Cruising Is Bliss

Oh those were the days. In the 70s & 80s & 90s when I'd stay at the Royal Hawaiian I could hop in a cab less than an hour before takeoff!

Would you mind saying which ipad mini keyboard you got and if you like it? I have an ipad mini I mostly use when I'm on vacation. Really miss the days of 8" laptops.

Song of America was my first cruise back in 1997 for a two week Panama Canal. She was a wonderful introduction to cruising. So sorry to see she was scrapped a couple of months ago.

Song of America was my first cruise back in 1997 a two week Panama Canal. So sorry to see she was scrapped a couple of months ago. My first two Celebrity cruises were both on Mercury, Buenos Aires to Valpereso one year, and Alaska (round trip San Francisco) the next year. Next after that was on Infinity for another Panama Canal transit. The SS United States restaurant was wonderful. So was the main dining room. And the staff took such good care of us. I was lucky enough to cruise at the tail end of the elegant era. I still love cruising and it will always be my go to vacation, but it's a different thing now.

Me too! I always took them with me to read with my first latte of the day.

And if the day ends in a *Y*. It's all marketing. I've noticed on some cruises the "early" booking bonus stays there way past the first first few months.

The ship will have to clear ICE which means long delays.

Yes. Every coffee drink except those with alcohol added.

This sounds like a fantastic trip and I hope you have a wonderful time! Thank you for taking us along.

I'm doing a HAL 28 day Alaska cruise this summer and the final payment is 120 days.

Agreed. Interesting that the survey asked about ship preference. I would love to do a world cruise on Zaandam or Volendam.

I had no trouble eliminating #D (Eastbound with 4 months with waaaaay too many 23 hour days, no, and also, **** NO!) and #E (no Antarctica drive-by). I'm tentatively ranking the other three as #A, #C, #B but I'll do any of them. The emailed survey included picking favorite ships, current and past, and I picked Amsterdam, Zaandam, Volendam.

Pete, upstream you referred to the eastbound as #E. The eastbound is #D. The confusion between #D and #E is also on the summary final page of the download.

The huge resistance to the $2 bill and all dollar coins came from merchants. No space in cash drawers for them.

Entirely possible they would doubt they were real and you were stiffing them. And very likely they would have trouble spending them off the ship.

That's not totally correct. If you cancel after final payment, during the 1st month after the final payment due date, the penalty as usual is equal to the deposit. But they keep the full standard deposit, not the special deal $1 deposit you paid.

I've never seen any local food choices on Celebrity in the dining room. HAL has an Indonesian menu you can get every night on every cruise but that's because their kitchen already prepares those dishes for the crew so they also make them available to passengers. Most of HAL's waiters and cabin stewards are Indonesian.

No and no. There is no traditional 1st and 2nd fixed seating on Edge class ships. That they can be booked prior to boarding is a still-unfixed bug in the software.

I hope you have a wonderful cruise and yay for the excellent news about the visa mess. Thank you for taking all of us along :)

I hope you have a wonderful cruise! Thank you or taking us along.

I hope you have a wonderful cruise! Thank you for taking us along.

HAL was previously licensing ($$$$) the BB King name and the Lincoln Center name and are ending those deals.

Good luck with that. Tell us you've never read the contract without saying that you've never read the contract. They commit to providing a bed on a cruise ship. Everything else is subject to change. Just this month MSC, the day before sailing, due to weather conditions, informed incoming passengers that their warm Bahama cruise was now a chilly New England cruise which would start with a couple of days docked in Boston before the ship even sailed. MSC offered passengers the choice of taking the altered cruise or getting a FCC.

Which is why you have to call to book it this way.

I carry a cell phone on board because it's my camera. And sometimes texting is my "voice" because I cruise with best friend who's severely hearing impaired and texting is our "voice" messages when we're not together. And when we are together, even though she has very high tech hearing aids and reads lips, we sometimes supplement conversation with texts.