mollygirl

I got the offer as well.  I only owe $240 since it was a casino offer and my share of the Cruise price was low.  We paid an additional $399 each to upgrade to a balcony for a cruise in late  March 2021 on the  Eurodam.  So if I take option 3, we will get 10% off plus $250 OBC added.  That brings our OBC to $650.  The offer says OBC cannot be used for gratuities.  It was always included in the past.  Not too happy about that!

I received this offer and all I can say is be careful, very careful.  My offer was for a free inside with $100 free play and drinks in the casino.  I called and booked an 11-night out of Ft Laud for March 2021.  The offer said  upgrades available.  Ocean view from $99 and Veranda from $199.  I obviously didn’t pay attention to the word ‘from’ and asked to be upgraded to a veranda thinking it would be an extra $199 per person, and the agent I booked with had the same understanding during our conversation.  Well, they made up the booking and included an upcharge of $599 per person for the veranda!  Plus we had to pay $200 each for the deposit to be returned as OBC on the sailing, plus taxes and port fees.  The total had to be paid at the time of booking.  I failed to have the veranda upcharge clarified and told the agent to go ahead with the charge (big mistake!).  After seeing the numbers on the booking confirmation, my husband said no way are we paying that much for a veranda upcharge, so I tried to cancel the booking to find we would not get back $238 of our money as that amount was not refundable.  Since we didn’t want to lose that amt, we switched to a 7-night with an upcharge of $399 per person for the veranda, which I feel is still too much.  But my husband wanted to be able to have fresh air in the cabin with all this virus stuff going on.   So for a 7-night Cruise, we ended up having to pay $1746.  Would you consider that a free cruise?  Sorry for the length of this but I wanted to explain everything.  Lesson learned for me!

7 minutes ago, ontheweb said:

I think it depends on your state laws. We did the same thing with our summer cruise with Princess that just had a refundable deposit. Our TA mentioned that since there was nothing at stake, according to the law in our state NY, we would also get the insurance back if we cancelled. The insurance, since we are both senior citizens, was more than the deposit.

 

When we cancelled, the TA took care of informing the insurance company, and I received an e-mail that it would be considered and would take 15-20 business days for a decision. 20 days later (14 business days) later, I received an e-mail that the refund was approved and would show up on our credit card but might take 5-10 business days. It actually showed up 4 days (2 business days) later.

Great - Thanks for sharing!

Thanks for your replies.  Very helpful.  I will be getting the amount paid to insure my deposit  back from John Hancock.  I do need to email them my cancellation notification from Princess along with my booking confirmation showing that the deposit was paid and that it was fully refundable.  The folks at John Hancock were great!  Another good thing about them is you can insure just your deposit in order to get the preexisting conditions waived and then when you make final payment, call them and increase your coverage and pay any additional amount due.  Not many allow for that.

I know I can get my answer by calling the travel insurance company, but am curious to hear your responses.  We have 2 cruises booked for next year that we plan to cancel.  We purchased outside travel insurance just for the deposit amount to be able to waive existing medical conditions with the intent of adding to it after making final payment.  The two cruises are with Princess and the deposits are fully refundable.  So would we get a refund from the travel insurance company since the trip will be cancelled and we won’t be turning in a claim to recover our deposits?  My assumption is No.  Thanks for your input.

Great tips!  I am on board right now anchored off Grand Cayman enjoying my morning coffee!  It’s a beautiful day!  Am in an a partially obstructed balcony on Emerald deck.  Lifeboat on bottom half but I don’t mind.  It is good to have fresh air.  Plan to watch Judy under the stars tonight on MUTS!  My 29th Princess Cruise with 3 more booked in the next year.  Just recently joined this group and am enjoying it!  Go Princess!! 

6 hours ago, Steelers36 said:

My guess is the "first drink free each cruise" promotion will continue at least until the entire fleet is Medallion Class.

