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Niggling charges on Princess
Greetings all,
My wife and I just returned from a nice 10 day cruise to Alaska on Regal Princess and something there bothered me and I want to find out if this is fleet-wide for Princess: We've done six cruises over the years, four with Carnival and two with Princess, on this last one, there was a charge for cappucino and hot chocolate after dinner. On Carnival last year, they did not charge and even on the Lido deck they had a much larger selection of drinks such as fruit juices, lemonade and so on at all times..even hot chocolate with no charge. Now Princess costs a lot more than Carnival, so one would think if Carnival can do it for free, Princess surely could as well. The question is, is Princess doing this fleetwide? Is it something new? (I don't recall being charged for this on our earlier cruise two years ago.) And is Carnival still giving it away? The charges are minor $2.00 for a very large pot of chocolate but it just seems petty. Especially fior the price differential in cruises. Any comments from anyone? Is this just something everyone is doing now? I don't really want to go back to Carnival (I *hate* singing waiters) but if I am going to pay premium prices, I don't want to be niggled by silly little charges for this sort of thing, might as well save money on the cruise fare if that is the case. Regal Princess really needs to put more variety in its beverage offerings on Lido anyway, it was depressingly boring. Jim P. |
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Niggling charges on Princess
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#3
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Niggling charges on Princess
wrote in message ... Greetings all, My wife and I just returned from a nice 10 day cruise to Alaska on Regal Princess and something there bothered me and I want to find out if this is fleet-wide for Princess: We've done six cruises over the years, four with Carnival and two with Princess, on this last one, there was a charge for cappucino and hot chocolate after dinner. On Carnival last year, they did not charge and even on the Lido deck they had a much larger selection of drinks such as fruit juices, lemonade and so on at all times..even hot chocolate with no charge. Now Princess costs a lot more than Carnival, so one would think if Carnival can do it for free, Princess surely could as well. The question is, is Princess doing this fleetwide? Is it something new? (I don't recall being charged for this on our earlier cruise two years ago.) And is Carnival still giving it away? The charges are minor $2.00 for a very large pot of chocolate but it just seems petty. Especially fior the price differential in cruises. Any comments from anyone? Is this just something everyone is doing now? I don't really want to go back to Carnival (I *hate* singing waiters) but if I am going to pay premium prices, I don't want to be niggled by silly little charges for this sort of thing, might as well save money on the cruise fare if that is the case. Carnival owns Princess. And the cruise industry is pretty good at extracting "on board revenue" from the passengers. What many of them have done is set up "branded" coffee shops on board (Seattle's Best, Cova, etc.) that they can charge extra for. Princess does this with Haagen Dazs ice cream as well, though other lines still make home made ice cream and serve it for free. Premium dining is another way of extracting extra money from you. Though to be honest, while I've seen big mugs of hot chocolate that the waiters bring around and charge you for, you could go to the buffet and make your own from a packet for free (however it doesn't have the ginger in it, like the chocolate they charge extra for). --Tom |
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Niggling charges on Princess
In article ,
wrote: The question is, is Princess doing this fleetwide? Is it something new? (I don't recall being charged for this on our earlier cruise two years ago.) And is Carnival still giving it away? I don't ever recall the cappuchino ever being free on Princess. They definitly have been charging for it for a few years. Are you sure it was free on Carnival? I seem to recall otherwisw but as I was only on one Carnival cruise I might be wrong on that one. Royal Caribbean changed it from free to a charge a couple of years ago. NCL still offers cappachino for free in the dining room. Had it every dinner last June as the regular coffee was not good. Regal Princess really needs to put more variety in its beverage offerings on Lido anyway, it was depressingly boring. Princess has always had the least in free beverages in the lido. Only coffee, tea, iced tea. And they have had the hot chocolate packets. NCL only had those drinks too. Royal Caribbean and Celebrity add lemonade to that and one other fruit drink. Carnival also has lemonade. While I prefer free cappachino and also lemonade at the lido it is not something that enters into my cruise decision. It is unlikely I will be cruising Carnival again and my tendencies right now are to cruise Celebrity or Princess despite anything else. -- Charles |
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Niggling charges on Princess
Charles wrote: In article , wrote: The question is, is Princess doing this fleetwide? Is it something new? (I don't recall being charged for this on our earlier cruise two years ago.) And is Carnival still giving it away? I don't ever recall the cappuchino ever being free on Princess. That's because you have not been on many Princess ships. While it is true that most (I think all, actually) of the ships in the Grand class (2600+ passengers) charge for cappuchino, at least the Tahitian Princess (been on it four times the past three years) of the Explorer Class of small ships don't charge for Cappuchino. I've been on the Pacific and the Regal Princess of that group of ships too (about 700 passengers), but I don't recall for sure about Cappuchino charges. Regal Princess really needs to put more variety in its beverage offerings on Lido anyway, it was depressingly boring. I tend to agree. While I prefer free cappachino and also lemonade at the lido it is not something that enters into my cruise decision. It is unlikely I will be cruising Carnival again and my tendencies right now are to cruise Celebrity or Princess despite anything else. I also prefer the Explorer Class of Princess ships to the Grand Class. Much less walking from one end of the deck to the other, and you even get to meet a few new faces more than once. I've been on only two of the medium-sized Sun Class (1950 passehgers) ships. They seem to have the worse of both worlds rather than the best of the larger and smaller. -- Bob. |
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Niggling charges on Princess
Charles wrote: In article , wrote: The question is, is Princess doing this fleetwide? Is it something new? (I don't recall being charged for this on our earlier cruise two years ago.) And is Carnival still giving it away? I don't ever recall the cappuchino ever being free on Princess. They definitly have been charging for it for a few years. Are you sure it was free on Carnival? I seem to recall otherwisw but as I was only on one Carnival cruise I might be wrong on that one. Royal Caribbean changed it from free to a charge a couple of years ago. We were on both Carnival and Royal Caribbean in 2004. Carnival cappuchino was free, Royal Caribbean was not free. sue |
