jimbob22

it would be nice if each day they could put a picture on the tv of each dinner entree, to give an idea of entree size. I too would find this kind of helpful.

I'll make a note to byopp (bring my own paper plates) if I do the Celebration.

The food is a step up for sure, slightly better quality of meats, far more choices on the lido.

there's a secret Indian vegetarian menu, you could likely search this forum for the topic. I think you may need to give them a day or so heads up (or at least they prefer a heads up). Like you, we were overall really pleased with our dining on Rotterdam last month.

it's hard to determine. Someone on one of these threads posted a good pic from sysco's website basically showing that the cinnamon twirls and yellow and red danishes are all pre-made sysco products, basically just baked on the ship. So that kind of made me wonder if hal, celebrity, princess are basically just buying a more expansive selection from sysco(?). But suppose your theory is correct: it just seems kind of a waste to put the effort into making the items, then putting them in the freezer for later. Why not just serve them up fresh later that day? or put them in fridge until next day? We eat a lot of frozen foods at home, so I can actually be ok if it's hot and tasty, but much we had was tepid and 'meh'. My eggdrop soup at Chibang was particularly hot, good, actually had some veggies, maybe not traditional but did no harm.

Portion size and quality seem to have dropped a bit in the complimentary, menu-based places (mdr, chibang, etc.). The quick-serve foods on Carnival are really good.

glad you could enlighten me, braintrust!

Hal is a Carnival brand; only logical to think that pizza would be really similar (or better on Hal). I go on Carnival board too. We did MG over thanksgiving, rotterdam over Christmas. Overall preference for Hal, even though blue Iguana, big chicken, street eats are really good...

The key to chibang (and we also didn't know this the first time) is that it's all small-plate, tapas type portions. So I spread the word on this to others. We went a 2nd time and I had 3 apps and 2 entrees, but like you mention: much of it was not blazing hot, was really not unlike any basic grocery store frozen meal I could have microwaved. And I do tend to wonder if Carnival is doing as much as they can with frozen foods b/c my banana pie at P&A (on Mardi Gras) was partly frozen, not as good as if it was much closer to room temp. Street eats and all the fast foods were great though--just mostly not open for dinner.

it just makes no sense b/c I'd think that they're using a very similar oven that Carnival uses. I think that they're not that tall or huge, obviously it's not a big fancy, fire-brick oven like a land-based place would use. And I don't even think the oven needs to be super hot (450-500 is fine), so I'm not sure what the issue is. They need to standardize the thickness of the uncooked crust, and I'm thinking that maybe they're sometime cooking at 300-350, so It's not alway coming out with the right meltiness, sauce isn't evaporating quite as much as it would in a hotter oven. Hal can reach out to me as pizza consultant/influencer, I can spend some time on board until they get this right. I'm a giver.

Thin with a little burnt (in the good way) sounds like a typical Carnival pizza. In our experience, Carnival has had good pizza consistency from ship to ship. Hal, for whatever reason, has struggled with this more. 5 years ago I wasn't thrilled with K-dam pizza, but it may be just different workers, making the crust a bit thinner makes a huge difference. Seemingly, Hal pizza would be the same as Carnival, but the latter is generally a little better at it.

Oh I know. They'd have enjoyed being with their child and grandchildren (had they come with us). They are the strange case of people that never went on a single mainstream cruise line b/c a rich relative spoiled them by taking them on an upscale cruise long ago. Tbh, I think they'd have been shocked to find out that the clientele and food on Hal are quite comparable to many of their cruises...

my memory of the prices was wrong, I initially thought it was 30 per person per day, whereas 25 is a significant difference. We actually did sail in the most obstructed balcony possible on Rotterdam, so paying $350 for unobstructed+CO is actually a deal worth pondering...

can you elaborate a bit on what you found to be the best perks and why? Not that I'm entirely poopooing it. If my parents (in their 80s) came on a Hal with us, I'd urge them to do it b/c a) the priority boarding would be good for them, as we were on our feet fairly still for a good 45+ minutes a few weeks ago while boarding and b) they're used to doing regent/silverseas and would probably like the higher status seated dining.

