10 Things I Wish I Knew BEFORE Going On Our Princess Cruise

10 Things I Wish I Knew BEFORE Going On Our Princess Cruise

These are 10 things I wish I had known before going on our Princess Cruise, little things that could have saved us time and money and I hope you find these helpful also.

We ended up ordering the Ocean Medallion holder the day before our cruise as we were just searching around Amazon and really stumbled upon it by accident.

The Caribbean Princess was updated right before the shutdown in 2019 and hasn't seen much use since it's been updated.

Here is a link to the Full Ship Tour of the Caribbean Princess that you should watch first before booking the Caribbean Princess. 👇

Our Cabin Tour - We had a fantastic AFT corner balcony 👇

Looking to book the Ultimate Balcony Dining Experience? Our full review 👇 (as mentioned in the video)

MY CRUISE ESSENTIALS from Amazon

FROM THE VIDEO 👇

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00:00 Introduction
00:10 Medallion via mail
00:35 Medallion Holder
01:20 Sanctuary First
02:30 Specialty Dining
03:50 Street Tacos
04:40 Coffee and Cones
05:46 Alternative to Thermal Suite
06:20 Special Dining Experience
06:49 WiFi speed is slow
07:29 Drink Delivery Overrated
08:24 * Bonus Beds are comfortable

[samoman]

We have done 10 cruises with Princess and have never had an issue. We did find that since the medallions came in there seems to be less staff so service can be a bit slow. I think if you go looking for problems you will find them but with us we go to enjoy our cruise and we always do.

[melferguson]

We have our 6 princess cruise booked this April to Hawaii we have never had issues with drinks finding us in a timely manner we have also order pizza to the sky walker lounge and finding us in a timely manner
Renewer when your in port at lot of the staff are also getting leave so they may go to port and get personnel supplies so yes expect delivery may be a little slower and this may be the days you walk to the bar and get a drink or go to the buffet for your food

We have cruised Princess Celebrity Royal Caribbean and Norwegian
Princess has always made our vacation perfect fun relaxing and memorable

[TinaMarshall-nx]

The delivery of Drinks and food was fantastic, used it the whole trip.

[michaelj]

Good tips to know! I totally agree with the drink delivery. As you said, you have to plan on being in one spot for a long time, which is not something you normally do on a cruise ship. One thing I learned is that when you belly up to a bar, your medallion links to the bartender's computer and your name and picture both come up on a screen in front of them. If you are the paranoid type, you may not like being this closely tracked while on board.

[lisakennon]

I highly recommend the balcony dinner. We did it on the Emerald Princess on the Panama Canal cruise. The food was amazing & the service was fantastic. Do if you have something special for us it was our 50th wedding anniversary & worth every penny. But just make you are extra hungry because you really do get a lot of yummy delicious foods.

[cathy]

I was on the Caribbean princess early Dec 2023 and the wifi’s was awful. Could watch nothing. The beds are so amazing, best sleep of my life!

[wfodavid]

Super helpful ideas! I'll 2nd going to the specialty restaurant and asking for a table. Worked several times for us!

[Genealogyhelper]

We just cruised the Emerald Princess in late Sept. Got our medallion at port and had no problems at all, very quick.

[l.faraday]

We tried to get our medallions mailed, but they wouldn’t send them to Canada. We picked them up at the port and it was quick and efficient.

[PamGrubb]

We do the same thing but when both hands are full and you need to get to the bathroom You will love it 😀

[taewiao]

love it love it. well done. Thank you Sir

[DrivingFree]

Cruising Discovery next year. Thank you for these tips I actually didn’t know where do get our plus perks

[karenlane]

I just finished a webinar for Princess (I am a travel consultant for Expedia Cruises) and they were saying they have improved the Wi-fi a lot over the past year. I hope you’re able to see the improvement. Caribbean Princess was our very first cruise, and I loved it then (2006), so I’m sure the 2019 update is great!