Sure hope so - that will be a long time! 🚢😀❤️

1 minute ago, Jeter02 said:

I practically lived on the Regal for the past five years. That was my baby loved everything about her. This guy is stunning and gorgeous. I love the new interior decor throughout the entire ship on the sky it now has a more contemporary and elegant vibe to it, giving it a very classy looks and I love. if you love the Regal in Royal you're going to fall deeply in love with this guy. The only thing I do miss is the old retreat pool setup with a little alcove right before you enter the retreat with all the seating area there. The shows done in the theater by the princess singers and dancers are absolutely amazing like none other. Love to rock opera, five skies was such a unique and fantastic show as well. the food is phenomenal my only downfall with the food was on the lido deck I found the Regal to be better with presenting a different variety of food daily for like lunch with different cuisine things which this guy doesn't seem to do. But the crew are fantastic the decor and layout of the ship is beautiful love the room of the new jazz lounge take five. The Vista lounge looks extra spiffy and elegant. And the new princess live I love that they brought back that explorer lounge feel it is so stunning. I think once again you will definitely fall in love with the ship. I'm sailing on her in February and one more time in March. have a couple of feelings on some of the older princess ships this summer and then on to the enchanted as my new home.

Great info - Thanks!!

2 minutes ago, Jeter02 said:

Yes the first drink is still free of charge. I was on the sky as well for Christmas and New year's and going back in less than three weeks.

Great!  How was the Sky for you?  How would you compare it to the Royal or Regal?

Voljeep - Yay!  What did you think of the Sky?  I will be sailing on the Sky in 3 weeks!

Shortly after the OceanNow drink ordering was launched, the first drink ordered with the app was free.  I was able to get my first drink free in Oct on the Crown.  Does anyone know if you can still get the first one free?  Thanks!

Thanks everyone - very helpful information.  

If a cruise is cancelled after final payment with no insurance or Princess protection, will the taxes and port fees be refunded?  Thanks!

30 minutes ago, Gigi1977 said:

The verandas on NS have nice glass enclosed showers. No tubs. 

We saw a video on YouTube filmed in a Spa cabin on the NS and it had a tub.  Maybe they are only in the Spa cabins?

We leave on Jan 12 on the Nieuw Statendam.  We had a VE Verandah guarantee and were given a VQ Spa Verandah 10021.  This appears to be an upgrade although I'm not sure these cabins are that much better.  We normally prefer cabins toward the back of the ship.  Curious for those that have had one of these cabins.  Did you like it?  What did you like about it?  Was it really windy on the verandah while at sea?  Is the spa showerhead any better than the regular ones? We have been on the Koningsdam and loved the shower in a regular Verandah cabin.  Is there a tub or an enclosed glass shower?

Thanks everyone!

Does Holland offer any discounts or onboard credit for veterans?  I know that Princess is very generous with OBC for every cruise.  Thanks!

16 hours ago, Hlitner said:

I can actually answer your question :).  We were on the Regal for her crossing from Copenhagen in September and again on the Regal on Nov 1 for her 10 day cruise from NYC to Ft Lauderdale.  And then we went on the Divina (Yacht Club) at the end of November for 21 days.  During our Copenhagen to NYC cruise on the Regal, the Internet service was fantastic (the best we have had on any ship).  By home standards you might say it was slow, but by cruise ship standards it was amazing with relatively little lag.  The service on the Divina was almost the same (we did not actually do any testing).  On both ships we were able to use Facetime with no problem and data flowed quite nicely for a ship.   Ironically, when we again cruised on the Regal (Nov 1 from NYC) the Internet service was not nearly as good as it was 3 weeks earlier.  Go figure.

 

As to equating Gigabytes to speed, it is just not a valid comparison.  If the speed is slow, you are going to use fewer Gigs per minute.   We do think that getting packages based on Gigs is a lot fairer then paying for time.  But as to how many Gigs you need, it will depend on what you do and for how long.  If you want to stream videos it will quickly eat up your time.  If you are simply using E-Mail, make a few phone calls (via Internet), and do some browsing...those Gigs will go a long way.  If you are a young person who must spend every waking second on social media.....nothing will satisfy you other then unlimited :).

