LACruiser88

We are now 72 hrs away from our departure from home to Madrid. Later today, we will be doing a dry run with our luggage as 95% of our things are out. It looks a bit daunting seeing all of the items to be packed, but Debbie assures me that it will all fit into our scheduled four checked bags! Flying BC, we each get to check two bags up to 70 lbs each. We have prepared for chilly Madrid and also if we hit a warm stretch as we did on last year's Med cruise. Countdown continues....

Usually the best meal of our cruise!

No, offering the suite breakfast to the most travelled passenger onboard (regardless of their cabin category) has been in place for years.

It has been our experience that ships will frequently use outdated fliers/brochures. The ships are slow to receive the newest versions of their fliers/brochures. Not good marketing. 🤷‍♂️

The suite breakfast is only offered to the most traveled onboard, #2 & #3 do not.

I have been busy this morning answering questions re: bus service from Livorno to Pisa and Florence, on the two separate roll calls from our voyage. I recommended asking questions and answers here for the sake of simplicity. Below is my input regarding the bus shuttles to Pisa and Florence. Going on how it was handled this past November, they had several buses going to Pisa and several buses going to Florence. They all left between 9:00 am and 10:00 am. I do not recall them making continuous round-trips throughout the day??? The bus to Florence takes around 80/90 min's each way. The bus to Pisa took about 30 min's each way. You catch the bus right where the ship shuttle bus drops you off in Livorno. No need to pre-book, pay at the time. The tour company drops you off in Florence for a DIY day. They will give you a time to return to the bus and returns you to the same ship shuttle bus stop. Here is the web site of the company running the buses. https://www.city-sightseeing.it/livorno/

Stateroom Upgrade Bids: Several folks on the roll call for the first segment of our voyage have reported successful bids from a balcony to a mini-suite over the past two days. Hopefully, there are more to come!

A couple of days ago, someone on our roll call for the Nov 12th, Enchanted, 26 day, Med/TA, posted that their bid was accepted for a mini-suite (from a balcony).

Along with Curtis Stone's 5 year contract...

Prior to his firing last year, I would mail the letters to Mario Seibaldi, VP of Guest Services. Now I mail them directly to the head guy below: John Padgett, President of Princess Cruises 24305 Town Center Drive Santa Clarita, Ca 91355

We frequently write letters of commendation for specific crew members and mail them to the corporate office. We almost always receive a return thank you letter from corporate. We also frequently hear back from the crew member that they received a copy of our letter and that they received special recognition.

For a long-time now we plan on it taking 72 hrs. If laundry is returned sooner, we are pleasantly surprised. 🙂

I'll check that out once we are onboard.

Wow! The longest we have had to wait for laundry to be returned has been 72 hrs.

Our Medallions have arrived!

We are still a week away before leaving for Madrid and Debbie has clothes and "stuff" all over the house. We will be checking 4 bags and will have a carry-on bag and a small backpack. Debbie loves her shoes and likes to have outfit "options" (and jewelry options too!) 🤷‍♂️ Luckily, we are flying BC and we get to check 4 bags at no extra cost! Happy wife, happy me! 🤣

We download movies to our devices at home, before leaving for the cruise. You can never count on the internet onboard to be able to download movies, it usually takes for EVER!

Congratulations on being Numero Uno! We are currently at 790 days and we have never been in the top three. 🤷‍♂️

We always bring these, they work great!

Oh, no! So sorry to hear this. Wishing you a successful surgery and recovery. 🙏

Below is a link to a recent thread that is on topic...

Those mini-suites are usually the last to sell because they are right under the Lido deck. The Lido deck is a busy place and noise can be an issue. We will be on the Enchanted in a couple of weeks and prefer the mini's on the Rivera deck, mid-forward, which have cabins above and below.

Hi Marcia, Debbie says hello! See you soon...

Having been on many TA's, we have never had so many Elite's onboard as we have had on the TA's. On one of our TA's more than half the ship were Elite and laundry took forever to get back.

It is going to be chilly for our week in Madrid. At least the rain situation looks better, it has been raining all of this week.