[GaryMcAdams-ijju]

Been on 12 Princess cruises and I am Platinum too. One thing to know about the Princess ships: they vary in service(s) and the staff know this. When Princess started the process of installing the Medallion equipment on the ships, it was very buggy, now it works very well, but mostly on the newer "regal / royal class" ships. This is because the newer ships were designed with the medallion and internet accessibility in mind. Princess used the pandemic time to upgrade the older ships as much as possible, unfortunately, the smaller ships just aren't amenable to all this new technology.

After the pandemic, we have cruised on the Enchanted, the Crown, the Discovery and the Sky. Amazingly the medallion services, internet, service have all been excellent. Our next cruise this fall will be back on the Enchanted. Even the Crown, which is an older ship, had great medallion services.

Looking forward to the new "sphere class" ships. Should be interesting.

From the start, I could not agree with about 50% of what Jayson was saying; and I finally figured out what the problem was when he finally mentioned the fact that this whole post was about the Caribbean Princess which is one of the oldest ships in the fleet and not the best one to use to talk about the overall Princess experience.

1. Always have the medallion mailed to your home. After the medallion experience, our onboard process is usually less than ten minutes from the parking lot / cab stand to our cabin or lunch in one of the casual dining restaurants.
2. Book everything that you can way in advance. Since we have been with Princess, we've done all the "Specialty restaurants". Our favorites are always the Crown Grill and the new "The Catch by Rudy" on the newer ships. We have also had good experiences once on board by either using the "dine line" or going directly to the restaurant to make a reservation. This is because there are always people canceling out and you can usually get a spot.
3. Some things like the spa and the sanctuary can't be booked in advance. If those are something that you really want to do, I agree with Jayson: make that a priority and book as soon as you get on board.
4. Try to book a "Club Class" mini-suite. It's now called the "Reserved Collection" cabins. Worth every penny: larger cabins and a special reserved dining area where the staff get to know you by name and you can sit at the same table every day at the time of your choosing.
5. Get the Princess plus. Not the Princess Premium, just the plus. It pencils out very nicely versus what we used to do.
6. Finally, if you can, book you cruises through Costco travel. Saves literally thousands of dollars sometimes and at the end of the cruise you get a Costco debit card, which actually pays for the Princess Plus!

[nancyjordan]

Thanks for the tips! Going on Caribbean Princess in November. First cruise since they made all the changes regarding premium desserts, juice bar. I always get the Plus Package.

[vickikohler]

I found this really helpful as I'm going to be on the Caribbean Princess Cruise next week. There are many changes from the last time I went on a cruise that I'm not really happy about. What I used to Have when I signed up for this cruise I Don't Have now. I truly feel I (actually there are 12 of us going on this cruise) should have been able to Keep what I/we signed up for and everyone else signing up after the changes were made would abide by the new changes, that would have been fair. This is like a Bait and Switch deal. Once again, I liked all the information you gave and found it very informative. I signed up to watch your videos and look forward to watching more of them 😊

[traciemay]

Wow. I am sorry for your experiences. We love Carribbean Princess. One of our favourite ships. Until recently, we could not have our medallions delivered, (we are in Canadian) and never once have we had to wait more than a few minutes to pick them up.
We also never had bad internet. Compared to other cruise lines, we always found Princess to be better overall.
We love Alaska and wouldn't sail with anyone else. When we did our research, almost everything we read said, Princess is the best cruise line for Alaska for many reasons. One being best overall itineries that are offered.
Of course a lot of things you mentioned are subjective and we are all allowed our opinions. So I just shared ours. Happy cruising⚓️🛟🛳

[carlaspitnale]

There are also some Premium Desserts available on Deck 5 at the International Cafe. We got an amazing Chocolate cake there which was premium.

[philiprachtman]

might be an Australian thing but on my last cruise there was no one else booked in Sanctuary

[NightWing]

Some genuinely helpful tips, thank you.