 

More and more lines are changing to a Gig standard or unlimited packages.  Time packages make little sense on ships since it can sometimes take 5 minutes to simply log-in.  What I really liked about MSC was that we could buy a package that covered multiple devices so DW and I could be online at the same time.  But we do not cruise to spend our time online, so we actually left the ship with several Gigs of unused data.  I should add that we have T-Mobile which works on just about every island and in most countries.  So, when we were close to or on an island we simply used shore-based servers (which cost us nothing  extra with T-Mobile).

 

Hank

Thanks Hank. Great response!

Thanks everyone- You guys (and gals) are great at answering questions!

We have recently been on the Caribbean Princess and Regal Princess.  They claim to have the fastest WiFi at sea now with their new MedallionNet.  Anyone on this board that has recently cruised on one of those Princess ships and also had internet on the Divina?  If so, how did the two compare?  I found the Princess speed to be quite good.  Thanks.

Will be cruising soon on Divina.  I have the option of purchasing 3.5 GB of standard Internet for $74.90 for an 11-night cruise.  My questions:

1. 3.5 GB of data translates to how much Internet time?  Minutes?  Hours?  Most cruise lines give a time amount and not GB.

2. Cost of $74.90 for standard Internet for up to 2 devices.  So can just one of us purchase the plan, or are both required to purchase?

3. Is the Internet worth having on this ship?  Is it terribly slow?  Or adequate?

Thanks all!

15 minutes ago, NCTribeFan said:

Although there was smoking allowed in part of the casino (and, naturally, the smokers on that side didn't restrict themselves to the smoking area and walked around with lit cigs), the side with the tables was totally nonsmoking and there are slots on that side as well.  No smoking at the casino bar, either, which certainly helped.  There was much less smoke than any other ship casino I've been in.  I mostly sail Carnival and they've taken a huge step back by now allowing smoking everywhere in their casinos. 

 

Ha, no, I'm a Browns fan.  And they actually won a few games this year even though I didn't really want them to draft Mayfield (I hope he's just immature and not really just a total egotistical jerk) but have to admit, he's better than we've seen in a very long time!

Browns fan here as well.  I think Mayfield has potential - time will tell.  At least they finally had a decent season.  I remember the good old days with Bernie Kozar and Vinny Testaverde.  

1 hour ago, Reds4life said:

As far as the slots, I was on Divina on 2017 and Adventure of the Seas in 2018 and Divina was definitely the better ship for slot payout. Plus, the casino was non-smoking. I'm not a huge slot player, so I appreciated the free $3 per day during the "happy hour" in the morning usually. I'm not sure if they still do that though. 

Can you explain the “free $3 per day”?  I am not familiar with that.  Thanks.

3 hours ago, NCTribeFan said:

I was on Divina in December (my first on MSC).  Unfortunately, the Sports Bar is rather small, understaffed, and incredibly LOUD when folks are in there specifically to watch a game.  Good burgers, though!

 

I went one night to watch MNF, but left at halftime and went to the cabin to watch the 2nd half (and my alma mater was in a bowl game at the same time).  The cabin had ESPN and ESPN2, so both games were on, and in English.

 

The slots were like they are on every ship.  Mostly tight but some people seemed to be winning (not me!).  I did better at Roulette, which rarely happens, but I'm a conservative player.  Still, I didn't spend my entire gambling allowance, which is a "win" in my mind.   It was an 11-night sailing, so 2000 points needed for their future discount.  I didn't even reach 1000 and they actually post your table points to your card periodically (which the others lines I've sailed do not, & you never really know where you stand).

Dear NC - Thanks for the good info!  Hoping to catch some of the NFL playoff games on the 20th.  I will check to see if they will be on ESPN.  Don’t know if you are a Bears fan, but that loss sure was painful to watch!  Will try my luck in the casino, but money sure can fade fast in there.  Kind of takes the fun away in my opinion.  My 1st MSC cruise out of 50+ cruises - should be interesting.

Thanks for your replies.  Will hope for decent coffee ☕️.  Happy cruising!!

I will be on my first MSC cruise in two weeks and have a few questions about the Divina:

1. Do they show the NFL games?  If so, on the cabin TVs?  Elsewhere?

2. How is the coffee in the buffet and dining room?  Is it made from ground coffee or the concentrated liquid?

3. How are the slots in the casino?  Good, bad, or forget about it?

Thanks everyone!