Can't grumble at these prices can you? Not sure what "almost all-inclusive" means!!

Just a bit of sales pitch. Don't drink, don't gamble and mean on tips($10pppd recomended) and this is an all in price except transport/parking(£79) for southampton.

These deals run throughto Aug 20 well into the school hols but if you think these prices are good US(Only) have this inside gty 28may(bank holiday/half term) at <£400 or £450-£500 for other dates. Best Suite price <£900 but not a lot left.

From the complaints about the food on the Legend it sounds like RCI cut corners for the UK market lets hope Princess don't do the same.

we booked directly through Princess.

Did they trim anything of the advertised price?, Upgrade?, OBC?

http://www.princesscruises.co.uk/offers.asp

Luci,

First spotted in an email early April(it is on TXT as well) but due to really wanting a warmer trip for the other half I have had to sell this one as a bargain and promise a better trip later in the year. We were also hanging on/hopeing for something like QM2 deal trans backto back (but I feel that may not happen 15n with 3n NY hotel was around £1600) or a Blackwatch north cape 15n (came down to £499 last year). It will be 8months since our last trip so booked this Golden rather than get nothing, our other choices were still over £1k so we have a few quid to spend in the spa.

Booking 7 weeks before a trip counts as an early booking for.

WJ

I picked up a Princess brochure at the weekend. Tips at $10 a day are automatically added to your cruise account for US cruises so I guess they will be the same here.

Any idea if we need to take a transatlantic adapter for the power supply?

Also can't find drink prices anywhere. Any idea what a bottle of wine/pint of beer will set us back? Planning to put a couple of bottles of wine/champagne in the case anyway as all staterooms have fridges.

Advantage of sailing from Soton is you don't need to meet the stingy 20kb weight limits most charter airlines impose.

Advantage of sailing from Soton is you don't need to meet the stingy 20kb weight limits most charter airlines impose.

Unless you are flying to Soton from the north of Scotland.

luci

In the brochure it says you may go to the purser's desk and subtract from the automatic gratuity amount.

I've been thinking about arrangements on other ships, ie on Thomson and some others, tips are included in the price, you just give a bit extra where you want to, others have envelopes for the waiter, steward and bus boy (guess you have to tip the bar waiters separately?) and finally Princess where 10$ per day per person is automatically added to onboard accounts.

After doing some complicated sums, that seems an awful lot of dosh - if everyone pays it

I just wondered whether it would be better tosubtract from the gratuity amount and give it directly to the steward/waiter/busboy. then you can be sure they are actually getting the whole amount.

Any ideas

I don't think $10 a day is that much and I budget for it anyway. for this 10 day trip it will work out at less than £60each I will have to pay £80 to park the car.

Personal choice dining(if you take it) means not having the same waiter every night so putting the $10 on account makes things easy.
We usually give the cabin steward a bit more if they are really good
They probably pool anyway so giving direct and not on account makes no difference.

A quick scan for drink info. we will probably sneek a few beers/wine since driving and no weight limit. looks like wine is ok so will take a copy of T&C's just in case.

Carrier kindly requests that You do not bring alcoholic beverages of any kind (except wine and champagne) on board for consumption. Alcoholic beverages that are purchased duty free, from the ship's gift shop, or at ports of call will be collected by Carrier personnel for safekeeping and delivered to Your stateroom on the last day of the voyage. A member of Carrier's security staff will be at the gangway to assist with the storage of Your alcoholic beverage purchases. A corkage fee of $10.00 per bottle will be applied to wine and champagne consumed in the ship's restaurant.

To get an idea of onboard prices try this link

http://www.princess.com/onboard/sendagift/liquor.html

Cheapest wine is about £12 so £6 bottles from Tesco and pay corkage.
wheely case and carry on straight to cabin.

Other note from reading up.

Arrive at least two hours before the scheduled sailing time and have with You Your cruise information packet. Attach a completed Princess Cruises luggage tag to each piece of baggage

WJ has a v good point about budgeting extra for tips, especially for those of us looking at the offers Princess have at the moment, as tips for a couple on a 10 day trip would add abouth 10% to the cheapest rates that have been advertised.

