Looking at booking my first Princess cruise and I have questions

[misha1]

Hello fellow cruisers.  Princess has enticed me with a round trip from Seattle to Hawaii in 2020.  I am looking at a suite.  What are the Suites only bennies?  I do not see anything on the Princess site about drink packages.  Is there such a thing?  Does the Ruby Princess have a 2 bedroom family Suite?  Thanks in advance.  Julie

[skynight]

2 minutes ago, misha1 said:

Hello fellow cruisers.  Princess has enticed me with a round trip from Seattle to Hawaii in 2020.  I am looking at a suite.  What are the Suites only bennies?  I do not see anything on the Princess site about drink packages.  Is there such a thing?  Does the Ruby Princess have a 2 bedroom family Suite?  Thanks in advance.  Julie

Full Suite Benefits and details of the beverage package  are shown in the web site below. The important ones are I think are:

Special mimosa breakfast, I think it's in the Crown Grill for full suite passengers only

Club Class Dining

Laundry, important for a 15 day cruise

Specialty dining on boarding day

Room service from the full DR menu

 

Yes, There are 2 family suites. Regular suites sleep up to 4.

https://www.princess.com/downloads/pdf/ships/PrincessSuite_eFlyer.pdf

https://www.princess.com/learn/cruise-gifts-celebrations/gifts-and-services/culinary-delights-wine/

[jondfk]

I'll add a bit more to the bennies list:

 

Suite breakfast will be in either Sabatini's or Crown Grill, varies ship to ship.  Such a nice way to start the day, there's a menu but in general if you let them know what you'd like they'll do their best to make it happen (worst case the following morning).

Formal days you'll find nibbles delivered to the cabin in the afternoon.  You can request these EVERY day if you like by calling room service.

Recently enacted changes to boarding and disembarkation (don't appear to be fleet wide yet).  At boarding, an escort to help you along.  The best ones will clear a path to expedite your trip up the gangway and will pull your carryon luggage.  This can be a bit unnerving if you arrive late at the terminal since you'll get the 'stink eye' from all of the folks you walk past - chin up / eyes forward I say!

At disembarkation Suite passengers are amongst first to depart the ship.  Generally with the earliest self debarkation group, we've used this feature twice in both cases finding ourselves on the taxi curb prior to 9:00.  This feature is so new that the gangway security officer was unaware and had to radio home for instruction when she couldn't find "Silver 1" (the boarding group assigned to suites) on her clipboard.  Once this confusion was cleared up we were in immigration within 3 minutes.

 

[skynight]

I want to add something regarding disembarkation. 

If you don't want to be first off you don't have to be. For example, you may have a 5pm flight, so why walk off at 7am when you can select one of the later times? You can select any of the departure windows offered on the debarkation questionnaire. Basically all passengers can select their preferred window, and almost always get it. The full suite disembarakation lounge is also used by Captain's Circle Elite and Platinum members and their families. It gets very crowded. For the last few years we have just use the general lounge assigned to our color luggage tag. They seem less crowded.

All passengers are asked to leave their cabins by 8am, have breakfast if time allows, and then wait in one of the assigned lounges. By 10am, maybe earlier all disembarking passengers must be off the ship.

[jagoffee]

As a suite guest you received one minibar set up.  We also received two bottles of water daily.

Princess does sell several different drink packages.  You can find the details on the Princess website.

Also annually Princess offers a Sip and Sale special with the Premium Drink Package as a bundle.  If you book before the promotion, you can check the pricing when the Sip and Sale promotion is offered.  I was fortunate last time, because I was able to add the promotion without a price increase.  I would say most of the time the cost of the cruise is higher.  

 

Skynight must have some recent experiences with enhanced boarded and disembarkation.  For our cruise, the suites were just grouped with the Elite status group.  Nice improvement.

 

Misha1, have you experienced a Suite on another cruise line?  IMO the Princess suites have very nice cabins, bathrooms, and balconies, but are a behind their competitors in the actual benefits.  But the suite benefits are still nice to have.

 

Watch  for the Sip and Sail Promotion next month.

 

Edited May 13, 2019 by jagoffee

[misha1]

I have experienced suite class on Celebrity and it sounds like Celebrity offers more significant benefits such as a "free" Premium drink package, unlimited WiFi, Suite class only dining, on board credit, and of course the embarkation and disembarkation help, as well as designated seating in the theater.  What Celebrity dose not have is round trip to Hawaii.  For the price of a suite on Princess, I would expect the drink package and WiFi.  Hmmm, more ponderance is required

[jagoffee]

1 hour ago, misha1 said:

I have experienced suite class on Celebrity and it sounds like Celebrity offers more significant benefits such as a "free" Premium drink package, unlimited WiFi, Suite class only dining, on board credit, and of course the embarkation and disembarkation help, as well as designated seating in the theater.  What Celebrity dose not have is round trip to Hawaii.  For the price of a suite on Princess, I would expect the drink package and WiFi.  Hmmm, more ponderance is required

I have a lot of experience on bothers Celebrity and Princess. Yes, you are correct about the suite benefits. 

As I mentioned the Sip and Sail is a nice promotion for the drink package.  IMO the Princess suite itself is much nicer than Celebrity’s Sky Suite, but not as nice as Celebrity’s Royal Suite.

Celebrity does have (or at least they previously had) some round trip cruises to Hawaii.