PTMary

Can anyone identify what company Princess uses for their Zodiac Whale Watching excursion? I'm trying to compare the prices of the ship's excursion to booking it ourselves. Thanks! Note: I also posted this to the Hawaii Ports of Call forum.

Can anyone identify what company Princess uses for their Zodiac Whale Watching excursion? I'm trying to compare the prices of the ship's excursion to booking it ourselves. Thanks!

And I don't get the logic of some people visiting areas with differing customs and then deliberately ignoring, challenging or ridiculing those customs. Isn't it an important aspect of travelling to experience the customs of those new places? Yet, here come all the "we don't do tipping in my country, so I will complain about it and refuse to participate" people whining about one of these customs as if it is beneath them. I just don't get the entitlement attitude of you people.

Depends on when you board. If in the first group so to enjoy lunch onboard, then no. If later in the afternoon near departure time, then yes. Generally, expect cabins to be unavailable until around 1:00 pm. It's important to note that the people who indicated their rooms were available upon boarding did not say when they boarded. I suspect they boarded later in the afternoon, a crucial detail that was left out.

Just to clarify, we're doing Hawaii in March on Royal out of San Francisco. The excursions have been available for booking for three or four months already. The ones we have booked have already appeared on our charge card statement. Strange that on some closer cruises excursions aren't available. 😕

Couldn't agree with you more! And based on the home country of the people who remove the service charges, and sometimes even brag about removing them, it seems that it's always people from the same three English speaking countries who are the worst offenders. NCL used to, and may still, require a passenger to send in a form AFTER the cruise ended with their reasons for having the service charges refunded. That reduced those "remove for poor service" requests by almost 85%! I applauded NCL for blocking these selfish people from stiffing the very people who worked so hard to make their cruise as enjoyable as possible. For those cheapskates who at the end of the cruise claim that service was so poor, or their room was not maintained, or what ever weak excuse the can conjure up, I can not understand why they would endure any poor service for the entire cruise only to try to remove the service charges at the very end of the cruise. Anyone who does that has a screw loose - or several. Or they are just lying because they are cheap.

The vast number of scheduled cruises go as planned - probably 95+%. There is more of a chance of you changing or cancelling for your own reasons than the cruise line causing the issue. Cruises are not remotely similar to an airline flight. Airline schedules are much more fluid due to weather, mechanical, or staffing issues. A cruise ship schedule is quite complicated and takes months to arrange, while an airline's schedule can be easily changed on an hour's notice. And, a cruise ship can still function with one or two staff short, but an airplane can't function with two of the flight crew unavailable.

We're 8 months out and we have already booked a couple of excursions. We are spreading them out so we don't have to pay for all of them on one charge card bill. As for the error, perhaps you haven't set up a payment method yet? Or are missing some passenger information that is needed to complete an excursion booking, such as age or passport info? I am only guessing. I have never had any issues with excursions, but we always have all of our passenger information loaded to the cruise booking.

Search for websites that will collect your desired destination, cruise line and cabin category and they will submit your needs to competing travel agencies. They are similar to an insurance broker who shops for the best rates. Unfortunately, Cruise Critic rules forbid us to mention who these brokers are. In a matter of a few days you will receive offers by several of these agencies. One of them that contacted me offered an itinerary and cabin category that Princess had listed on their website for $9,199, but for the total cost of only $7,350. Their agency only offered $80 OBC instead of Princess' $100, but it was worth it for the savings I gained. That agent/agency has high rating from customers, something I checked before going with them for my booking. Since then I have had to contact the agent assigned to my booking several times due to a ship swap and he was always quick to reply and took good care of our booking. He has forwarded to me several emails that Princess had sent to him about the swap. Eight other agencies contacted me with deals that were better than Princess, but not as good as the one I eventually went with.

Congratulations!! You have posted twice on this thread, and both are criticisms that provide absolutely zero value to the discussion. How in the world could we have gotten along without you???? SMH.

If your room was a connecting room, perhaps you were moved so two rooms could be booked together to take advantage of that connection.

The nastiness is coming from you by you calling people who disagree with you "trolls", and people you don't approve the way they dress as "slobs" and "slovenly", or accusing them of "lowering the bar to see what they can get away with". It's quite clear who is the nasty person on this thread. No amount of deflection will change those facts. BTW: name calling and insults are not, as you claim, "valid points".

Might be Princess produced 360° virtual tours of the ship.

Add a tank top and bow tie, and men are dressed for formal night.

SMH!

I just logged in without any issues. I can manage my account, mock book new cruises, etc. It must be for only some people.

The dress code is a recommendation, a request. It is NOT A RULE! If it was a "rule", Princess would not get my business. Any company that is in the business of providing vacations to get away from work rules and day to day responsibilities and then makes me dress up when I paid to be on vacation and not at a coronation, is not going to get my business. Fortunately, Princess is not that cruise line. If people want everyone to be forced to dress formally on a cruise, then Cunard is where they should be.

Isn't that large purple balloon considered formal wear? It's been so long since we decided to be un-formal wear anarchists that I don't know what is considered formal wear anymore. Does the attached image qualify as formal wear? It has all the elements that you formal wear fans insist on.

Keep in mind that deck 8 is directly above the promenade deck which has entertainment venues in certain areas such as the main theater or Vista Gaming Lounge which may have music and dancing late into the evening. Personally, we avoid any rooms above or under public areas as there is no way to know how those areas will be used during the cruise. Edit: I just noticed your room number. It is directly above the French bistro, which should not be a noise source. There may be some noise from the piazza, however. They sometimes have music and games there with an announcer using microphones and amplifiers.

Isn't that you?

I love my husband. I would rather him be dressed comfortably than to be uncomfortable just to satisfy the self appointed formal night dress code police.

I watched a video of Royal Princess going under the Lions Gate Bridge in Vancouver, BC. where the author mentioned it looked like the clearances were tight. That got me to wondering about Royal's clearance out of San Francisco and under the Golden Gate Bridge. According to Princess, Royal is 217 feet tall. According to several online sources, the clearance under the Golden Gate Bridge is 221 feet at high tide. That's only four feet of clearance! I checked our departure time on our March 12, 2023 Hawaii cruise and we depart at 4:00pm. High tide according to Hightide.com is at 4:30pm on that day. That seems quite close! Has any of you been on Royal out of SF and noticed how close it actually is? I guess as long as there are 4 feet, it's no different than 40 or 140 feet - it still clears. As an aside, I fondly remember being on a Celebrity Constellation Baltic Seas cruise and going under the Øresund bridge between Denmark and Sweden. We passed under it around 11:30 at night and a crowd had gathered to watch the crossing. It was an atmosphere not unlike New Years Eve - everyone was having a great time as we passed directly under it!!

Who ever mentioned that men don't respect their partner's desire to dress up? Please refer us to that post.

Some people like to rotate through the three dining rooms for variety of décor. Some even like to be seated at different tables to get a different perspective of the room at each dinner time. With Princess' Dine My Way program, when making dinner reservations you can either reserve the same time and room for the entire cruise, or vary the time and room for each day. You now have complete control of when and where you want to dine. Also, on our next cruise on Royal Princess in March the Symphony dining room is not available for reservations. And current cruise reviews have indicated that it has been closed for some time. Not sure of the reason, but the same may be true for Regal as well.

Noted. I thought you were the "upper crust" by your statement. My mistake. I prefer casual dress, so I'm the "riff-raff" in my own comment. I think it amusing when the "I don't want to see your lower class clothing" types get their designer knickers in a bunch over a meal in a dining room. Just too much judgment going on.