bluegiraffe

Terrible!

 

Have you tried using the old site? This link still gets you there:

https://www.hollandamerica.com/?ASCookie=RSOrigin

Just tried that. When I finally get to the Summary and Boarding Pass page, there's no "print" button or link to the boarding passes!

I downloaded the boarding passes to my laptop a few weeks ago in PDF form, so I'm going to download them to my tablet and use that. I'm not spending any more time on HAL's inability to do something as simple as providing a boarding pass for their customer.

Not sure how they could be so clueless. They have received many complaints and not just from CC members. I thought I read that someone was emailed their boarding documents. Did they offer that or just snail mail?

 

 

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The "customer service" person I spoke to first flat out told me "I can't do anything for you." When I suggested they could mail me the passes, that's when I was told $25.00 or no go. The supervisor was absolutely no help either and was clearly not interested in helping.

Lousy, lousy "service."

I've been reading about all the problems people have had printing boarding passes, so I tried today to print ours for our upcoming cruise. I've tried everything suggested here, including different browers, etc. No luck.

I then called HAL and was told 1. I didn't know what I was doing. 2. My printer settings must be wrong (no, works just fine on everything else). 3. There are no problems with their website (the supervisor finally agreed that there have been "minor" issues). 4. No one has had any problems printing boarding passes (I told him that there were several posts here on Cruise Critic about just that, but he didn't want to hear it). 5. They could mail me boarding passes - for a $25.00 fee.

I think HAL just lost a customer.

Is the view scenic the entire time?

 

 

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Yes.

I know that I'm going to take a lot of heat here, and that's okay. My own personal opinion is that 'sea sickness' is a preconceived notion of some sort of vague illness that happens when at sea.

 

I have personally experienced 25 years at sea, including typhoons, and 45 degrees rolls. And I have never experienced any 'sea sickness'

 

Am I just lucky?

YES, she said heatedly.

There are also different forms of motion that feel very different - the side to side which can be mitigated by the stabilizers or the up and down of the front and back of the ship, which cannot. Or the whole package to gether called "corkscrewing" which is about as bad as it can be. The one I really hate is when the ship goes up and down from fore to aft - that is the stomach churning vertigo one for me.

The corkscrew! **shudder** Happened to us a few years ago in the Caribbean. I'm prone to motion sickness anyway, so that was unpleasant.

My prevention starts with choosing a room on a lower deck. I bring ginger and Bonine with me. Since Bonine makes me sleepy, I take it before going to bed. I get a good night's sleep and I don't get sick.

I also received the email. I tried it out...way to many clicks! I was researching the new 21 day Alaska cruise from San Francisco and it wouldn't let me finish. I called HAL and agent said old site will be taken down in a few months, and they appreciate the input they get from Mariners. I gave plenty of input! The web site should have been perfect before they introduced it. For my Sea of Cortez cruise on the Eurodam in November the web site shows La Paz Mexico, the capital of Baja, as being below Puerto Vallarta!

 

Karen

Yes, the cruise I looked at last night has an itinerary that goes from FLL to Key West to two stops in Cuba, Grand Cayman, Jamaica and back to FLL. The map on the website shows it going to the eastern Caribbean! I mean, they can't even get the right map with the right itinerary.

Oh, and it took far too many clicks to get to that page.

Don't like that direction at all. I prefer to just have a bucket of minutes that I can use as needed. I may not be online at all on some days and use a bunch of minutes on another. All I do is email and light web surfing to check CC/Bank accounts. I don't use Social Media at all and the DW uses it very sparingly and thats only at home.

I'm with you: I don't like the dropping the per minute plan and only giving you the option of expensive daily plans that you must purchase for each day of your cruise. We have a 21 day cruise coming up later in the year & I'm certainly not paying $300+ just to check my email occasionally.

I voted for less Government. It doesn’t take 50 people to do a one person job.

 

We shouldn’t be dependent on Government for so many things.

 

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Less government = fewer customs personnel at ports.

I was sure it was a must when I went on my first Alaska cruise. But I changed my mind during the cruise. A balcony is nice to have, but we spent most of the day in Glacier Bay, for example, out in various parts of the ship: the bow, the Crow's Nest, the promenade deck, the aft portion of the Lido deck. It was fun to see everything from different vantage points.

Add me to the list of people who've done this cruise on the Zuiderdam in September. Our cruise was at the beginning of September, so too early for fall color, but we certainly saw every shade of green! Lovely landscape. Only one slightly rainy day and very comfortable temperatures for the duration.

Prior to retiring for the first night at sea, I find a spot on an open deck, as dark as possible (which has become a challenge). Gazing out at the ocean and what I hope will be a clear star-studded sky, I thank God for a Mother that taught me the love of travel and thank God that I am still able to sail on another cruise.

Lovely tradition!

My tradition is the ceremonial putting all devices in airplane mode. Woo-hoo! No one can reach me! And that's when the relaxation starts. :)

Yes, thatis accurate.

 

 

You can use a libary card, ane xpired card, as long as it has magnetic strip

 

 

 

 

My dH and I used to hide the card and always in the same place every cruise when we needed to use it.

 

 

Many, ruises, I unpa cked, put the card in the he would know and sure enougfh, he went to the correct spot to find it. ;0

 

 

I always brought the same card. It was an old expired gas company creditr card we had no used for gas in many, many years.

Great idea, thanks!

