lx200gps

Already tried that, thanks. Still no sign of the upgrade anywhere. In the past when I have upgraded from Plus to Premier the upgrade shows on the Personalizer under the "Extras" tab, either as a straight Premier or as the Premier upgrade. So far, nothing. It's only Day One of the new upgrade for these two ships (and IIRC it only started yesterday on a few other ships) so it's very early. Given Princess IT's stellar reputation, I have my doubts it will go well, but I'll give them a few days and Chat in again for an explanation.

I "Chatted" in to Princess a short time ago and requested an upgrade, for three of our four upcoming trips, from our current Plus to the new Premier. The CSR came right back and said no problem, I can do that for you. He processed all three upgrades, but pointed out that we would not see the upgrades in our Personalizer until the dates that the upgrades go live on the specific ships. In our case, that was September 1 for the Sky and Majestic, and September 15 for the Royal. It's now September 1 and there is no sign on our Personalizer, or in the App, of the upgraded Packages. Has anyone yet had any luck seeing such upgrades on their bookings?

That was my point. I was questioning the statement that you couldn't carry on board anything bigger than an airline carry-on sized bag. In my experience, you can bring on board larger suitcases, as long as they fit in the security scanners. This has been my experience in Princess's North American ports like PE, Galveston. San Pedro, Seattle and Brooklyn.

That's interesting. At other ports we've sailed out of, any luggage that can fit in the security scanner is acceptable to be carried on board, including many larger luggage, not just carry-ons. Many people carry relatively large suitcases on board. Are you saying that's not allowed in Boston? As to the question about using porters, all you do is hand them your bags and watch as they deposit them in the luggage carrier racks that then get loaded on the ship. At least that's what happened when we sailed out of Boston last month.

I was about to post that very question, thanks for beating me to it ;o) Is it November 1, or so may months in advance of the trip? We have two trips for next year, the first being Feb 23, 2025. I already have the Shareholder OBC for all our 2024 trips, but haven't yet submitted for 2025. Thanks...

The last time I used ValueTRIPS, their website gave me a formal acknowledgement of receipt of our request, and they then followed it up with an Email confirming our reservation. Only problem was that they confirmed our booking for a date that they subsequently, immediately afterward, put on their blacklist, and to this day, they have never informed me that our reservation is null and void.

...with the caution that you can't Uber from the LAX terminals, you have to shuttle over to the LAX-It lot and Uber from there. Only Uber exception is the "uber-expensive" ;o) Uber Blacks which can pick up at the terminals. But yes, with a 7PM arrival into LAX, the Crowne Plaza in SP would be the best bet. On our last trip into LAX we didn't arrive until 9:30PM so we chose to hotel it at the airport and Uber down to the port the next morning.

The PE schedule on the website actually goes out a lot farther out than a week. The default view is about 7 days, but using the admittedly pretty obtuse Query function, you can search out months in advance. Our next sailing is on the Sun in October and that one is shown as being at the expected Terminal 2 on October 19

Tried that, thanks. Still no luck. I finally located one of my tablet PCs running Linux Firefox and surprisingly, Chat worked just fine on that specific Firefox when it wouldn't run on Firefox on other PCs. Probably different security settings between the two machines. The very helpful CSR put through all three of our Plus to New Premier upgrades in a few minutes, despite our Travel Agent being told by Princess that we couldn't upgrade because of our "special" fare. The CSR told me that the upgrades would show up after Sept 1 for two of our trips, and mid-Sept for the trip on the Royal. This might be due to the fact that the NEW Premier package rolls out on different ships on different dates?

I'm hoping to upgrade our upcoming trips and would like to try using the Chat function instead of the phone. Unfortunately, the Chat icon in the lower right side of the screen does not appear in any of my browsers regardless of OS. How are you folks managing to access Chat? Thanks....

I'll second this for the OP. There are a number of Marriott brand hotels in the downtown area, near Ocean Blvd and the Shoreline Village. Lots of decent restaurants around the marina as well. Great area, lots to see and do.

They sure are moving fast. I submitted my latest renewal on Sunday, August 18 and just received my formal approval today. 5 day turnaround

Our next upcoming trip is the 19 October sailing on the Sun. All four of our upcoming trips were booked with the big cruise TA who can't be named. Our personal TA with the agency tried a number of times this week to upgrade us from the old to the new premier package. The last Email from her, after talking to Princess, said that "At the present time, the new Premier Package cannot be added to any of your 4 bookings because the cruise rates you got are ... Special Pricing, which are not combinable with the New Premier Package. The only way to upgrade is on board. Princess Cruises Staff will be located outside of Sabatini's & Crown Grill to do the upgrade for you." Not a huge deal for the October trip as the only perq we wanted ahead of time is the unlimited Specialty dinners, and they can't be booked online right now anyway as pretty much everything is sold out. We will just do as we always do and call the DINE line the moment we board and book the rest then. For our other three trips, it looks like we will have to book online now, pay in full, do the upgrade as soon as we board, then see how the refund will work since we would supposedly have 5 or 6 dinners for "free" that we would have already paid for. Probably refunded back as refundable OBC. Makes my head explode just thinking about it.

