or two, but im going to assume they will cancel our bids for anything below we we currently have?? Also, should the bids on the penthouse or owners suite bids go down given our current cruise cost has gone up quite a bit? Thanks

So this is pretty specific, but we are trying to rack up more activity on out next cruise in the casino to see if we can get some casino offers in the future and from what i have read, its not how much you spend but rather how much time / cycles you spend in there. So, that being said, the only thing in the casino i can play for any length of time is video poker and i prefer it to be at the bar. A lot of ships have it built into the bar so im wondering if that's the case with Enchanted. thanks

This is very cool and i wish i saw it before i got the watch band option... for $10, ill give it a try on our april cruise. Better than wearing and apple watch on one wrist and the medallion on the other. thx for the info

Thanks for the info everyone, and we have made final payment. The cruise is 60 days out. We booked the 360 experience and we just assumed it wasnt included in the package because it is pricy. $149 per person. So we went the whole way through the booking process and it did charge my credit card the $300ish cost for 2 people. Got the notification from AMEX shortly after booking. So we tried to book the catch next, and it also wanted to charge us for that as well so we didnt go the whole way through the booking process. We're trying to not rack up too many issues that we have to spend time in guest services to resolve. We had a nightmare on MSC last year with random charges that i spent no less than 2 hours in guest services to try to get resolved to no avail. Thank goodness for AMEX allowing us to deny charges.

so the other half dont get charged pre cruise?