TorontoTL

Lots of great suggestions, thank you.

Great, same a Princess then, good to know.

I was thinking that what we might do, since we generally don’t love buffets, is order room service for breakfast. From what I can tell, HAL has quite a good room service menu for breakfast. Is there a charge for the delivery? Do we generally tip the person who delivers the food? Benny

You guys are awesome, thank you so much for your help. Hopefully we enjoy our upcoming cruise to Japan on the Noordam. Hard to imagine that we won’t, in reality my impression is that cruise lines are more alike than different. We’ll miss our Elite benefits on Princess, but we’re excited to try out HAL for the first time. If there is a good itinerary that interests us on HAL on the Pinnacle class ships, that might be the next cruise after this one.

I guess I’m wondering about the food options then at the Explorations cafe on the Noordam. Besides a few complimentary pastries, does it offer enough non sweet food options for breakfast and lunch? I’m wondering about things such as muesli or egg sandwiches at breakfast and a variety of sandwiches for lunch?

I’ve travelled with Princess 28 times and have my first cruise booked on board the Noordam, so my first with HAL. We enjoy having our breakfast at the International Cafe where the food is complimentary although coffee and tea are extra. The food offerings are excellent there with muesli and many baked good available for free in the mornings and sandwiches for lunch. Is there a cafe that is similar on the Noordam? Thank you in advance for helping this soon to be first time cruise with HAL.

I’ll be sailing on the Noordam in Feb/March and I’m wondering if the ship has complimentary steam rooms in the change rooms for the gym. If so does anyone have photos of them?

Thank you everyone for your responses, they are very helpful. This Japan cruise on HAL is looking better each day, better than what similar cruise Princess currently has. This will likely be our first HAL cruise.

It did seem to be too good to be true, that is super helpful thank you very much 🙏🙏🙏🙏.

Hi I’m new to HAL cruises having done many cruises mostly with Princess enjoying the perks. However, next spring there is a Noordam cruise in Japan that looks great that we are considering, it would be a nice way to try HAL for the first time. We don’t usually book cruises so far in advance so have a few questions before we book. One question is that if we put a deposit down on a cabin and the price drops between now and final payment, does HAL honor the lower price? I ask because on Princess, if I call the travel agent they will honor the new lower price so long as I call to ask about it. We’ve never been denied the lower cost. Does HAL also do this? The Noordam is an older ship, is it true that she is going into a fairly extensive dry dock this year? I noticed that the cabin diagrams for insides show a very square cabin that has a small L shaped sofa, is that really the layout of a majority of the inside cabins? There is also the option for a larger inside cabin, does it also have that same layout with the L shaped sofa and square overall shape? I’m sure I’ll have other questions for your fine HAL folks when I finally book. Thank you in advance. Benny

I agree with you, that doesn’t work. The whole idea of French Onion Soup is to have the cheese melted on top. I’m sure they will get a ton of complaints about this and go back to a more traditional preparation. Thank you for all your posts especially the photos, I haven’t posted a thank you yet because I didn’t want to clutter your awesome thread. Benny

He has his IG account linked in the video. His IG has a few more videos from the ship.

Currently on the Enchanted and switching devices on a one device plan is easy. I expected to have to turn off or log off a device when you wanted to use another, this isn’t necessary. Just open the Medallion app on the device you want to use, scroll down to Medallion Net, the app prompts you to swap devices. Click swap and then voila the device you’re using is on the shop WiFi using your plan.

We are on a 26 d sailing on the Enchanted Princess right now. I have to say that the food on this cruise has so far been even better than any of our past Princess cruises. The offerings in the IC are more varied and better quality. Yesterday during lunch at the World Fresh Marketplace they had lobster and crab claws and shrimp piled high. It was a frenzy of people lining up to get the lobster and crab, but it was the first time I’d seen that since the the Caribbean Princess first year of cruising.

We are onboard the Enchanted Princess right now, both of us are Elite CC. I purchased my internet package prior to the cruise using the medallion app. It was 50% off and since we’re Canadian they offered it at a better exchange rate than the current real exchange. My partner didn’t purchase ahead of time, he paid in USD via the app and did get 50% off as well, but not paid in CAD. Both have been taken out of our onboard credits. Hope that helps.

Thanks for sharing that. Great to see more of the ship. Did we know that the specialty restaurant at the aft of the ship up high was going to be named Altitude?

Any thoughts on how well the internet will work while at sea on a TA cruise? I’m not sure if it is worthwhile getting it or not.

Thank you all for your answers. I didn’t think of trying it by turning off cellular on my phone. You’re right, wifi hotspot didn’t work unless cellular was on.

I’m sorry if this has been asked before, but my search could not find confirmation of whether this would work or not. If I purchase the wifi package for one device (an iphone) can it be used as a wifi hotspot and share the wifi with my partner’s device? I’m hoping someone who has cruised recently can confirm this for me either way. Thank you in advance. Benny

How are the wifi speeds since the Enchanted was updated to Starlink?

This is a screenshot from the promotional video of the Star Princess. You can see into the sphere and there is a glass floored walkway visible. This seems like it will be so much better for views out to sea than any other class of ship that Princess has.

If you’re on the deck plan for the ship and on the deck you want to look up, on the left side of the screen under the staterooms tab, there is a checkbox for connecting rooms. Click that box and the deck plan will update to show which rooms are connecting one.

Thanks for sharing that video with us.

You’ll have an incredible time, when we were in Japan in the fall of 2019 on the Diamond, it was our best cruise ever.

Beautiful spaces, I’m sure that we’d all love to see more photos of this new ship if you see more to share.