LIVE From the Emerald - Vancouver-Seattle - 5/20/17

[easyboy]

We too were told no minibar because it was a one night cruise. I complained, called twice, it arrived.

 

 

 

I talked about that process on the survey.

 

 

You did the right thing. Some crew are not fully aware of the policy.

 

 

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[CanadianBurger]

Buffalo to SFO to Seattle, and drive to Vancouver for a 1 day inside cabin cruise? You must be hardcore, it must have cost more to get there than you paid for the cruise.

 

 

No, I travel for work all the time, so have tons of miles, hotel points, and car rental days...

 

 

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[Eaglecw]

We have the opportunity to do the repositioning cruise on the Emerald Princess on Sept. 24, Seattle to Vancouver, is it really worth all the hassle, one night, the MDR isn’t open for breakfast. We hate the buffet so we don’t go there, too crowded etc. Can I get my OBC for my Carnival stock and veterans credit? Is it really worth the hassle?

[Wulfwyn]

I was told "no minibar" by Stewart and to call room service, but it magically appeared while we were at dinner.

 

No complimentary beverage for Captain's Circle members courtesy of the Captain, contrary to what has been de rigeur on one-nights for the past several years.

 

I really hate it when they use the 6 aft dining room for disembarkation breakfast - it soaks the aft elevators by creating demand for one-floor rides from 6 to 7.

Captain Circle host told us that they stop the complimentary beverage for one day cruises. princess was losing money.

 

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[fishywood]

We have the opportunity to do the repositioning cruise on the Emerald Princess on Sept. 24, Seattle to Vancouver, is it really worth all the hassle, one night, the MDR isn’t open for breakfast. We hate the buffet so we don’t go there, too crowded etc. Can I get my OBC for my Carnival stock and veterans credit? Is it really worth the hassle?

 

Botticelli Dining Room was open for breakfast--noted in posts, 53, 64 and 71.

You still get shareholder OBC; $50 for cruises 1 to 6 nights.

As well as the Military Personnel Benefit:

https://www.princess.com/downloads/pdf/faq_answer_legal/Military_Personnel_Benefit_US.pdf

[ar1950]

We have the opportunity to do the repositioning cruise on the Emerald Princess on Sept. 24, Seattle to Vancouver, is it really worth all the hassle, one night, the MDR isn’t open for breakfast. We hate the buffet so we don’t go there, too crowded etc. Can I get my OBC for my Carnival stock and veterans credit? Is it really worth the hassle?

 

I would say that it depends on why you want to do a one day cruise. If it just to have a one night get away and you can put up with the inconsistencies that have been mentioned, then, maybe it is worth it. We did a 3 day repositioning cruise on the Ruby from LA to Vancouver a couple of years ago because we thought that it was a bargain price. In retrospect we thought it was way more of a hassle than it was worth. And, with the inconsistencies that we saw in service and amenities it was not worth doing again. We did a 7 day Alaska cruise a few months later on the Ruby and it was a much different experience. We would not be interested in a one day for certain, but, that is just us, not unless it is prior to another cruise on the same ship (a B2B in other words).

 

 

BTW, we did get our FCC OBCs.

YMMV.

[sfaaa]

I agree. One day cruise is not even 24 hrs long and you have to vacate your cabin at 8am the next morning. Way too short and hardly worth the hassle.

[trajan]

Hi, we were on this cruise in D410, Club Class mini suite celebrating our 10th wedding anniversary. Appropriate as we honeymooned on the Crown and loved it.

 

As others have noted our embarkation was terrible. They were calling 43 when we arrived at 1:30 ish, we were given group 70. 2 hour wait just to get called for check in and only then could we use a preferred boarding line that saved us maybe 2 minutes. We did have nexus and as mentioned the nexus line was very poorly marked but we found it which saved an hour or two of further waiting.

 

This sucked but for background people should be aware that that day, Saturday May 20 was the busiest day for passenger volume by far for that port this year. I had reason thru my work to attend a security presentation about the port and they gave out a calendar that listed volume by day. And that was the busiest day by a big margin. Not an excuse, just FYI. I'd hoped preferred boarding would save us a big wait but nope.

