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Royal Caribbean vs. Princess -- my perspective as a Covid-positive passenger


JLMoran

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So, I'm back from a 2-week Mediterranean cruise on Princess that was going to be a trip of a lifetime with my whole family. Unfortunately, 5 days into our sailing my wife and I both tested positive for Covid-19 and ended up in isolation for a week. I still wanted to give my perspective on Royal vs. Princess, but it's going to be equal parts about my experience as a Covid-positive individual in isolation, along with a general comparison of the two cruise lines and my experience with their ships and regular services.

I'll start with the general impressions I have of each:

  • The Ship: We sailed on Regal Princess, which I would say is roughly equivalent in size and capacity to Anthem of the Seas. Regal Princess was very nice, with a gorgeous central Piazza going from deck 5 to deck 7 that reminded me of pictures of the Centrum or Atrium on ships like Brilliance of the Seas. Instead of an indoor Solarium for adults-only swimming and lounging, it has an outdoor Retreat Pool area that is similarly adults-only. While it has the usual collection of shops, it seemed to me that there were fewer of them than on Anthem, which I appreciated. The layout of the ship has one incredibly annoying flaw, however: If you are in an aft cabin, there is no way get to any part of the Deck 5 or Deck 6 mid-ship areas from the aft elevators unless you either go to Deck 7 and walk mid-ship, then go down the stairs; or go directly to the mid-ship elevators and take them to Deck 5 or 6. This tripped us up for a couple days every time we had to go to dinner or wanted to visit the Piazza area. Mainly because of this, I'm rating Anthem and Regal Princess the same in my book.
     
  • Itinerary: Princess wins this one hands-down. They have far more options for Mediterranean sailings than anything I could find with Royal or sister line Celebrity. They were the only line I found with a rotating set of 7-day itineraries covering different segments of Eastern and Western Med, allowing for a custom mix-and-match for desired trip length and port set, and this is the main reason I chose to sail with them for this trip. I have no idea why Royal (or at least Celebrity) doesn't do the same thing; any attempt at a 2-week Med trip requires a side-to-side sailing with a few days between each leg, originating from widely separated ports.
     
  • The Cabin: Sailed in an aft-facing balcony when not in isolation, and was in a mid-ship balcony during our isolation period. The mid-ship balconies are just big enough for two chairs and a small table in between, and the chairs need to be up against the sliding door or facing sideways if you want to stretch your legs at all; definitely smaller than Royal's mid-ship balconies that I've sailed in. The aft-facing balcony was about 3 times as large, yet it still had just the standard chairs and table instead of two loungers or two chairs with footrests. This made no sense to me, and we never got a chance to try and get footrests for our run of sea days mid-cruise due to our Covid infection timing. The cabins themselves were basically identical, although I'd say the aft-facing one was slightly more spacious with a less-navigable layout than the mid-ship one. Decor was fine, as long as you like lots of beige. The bed in the mid-ship was hard as a rock, and I had to ask for a mattress topper; the aft-facing cabin's bed was much more comfortable. All that said, I personally liked our cabins on Royal better; decor was nicer, balconies mid-ship are deeper.
     
  • On-Board Entertainment: My experience here was limited to what was presented in the Piazza and aft-most bar area on the Lido deck. A nice selection of classical, jazz, acoustic guitar, and piano music. None of it super-loud, all the performers talented and capable. I have to give Princess the edge here; Royal always blasts whatever music is playing in one of the bars or other venues, to the point where you can't have a conversation if you're sitting with anyone. On Princess, I could talk with people had I wanted to, or focused on the music if that was my preference. None of us saw any of the main theater shows during the entire two weeks; Cathy and I were sick during most of the time the main shows were on, and the girls were far more interested in doing karaoke and hanging with the group of 18-22 year-olds they found.
     
  • Crew: This was the area most clearly impacted by Covid, and I can't give a fair comparison right now. Many of the crew were clearly still green; bartenders didn't know what the drinks of the day were (despite placards for them right on the bar) or how to make them, MDR wait staff varied tremendously in quality of service/professionalism, room service had a chronic problem getting our orders right during our isolation period, etc.
     