For sure, but you forgot the winkie ;o)

Keep in mind that you may occasionally have to remove it from your belt to place it on a sensor pad, for instance when leaving or boarding the ship. I also hate lanyards for exactly the same reason, so we use one of the plastic credit-card sized holders instead. They used to be the standard holder but have been replaced by the small round lanyard thingy, which we don't use. The puck sits in the holder in my pocket at all times and I easily extract it to touch the pad or hand to a waiter when needed. There are also holders that attach to your watch band though I found those to be a bit too big. As Elite, we get free blue plastic spring clip holders for free, but those are useless for us so they get disposed of. Note that all Princess ships have a small "store" selling a range of Medallion accessories once you board.

https://www.aircanada.com/ca/en/aco/home/aeroplan/credit-cards/companion-pass.html#/ Looks like Hawaii is $299+tax. The pass is available within a few weeks of you renewing and paying your annual fee for the card. Officially, they say "...up to 10 weeks" but I got this year's in about 3-4 weeks. If you currently do have the buddy pass, then it will appear on the AC site when you make a real or mock booking. Log in to your account and enter the desired itinerary, dates etc. You will see a box titled "Your Booking Benefits", click on it and it will show you the details. Note that it only applies to cash bookings, not rewards bookings. Absolutely no need to contact AC/Aeroplan to use it, it's all built-in to the booking engine and gets applied immediately. Very easy to use.

If you can, make sure you take advantage of the VIP card's annual AC buddy pass, particularly for travel inside North America. Second person flies for only $99+tax, which can mean huge savings depending on the ticket class. I've been pricing R/T flights to FLL and the buddy pass brings the cost down by almost $1K.

How about The Prince Of Travel? Ricky used to be very good at providing tips on maximizing Aeroplan benefits et al, churning credit cards to obtain multiply sign up bonuses etc. etc. Before the credit cards companies really started to clamp down on abuses, it was quite possible to collect hundreds of thousands of points easily, not sure how easy it is these days. https://princeoftravel.com/

Does Princess sail from Miami? We've only ever sailed from PE with Princess. To the OP, the best hotel area for Port Everglades is 17th Street, easily found on Google Maps. Most, though not all, Princess ships sail from Terminal 2 off Eisenhower Blvd. Hotels include the Hyatt Place, Renaissance and Hilton Marina, the Embassy Suites is not well regarded here on CC though is apparently undergoing renovations. The HP and Renaissance have shuttles at modest cost, can't speak to the Hilton as we've never stayed there. Uber or taxi would be easier than a hotel shuttle though.

The last time we dropped off a rental at San Pedro (a one-way rental from Vegas), we used Hertz. AFAIK, unless something has changed, there are two rental car companies, Hertz and Enterprise near the port. Enterprise is physically located in the Crowne Plaza hotel and Hertz is located just across the street from the hotel. Both locations are very close to the port, maybe a 10-15 minute walk, so you would drop off the bags at the ship, bring the car back, then walk back to the ship from the car rental office. If you use either one be VERY careful to check their hours of operation, IIRC they have limited hours on weekends for example. Aside from those two companies, you will probably find a lot more options nearby in Long Beach.

No, it was an intentional typo, written by someone who is VERY happy that huge mob will be at another dock area ;o).

FWIW, we will be at St Thomas on October 23 on the Sun. The Sun and HAL's Nieuw Amsterdam are at WICO/Havensight and the Icon Of The Seas and her 234,638 passengers are at Crown Bay.

Sorry for the confusion, I meant that in general terms, in my experience, many airport hotels have shuttles to and from the terminals, particularly ones that close. If you say that YQB hotels don't then that's what it is. Taxi drivers must love picking up all those 3 minute fares ;o)

As this is as much a Princess question as a West Coast Departures question, maybe try posting over on the Princess sub-forum as well? I'd also like to know the answer. We usually take an Uber from SP to LAX but I'd like to know how well the Princess shuttle works.

According to Google Maps, the Comfort Inn Airport East is only 3 km from the YQB terminal, so yes, is in Ste Foy. Not sure what the fee means, but the GST and PST are the Goods and Services Tax and the Provincial Sales Tax, which combine to about 15%, so $0.90 + tax is approximately $CAD1.04, or about $US0.77 depending on what US/Canadian exchange rate you use. I assume the hotel does not have a shuttle? Many hotels that close to the airport perimeter have shuttles