On-Board Billing

When you are on the ship, you use a plastic card as an ID and to bill items to your account. On short cruises, you settle your account at the end of the cruise.

For our cruise, the accounts are settled at the end of each of the 4 segments. This caused an interesting dilemma for some passengers. Any excursions booked during the first segment (prior to Sydney) were billed to this first segment, regardless whether the excursion had been taken or whether it was to occur much later during the cruise. Some passengers had apparently assumed that their costs during the cruise would show up averagely over the entire period. They must not have had their finances at home ready to handle a large payment on or about 35 days into the cruise.

Kathleen and I have booked 4 excursions through Princess that involve airplane flights. These are quite costly. Our first-segment bill was $16,000. Our second-segment bill only $300 (we had a cancelled excursion, and I do not count some cash that we withdrew from the casino). Our third segment bill was also only $100 or so for the same reason.

Some people who did not want such a large single bill up front, were advised that they could cancel the excursions that they had booked for late in the cruise on the day prior to us landing in Sydney, and then rebook the same excursions on the day after Sydney. This would remove the charge from the first segment and add it back to the second segment bill.

That would be an okay strategy (apart from the hassle) so long as the excursions were not completely booked, in which case you’d go on the wait list, and might be locked out of the excursion.

Clearly the best strategy if you can manage it is to have sufficient funds available in your accounts to be able to handle this sort of skewed billing timing.