Regal Princess: Planning

Booking        

I was originally supposed to be on Carnival Jubilee after Thanksgiving. Shipyard delays caused that cruise to be cancelled. I re-booked Jubilee for February but needed a replacement cruise for November or December. 

I decided to wait until the NFL schedule release in May before booking a replacement cruise. My preference was Carnival Venezia in December so I could visit New York while it’s decorated for Christmas. When the NFL schedule was released, it included home games for December 3rd, 10th, and 17th, ruling out a 7+ day December cruise for me.  

I was open to 4–5-day cruises out of Galveston or New Orleans which are drivable ports for me. For a full week I was looking at before Thanksgiving when the Saints have a bye week.

The best I could do was a Sunday cruise leaving on a day when the Saints have a noon road game and getting back on their bye week. 

Carnival prices were high, so I opened my search up to all cruise lines. I ended up finding a good deal on Princess. I was able to get an interior guarantee with the Princess Plus package for cheaper than just the base price on a 4–5-day cruise with Carnival.

I saved 10% by purchasing discounted Princess gift cards and using them to pay off the cruise.

Onboard Credit

I received $150 onboard credit for booking with my travel agent. I am a Carnival Corp stockholder which allows me to claim an additional $100 OBC on 7-day cruises. I applied and received that credit.

I found out that Princess also offers $100 OBC to veterans. I heard they stopped allowing people to claim both stockholder and veterans onboard credit, but I applied anyway. I can confirm my application for veterans’ onboard credit was denied because I had stockholder onboard credit. 

Upgrade

I was pretty happy with the room assignment I received. There is a video tour of that room on YouTube so I got the full tour. I did plan to bid on an upgrade when Princess sent me that email in August.

The upgrade email came a few days before my August Alaska cruise and I forgot to bid. I was surprised to get another email with a chance to bid on upgrades in October. I submitted $5 over the minimum in all categories just to put myself ahead of the minimum bidders.

Two days after bidding I was upgraded to a standard balcony for $210 total. This room location is pretty central. I’m four decks down from lido and four decks up from the promenade.

The standard balcony room looks to be fairly small. It doesn’t have a couch. That’s not a big deal to me but I think I am going to miss the closet I was going to have in my interior room. I do think the balcony will outweigh the closet. This will only be my second balcony room. The one I had on my transatlantic was unusable for most of the sea days due to cold and fog.

Pre-cruise Hotel

I’m going to be driving down but I do like to get within an hour of the port the night before. Normally I would stay in Webster for a Galveston cruise. In this case a friend in Houston wants to hang out the night before the cruise so the current plan is not to book a hotel room. 

I went ahead and did my hotel research in case plans change. In the event I need a hotel I will likely book the Comfort Suites Seabrook-Kemah for $76 after taxes and fees. This is a great area to be in if you want to visit Space Center Houston.

Parking

During this process I updated my prices for Galveston Cruise Parking. There have been significant price increases since my last Galveston cruise two years ago. They added about a 10% tariff. But prices are up 25-100% depending on the lot, length of cruise, cruise line, etc. The absolute cheapest right now for a 7-day is $95 for uncovered parking at Lighthouse. But they charge Princess cruisers $130 so that’s out. The second cheapest is Discount Cruise Parking at $98. That’s up from $65 two years ago. I had a bad experience with them that time. It was a long wait for a shuttle  and they were too far away to walk. Uber prices were insane from there as well. There was a lot of traffic getting to the port that time. They did move to a much closer parking lot this year. Hopefully it will be better because I booked with them again.

Cozumel

I have been to Cozumel 13 times on cruises and once on a three-day trip. I’m running out of activities to do there. One thing I have been keeping my eye on for a couple years is a microbrewery that also serves tacos. It’s owned by one of the former Cozumel Barhop tour guides.

In the past I haven’t been able to go when my ships have been in port due to it’s limited hours. According to their website they now open at 10am so my plan in Cozumel is to take a cab downtown for beer and tacos.

Roatan

I like to take advantage of the free beach in Roatan. I’ll go down after breakfast, get in a swim and some local beer, then return to the ship for lunch. We are the only ship in port that day so getting a free beach chair shouldn’t be a problem.

Belize

As you probably know my favorite thing to do in Belize is Mayan ruins. I have already done Lamanai, Xuntunich, and Altun Ha which are all of the ship-sponsored Mayan ruins excursions in Belize.

This time I went with an outside company to book Cahal Pech for $92. It’s a six-hour excursion that leaves one hour after the ship arrives in port.