Some say that on the pinnacle class it's worth it because CO has its own dining room. I think the CO dinner menu has an extra choice or two (beyond the same MDR menu), perhaps someone else here can elaborate. If you mostly tend to be a lido-eater, then this would probably be less 'worth it'. It would be $420 for you and a spouse. Obviously, that could alternately be put towards a few dinners at Canalleto and some other specialty dining... But we haven't done CO; there may be some aspects I don't grasp.

we did that on Rotterdam around 3 weeks ago; they had a lot of people sign up and thus had it at that BB King stage area, lots of tables set up ahead of time with I think it was 6 glasses. It was entertaining enough. One of the main billboard bartenders, 'Jeffrey' did most of the talking, mixing, he was kind of goofy but amicable enough. My wife is a bigger lightweight than I am, and they were fine letting us share a set of glasses. We thought it was nice and very reasonably priced way to pass some time.

sorry to hear that, glad no one was hurt.

You may still want to order extra sides, since small sides does seem to be a trend. One night my wife did order some extra steamed vegetables, and the extra veggies was not a very large portion. To us, the lido on Rotterdam was good enough that we ate there 4/7 nights (the non-gala nights), and it typically had the meats served in the mdr that night. I think the consensus of recent Rotterdam posters is that the food has overall been really good, with good selection too.

Hey, I was close. They did serve it a couple of times on Koningsdam a few years ago. It's transcended Russia into the realm of classic 'cruise food'. Carnival was serving it around once a week last year (not sure if that's still ongoing, as it was part of their 50th anniversary recognition).

As part of their 50th anniversary, they were doing some 'throwback' entrees like that (salmon coubiliac). Since we're in a new calendar year, I'm not sure if it will be back. We recently did Hal, and they didn't serve it once (whereas 5 years ago I remember them having it a couple of times). I'm also a fan. My local Lidl stores sell a salmon in a pastry shell, but still not the same as the freshly made version on a cruise ship.

There was no salmon coubiliac on my recent Rotterdam cruise. Back in the glory days of Pinnacle class cruising, Koningsdam, 2017 (my de riguer reference to the glory days of the largest and most recent ship class), the servers at the lido were trying to foist that upon me repeatedly. I thus had to eat salmon like a commoner, like a crude vulgarian--sans any puff pastry. But other than that, I didn't notice any issues.

just out of curiosity, what music would you want to see? Obviously, BB/RS are just cover bands, not bigtime recording artists. If they got rid of all of it and said they would replace with a mix of variety acts, I'd probably be ok with it. My biggest pet peeve is drastic cutbacks on food quality on cruises in general, not specific to Hal (yes, I realize there's no free lobster, but we had no issues with the quality and variety of is available).

beastie boys would be good.

we're newer to Hal than many, in that 45-50 demographic they probably want to reach. Really pleased with our two cruises, both on Pinnacle ships. Entertainment has been solid, food has been really good (good selection and good quality in what is available). I'm slim and I work out--but food is important to me. I don't need any cruise line to serve me dinner entree meals that are like 300 calories (like the diet Carnival just put me on). The app wouldn't install on my android phone at all. It's really poorly rated. So I think they need to improve that. I'd like to see Rolling Stone evolve into not just covering 60s and 70s rock, but actually going up into the 90s. In the late 90s, 'alternative rock' radio was popular (whfs in DC area, 99x in Atlanta, etc). I'd like to see them cover more 80s and the 90s stuff (which appeals to the 45-55 age demographic). My wife would probably love to see some music/dance homage to the 'boy bands' of the 1990s. So that's another thing that would reach a somewhat younger demographic (but I think people of all ages enjoy the music/dance shows). Really no complaints. Great for families that don't feel like they need a full blown amusement park at sea. There are probably families that spend the same money renting an airbnb at a beach for a week--and they still have to do all their cooking, get groceries, etc. So we'll choose a cruise over that any time.

You can still cruise just fine, with no hassles. You're just not supposed to disembark at Grand Turk (if you're not vaccinated that is). Some have said that they're not vaccinated and that they disembarked just fine, but several others have said that there was some place in the process where someone was checking papers. So you just stay on the ship, enjoy easy access to the hot tubs, etc. If you dig into Hal's website, it has the protocols for all of this stuff. But pretty much all cruises starting and ending in the US do not require vaccines or masks now (I type 'pretty much' b/c I'm not certain if it's 100% or not).