Dan

So, we talked to the inlaws last night and they agreed to take the kids for a week in January so we could go on a cruise. We had already done an advance booking 2 years ago on Princess, and since those expire after 4 years, we are using it now so we don't end up letting it go if we can't use it within 2 more years. I already have the week of Jan 20th booked off so those 3 options I listed are it for Princess that week for the Caribbean. It will have been 7 years since we were in the Caribbean, so we look forward to going back there. We haven't done the western route yet, but we have been on the Grand already. Not sure why, but in all the years of reading reviews, those ports have never grabbed my interest. Maybe I need to try them to find out. We've been to the eastern side twice, but St Maarten was dropped both times due to hurricanes. The Caribbean Princess sounds to me more like the Grand with 500 more people, but nothing really new other than the movies outside. (and we've already been on the Sapphire, which had new stuff). But 3 sea days sounds relaxing. We've never sailed from San Juan (been there twice as port calls) and would like to try the Crown the most of these 3 ships. Cruise costs a couple hundred more pp and air is quite a bit more than FLL. Plus I'm not looking forward to spending another 3 or 4 hours of sitting in airports and airplanes than what going to Florida would be. This one only has one sea day, and I've never done a port intensive cruise before. So each options has it's plusses and "not so plusses" (can't call them minuses, this is a cruise after all LOL). So what do my fellow Crazies think?

Well, their website is a little screwy, which isn't uncommon for them LOL. It doesn't show up if you click "Hawaii and Tahiti" and the calendar, but if you click the ship name and the month, then "view", the fall 2008 FP voyages come up. Granted, these itineraries don't appear to include Cook Islands. Who knows where the TP will be after the world cruise ends in May 2009, but they don't have anything listed on their website that far in advance yet.

According to the site, the TP departs Honolulu Sept 28, 2008 for a 12 day cruise to Papeete. Then it does 10 day FP cruises until Dec when it departs Papeete on the 19th for a 26 day repo to FLL. I also notice on the website that there are only 3 cruises in Alaska in 2009. Surely they aren't pulling out of Alaska are they? LOL. Or could it just mean the schedule isn't complete. I can't imagine Princess not having final plans 18 months in advance. LOL. It just looks to me like they have decided Tahiti isn't worth year round service anymore, just like they have pulled ships out of Florida and are only offering Caribbean cruises from New York next summer (and not at all in September). The economy has changed.

4 7's and a 10 so far and we loved them all. The 10 was really nice, especially since it costed less than the 7 day one we did a year earlier LOL. Would like to try the 15 day round trip to Hawaii that my inlaws did last year. Getting time off is one problem, and making arrangements for the kids is the other bigger problem. As Frostyboy says, 4 would be a nice long weekend away, if I lived right there. But if I'm goign through the expense and aggravation of flying in, it will be at least 7 days for me.

Title should be "Free Gift For Most Members" unfortunately. Only US addresses.

They aren't "leaving" the route. They are repositioning away for a few months in the summer. Same as the Caribbean. They obviously feel they can make more money with the ship in Alaska during the summer. But it is going back to Tahiti for the winter.

The calendar on Princess.com shows the TP returning to Papeete in Oct 2008.

"Book with John, he'll have you Gawne" ;) Sorry, couldn't resist LOL.

Added to that will be the $10/day in gratuities charged to her account for the baby. She would have to decide on the cruise how much work any of the staff do for the baby and how much of that $10/day she will leave on the account. Presumably the baby will be in high chair taking up a space at the dining room table, and eating something (and being cleaned up after LOL), and there will be a pail full of dirty diapers in the cabin, so there will be some services rendered.

We visited another ship while in port once. It was in 1995, and we were on the Westerdam. The Statendam was docked next to us in Nassau, and their gangway was almost directly across from ours. So we strolled over when we returned from town and told the gangway people that we were Westerdam passengers and were curious if we could look around. They said yes and off we went for about an hour walkabout. When we were docked in St Thomas in 1999, the Sun Princess was anchored off shore. I asked one of our security people if going over was allowed. He said usually yes when the other ship is docked, but not if tender is required. Of course, this was back before 9-11 and the security changes that brought along. I would think in an embarkation port, it would be very difficult to impossible to visit another ship these days. Unless as part of some trade group or something (my sister did this in Halifax a couple years ago as part of her travel agent course)

