Ramblin Wreck Cruiser

We were on a waiting list for the BusyBus tour for several months. One day, just for grins, I tried booking it again, and suddenly there was availability. I booked it immediately. I never did get contacted by them about the wait list. So make sure you keep trying.

I’m not sure about this. I was told it was as easy as going to Guest Services and requesting the refund. But after seeing what @Hlitner and @duchess7 just said, I think it could be complicated. I guess I will print off my credit card statement to prove we paid. @duchess7, would you mind explaining how exactly you cashed out at the casino? We rarely go to the casino and don’t know how it works. Please explain it to me as if I am a child. 😅

Here is the end to my saga. This weekend, I wrote an email to the CEO as well as the Vice President of Guest Services and the Director of Customer Relations. I briefly explained what I’ve been through and that I have once again been charged for my reservations. I asked to have the $156 credited back to my credit card which seems to be a reasonable request. I just received a call from someone in Guest Services. She told me that while they are aware of the problem, there was nothing she could do to resolve it. If I want to keep my reservations, which I do, I will need to go to guest services once onboard and get it credited back to me in the form of refundable on-board credit. I will do this, but think it’s terribly unfair that I have to spend my time fixing their problem. I’m actually amazed that there is no way to get around this. While I won’t let this spoil my vacation, it certainly leaves a sour taste in my mouth regarding Princess Cruises.

Welp, joke’s on me! I just noticed two charges for $78 on my credit card. Sigh. Why is this so hard, Princess?

For anyone still following along, I thought I’d provide an update. As mentioned previously, I have been struggling to make specialty dining reservations which are included in our Premier package. I called Princess a total of four times and each time spoke to someone in the call center. The first three times, I was assured that my account would be updated or tweaked or something so that the system would allow me to make my reservations without being charged. Nothing ever seemed to work. The fourth time I called, I spoke with someone who could barely speak English, couldn’t understand my situation and basically said “sorry, I can’t help you.” In frustration, I finally reached out to my travel agent yesterday. I was trying to avoid bothering her over something so trivial, but I had run out of ideas. Today, I received an e-mail that she has secured my reservations. They actually show up on my app as well. So I guess my advice to anyone having the same issue, is to get your travel agent involved if you used one. If not, I don’t know what to tell you. The call center seems to be unable to do anything about it. Maybe this is somehow related to the new dining reservation system that has just been rolled out. Best of luck to all!

I just got off the phone with Princess again and it seems that nothing has changed. The person I spoke with could not even see any record of my call yesterday or any notes on my file that anything had actually been done. He did seem a little more competent than the person I spoke to yesterday, and was even aware of this issue with booking specialty dining. He said he did something to update my records and remind the system that I have the Premier package. He said it might take 24 to 48 hours for it to “fix” the situation. He also put documentation on my file so that future agents could see what it was that he did. I’m not exactly confident that this will work, but I will give it another 2 days before I escalate this. I know it’s a measly amount of money we are talking about, but at this point, it’s the principle of the matter. Princess knows about this issue and chooses to do nothing about it.

Here’s a quick update. I called Princess this morning and spoke to an agent who attempted to book my reservations for me. After a few minutes on hold, she came back and said that the system was trying to charge us again, but if we call back tomorrow, it should be fixed and we should be able to book without charge. We shall see! I will report back tomorrow. Again, this should not be that difficult. I can’t decide whether I think the IT department is just inept or if this is intentional by Princess. Perhaps they think a certain percentage of people won’t notice the charge or won’t jump through the hoops to get it fixed. Either way, it’s disappointing.

Thank you for sharing your experience. I suppose I could give this a try. I just feel that Princess should not make this so difficult.

Thank you. I did go all the way through the transaction and it was definitely going to charge me. As to the casino, I suppose that would take care of the OBC quickly! 😂

Thank you for your reply. Wow, that is so ridiculously difficult! It shouldn’t be so hard to do.