The idea of compensation (FYI, I am a lawyer) is to make one whole. I saw a video where a cruiser followed the signs to get to their lifeboat-every single way to their lifeboat was blocked! This has to be a significant maritime violation in addition to whatever hazardous chemicals the passengers were subjected to. This is way different from just construction. These are health and safety violations-not just noise and nuisance problems. First-giving people credit for a free cruise is wrong-they should offer a choice of cruise credit OR a refund. Personally, I would think twice about booking on NCL again after this debacle. Second, in reference to making these people whole, many, many people had to fly to board the ship and had flight and/or hotel expenses, and people who drove had parking and possibly hotel expenses. Those expenses are not accounted for by any cruise credit. Third, any inflation in cruise prices is not accounted for, nor the inconvenience, health risk, and wasted vacation time. NCL should throw extra money or shipboard credit at the people who are taking a cruise credit refund. This is like the United Dr. Dao public relations nightmare, and the CEO was an idiot for thinking this would work and people would not complain. More bad press is going to follow, and NCL will get sued. NCL may win, but the bad press they will get will nullify any victory. They would be better off paying everyone off now, IMHO.

Thank you! I was about to bring that up. It wasn't just about inconvenience, it was about SAFETY! I also saw those pictures of muster stations blocked off and no access to the lifeboats. I saw pictures of workers sanding and soldering with sparks flying. I saw pictures of workers with respirators working 10-20 feet away from paying customers who had no protection.

I've been on one HAL ship - can't remember which now - that had some cosmetic work being done in a few places after drydock. Not a big deal, and they did the best they could not to overly impact the customer's enjoyment of the ship. Quite different from the NCL debacle, which calls for a full refund, not credit.

We were on the Amsterdam last year for Koningsdag (King's Day) and most people wore orange to some degree (ties, pins, earrings, shirts). IIRC, there were decorations in the Lido and some Dutch specialties for lunch that day.

I think they could still save it if they offered passengers a refund (not a credit) and wrote up a new policy guaranteeing that nothing like this will happen again. Short of that, I think they stand to lose a lot of current and future customers. I will stick with them for now, in the hopes that this has taught them the error of their ways, but I will definitely be careful in booking trips around ships' dry dock dates if I can help it!

They certainly lost us. Just this week we were looking at an 11 day cruise in the fall. Then we saw the article and pictures. The first photos I saw were bad enough, then I got to the ones that appear to show muster stations roped off and obstructed with equipment. That's an absolute "no" for me; there are plenty of other cruise lines that don't risk passenger safety solely to improve their bottom line.

Yikes....so I log in and go and try to look at excursions. At this point, I found that when I clicked on "Manage" it made me log in again. After that, the old site came up. Before this, if I hit excursions it showed Juneau to Hilo. Not user friendly!!!!

Yep. We were trying to book excursions the other night and finally threw our hands in the air and gave up. Guess I'll never know how fabulous HAL's ExcTours are because we booked tours with well-regarded local vendors whose websites actually work.

I am bemused at why HAL finds it so difficult to have this info on its website. I showed this to my brother who is an IT manager, and he was bemused.

Keep in mind that I-95 is currently closed in both directions (and has been for a few hours) in Volusia County due to brushfires. As you probably know, we're in drought right now, and these types of fires can break out at any time. And close roads.

The last time we had these kinds of drought conditions and were driving to Ft. Lauderdale for a cruise, we went the day before. Otherwise, we usually drive there that morning.

Many thanks for taking this on.

Your hard work has been very much appreciated.

I really appreciate all the responses to my thread/question. I agree with those who posted they'd enjoy being able to watch their favorite shows in their cabins, whether that's by DVD or free programming. From what I understand, Carnival Corporation is doing away with most network programming on cabin TVs across all their brands, and will only offer very, very limited network programming on cabin TVs going forward, along with some on-demand programming (both for a fee and free). From what I've experienced so far during this change, HAL is offering more free choices compared to other Carnival brands. I'm sure this won't matter to some cruisers, but to others like me, it is disappointing. At this point in the transition, I find it helpful to determine in advance whether my cabin offers a DVD player since I'm not interested in most of the limited programming being offered. I won't bring my laptop since it won't fit in a cabin safe, but I will dig my old DVD player out of storage to carry on my cruise so I can enjoy some TV time on my cruise. Maybe the day will soon arrive where streaming TV will be an affordable option while cruising (like it is becoming on land). For those asking about plugging into cabin TVs, my experience is that isn't an option in most cases because Carnival Corporation is not providing the capability to plug anything into their cabin TVs. The plugs either don't exist on their TVs, or the plugs have been inactivated.

On our last HAL cruise I brought my Kindle Fire pre-loaded with a number of movies I had downloaded (quite a few are available for download through Amazon Prime & Netflix if you don't want to purchase them). Not streaming, but close! ;)

We were on the Amsterdam for 3 weeks last spring. We really liked the ship - the smaller size and the excellent, personal service in particular. There were some issues with air conditioning on that cruise; the Lido was freezing as was the room where they showed movies. I spoke to one passenger who had the opposite problem in her room- too warm. We didn't have that problem in our room, and I made sure to take a sweater with me to the Lido. I would happily cruise on the Amsterdam again.

Now this sounds interesting! I like what I've read so far and I think it's a smart move by HAL.

I was there two years ago and I remember a very small giftshop/bookstore area. I don't specifically remember crosses, but I can't imagine they wouldn't be available there. It was all run by volunteers, so you might want to contact them directly with you question, as they were not open every day (at least when I was there): https://www.stnicholasjuneau.org/contact.html

Oh, and счаливого пути!