 

Once on board I was thrilled with our cabin. It was beautiful and spotlessly clean. 1 day cruise but our half bottle of red and white were there and the steward brought us a couple glasses of champagne.

 

We had an excellent dinner and breakfast in the Club Class dining area. Tried the buffet around 11:00pm and it was terrible with poor selection and cold tasteless food.

 

Did sail away in the rear hot tub on deck 17 having drinks with new friends. Fantastic view and no blaring music.

 

Went to the late show for the comedian and he was dynamite; not sure of his name (?) as he was a last minute replacement act.

 

Our notice said to disembark at 9:25 from Wheelhouse Bar. We ignored it, sat on deck till 10:00 enjoying the sun and walked off with no hassles.

 

Beautiful ship and cabin. Great crew and fun night. Planning to do reverse in September and hoping embarkation goes much better.

[Lucky TGO]

I love the photos of the long lines and I can feel your pain :o. Good luck and have a great cruise.

Tony

[Vexorg]

If you were going to do a one-night cruise I suspect that the Seattle to Vancouver direction would probably be a lot less boarding hassles to deal with than the Vancouver to Seattle direction. There would only be two ships at a time at Smith Cove (Norwegian and Oceania sail out of Bell Street Pier several miles away) so it would be just a regular turnaround day.

[VibeGuy]

The one-night sailings from Seattle to Vancouver *are* vastly more pleasant to board.

 

The holdup at Canada Place is the CBP admissibility preclearance. The space and staffing simply aren't up to three large ships in a day.

 

A comparison: for the recent Ruby one-night I arrived Canada Place at 12:45 and was in the dining room for lunch at 12:57. The other ship in port was Norwegian Jewel. 3100 pax for Ruby, 2400 for Norwegian.

 

Saturday CBP processed 3100 from Star, 3100 from Emerald and 2100 from Nieuw Amsterdam. I arrived at 12:35 and got on the ship at 3:35. Without NEXUS, the waits were at least 90 minutes longer.

 

In Seattle I have never spent more than 15 minutes from front door to gangway.

 

I have BEGGED Princess and CBP to work on this issue; NEXUS/Global Entry helps me quite a bit, but it doesn't fix the systemic problem: the space and personnel at admissibility preclearance are inadequate for more than about 5000 passengers a day. The solution is simple: when the schedule creates this issue, don't preclear Seattle-bound 1-night sailings. Seattle has a full CBP facility and more scheduling flexibility to assign officers to Seattle than they do to Vancouver (the issues are related to employment agreements). Yes, it would delay getting people to the sidewalk in Seattle to some extent, but not so much that sailaway is postponed until 8:30 pm.

 

One reason this doesn't happen is that Princess markets these sailings VERY HEAVILY to group operators who specialize in serving Asian customers. The balance of US/Canadian nationals to those holding other passports is VERY different than usual Vancouver-Alaska departures, and many need more than an ESTA as the passports are not from Visa-Waiver countries.

 

There are two things at play here. CBP likes denying entry before someone gets to the US, and Princess doesn't like having to get denied parties out of the US posthaste.

 

The impacts of these positions this are both direct and indirect. Directly, it floods the capacity (16 agents, tops) at the port. Typically they have two officers working Global Entry/NEXUS, who, if they aren't busy, pull over US/Canadian passport holders. There's usually six officers handling US/Canada without trusted traveller status, leaving eight positions for everyone else. Nobody is slacking - it just takes much longer per passenger to admit the "everyone else" category. The queue space is limited, and thus once the queues and the limited seated queueing space are full, they stop letting people through security. This floods the queue for security and once that's full, they cut off taking people from upstairs. If CBP and Port Of Vancouver insist on doing everything the same way, this will remain unfixable. If average processing time per person were equal regardless of demographic mix, there would be delays but they wouldn't be measured in hours.

 

Indirectly, the reluctance to using the Seattle facility for full clearance takes various creative solutions off the table.

 

If I ran the zoo, and I couldn't get third ships to clear on arrival at the first US port, I would still work on what the Port can control:

 

1). Switch the seated queueing from "before cruiseline checkin" to "after" - they did this in 2016 and it worked surprisingly well. Customers got their cruise cards promptly and documentation issues were resolved up front. Those with preferred boarding can be processed as a priority *and released to security as a priority*.