  • Overall Experience: For being a premium mass-market line, Princess didn't feel particularly premium to me at all.
    • The wine selections on board weren't as good as on Royal (although I did find a few new wines I am determined to get here at home)
    • Cocktails were consistently super-weak; none of us expected to get loaded off a single cocktail, but all of us agreed that we couldn't even taste the spirit used in anything we ordered. Most of the time, we might as well have ordered a virgin drink.
    • The MDR and specialty dining food quality and menu variety were the same, in my opinion
      • Will note here that several passengers we spoke with on board said that Princess' MDR food was significantly worse than on earlier cruises they'd taken with the line
      • On top of that, my daughters both got food poisoning after eating at the on-board sushi place, which they said was worse than any local sushi place they've eaten or worked at, and was more on par with local supermarket sushi (i.e., the same as what you used to get on Freedom of the Seas)
    • The quality of the crew wasn't any noticeably better or was even slightly worse at times (though I'm trying to give a pass on that because of how new so much of the crew likely still is)
    • Worst of all, Princess pulled a complete bait-and-switch on my whole family. When we booked the cruise in December 2020, we used the Princess Plus option that added their Premiere Beverage Package along with 1-device internet and pre-paid gratuities. In March of this year, Princess replaced the beverage package with a "Plus Package" and never told anyone; if you wanted the Premiere package, you had to now pay several hundred dollars more for their Princess Premiere (which included other extras I had no interest in) or pay the overage for any beverages on the Premiere list. I was beyond pissed off that they didn't grandfather passengers who booked under the original terms. I don't care that it only translated to about $50 in additional charges for me, that is crappy customer service and a pure money grab.

 

OK, now onto the Covid handling experience...

Obviously I can't directly compare to Royal, since this is my first cruise since Covid and my first time dealing with isolation protocols. But I have the written experiences of @Matt, @monorailmedic and others to draw on. And Princess just didn't measure up in a few key areas.

  • Communications: Matt and others mentioned how they had regular communications from both medical and guest services, with each often checking to confirm the other had asked about something or informed them of something. The only calls we received daily were from medical, to check on our symptoms (and later to relay results of our daily re-tests). I never heard from Guest Services in any capacity, besides once about mid-way through to see if we needed anything in terms of cabin items like fresh towels and if we were doing OK with the in-room dining. I had to call Guest Services myself to get answers to every one of my questions
    • How was the per-diem refund of our cruise during isolation being handled? (FCC issued to our accounts; I would have preferred a cash refund tbh)
    • Would we be able to join excursions scheduled the same morning if we tested negative? (yes, thank goodness)
    • Would using the laundry service be charged to our account during isolation? (no, it was free; the included forms gave no such indication)
    • Could we continue to order wine, cocktails, specialty coffees, etc? (yes, thank goodness; by day 5 when symptoms were mostly gone and cabin fever had set in, we were seriously ready to get our drink on)
  • Re-testing: Every morning's re-test was an exercise in stress and worry. Not because we were concerned about testing negative; that would be what it would be each morning. But we had excursions every single morning after our initial 5-day isolation window, with meet-up times around 7:45 to 8:15 AM. And no one came to test us earlier than 7 AM, with no call back to us with the result for a minimum of 30 minutes. The first day, we didn't even get that call until almost 8:30. This was after informing the med team about excursions each morning and that we needed to be tested and get our results ASAP to avoid missing it, due to the early meet times. Cathy and I tested negative on different days, and on both of them we got our results about 10 minutes before we had to be at the excursion meet-up location. This resulted in having to hurriedly get our separate stuff back to our original cabin (which was held for when we cleared isolation), and then run down to the meet-up. Each time, Cathy and I only barely made it.
  • Dining: As noted earlier, there were frequent errors with the deliveries, requiring us to call them back and request the items that had been ordered but weren't delivered. There were other times where we had ordered just one of something and ended up with two, which was certainly a better situation but let to a bit of food waste. And to be fair, we did get a visit from a head steward about 2/3 of the way through our isolation to apologize for the errors, and after this the deliveries did get better. He even gave us a plate of chocolate truffles as consolation, although that was the day we both lost our sense of smell and taste. Not their fault, but we were sad they couldn't be properly enjoyed. All this said, there were some positives:
    • Like with Royal, Princess makes the MDR dinner menu available for guests in isolation. On sea days, the lunch menu was also available. This greatly relieved the monotony of the room service menu for these meals, but there was no such option (even on sea days) for breakfast.
    • We had one lucky morning where Cathy begged and pleaded for pancakes, and they scrounged some up for her
    • I also have to give a point to the room service phone staff; they were always pleasant, always patient, and even took time for a minute of chit-chat to help break up the monotony of isolation time

 

I don't really know what my final view of Princess is vs Royal. Getting slammed with Covid and losing half of our vacation really put a damper on the whole experience. But, right now I feel like Royal is still the better line for most times that we'll be cruising. Since we have a decent bucket of FCC available now that will let us get a basically-free cruise (minus deposit), we're looking at options in early 2023; depending on how that goes, I'll likely have come to a more solid conclusion.