I was wondering whether anyone had any concerns about the tips getting to the right people when they are paid directly to the company

Guess you couldn't spend your last day chasing every single waiter that ever served you on open dining though

Luci

My Sea Princess review has now been posted, we did the 4th-18th cruise round the med.
cheers

Hi Bruceybabe

Excellent review! I think it covers everything I wanted to know about, eg drinks prices, sockets, the Steakhouse and Italian.

Thanks for posting your review, it really is appreciated.
Did you get the full Red Letter package on your cruise? I wasn't sure if you would as it's only available on certain sailings. Perhaps yours was one of them.

luci

Luci

yes we got the full package, it was just co-incedential that the cruise we fancied which also took in my birthday, was also the one including this offer. The cruise we might go for next year if we stick with princess is a little earlier in may and this one also has the same offer, however of course we do not qualify for this. In 5 years time I will certainly be looking for this again though as it was well worth it.

A bottle of Dom Perignon champagne awaited us in our cabin, this was listed on the bar list at $115!

We got the petit fours served every eve in our cabin, strawberrys dipped in chocolat, fancy biscuits etc. Something to nibble on whilst we relaxed after our day on the sun beds supping our vodkas and cokes.

The towelling robes were delivered to us to take home as well. By the way if you want the robes in your cabin you have to request them, there is no charge, also fresh fruit is delivered on request, this has nothing to do with the anniversary offer but is available anyway. On most cruise lines a higher grade of cabin is usually required for perks like this.

The free framed photgraph was also much larger and grander than we expected.

The two free upgrades took us up to deck 11 (alahoa) just below the pool area.

The champagne breakfast consisted of a half bottle of Moet Chandon plus a cooked choice, normally with room service there is only a continental choice.

Our 30 minute lotus spa session was very good, my wife had a facial I had the back and neck rub, these sessions in the Lotus are really pushed but are pretty expensive if you actually pay, $99 was about the cheapest that I saw.

A tip re the sun beds, the pool area fills up quickley as does the immediate deck above, however if you go up to the top and walk forward (is that aft?) there are usually plenty of spare beds, plus a kiddies paddling pool, it is much quieter here, though sometimes especially on sea days, can be windy, personally I prefer a breeze, just beware of that wind burn you can get without reliasing.

The daytime poolside entertainment is rather dissapointing I thought, a small group plays a set at lunchtime and again at teatime, otherwise it is just the movie screen, on RCI a calypso/reggae band was playing most all of the time and it provided a great atmosphere along with the cocktails.
However the old fogeys probably prefer the quiet though the childrens pool is noisy enough, they really were enjoying themselves despite the efforts of the princess pool attendants to stop them running, jumping in etc., health and safety they said.

Regarding the cocktails, the cocktail of the day was always superb (and strong), it comes in regular, medium or large. We started off with the medium which came in a fancy pint size glass, god knows how big the large size was. After a few days we reverted to regular, a more manageable half pint effort at $3.25.

Anyway I am sure you will throughly enjoy yourself when you go, any more questions I will be happy to answer as best I can.

Thanks so much for the additional information, especially about the cocktails.

I didn't realise you could get the Red Letter package for birthdays, I thought it was only for wedding anniversaries. Definitely worth considering when the next big birthday is due.

We manage to qualify for the standard celebration package - no spa treatments or robes to take home - so we are looking forward to the champagne and chocolate dipped strawberries!

luci

luci

sorry to mislead you, the birthday was just a coincedence, we had the anniversary (30th) package, it only has to fall anytime during the year of the cruise, ours was actually jan but we still qualified, other lines insist on it being during the actual duration of the cruise.

As for the birthday I could have had the singing waiters job but declined, thee were quite a few of these, you do appear to get some kind of small cake but after the desserts that you get, hardly important.
cheers

Hi Bruceybabe

Thanks for the clarification and sorry for my misunderstanding. I mistakenly thought the anniversary had to land during the cruise, so it's excellent that Princess allow it for anniversaries any time during the year.

