From my eyes to your screen!

About this cruise…
We’ve wanted to do a cruise with a Macchu Picchu tour for a few years. In fact, I had one booked for last year and had to cancel. I booked this cruise as soon as bookings opened for the year and received a huge on board credit. That, along with our shareholders credit and our future cruise credit, resulted in a total of $1800.00 on board credit! I’ve booked most of our shore excursions with it, with the exception of one I booked with Viator. There is still a huge chunk of onboard credit left and this credit is non-refundable, which means spend it on board or loose it! I have some ideas on how to turn it into cash, but more about that later.

We also have the Princess Plus package that includes Wi-Fi, gratuities, 15 alcoholic beverages a day up to $15, special coffees and teas, some sicking sweet desserts, a couple of exercise classes, free Medallion shipping, 2 casual dining meals and a few other items. We could use some of that on board credit to upgrade to the Premium package that includes unlimited alcoholic beverages a day up to $20.00 and unlimited specialty dining and casual dining for about $20 a day. For us it just doesn’t make sense. If we want to go to a specialty restaurant, we’ll just pay for it and if I want a better glass of wine with dinner, I’ll just pay the difference.

Could the land portion of the tour been done cheaper if I’d have booked it on my own, most definitely. I just didn’t want to deal with all the logistics of it all. Princess usually provides a first class product for their land tours with all the transportation, first class hotels and luggage transfers taken care of. So it’s a little indulgent splurge.

I booked us in one of the cheapest interior room mainly for economic reasons (and I don’t mind an inside cabin, but would I rather have a balcony “Heck Yes”). I was able to successfully bid for an upgrade to a deluxe balcony for a reasonable $500 total for the 18 day cruise portion.

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