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Sorry you got CV during your cruise but there is a lot of that going on right now. 

I have $800 in Princess FCC but they've got nothing from Florida and haven't for months so it looks like I'll have to abandon my FCC with them as I don't want to fly to cruise right now with flights so expensive.  I've got two more months to use it.

What did your kids think of Princess vs. Royal?

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JL Moran, thanks for sharing.  I    loved the read and loved the candid Princess info.  We've considered trying them a couple times, but stayed loyal to Royal.

My family regularly struggles with "hay fever" symptoms and allergies...it's a Michigan thing.  On any given morning, afternoon or night, we (one of our family of 6) could feel like we had a cold during the summer.....any.  Don't judge, unless I    am face down, feverish, stuffed up, and unable to operate.....I     wouldn't test.  Especially in light of the brevity of current CV variants.  If everytime myself or my family had the sniffles, stuffy nose, headache and tested....we would be one of Abbott Labs largest customers or we would be able to buy Big Screen TVS with CVS rewards points.  It simply isn't practical, since we've been like this way prior to CV and never paid it no mind.  I    in no way think it is wrong for you to test, I    am just curious at what point do you feel convicted on a 2 week expensive cruise of the lifetime to test?

Also, the bait and switch beverage change would be a deal breaker for any future cruise with Princess.  You can't do that to customers.

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4 hours ago, FionaMG said:

I can't believe you've been so unlucky @JLMoran! After missing out on the Greenland cruises, now this!

I'm afraid the bad luck was worse than you know. When we got home, we found one of our two cats dead at the top of our second-floor stairway. As best I can guess, she died just a couple days before we got home. We have no idea why or what caused it, and it clearly wasn't "peaceful". She was always a shy cat and hid from strangers, so absolutely no one who had been coming to the house to check on them had any idea it had happened.

I spent an hour of my day back home burying her in our back yard, and the next 3 days getting over intense grief as well as jet lag. 😢 😢 😢 

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4 hours ago, twangster said:

What did your kids think of Princess vs. Royal?

They liked it a lot better, but I think it had more to do with the fact they found a group to hang out with every night on the first or second night of the cruise. There was an 18-to-20-somethings meetup in the Princess Patter, and they spent every day of the trip hanging out with them. On top of that, they loved the itinerary and were thankful to have been able to go on this trip, since neither of them will likely be able to do anything similar for many years.

It's really funny, because they thought they'd be spending the whole trip surrounded by "the olds" and be bored. And instead, they were out around the ship every night, doing karaoke on the nights it was offered, using the swimming pools, checking out the Vista Lounge where they had a sort of dance club thing going most nights, and more. They really had a blast, and I'd say Princess left a far better impression on them than Royal did. Even allowing for the night of food poisoning from the sushi place.

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3 hours ago, WAAAYTOOO said:

Interesting that they allowed you to go on excursions but not continue daily shipboard activities while in isolation.  Maybe I’m misunderstanding some of this…

Sorry, I wasn't clear. We were in no way allowed to leave the cabins until we tested negative. My complaint was that the way they timed taking the tests and letting us know the results left almost zero time to make to the excursions we had scheduled on the separate days that Cathy and I finally did test negative -- 7th day for Cathy, on our Genoa stop with an excursion to Portfofino; 8th day for me, which was the final port day on our second week with a stop in Livorno and an excursion to Florence.

We were stuck on the ship for our port days in Barcelona, Gibraltar, and Marseilles. That last was the one I was most bitter about; the weather that day was perfect, not the brutal low-90s we had the rest of the trip. And the city looked absolutely beautiful from what we could see off of our balcony.

