When we booked our Caribbean Princess sailing we had a GTY room and have been waiting for a room assignment. Saturday morning, on my daily check of this, I found out our room had been assigned. We did not get an upgrade, but we did get a better location for the room than we could have. We are in a category BC balcony. I was worried about having the buffet above our room. Instead we were assigned a room on the Aloha Deck, midship. Now is the perfect time to go over our documents, special requests, prebookings, etc.
With Princess Cruises, we will not get documents in the mail. Instead we will complete them online, even printing off our luggage tags. You will need to log in to your reservation to view the Cruise Personalizer. If you haven’t set up a log in with Princess Cruises, you should do so. On the home page for Princess Cruises, in the upper right corner, there is a link to log in or register. Once you have logged in, yu can go to My Princess.
When you are planning your cruise, you can save cruises in My Princess and review them later. On this page, you can visit the ports of call, request a brochure, check out the weather and see a bridge cam from your ship! Here is ours http://www.princess.com/bridgecams/cb/caribbean_bridgecam.html.
Under My Profile, you can enter your contact information for the cruise, how you prefer to be addressed and how you want to be contacted by Princess for marketing, etc. There is a personal information page where you will enter your gender, date of birth, wedding date, children, and passport information. The next page is vacation information. Here you will enter information about previous vacations, where you would like to cruise next, when you typically vacation, length of vacations and reasons you cruise. The final page is about onboard preferences. Here you are asked about your dining preferences, medical conditions, dietary restrictions, special request (like bed extenders, shower stools), bedding configuration, smoking preference. They also ask above soft drinks, fruit and alcohol for minibar purposes. Finally they ask about what you might be interested in onboard (like the casino, spa, specialty dining, etc.).
There are a few other things that you can set up in advance. Transfers to and from the airport or rail station and hotels both pre and post cruise will need to be paid at the time you add them if you are inside the final payment date. If you know you are going to need an extension cord, feather pillows, extra pillows or an egg crate mattress, you can request these ahead of time.
Now we’re ready for the Cruise Personalizer!
Here is where you will complete the documentation for this cruise plus make any optional plans for the sailing. Under Passenger Immigration for each guest, you will enter basic information, emergency contacts, citizenship & immigration and shipboard account. There is also information about what is required for documents and when you need to arrive to the cruise terminal.
The Special Requests section includes information about medical conditions, dietary restrictions and special occasions.
Cruise Preferences again goes over if you want a robe in your cabin, the activities onboard you may be interested and your travel preferences.
Next are the shore excursions. Here you can select the shore excursions you wold like to do on your cruise. You can hold shore excursions without deposits and cancel most of the tours up to 24 hours prior to arriving at the port (some are longer). You can download a full brochure or create a custom brochure for your sailing.
The Lotus Spa Reservations can be reserved under the next section. These are only for guests 18 and older. All others must be handled onboard.
On the right side of the screen you can view your itinerary. This will show you locations and times where you will be. Also any important notices, documents you will need and flight guidelines. Since we have purchased transfers from the airport to the pier, there are instructions for what we need to do when we arrive.
There is a section where we can provide our independent air schedule. This will also let Princess Cruises know when we are arriving.
New to the Cruise Personalizer is the Princess Roll Call on Facebook. There is a link here so that you can go on Facebook, find your sailing and connect with others going on your cruise.
Finally when you have completed your Passenger Immigration and the Passage Contract is showing as accepted, and you are within 75 days of sailing, you can view or email your travel summary, boarding pass and luggage tags. You will have a boarding pass for everyone in the room plus luggage tags for everyone as well. The luggage tags are very straightforward and have good instructions for folding and affixing to your luggage.
Under the Documentation section, you can download forms and documents. This will have your travel summary and boarding pass in a printer friendly version, plus there are precruise check lists, immigration forms, air information, insurance information, security guide, answer book and port directions & details.
Once you have booked your cruise and provided Princess Cruises with your email address, they send you period emails about the cruise. You can review the pre-cruise emails on this page as well. We have received three so far.
Finally there is information on Princess eZAir program and also a Cruise Countdown that you can download.
Also to get ready for our cruise, we checked out some of the things we can purchase in advance like gifts, dining, etc. We were impressed with some of the offerings. So of course, I had to start purchasing.
One thing that I didn’t get that sounds fabulous was the Grand Occasion package. This included a “welcome aboard” Dom Perignon Champagne, a framed formal portrait, champagne breakfast in bed with a half bottle of French champagne, two waffle robes, a visit to the Lotus Spa, canapes or petits fours one evening, a 14 piece Godiva heart-shaped box of chocolate and a personalized invitation from the Captain to visit the bridge while in port.
We had to purchase a bottle of Asti for sailaway. I didn’t want to purchase a beer or soda package, but we will consider a soda card once onboard. We did get the Coffee Card however. This gives us 15 espresso-based coffees plus unlimited brewed coffee and tea. I saw the chocolate-dipped strawberries and had to have them! They look like little tuxedos!!
One more thing that we considered but decided against was the Champagne balcony breakfast for two. This is a four-course gourmet breakfast and a half bottle of French champagne. This was affordable at $32 a couple, but when I saw the menu, I wasn’t as impressed. Not that it was bad, it just wasn’t what I wanted for breakfast. It is only offered on the sea day too and since we only have one, we decided against it.
We did prepurchase the internet access though. When you purchase it in advance, you get bonus minutes free. The 120 minute package was only $58.95 with a bonus 20 minutes and the 190 minute package was only $78.95 plus 40 minutes free. I forgot that I’ll be getting some free time onboard, but that’s ok. I can use it to keep in touch and do a few blogs.
One more thing that we had to pre-purchase was the Ultimate Balcony Dining. This is $100 a couple and sounds fantastic! Included in this meal are flowers, a photograph of the event, your favorite cocktail, appetizers, salad, choice of two entrees or both, dessert and a split of champagne. We set this up for the second night.
We didn’t prepurchase but do plan to go to Sabatini’s and Crown Grill. We could prepay for these, but there is no advantage to do so in advance so we will wait until we get onboard.
Travel on a Dream's Blog 