Cruising Is Bliss

OH MY GAWD. I looked at HAL's website and the last Volendam cruise currently on the schedule ends in Fort Lauderdale on 1/25/25. Significant date because when HAL put out a poll for four possible routes for the 2025 GWC, option D was 1/25/25 to 6/07/25. And not technically a GWC. So, testing to see if it would be a popular option for the 2025 alternate to the world cruise? 1/25/25 to 6/07/25, FT. Lauderdale, all the way down to the Antarctic, all the way up to the edge of the Arctic Circle, back to FT. Lauderdale. So, Grand World Cruise (either option A, B, or C) on the Zuiderdam, Grand Voyage (option D) on the Volendam?

Happily following along, thank you for doing this!

I'm looking forward to following along!

YAY another Charla Live, I always enjoy your posts so much, thank you for taking us along!

Every cruise we've been on I tell the waiters at dinner the first night that every night we will want an extra plate of just vegetables. It's never been a problem in 26 years, on RCL, Celebrity, and HAL.

This. Yes. I wrote a long post and realized it was pretty much a duplicate of yours so i deleted the rest of it.🙂

Yes, the Zuiderdam does have the library back.

Pete, thank you for the Midway video! Interesting tour of a bit of what ships would have been like for my dad during and right after WWII. He was on the Saratoga (including the last voyage) and on the Missouri. I'm going to be in San Diego in January for several days before the Australia New Zealand GV and visiting the Midway is high on our list.

He was hospitalized for several weeks but he's doing so much better. His latest post he and his wife had made it to Seattle and were waiting for a flight to their home in Sitka. He said the blood transfusions he got on the ship probably saved his life. Here's his first post after his Feb 28th hospitalization on the ship. His posts are interesting reading on what happens when you need medical attention in the middle of nowhere. https://rich.mcclear.net/2023/03/05/well-at-least-this-time-we-made-it-past-fremantle/

Really looking forward to whatever you want to share, thank you for taking us along!

Traditionally a World Cruise would always cross all lines of longitude and be round trip the same city. For example, HAL calls all their other long cruises Grand Voyages. Best guess right now is that HAL's longest 2025 Grand Voyage (the alternate to their 2025 World Cruise) will be what everyone is calling the Pole to Pole, a four and a half month itinerary (round trip Fort Lauderdale) that would include scenic cruising above the Arctic Circle and scenic cruising in the Antarctic.

We each send laundry every day, cabin total of two to four bags a day. Sometime we ended up sending it out in the morning and then again in the evening. Sometimes I split laundry in multiple bags for different washing instructions.

One of the HAL world cruise bloggers is currently in intensive care in Port Louis, Mauritius, in the Indian Ocean.

Injuries don't care how old someone is or where they happen. Many years ago a friend of mine from Australia was on vacation in Spain when she minimally scraped her leg on a stone step, resulting in more than a month in the hospital with flesh eating bacteria, much of it in intensive care. Her travel insurance paid for all her medical care. She was lucky enough to have an ex-pat relative living in England she could stay with for the extended long post-hospital recovery. Her British team of doctors finally said they would clear her for the long haul flight home but only first class in a lie flat seat. Her travel insurance company considered their exposure to future complications during the additional months it would take before she could safely fly home in the cheap seats, and they also paid for the one way first class ticket to Australia.

Thank you for sharing your cruises with all of us!

PVSA only applies to cruises that begin and end in different US ports. Round trip same US port is fine. Victoria wouldn't qualify anyway if it was an Alaska cruise that was either Seattle to Vancouver, or Vancouver to Seattle, because PVSA requires a distant foreign port.

We did the Buenos Aires to Santiago cruise 20 years ago in February on the old Mercury and had probably unseasonably really nice weather the whole cruise even on the day we went around the Horn. Very windy there of course since that wind has been blowing unabated for centuries but that day was clear blue sky and the water had just the tiniest bit of white caps.

The passenger who needed blood transfusions last week has been blogging the GWC (not on CC) and he posted yesterday that 37 people came forward to donate blood! He's still in intensive care in Port Louis but is continuing to improve. He says the multiple blood transfusions he received that night probably saved his life.

OK then, if that does turn out to be it, easy decision for me. Pole to Pole was by far my favorite and C was my least favorite, so Pole to Pole it is. Er, if it is.

This! Always run the numbers to see how much the change saves or costs me. I did a re-fare that upped our cruise rate because the newly included items were all things we would have paid for individually. The new *higher* cruise rate was significantly less than the original rate plus the individual costs of the added things.

I think it's because some people who think they might cancel wait to cancel until the last minute before final payment is due. This way, either HAL keeps the deposit, or HAL can sell the cabin again before final payment is due.

Every ship has two actual captains who alternate, generally three months on, three months off. The Staff Captain is second in command and would take over only for brief absences. Ascent's take-out captain will be Captain Dimitrios Kafetzis and he will eventually be relieved by Captain Tasos Kafetzis. Captain Kate's husband previously was Virgin's Fleet Engineer (employee #1) involved in the design and build of all of their ships. He's back at RCCL now, traveling around to all the ships of the RCCL brands.

The laundry package is fantastic. It's one charge, per day for the cabin (I think still $7/day?) no matter how many bags your cabin sends out. I tell the room stewards on the first day we will be sending laundry every day so we need extra bags. Best friend and I each send separate bags every day. Some days we send bags in the morning and bags again in the evening.

Adding Seattle to Seattle doesn't help. Seattle to Vancouver would. The only thing that counts is where you first board a specific ship and where you end up and get off THAT ship. Doesn't matter how the cruise line chops that ship's overall voyage into different cruises. That ship is still on-boarding you in one US port and shoving you and all your baggage out the gangway in another US port.

My favorite CC typo ever 🙂