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3 hours ago, CharmMicah68 said:

I am just curious at what point do you feel convicted on a 2 week expensive cruise of the lifetime to test?

My wife had been experiencing potential Covid symptoms for 2 days before she and I both tested. Started off with just some sniffles / hay fever like symptoms such as you described, and on the second day she had a very brief bout of chills. But on the third day she started feeling completely exhausted and developed a bad chronic cough; that was the final warning sign.

On that same day, I suddenly developed a bad sore throat that got progressively worse as the day went on; I had been dealing with a slight sore throat off and on for a couple of days prior, but it always went away after drinking water / rehydrating.

Now, here's the thing -- we had brought BinaxNOW tests with us so we could self-test and avoid calling the med bay in case it wasn't actually anything. And we took those after dinner, when her symptoms really started getting pronounced. We saw that positive line come up on her test in less than 30 seconds. And it wasn't faint, it was a thick bright crimson line. There was no question she was positive and we had to call medical, who would do their own test to confirm.

My BinaxNOW test (which I took along with her, just in case) came back negative. But as my wife's cabin-mate, I was required to be tested per ship protocol once it was clear that she needed to be tested. And per their test (which is a more-sensitive florescence antigen test), I was already positive. Even if I had tested negative, their protocol would have required me to stay on the ship that day and isolate in our aft-facing cabin until I cleared a second test 24 hours later. How do I know this? Because my younger daughter developed bronchitis toward the end of the cruise, with a fever and horrible cough and congestion; and while she tested negative that night, she had to follow that protocol and stay on board for the day in Genoa.

Our older daughter, who also tested negative and had no symptoms, was free to leave the cabin and go on the excursion to Portofino with my wife since our younger one was also negative.

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4 hours ago, twangster said:

I have $800 in Princess FCC but they've got nothing from Florida and haven't for months so it looks like I'll have to abandon my FCC with them as I don't want to fly to cruise right now with flights so expensive.  I've got two more months to use it.

Cathy and I each have on the order of $2,600 in Princess FCC to use up (that's the average between us, since I have one more day's credit than her). We're looking at sailings in Jan-Apr and Oct of 2023, but the credit is good until 2024; if we decide none of the sailings we found -- 10-night Canada & New England, a couple 14-night Southern Caribbean sailings, or a pair of 10-night Mexican Riviera sailings (all of which would just require paying deposit, and two of which could be booked in a Club Class Mini-Suite while still otherwise fully paid for) -- then we'll wait for 2024 itineraries to come out.

It's the one good thing about finally being empty nesters; we can take those shoulder season sailings and get a hell of a good / long sailing out of that much FCC.

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14 minutes ago, WAAAYTOOO said:

So your isolation room was a balcony and they allowed you to go out and use it ?  Better than what Royal did for isolation…

Yes, we had a mid-ship balcony, just aft of the hump, in the middle of the "isolation section" of our deck. Fully free to use the balcony at any time, which we did when the weather was cool enough to enjoy it. Was very good to get that fresh air, as well as step outside and least be able to have a clear view of our sailing into the port, or our exit at the end of the day. There weren't very many CV-positive folks in isolation, at least at the time that we were isolated; I would regularly look around during port sail-aways and see basically no one on the neighboring balconies, either next to us or below.

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18 minutes ago, JLMoran said:

My wife had been experiencing potential Covid symptoms for 2 days before she and I both tested. Started off with just some sniffles / hay fever like symptoms such as you described, and on the second day she had a very brief bout of chills. But on the third day she started feeling completely exhausted and developed a bad chronic cough; that was the final warning sign.

On that same day, I suddenly developed a bad sore throat that got progressively worse as the day went on; I had been dealing with a slight sore throat off and on for a couple of days prior, but it always went away after drinking water / rehydrating.

Now, here's the thing -- we had brought BinaxNOW tests with us so we could self-test and avoid calling the med bay in case it wasn't actually anything. And we took those after dinner, when her symptoms really started getting pronounced. We saw that positive line come up on her test in less than 30 seconds. And it wasn't faint, it was a thick bright crimson line. There was no question she was positive and we had to call medical, who would do their own test to confirm.

