ModMs

Mike - really enjoyed your posts. We are boarding the Oosterdam on April 5 in FLL for its TA to Barcelona. Save some of that food for us! 😄

We are on an Alaska Max 9 flight in April. I did call the Flight Ease people and they did tell me to wait and see what the airline does with the aircraft and any schedule changes. I was told they do wait until the flight is actually cancelled before working on alternate flights. - Debbie

Our 1st time on Celebrity. Going on the Ascent in an IV cabin - Deck 7 - and I'm having second thoughts about not having a real balcony, especially as we really like sitting outside to read, etc. It didn't look to me like there were too many choices to get a real balcony on this ship within our budget. We picked the particular cruise for its itinerary and dates so won't make a change just because of that. Still, it is disappointing to read some of the commets.

Thanks. It seemed obvious but I wanted to check. Have to decide if we want to lock in.😉

We are booked on the Oosterdam TA to Barcelona in April. It’s

the first time we’ve used FE; the price was so much lower than booking ourselves. Just want to know what exactly is “early ticketing”. Tried to find it in the FAQ pages. Does this lock us into the airfare? Can we pay airfare and cruise fare separately? Thanks for any info on using FE.

My current favorite topic. We took our first HAL cruise on Oosterdam in October, previously only Princess pre-pandemic. I have to say the food on the Oosterdam was absolutely atrocious. Very little choice in Lido and servers very stingy with portions, same with MDR. For example, in MDR one night ordered the grilled salmon. Menu said it came with grilled vegetables and Wasabi mashed potatoes. The piece of fish was fine but "vegetables" was a bit of onion and one small piece of carrot and mashed potatoes was a piped thin ring around fish.DH ordered rock fish one night. The piece of fish was just a 3" x 3" piece with the same vegetables. Gala night did have lobster and steak, but I can't eat shell fish. Other dishes were very meh. For the record, I do eat pretty bland food as a rule, but this was out of line, especially the misleading descriptions on the menu. Going on the Rotterdam in a couple of weeks, hoping for better. Thanks for the posts.

Did finally get through on HAL website and have booked Greek Odyssey cruise. Thanks for all the comments, as they helped us choose HAL.

We have been trying to book a cruise on the HAL website, but having a lot of trouble with the website itself (won't go into all the problems). Needless to say, I was unable to book on line so called to book over the phone this a.m. The agent told me HAL wasn't letting her do further bookings on the particular cruise as they were working on the itinerary and that it had to do with Trieste, etc.  She advised that I wait a couple of days.  Since I am also having problems with logging in (have a Mariner number and password is correct) and she wasn't able to help me with that, we are now considering another cruise line -- but we really like the itinerary on the cruise (Rome, Greece, ending in Venice).  Have concerns about HAL's management since their website never seems to work properly.  Is this par for HAL or does everything eventually work out? Any advice or comments would be appreciated.

I had wanted to book the July 28 12 day Mediterranean Odyssey, and had a lot of trouble with the HAL website (won't go into all the problems). Needless to say, I was unable to book the cruise so called to book over the phone this a.m. The agent told me HAL wasn't letting her do further bookings as they were working on the itinerary and that it had to do with Trieste.  She advised that I wait a couple of days.  Since I am also having problems with logging in and she wasn't able to help me with that, we are considering another cruiseline -- maybe. Thanks for all of your posts.

What everyone said about Princess is sadly so, so true.  We also said we were done with Princess on our very last cruise in 2015.  We haven't wanted to cruise until now because of it. My impression is that we are really going to like HA -- anyway, we hope so. 

Thank you to everybody. As you can see, we've been doing independent travel the last few years and haven't cruised in a while.  I agree about Princess having sparkly entertainment; we don't go to the shows, but really prefer listening to music in the evening -- jazz, etc., so that attracted us to HAL. Again, thanks for the replies.

Hi Cruisers: We've done seven cruises with Princess, but just don't care for movies on deck all day. Considering sailing with HAL this summer. If someone has sailed on both, can you let us know of any significant differences between the two. For example, we like having access to coffee/tea on deck -- does HAL do the same? Any replies will be appreciated. Thanks so much.