I haven't been on this ship yet, although I really want to. Cunard has a higher-grade reputation than the other members of the Carnival family of cruise lines. You will be fine getting all dressed up. Even on Carnival I've seen a wide range of dress with people in tuxes and gowns. I don't think you'll have a problem with the food. True that it's not typically top of the line land restaurant quality, because of the number of meals they put out in a day, but the sit-down meals should be very good to excellent (depending on your tastes of course). Regarding your wedding dress, how do you have it packaged up? They generally are similar to airlines as far as carrying your luggage goes. I know my wife's dress was in a garment bag that I think would have had to be checked. You can try to carry it on, and explain to whoever asks that it's a wedding dress, and they want to have a look at it. Have a great journey and congrats on the wedding.

Always wear mine. They don't have enough clocks on the ship for me to know that an hour has passed since I last ate LOL.

I think you hit on it with the promotional thing. They have a few that they can advertise and quite often people that book those will get an upgrade so the cheap ones are still available later on for advertising purposes. They typically aren't in prime locations so the hope is that people will just book the higher grade cabins to begin with.

How does this person find out you are going on a cruise, and which one?

Practically everything else in our society is age-based, not maturity-based, so i don't see a way around this either. I guess you'll just have to suck it up and realize in a couple more years you'll be able to leave the noisy kids behind and go sit by the pool while a bunch of drunk, noisy adults disturb you LOL.

I think there were pictures a couple years ago of the Norwegian Dawn all covered in snow the first day of a cruise. Rumour is that New York City does get the odd snowstorm, and that ship was (Is?) sailing year round from NYC.

He mentions the rough seas they were having on that cruise last week, not about the picture above. Canadian Cruiser, I've been led to beleive it was the Triumph as well.

I remember this from a few years ago. It came out as the Triumph hitting a wave in hurricane Isabel, but that was false because that ship was doing the Canada New England itinerary at the time. From what I read on other various sites at the time was that it hit the rogue wave off the Nova Scotia coast and this pic came from footage taken by a Canadian military plane. If I remember right, the pic was posted online by the mother of one of those air crew members. A couple google searches only came up with the link that Peddlar posted, so I can't come up with the original stories I read about this.

Nothing to be sorry about. We like the fact that newcomers find some of the old stuff useful and worthy of resurrecting.

No problem. I've done that many times where somebody has brought back an old topic and I reply to somebody who posted a long time ago and no longer is around. Or even worse, when I reply to the topic and read back and see that I already replied 2 years ago LOL.

If you're talking about Jeff (Dacruznut), check the date on his post LOL. He bugged out a while ago LOL.

Our first cruise was a group cruise. My uncle's company sent 30 or 40 of their top advertisers on this cruise, and one of them didn't want to go, so my uncle sold us the trip very cheap, and we used that as our honeymoon. We all sat in the same general area of the dining room, although we took a table for 2, since we didn't really know what to expect with cruise dining. We were all on the same flights both ways, we had a group bus to get to and from the ship, and there was a cocktail party before dinner one night, but other than that, it was like we were on our own.

If you no-show for the cruise, then you have no rights to the cabin or any recocery of costs should the cruise line upgrade someone to your room. (Since they can't resell a no-show's cabin that close to departure, they aren't getting any more money anyway, so nothing to give you). If you call the cruise line and advise them that circumstances prevent you from getting there at sailaway but you plan to meet the ship, they may leave your cabin open for you to meet it, but I really don't know for sure. If you don't communicate with the cruise line about missing embarkation, you will likely be turned away at the next port if you just showed up there to meet up with the ship. In regards to the question, there would have to be a very serious reason for us to cancel because of travelling companions cancelling. I can't really think of anything that could happen to our friends that would cause us to also cancel, short of them dying. And in that situation, if our bookings were together like last time, I'm sure the cruise line would allow a penalty-free re-scheduling. But fear of getting sick? Sorry, enjoy the cold at home while we head south LOL.

Well, clearly somebody who just got off a cruise ship went to that hospital and infected those poor people.

Have you seen the helm of a cruise ship lately? Walk into any office with a woman sitting at a computer and she could be in command of a cruise ship. Commanding cruise ships is pretty exclusive company and it takes a long time to move up the ranks, but I say it's about time a woman made it.