We are sailing on the Regal Princess on August 7 with the Premier package. We have two free specialty dinners and I was trying to book reservations in advance. My first attempt was done on the website. After making the reservation, I was charged for these dinners on our credit card. I cancelled the reservations and received a credit after 5 days. Now I am trying again with the app. After selecting Crown Grill, the page did specifically indicate that we have the Premier package with two free dinners. However after selecting the date and time I want, it indicated that I would be charged on my credit card. So I did not finalize the reservation. I’m not going through that again. Is there a trick to this? I do not want to be charged and then have to deal with getting a refund in the form of on-board credit. We already have more on-board credit than we know what to do with. Also, I don’t really want to wait until we are onboard to book, as we prefer an earlier reservation time and don’t want to be left with only later times to choose from. Is there a number I can call or do you have any other advice? Thank you in advance!

I just checked the fares again, and the discounted advanced fares are finally showing. 😃

Thank you all for your excellent advice. I believe we will just hop in a cab or two (we are two couples with large bags) and board the train at Waterloo. It seems like the simplest way. Changing at Clapham Junction sounds far too complicated to me. Thank you all again for your wealth of knowledge!

Wow, thank you! You have been very helpful. I will look into the National Express coach.

Thank you both for your replies. I’m a bit confused because the LNER site lets me choose Victoria to Southampton and it says there will be one or two changes of train depending on the time. So it is not as simple as this?

I have been checking daily for the last week for the fares to become available for our August 6 trip from London to Southampton. I am using the LNER site. I have read on this board that discount tickets should be available around 12 weeks before. Up until today,I kept getting a message that the fares were not available. Today, the fares became available, but the cheapest seems to be £54.50. This seems to be the walk-up fare, not a discount. Am I doing something wrong? Or maybe the discounted fares just haven’t been posted yet? On another note, we are staying at The Clermont Victoria. It looks to me that we can start the journey there and change trains at Waterloo. Is that correct and is it our easiest option? Thank you for your advice!

We did this last year. Our hotel was walking distance to the Venice train station. I can’t remember how we booked the train tickets, but it was easy to do online and very reasonable. The train station in Trieste was about a 15 minute or so walk to the cruise port. It was super easy to find our way using google maps.

We were on the Grand last summer to Alaska. There were free tokens in the laundry room for our use. I don’t know if that will be the case going forward though.

Sorry. Duplicate post

I so happy to see this live trip report! We will be on the Sky next summer for a cruise to the Norwegian fjords and Iceland. We are so excited to sail on this beautiful ship, since our 2020 cruise on her was cancelled. I also love that you have an aft balcony cabin, as we do too! I believe we are on the Dolphin deck. Please let us know how you like your cabin location. Safe travels and have a wonderful time!

We just booked a cruise with the premier package for next summer. Our primary reason for getting the premier package was that my husband prefers the higher end bourbons, but we were also enticed by the reserved seating in the theater. We had a very unpleasant experience years ago on a Princess cruise where we struggled to get a seat in the theater 45 minutes before the show. We eventually gave up and missed the show, which has never happened on any of our other cruises with other cruise lines. I do hope we can take advantage of the benefit that is included in the package that we have paid for without confrontation. We will definitely show up at least 15 minutes before showtime.

In the fine print of the flyer I saw, it states that it is for new bookings only. But maybe I misunderstood. In any case, I am grateful to my TA for the re-faring. JulyAugLTO-TA-eflyer_FINAL.pdf

We loved the Mt. McKinley Lodge. We did 2 nights at the Denali Lodge and 1 night at Mt. McKinley Lodge. We did not go into Talkeetna, because we were pretty tired from the bus trip and there wasn’t anything there that really appealed to us. There is a nice restaurant on site and we had a great evening enjoying the peaceful surroundings with cocktails and dinner. Although we didn’t sign up for a call about Denali, we still received a call the next morning saying Denali was visible. It was an unbelievable view. It was our best view of Denali the whole trip. I am very happy we chose to go there.

I saved over $2700 on our June 2024 Norwegian fjord and Iceland cruise. It’s the best price drop I’ve ever received. But, we just booked about a month ago and maybe those prices were just inflated to begin with. Edited to add that I know it was supposed to be for new bookings only, but my travel agent managed to get the price drop for us nonetheless.

Thank you!