pandas4cheri

2 hours ago, Wachesawcruiser said:

Thanks to the group for the info on how to contact Princess for a M&G! Was able to reserve a space and lots of "Roll Callers" have signed up. How do I go about inviting ship officers? 

 

The email I received said to take a written invitation to Guest Services for anyone you would like to invite. I am inviting the Captain and Cruise Director, and asked in the invitation to please also bring any staff they can spare. We’ll see what happens!

Hooray!  Copying Diana Hall on my request seems to have done the trick.  She called and confirmed the date and time I requested for our Meet & Greet.  Thanks so much to all of you who stepped in to help me.  You are the best!!! 😍

4 hours ago, srice said:

My experience has been that I can ask for a place and time and usually they grant it.  Sometimes a certain venue isn't available at that time.

 

There is a lengthy discussion back in this thread about whom to contact.  Basically you e-mail grouponboardservices.princesscruises.com and give them your name, booking number, requested time and date, requested venue, and a current estimate of how many will attend.  They may want an updated estimate a couple of weeks before the event.  In my posting #171 I suggested you cc your request to a specific person who in that department who recommended that anyone having problems getting a response reapply and add her address in the cc.

 

Give it a try and let us know if it works.  If you don't get a reply within a week let us know here and I will contact them directly.

Thanks so much.  I will resend my request (4th time is the charm, right?) and cc: D. Hall.  Fingers crossed!

1 hour ago, rabin1 said:

You cannot pick a time and date and where Princess does that once you connect with them. They tell you all that info. It is easy to figure out the number of people all you do is design a spread sheet and & have those that wish to attend sign up. You then near the end tell Princess. Your really only have one job is to ensure everyone on your roll call knows about it. Some people like to do more for the event but that is all that is required. I just cancelled the one I was going to host as I got some not so nice posts about what I was going to do for the group

Best wishes

Thanks. I am happy to have them tell me where and when. I can’t even get them to respond. I have organized many M&G’s pre-Covid, but the contact I dealt with is no longer with Princess. Lots of things are different now. Thanks for trying to help. 

Can anyone help?  I have sent three emails to grouponboardservices@princesscruises.com to try to schedule a Meet & Greet on the Ruby Princess June 1 at 11:00 AM in Skywalkers Lounge.  I have not received any response and when I called Princess, no one had any idea what I was talking about.  It seems all the points of contact have moved on to other opportunities since "the pause".  Is there a secret phone number I should call?  Color me frustrated.  Thanks in advance!

50 minutes ago, 1025cruise said:

Might be best to ask on each roll call.

I have actually mentioned it already on both roll calls.  I thought there might be some folks out there who are not on the roll calls.  It was a long shot.

Hello everyone out there in cruising land!  (Or would that be sea???)  We are sailing on the Grand Princess for our first B2B in February 2020.  The first leg sails 2/11/20 r/t San Francisco to Mexico.  The second leg sails 2/21/20 r/t San Francisco to Hawaii.  We are members of the roll calls for both cruises, but is anyone else doing these two as back-to-back?  Just curious.

Hello, Dave Cole here. We get our rotations about a year out but they're always subject to change. Hope that helps!

So nice to see a CD on the boards! We are sailing with you on 12/10. I hope you can make it to one or both of our Meet & Greets. The first is 12/11 and the second is 12/18, both in the One5 at 2PM. We have over 50 people signed up to attend both. The second will include a white elephant gift exchange of tacky Mexican souvenirs. Hope you can join us!

I did a little research about the PVSA. If they dropped Ensenada for a mechanical malfunction, they would not have been granted an exception. The fine would have been $300 per passenger. That would have cost Princess almost $1M. I know they are spending more than that on the compensation package, but they have a bunch of very satisfied passengers.

As for how NCL avoids the foreign port - they have one ship under U.S. registry that sails the islands. They used to have three, but they deployed two elsewhere, re-registered them in Nassau or some such place, and renamed the ships.

I think Ensenada is an armpit, but I understand why they still have to stop there on the way back to S.F. The PVSA is an archaic piece of legislation, but I guess the decision-makers have bigger fish to fry.

Please join us on the Roll Call for the 12/10 sailing on the Grand. We have a friendly, lively group and have two meet & greets planned. We are all looking forward to this cruise so much! I spoke with Princess this morning, and they said that as of this moment, they expect our cruise to sail as planned.

Interesting to read all the folks on the 12/10 cruise following our adventure here…. we are doing a back2 back (this one and the 12/10) …you all will love the crew and the ship is still great.

 

 

 

we are having a great day today in Honolulu…..ship isn't scheduled to leave (we assume!) till 10PM…i expect an update from captain about 6PM... as the ship is pretty empty…. with some passengers watching DO HO impersonators this evening on shore….

 

 

 

briefly i saw the captain down on deck 4 early this morning and thanked him for his fine work in this matter…in all our cruises i have always been one of those guys who hopes the captain is spending his time driving the boat and not to overly concerned about shaking hands at the champagne waterfall…

 

 

 

for those of you from SF area…on the 12/10 turnaround day for us.. if you see a guy exiting the port in a hurry ….heading towards the "IN and OUT" burger thats me….i have never understood why we can't get one of their joints east of the Mississipi river…its just wrong.

I have not seen you on the roll call for the 12/10 sailing. Check us out! We are having two meet & greets - would love to have you join us!

I, too, will be boarding in SF upon your return. Hopefully, everything will be fixed and ready to go 12/10. (I know - none of you want to think about disembarkation!) It sounds like the captain and staff have provided everything they possibly could and more. There are always people ready to complain, even when things are just ducky. Let some force of nature or mechanical failure erupt, and they lose their stinking minds. You can usually spot those types as you are checking in on embarkation day. They are the ones complaining about the temperature of the complimentary beverages or the color of the ink used for the health screening documents. When we hear those folks, DH and I say a silent prayer, "Please Lord, don't put them at our dining table. PLEASE!"

Since the Splendor debacle, I pack a couple of small flashlights and some nutrition bars JUST IN CASE. Of course, since I have started doing that, I have never needed them. So, I will continue to pack them, to ensure nothing goes wrong. :D

Yes, you can use your coffee card to purchase specialty coffees when you are in the dining room. I like to end my meal with a decaf cappuccino. Mmm!

The coffee cards now have a space on the back where the staff writes the cruise number. The punches are good indefinately until used up, but now they say the free brewed coffee with the card is only good on the original sailing. Loved the comment about the small discount off a $150 CZ purchase, BTW :)