Was there much daytime activities or entertainment, especially during sea days? There wasn't much on the Marco Polo compared to the Thomson's and Airtours cruises, only the odd game of bingo.

When did you find out your upgraded cabin allocation? We received our shore excursion brochure and pre-boarding forms today and they still show the original cabin number, not the upgrade.

luci

Luci
The aniversary has to be 5-10-15-20-etc to qualify. The upgrade we got was because of our 30th, we got two automatic upgrades, nothing to do with the actual company giving us one at last minute or anything.

The day time activities look very varied according to the patter sheet, but really there was not much to interest me or my wife. There are always about two to four trivia quizs a day, a lecture early in the morning from a very learned professor which seemed a little heavy going for me. there was ceramics and computer courses, some you had to pay for plus lotus spa demonstrations and lots of 'get rid of that bottom, get a flatter stomach' type of sessions plus the gym, again too energetic for me. Shuffleboard seemed quite popualr and basketball and golf chipping also. There was a sushi demonstration which i would have quite liked to see, the results were there at lunchtime to partake of.
However the usual napkin folding, vegetable and ice carving do not set my pulses racing so apart from the quizs we just lay on our sunbeds.
There were some daft pool games also which the kids seemed to enjoy.

I intend to be booking next years quite soon as the early booking offers are good.

Sea princess next may comes in around £999 however that is a little too early for us so I am looking at Legend of the Seas which is a similar price and sails on June 10th, both discounted by approx £200 from the brochure early booking saver. There should be more activities on this boat with the rock climbing wall, 13 hole mini golf and the ice rink. You can get bargains around 3 months prior but to be certain of the date you want and of course sailing from Southampton I prefer to book early. A couple we met had booked just a couple of months prior for the Sea Princess and paid £200 more per person than we did for exactly the same grade of cabin, they too were on their 30th anniversary.

Finally if you do not get a prompt reply from me it is because I am doing this from work in my lunch break so can only answer during working hours mon-friday, my son hogs the PC at home.
regards

Thanks again Bruceybabe. If there's a couple of quizzes and maybe yoga or Pilates that'll keep me happy. Not into anything too physical!

We have been allocated a cabin number which should be upgraded by one category and were wondering when we find out out final cabin number.

luci

Our cabin upgrade was done at the time of booking so we knew from the outset which cabin we were going to be in, not sure how your upgrade will work, you might have to wait until check in although I would have thought you would have a number to call for details.

Just looking at one of the patters and seeing exactly what I missed--

deck quoits-beginners ballroom-absolutley flabuless-fight the fat cell-reflexology seminar--doubles ping pong---arts and crafts---water colour card---darts comp-----basketball shootout-----let your skin glow----beautiful hands and nails-------golf putting-ceramics--and of course bingo.
we only played this on the last day as the snowball had not gone all fortnight and the full house prize was $3,400, however no luck still somebody managed to pay for a good portion of their cruise!
good luck to you.

Thanks again Bruceybabe. Think I'll have to give Princess a ring to see if they can help.

Sounds like there will be enough to keep us occupied during the day on the ship.

luci

Just as well I phoned Princess about our cabin number as there had been a mistake and we hadn't been given the upgrade. Hopefully it is all sorted now.

One more question - do you pay for the coach transfers at the ports in cash or are they charged to your onboard account?

luci

BY coach transfers do you mean from your home to the ship, we used Eavesway and I found it very good both to Southampton and returning home. This was payable prior to the cruise, in our case to save'n'sail.

If you mean for the excursions at the various ports ,we never took any, but you prepayed these onto your account, the shuttle buses that ferried you into the towns were all apyable by euros or in the case of Gibralter, pond sterling also. Only the Lisbon trip was prepayable on your ship account, you could still pay this on the bus if you wished in euros.

Ha I meant the shuttle buses in each port. Knew I hadn't worded my question correctly, but thanks for your reply to cover all eventualities.

We have US$, euros and sterling so should have everything covered.

luci