My BinaxNOW test (which I took along with her, just in case) came back negative. But as my wife's cabin-mate, I was required to be tested per ship protocol once it was clear that she needed to be tested. And per their test (which is a more-sensitive florescence antigen test), I was already positive. Even if I had tested negative, their protocol would have required me to stay on the ship that day and isolate in our aft-facing cabin until I cleared a second test 24 hours later. How do I know this? Because my younger daughter developed bronchitis toward the end of the cruise, with a fever and horrible cough and congestion; and while she tested negative that night, she had to follow that protocol and stay on board for the day in Genoa.

Our older daughter, who also tested negative and had no symptoms, was free to leave the cabin and go on the excursion to Portofino with my wife since our younger one was also negative.

One other item on this, on why I felt the need to test.

My daughters and I booked a wine tasting event the first day, which met on the first sea day of the sailing. We were sat at our table, and had one seat left. A woman was told to sit next to me in the available seat, since she was alone. During the time waiting for things to begin, she casually told us that her mother, who she was traveling with and was sharing a cabin with, had just tested positive. But she was currently negative, and so they were allowing her to continue to use the ship.

I have no idea why she wasn't subject to the same 1-day isolation as my daughter. It's possible I misunderstood and her mother had tested positive the day before, as the woman mentioned her mother was tested before boarding a shore excursion (which would have been the day before); if that's the case, this woman had already cleared her second negative test. But I was on red alert at that point, because I'd already been talking with her and the rest of the table for about 15 minutes; if she was still latent but contagious, I was seriously f'ed. I was on high alert for anything that could be Covid symptoms.

I did realize, however, after testing positive that it was only 3 days after I'd seen that woman. And my wife was showing symptoms before me, even though she hadn't attended the wine tasting. So it's far more likely we picked up The Rona in Athens, or maybe during our excursion in Santorini.

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9 minutes ago, SMOKEY0202 said:

- passenger count and reported cases?

-sickness start on 1st sailing or the BTB?

-embark and disembark compared to Royal?

-would you do another European sailing with Princess?

-how was Princess app for information and all?

How well did wifi work on ship?

Sorry, I hadn't asked for either of those numbers. I want to say that another person on my sailing reported something like 3,300 people on board during the week before my sailing started, so it was likely in the same ballpark. Cases were not reported publicly, and I was given no information after being diagnosed.

We started developing very mild symptoms around day 3 / 4 of the first leg, and were diagnosed the evening of day 5 of that leg. So we missed the first week's final sea day (no big loss), the three ports from the B2B leg that I'd mentioned, along with both sea days of that second leg.

Embark was about the same as Royal, I'd say. On arrival to Piraeus port, we had to present all of our CV-related documentation -- proof of vaccination as provided in the app, and proof of negative PCR / antigen test in the allowed time window -- along with our passports. Masks were recommended but clearly not enforced in the waiting area, which was a large tent structure with some portable A/C units that didn't do bupkis to relieve the heat or keep the air moving particularly well. I'm assuming US ports with Royal are better on that last front, since they're actual buildings with dedicated HVAC. All told I'd say we needed about 30-45 minutes to get on board, between problems my wife had pulling up her Covid test proof and then waiting for our boarding group number to be called.

Disembark was super-fast. I'd say we were off the ship in under 15 minutes since we self-debarked and didn't have to find our luggage. Just tapped our Ocean Medallions on the scanners one last time before we hit the gangway, and that was it. Self-debark was given two time slots -- 7 or 8 AM, and those were purely guidelines. We chose 7 but didn't actually get off the ship until 7:45. Definitely a faster process than what I've experienced on Royal, but I have to qualify that by noting that only a small portion of the passengers were disembarking at the end of each week's leg. Most passengers (around 2/3 to 3/4, I think) were continuing for at least another week on any given turnaround day.

I would definitely do another European sailing with Princess, at least if it was in the Med. For Northern Europe / Iceland / other parts of Europe, I'd have to see who had the best itinerary options.

The Princess app was great. When it worked. 😛 For most of the cruise, the daily activity screen would never load even if I force-quit the app and restarted multiple times. Same with the account folio screen about 40% of the time I tried to access it. But the app was rock solid for things like ordering food or drinks for delivery to your location, as well as for getting through all of the pre-embarkation paperwork and certifications.