 

2) identify parties with Trusted Traveler status during check-in and send them directly downstairs.

 

3) once boarding has started, use the space that was holding passengers who had completed admissibility screening and were seated waiting for the ship to be ready to seat passengers waiting for CBP. This could double or triple the space for passengers needing extra resources from CBP at zero cost for operation or construction.

 

4) make the split for US/Canada / All Other someplace where it won't keep people from getting to the US/Canada queue if it has capacity.

 

I've been sailing from Canada Place for 30 years now, and while they got better in 2016 they backslid this year. They're consistently friendly and polite but Canada Nice only goes so far when they refuse to address the systemic bottleneck: Insufficient magnetometer/x-ray lanes (Seattle has 2x as many per ship in port) and adequate flow control to the CBP facility that won't expand or bring in reliever staff.

 

I won't even mention where a third of the CBP staff disappears to around 3:00 . . .

[cruisequeen4ever]

So they actually bothered to open the casino!! I sure hope it's open on the Ruby's 1 nighter in September!

 

 

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[Mingus]

Captain Circle host told us that they stop the complimentary beverage for one day cruises. princess was losing money.

 

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We did receive the complementary drink voucher on the May 5th one day cruise.

[redtop101]

We did receive the complementary drink voucher on the May 5th one day cruise.

 

 

...and got the mini bar setup, and were notified in the Patter which dining room was available for breakfast on disembarkation. Too bad that Princess is totally inconsistent in its application of practices and procedures across its fleet.

 

 

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[VibeGuy]

So they actually bothered to open the casino!! I sure hope it's open on the Ruby's 1 nighter in September!

 

Don't hold your breath. Historically (like, almost every 1NT Ruby has done, either direction), the Casino Manager has opted to use the night to give her staff a well-deserved break.

[CanadianBurger]

I posted a time lapse video of sailaway from Vancouver. You can view it here:

 

@trajan - my GoPro was mounted on Deck 17 by the hot tub. Is that your group barely visible through the glass?

[CanadianBurger]

...and got the mini bar setup, and were notified in the Patter which dining room was available for breakfast on disembarkation. Too bad that Princess is totally inconsistent in its application of practices and procedures across its fleet.

 

 

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Where in the Patter did it state that Botticelli was open for breakfast?

 

Edit: never mind, I figured out you were referencing the May 5th Ruby cruise.

 

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Edited May 24, 2017 by CanadianBurger

[CanadianBurger]

BTW, we did get our FCC OBCs.

YMMV.

Were you able to book this cruise using a Future Cruise Deposit? I was told that 1 and 2 day cruises were not eligible, and thus, no OBC...

[Potstech]

Went out of Vancouver last May. Will never go out of there again. Long winding travel to get from one place to the next, very little and small labeling for directions, smoke from all the cars in the parking area, confusing directions form different people and to many sit and waits with no information on why. Sorry Vancouver but for such a fairly new port this is a disaster. I do visit Vancouver at least once a year but will take any additional cruises from that area departing from Seattle.

[Boytjie]

Does anyone know why Emerald Princess arrived late in Juneau today?

[Av8tor]

Does anyone know why Emerald Princess arrived late in Juneau today?

 

How late was she? I heard that there was an itinerary change last week that showed her getting to Juneau a few hours later than originally scheduled (2:30pm?) for this week's and next week's cruise. The revised arrival times were showing in passenger Personalizers for those two cruises. I'm on the 6/4 cruise and our itinerary still shows 12:30. I asked the OP of another thread about the change and why it was made but never got a reply...

[trinaM]

Beautiful Vancouver morning.

 

 

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I know that view!!! I have one I took just like it! :)

[Boytjie]

How late was she? I heard that there was an itinerary change last week that showed her getting to Juneau a few hours later than originally scheduled (2:30pm?) for this week's and next week's cruise. The revised arrival times were showing in passenger Personalizers for those two cruises. I'm on the 6/4 cruise and our itinerary still shows 12:30. I asked the OP of another thread about the change and why it was made but never got a reply...

 

Thanks for the info. As a Juneau webcam watcher I was wondering why it arrived at 3 PM instead of 12:30 PM.