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.

wrote:
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.

I seem to remember always having to pay for cappucino and similar
drinks on Princess. Some cruise lines charge for it, others don't. I
would not choose a cruise line to sail or not sail on based on this.

sue

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

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

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.

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

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

"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

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

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