Princess' wi-fi, for us at least, was a bad joke. The fastest internet at sea? For all of us, that was only true on a port day, when we were stuck on the ship and just about everyone else was off it. The rest of the time, I was lucky to get 1 Mbps download speed (vs over 4 Mbps advertised), 500-600 Kbps upload, and ping times were over 700 ms all of the damn time. Streaming video during those times was not an option, unless we were willing to put up with lots of stuttering / buffering lag, or video so blocky and blurred that the benefit was more from just listening to the audio track. I even had multiple times where simple messages sent in WhatsApp or the Messages app on my iPhone wouldn't be received for over an hour! Sending a handful of photos each day (6-10) to my mother and MIL would take at least 20 minutes, often requiring a re-send because some or all of them failed to be sent. I have no idea why it was so bad; being that close to the equator should have meant we had the best reception possible, if I'm remembering @twangster's explanations of O3b right.

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JLMoran, totally agree.  Absolutely love the information you shared.  You are a gifted writer and should contribute more to the message board.

Based on today's CV metrics, severity, overall physical impact, sympton duration, testing accuracy to symptom/impact, what life is like everyday and everywhere.....I'm not testing.  If I  really feel bad, I    will stay in the room then go out when I    feel better.  Same goes for my family.  The math and statistics overwhelmingly suppport carrying on business as usual to the average person.

Again, thanks for sharing.

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10 hours ago, CharmMicah68 said:

You are a gifted writer and should contribute more to the message board.

Thanks for that. I did have to laugh, though. I was... umm... kinda prolific in my posts when I first joined. I actually have 5.5 thousand posts to my name, including a few semi-live blogs of my past cruises. But since Covid has come and my cruising life got shut down, I just haven't had as much to post about. I took a break from the boards and have only recently started posting again, still pretty limited.

I also just don't have as much time for following the boards any more. They are far more active now with a much larger community than when I first joined, and my work life has only gotten more hectic over those years. But I hope to become more active again as things slowly get back to normal and, with luck, Covid finally settles down into something more like a nasty cold that everyone is just going to be dealing with once every couple of years and no longer the life-threatening disease it started out as. It is, thankfully, one of the nicer parts of evolution; lethal parasites don't succeed in spreading their genes as well, so they tend to evolve over time to be far less lethal to their hosts. Here's hoping that Covid-19 continues to follow the same trend, where it's more infectious but far less lethal.

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11 hours ago, CharmMicah68 said:

JLMoran, totally agree.  Absolutely love the information you shared.  You are a gifted writer and should contribute more to the message board.

LOL! @JLMoranbeat me to a response to this but I am laughing so hard right now. 

Joe is as long winded as they come! But we love @JLMoranand he's been around for a long time. 

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  • 1 month later...

How ironic.  

Joe, I've always enjoyed your posts (I thought it was like 25,000 before your first cruise!) and am very sorry about the crappy experience and, worse still, your poor cat.  

A little while ago, I was wondering where you had gone, so I actually did a search of your name and found this thread.  Talk about irony.

I agree with you about the blog family - it seems to have grown a lot, even since CV.  There was always the same folks contributing and replying, but I guess the virus caused a big pause for all of us.  I kind of miss having familiar names to converse with and seemingly get to know.

 

Anyway, it's good to see you're still around; I hope you post more.  

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Figured I'd post a sort of epilogue to this thread. Princess' customer service handling has continued to leave me very unimpressed.

The letters we got from the ship about our FCC stated its should be issued in 30 days. Well, 30 calendar days went by and nothing. I said, "Hm, maybe it's business days. I'll give it until Sept 12".

Guess what still wasn't there on Sept 12? 😡 

I called their customer service line and, thankfully, got a very pleasant and patient rep who went by "Doc". He looked up our booking, and gave me some incredibly aggravating news: The person from the ship who was supposed to report to corporate that we had been quarantined due to Covid never bothered to do that!!! He calmly put up with my anger and frustration, and once I calmed back down and was able to listen again he proceeded to enter the needed information himself. He also gave me Princess' customer relations email address and told me to go ahead and send an email that was as angry and forceful as I wanted it to be; also said to make sure to include photos of the letters we were issued so there was undeniable proof that this was Princess' cock-up.

