mrmoviezombie

Are you 330 days out from the return? For economy flights it's usually a wash vs booking direct... it's the higher classes that usually are cheaper than the airlines. If you use the cruise line protections/insurance, then you start the benefits from the first flight. specifically trip interruption kicks in. If you book your own flights, then you need separate coverage because as far as the cruise line is concerned you trip "starts" when you get on the ship.

No. It's caused by math. A tiny finite piece of ocean cannot supply an infinite amount of crab demanded by tens of thousands of cruise passengers per day.

Also look for your name, you might be the only people at that time and getting into a normal private van/limo service. There was extra confusion for us because there was also someone with a HAL sign, but they were picking up crew.

On our last cruise where we had the wine package, we discovered in the MDR that they don't have access to most of the wine/beverages. They have to send someone to a bar when you order a wine. That's why it takes so long, a person is doing a full roundtrip to a bar for each order. We started doing the same thing, with the wine package they will store a partial bottle for you a bar. So, we would pick up our bottle before heading to the MDR (or Lido). I'm guessing it's to control access to only the beverage staff.

Totally agree... the Tamarind was the best thing about our last Koningsdam cruise. Unfortunately, according to the HAL website it's only available on the Westerdam for the Asia itineraries. Tamarind - Cruise Asian Restaurant & Cuisine | Holland America Ships Featuring Tamarind Dine at Tamarind on the following ships Eurodam Koningsdam Nieuw Amsterdam Rotterdam Westerdam* Zuiderdam* *Tamarind menu available in Pinnacle Grill on Westerdam Asia itineraries and Zuiderdam Grand World Voyage itineraries.

https://www.airportdistancecalculator.com/atlanta-united-states-to-tokyo-japan-flight-time.html You will have to scroll around on the map... it doesn't like the date line crossing... spherical mapping is hard math. Since I assume you are not using an SR-71, the sunset will still outrun you. (More accurately you, the plane, and the earth will rotate you backwards away from the "sunlit patch" on the earth. And in-fact, it will catch up with you from behind as you get closer to tokyo. Hlitner advice stands, you want the north side of the plane.

Definitely signup for the Ilulissat glacier boat trip. If you cannot book in beforehand, make sure to sign up as soon as you get on the ship. It will sell out quickly. If you are suite level, you get free laundry.

We recently took the northwest passage trip. We were at the back, ME-850, overall, very happy with the ship. Roald Amundsen is quite small, and everything is easy walking, so I wouldn't necessarily pick a location based on accessibility. Note that the bank of 3 elevators is near the back, the front one is a single and slower. You will likely spend more time going up to the top rather than the forward observation deck. Don't forget if the ship is in motion there will be a lot of wind. Those front facing windows on 7 are right at observation deck level. Watch the begin/end carefully. These windows behind her are deck 7 You would have to check with Hurtigruten if that door in the middle is passenger accessible. I don't remember us ever coming thru it, we always came up from below. Personally, we also avoided any of the balcony cabins with the red stripe as that is solid metal rather than the glass railing ones. Which restricts your view down and out. There is also a design flaw on the Roland, in the explorer lounge, the front windows are very sloped, between that and how far back behind the bridge they are set, it's actually hard to see anything clearly. The front cabin windows look to be less sloped, but I'd be concerned. Marcus. PS. The suite level comes with free laundry, which is very useful to cut down on packing.

The suite level gets you free laundry (once per day) and the bag is decent sized. I did the math on the amount of laundry, and it would have been a couple hundred dollars if we had paid the sticker price. We upgraded to suite because our original cruise was covid cancelled, and there were the only balcony rooms available for rebooking. Free use of the Lindstrøm restaurant was also a nice perk but watch out, a full 3 course meal with wine 3 times a day is way too much food, even with European style portion sizes. This is the official breakdown they gave in the logbook at the end Nationalities on board 107 BRITISH 64 AMERICANS 135 GERMANS 8 DANISH 23 CANADIANS 5 FRENCH 27 SWISS 10 NORWEGIANS 13 AUSTRALIANS 5 NEW ZEALANDERS 2 SWEDES 2 DUTCH 1 AUSTRIAN 1 FINNISH 403 IN TOTAL Everything was done dual language English / German. The lectures have live translation for the German's. They had a quiz night that tested your knowledge of things learned in the lectures. For some reason that was only done in English the first time. Rightly, the German's complained, and they sorted out doing it again in German the next night, it was a lot of fun giving that a try.

Amazingly it was almost never out. There were plenty of dropouts for minutes. Don’t remember any period more than hour when it didn’t work. No Cel roaming coverage on the ship. However ATT Wi-Fi calling and text messages also worked just fine over the internet. Interestingly there was no coverage on shore when out of Wi-Fi range of the ship. I think the remote communities have locked out roaming on their cel service’s which makes sense. The Greenland and larger east coast Canada stops had normal roaming. Early in the cruise one of the lectures showed the satellite footprints. There were two that had coverage over the whole cruise.