#7
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Niggling charges on Princess
Charles wrote:
snip While I prefer free cappachino and also lemonade at the lido it is not something that enters into my cruise decision. It is unlikely I will be cruising Carnival again and my tendencies right now are to cruise Celebrity or Princess despite anything else. People keep saying things like this implying (to me anyway) that one single thing is insignificant (and of course it is unless there is a whole host of insignificant things taken together) and that it is sort of shallow to mind what extra charges there are - kind of 'if you are paying $$$$ for the cruise why are you complaining about another $. I think this is sort of patronizing. Because you've said that you will cruise Princess "despite anything else". That indicates to me that you've considered the cappuccino and extra charges question but that you've decided that other things (like the decor or things that you don't like on Carnival) are more important to you. And that's OK, as long as you allow other people to make their own decisions about what is important. Cappuccino wouldn't matter to me at all because we don't drink any kind of coffee. But if it does matter to someone, I see nothing wrong with asking the question and taking the answer into account when booking a cruise. Why not try for the best fit possible? grandma Rosalie |
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Niggling charges on Princess
"Tom K" wrote in message ... Though to be honest, while I've seen big mugs of hot chocolate that the waiters bring around and charge you for, you could go to the buffet and make your own from a packet for free (however it doesn't have the ginger in it, like the chocolate they charge extra for). --Tom Tom, I forget which ship, but it was not long ago..possibly the Norwegian Spirit or Caribbean Princess, but they had cinnamon and ginger next to the hot chocolate packets on the Lido Deck. There has always been a charge for hot chocolate or cappuccino in the dining rooms on most of the ships..once in awhile you run across a ship that doesn't...Since I am not a cappuccino drinker, I haven't really paid attention to which ones. They do serve free hot chocolate on the decks of HAL ships going to and from Alaska..that or hot pea soup! ;-) --Jean |
#9
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Niggling charges on Princess
In article , Rosalie B.
wrote: People keep saying things like this implying (to me anyway) that one single thing is insignificant (and of course it is unless there is a whole host of insignificant things taken together) and that it is sort of shallow to mind what extra charges there are - kind of 'if you are paying $$$$ for the cruise why are you complaining about another $. I think this is sort of patronizing. I did say one single thing is not significant but you are putting words into my mouth that I think it is shallow to mind extra charges. I do mind the extra charges myself, it is just that particular extra charge is not going to make me pick NCL or Carnival over Princess since I can think of more other reasons not to book those than the charge for cappachino. Because you've said that you will cruise Princess "despite anything else". That indicates to me that you've considered the cappuccino and extra charges question but that you've decided that other things (like the decor or things that you don't like on Carnival) are more important to you. And that's OK, as long as you allow other people to make their own decisions about what is important. I did not say I would cruise Princess despite anything else. As a matter of fact I haven't cruised on Princess for a couple a years and have been on Celebrity, Royal Caribbean, Carnival and NCL since my last Princess cruise. I do have two future cruises booked on Princess out of three futures but I might not go on either of the Princess cruises. (yikes! I have four future cruises booked, two Princess, one Celebrity, and one Royal Caribbean). The other person, Jim, asked for comments about the charges on Princess. I am giving my take on the extra charges. I don't care for them but I have to look at the whole cruise experience. Even with the extra charges on Celebrity and Princess I have felt much more satisfied after cruises on those lines than the cruise I took on Carnival. One other thing he mentioned was that the price of Princess being higher. I have not really found that to be the case, but I would not book Carnival again if the price was half as much as a Princess cruise. -- Charles |
#10
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Niggling charges on Princess
Hi Charles,
We just returned from the Carnival Spirit, Vancouver to Hawaii cruise. The Lido Deck has coffee (regular and decaffeinated) and hot chocolate dispensers available 24 hours a day. For cold drinks, they had a self-serve ice dispenser and iced tea, lemonade, fruit punch, orange juice and apple juice (I'm not sure all the juices were available all day). Cappuccino was available free in the dining room at dinnertime. We had it every night. I don't know if it was available at breakfast and lunchtime or not, and I suspect if you had ordered it on deck from a bartender, it would have been charged for. They also had a "name brand" coffee and pastry place for a price. Soft ice cream was always available, and they had a regular ice cream stand open at certain times in the afternoon. Tobieon an Island in the Pacific "Charles" wrote in message d... In article , wrote: The question is, is Princess doing this fleetwide? Is it something new? (I don't recall being charged for this on our earlier cruise two years ago.) And is Carnival still giving it away? I don't ever recall the cappuchino ever being free on Princess. They definitly have been charging for it for a few years. Are you sure it was free on Carnival? I seem to recall otherwisw but as I was only on one Carnival cruise I might be wrong on that one. Royal Caribbean changed it from free to a charge a couple of years ago. NCL still offers cappachino for free in the dining room. Had it every dinner last June as the regular coffee was not good. Regal Princess really needs to put more variety in its beverage offerings on Lido anyway, it was depressingly boring. Princess has always had the least in free beverages in the lido. Only coffee, tea, iced tea. And they have had the hot chocolate packets. NCL only had those drinks too. Royal Caribbean and Celebrity add lemonade to that and one other fruit drink. Carnival also has lemonade. While I prefer free cappachino and also lemonade at the lido it is not something that enters into my cruise decision. It is unlikely I will be cruising Carnival again and my tendencies right now are to cruise Celebrity or Princess despite anything else. -- Charles |
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