The ball is now officially rolling, and the FCC should finally be issued in another couple of weeks. (but hopefully sooner)

Meanwhile, Cathy and I had picked out 11 different sailings that would basically give us a free or minimal-cost cruise with the FCC. We have booked a 10-night Southern Caribbean sailing out of FLL in early February on Enchanted Princess (younger sister of Regal Princess). The FCC was so much that after my TA's group rate, we were able to get a mid-forward mini-suite that will only cost us the $200 deposit plus another $300-400 total. Obviously, we also have to pay for airfare and a hotel, but now we have a nice mid-winter trip to look forward to. It'll be our first time cruising in off-peak season, and first time enjoying the warm Caribbean while the north is freezing. I'm praying this works out to be a much better trip than the last one, and that with another 8 months of experience under the crew's belts we'll find the on-board experience and food will be better.

If not, that will be our last Princess sailing and we'll be squarely back with Royal and Celebrity. Which would be ironic, because we'd be higher in Princess' loyalty program than we are with Royal right now. (qualify for Ruby status after 3 sailings, and our med cruise counted as a B2B)

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I'm walking away from $800 in Princess FCC.  It expires at the end of this month and Princess doesn't sail from Florida until October.  With so few ships I could only use the FCC by flying somewhere I and I didn't want to pay for flights or do Alaska again this year.  

Some of their itineraries are nice in other regions but no options from North America while my FCC is valid and there hasn't been for over 6 months.  There was a one-way involving Quebec this summer to Florida but I didn't want to pay $1,000 in airfare to fly to Canada so I could use my $800 FCC and pay another $1,000 in cruise fare on top of it.  They've had nothing round trip available from Florida all summer.  A deliberate move I think.  

Oh well.  I earned it when they removed 2 of 4 ports of call to Alaska in 2021 so it was paper money with no value to me.     

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2 hours ago, twangster said:

They've had nothing round trip available from Florida all summer.  A deliberate move I think.  

I figure you are half joking, but Princess has never really been big on sailing out of the east coast during the summer.  It's one of the reasons I haven't sailed on that line yet, still being stuck to sailing on the school break calendar.

In past years, I don't think Celebrity has sailed out of Florida in the summer either, but with some COVID related redeployments I know they have been recently.  That is one of the reasons I went on Edge summer of 2021; figured it was too good of an opportunity to pass up!

 

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4 hours ago, twangster said:

I'm walking away from $800 in Princess FCC.  It expires at the end of this month and Princess doesn't sail from Florida until October.  With so few ships I could only use the FCC by flying somewhere I and I didn't want to pay for flights or do Alaska again this year.  

Some of their itineraries are nice in other regions but no options from North America while my FCC is valid and there hasn't been for over 6 months.  There was a one-way involving Quebec this summer to Florida but I didn't want to pay $1,000 in airfare to fly to Canada so I could use my $800 FCC and pay another $1,000 in cruise fare on top of it.  They've had nothing round trip available from Florida all summer.  A deliberate move I think.  

Oh well.  I earned it when they removed 2 of 4 ports of call to Alaska in 2021 so it was paper money with no value to me.     

Since Carnival owns Princess, can you not use that FCC on a Carnival cruise?  I'm pretty much a novice at cruising so I don't know how things like that work.  Maybe one day I'll have some FCC 😀

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1 hour ago, Southern Waters said:

Since Carnival owns Princess, can you not use that FCC on a Carnival cruise?  I'm pretty much a novice at cruising so I don't know how things like that work.  Maybe one day I'll have some FCC 😀

No, just like you can't mix Celebrity and Royal Caribbean FCC.  Separate companies despite being owned by the same parent company.  

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3 hours ago, twangster said:

No, just like you can't mix Celebrity and Royal Caribbean FCC.  Separate companies despite being owned by the same parent company.  

OK, I thought it worked like the shareholder benefit and CA status which applies on both RCI and Celebrity.  I'm learning more every time I come to this forum, thanks!

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8 hours ago, Southern Waters said:

OK, I thought it worked like the shareholder benefit and CA status which applies on both RCI and Celebrity.  I'm learning more every time I come to this forum, thanks!

No worries. 

In the case of being shareholder you have stock in the parent company, The Royal Caribbean Group, not in Royal Caribbean International or Celebrity (the cruise lines).  Celebrity, Silver Sea and Royal Caribbean International are corporate entities that are part of the Royal Caribbean Group.  The fact that Royal Caribbean International and the Royal Caribbean Group partially share names confuses a lot of people.  Some people think Celebrity is owned by Royal Caribbean International which is not the case.  

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