This is going to read as negative, but I’m collecting all the things I wish I knew going in… We loved the cruise and the ship. It was a fantastic 25 days. For the excursions, if you cannot book them before hand, book them as soon as possible on the ship. They fill up quickly. Go to the excursion deck (near science center deck 6). Don’t remember the pricing, but it’s down in the noise on the price of the cruise 😊 < $100 There were only a couple choices of paid excursions. Definitely do the iceberg trip in Ilulissat, “Boat Trip to the Icefjord” The kayaking was a total bust, blocked by weather and wildlife. Inside the ship is on the cool side. We were told its warm, short/t-shirt temps. This is not true. However, must have lots of layers for the excursions. Our biggest clothing problems were getting too warm on shore. Make sure you have bag/backpack to carry the discard layers. The boots they provide are excellent, spend the time to get proper fit. (DW US 7 = 37 eur sizing) a little on the loose side is better but not sloppy loose. They are tall and provide a lot of warmth and weather protection. Some complained they were heavy, but we liked them (we tried to buy them). Some, including me, had complaints that the supplied red jacket wasn’t wind proof enough, but DW didn’t have issues with that. Make sure you bring good quality light wind rain proof shell bottoms. We found wearing a thin base layer underneath the shell pants, with the boots was more than enough. Repeating, bring the layers, how warm/cold it will be is really going to depend on the exact weather during your trip. Hurtigruten is very poor on communications. Ask a lot of questions about what is going on, when things are happening, where you will be tomorrow etc. You are generally expected to read the program on the App or on the TV screens, no printed material to the room each day. There is usually a briefing (repeated once) the day before any port stop, pay attend to these (or watch in the room on the TV), there will be important information that isn’t available elsewhere. They were not recorded/replayed for us, but they said they are working on the technology to do that. Due to Covid we elected to watch most of presentations in our room. Stay on top of the Canadian entry requirements, it will probably change by the time you cruise, but the itinerary meant we entered/left US/Canada multiple times, So had to interact with ArriveCAN app a lot, which has some hard to answer question about where you left and when you are arriving. Multiple people had to complain before they sort of started doing the normal sorts of announcements you get on other cruise lines about where is the ship and what scenic sites are going past outside. Their default position is they don’t want to annoy people with lots of announcements. The worst lack of announcement happened on evening when there was truly spectacular Auroa (on the south side of the ship, note), about 10pm onwards. They claim they announced it, but for some “technical” reason no one heard it. The official photographer on the ship wasn’t woken up and didn’t get any pictures of it. Hurtigruten embarkation/disembarkation organization is also hit and miss. It’s another one to pay attention to what is going on, read everything and ask questions. Don’t assume someone will tell you where/when you need to be somewhere, their crowd control skills are lacking. Definitely don’t schedule an early flight on disembarkation day. We stayed the night in Halifax, others missed booked excursions. The issues were primarily baggage handling delays. Had a couple periods of rough seas, make sure you are ready for that. It’s a smaller ship so it does move around more. There were one or two really good thumps when the bow slammed into a big wave, shuddering the whole ship. DW swears by ginger candies. Was quite foggy in the early part of the cruise, so missed a couple scenic views because of that. As they repeated often, this really is an “expedition” style cruise so almost everything is subject to weather and sea conditions. There were folks onboard from the previous attempt at the northwest passage that actually got blocked by the sea ice and had to turn around. Most places you are going ashore in the zodiacs. Only in the larger places with proper ports did they use the traditional tenders. First stop in Ulukhaktok was a highlight for us, smaller and more of the local culture preserved. Prince Leopold Island was very scenic, we were supposed to cruise around in the zodiacs but good news/bad news: there were polar bears. Radstock Bay was a pickup stop, LOTS of wildlife here, 18 polar bears (3 cubs), hundreds of beluga whales and harp seals etc. It’s an interesting balance, on the one hand it seems like a normal cruise, you are on a modern shiny cruise ship, going to places with people and other shipping around. On there other hand you are completely in the middle of nowhere, everything is very desolate almost nothing taller than moss and lichen. Towards the end of the cruise, it was a surprise to see trees/shrubs again. If there is a problem with the ship no one is coming to get you for days. Overall, we would definitely do this cruise again.

Do you want to see the northern lights? Or go on a northern lights cruise... those are not the same things. If you want to maximize your chances of seeing the northern lights, then fly to either Fairbanks, Alaska or Tromso, Norway. Spend at least a week there, pick several of the tour operators that will take you out into the wilderness late at night. Your chances of seeing the northern lights from a cruise ship are not great. With a port heavy cruising you are unlikely to be up at the best viewing times. And light from the ship also make it harder to see them.

I would assume that bunker fuel costs are a relatively minor fraction of the total costs to run a cruise ship. At this point I would suspect that debt servicing costs are now the dominate consideration that the lines have to worry about.

When you picked that deck/location you were subtly picking the exact category and price of your guarantee cabin. As others pointed out, you can then be put anywhere on the ship in that specific category (or better, but that "better" might be a known terrible cabin with noise etc) If, for example, had instead picked the same cabin type but mid-ships then it would have been slightly more expensive and been in a slightly high category grade. Likely still able to be switched decks but probably only high and mid-ships. It you look closely at the deck plans you can see all the BA BB BC BD etc lettering that has these fine-grained categories.

They have been in the business for a while