Copper10-8

Enjoy K-dam and her crew! Go get a Broodje Kroket at the Grand Dutch Cafe! See ya soon! 😉

Well, you've heard about the slur "Going Dutch," have ya, Meneer uit Den Haag? 🤓

VIP or not; doesn't matter/don't care! You don't start blaring YOUR music in a common area of the ship for everyone else to have to endure! If you are a VIP, then reserve one of the meeting rooms on the ship and go play your tunes over there until the cows come home looking to be milked! Poorly handled by ship's staff!

Sorry, but the NL staff is from the Philippines, not Indonesia! 😉

The Neptune Lounge concierge assignment used to be a rotating position from within the front office/guest services. For about a year and a half now, that has been changed to a permanent NL concierge position (so no longer a rotating position), backed up (for her/his breaks) by a member of the front office which is still a collateral assignment. So, to answer your question, you will see one NL concierge plus one part-time backup. In addition, members of the Pinnacle Grill restaurant will be in the NL on a daily basis to set up /restock the food items inside. That is usually also the same individual however he (it is usually a male PG server) can have a backup from the PG also. Enjoy your time in the NL! It's a great place to relax!

Good for ya! Let's keep it that way and think positive! 🤠

Captain Halle Thon "Hi, it's me again" Gundersen entering Prinsendam's show room on formal night for the staff introduction and toast

Looks like Cees Tesselaar with his front office crew; cool pic!

Amera with an "m" 😉 It's a girl’s name of Hebrew origin, meaning “princess” and/or “treetop.” Me thinks the Germans of Phoenix Seereisen had the first meaning in mind when they renamed the former Prinsendam, Seabourn Sun, and Royal Viking Sun

The crew doctor will have referred that officer to a shore-side dentist at the next port of call for a consult and to hopefully take care of his dental pain. You are correct; HAL does not carry dentists onboard

The crime here - "one transaction over $1k went thru"; and that is a confirmed crime - is not theft and not robbery. It is fraudulent/unauthorized use of a credit or debit card without the cardholder's permission. Under California Penal Code, that is PC Section 484g.The FBI does not get involved in this! The jurisdiction of this crime is from which location it was perpetrated, i.e. was the card fraudulently used from a location somewhere ashore/a port call, or was it used from a computer or telephone from the high seas. Security onboard has the ability to perform "lock reads" on cabin door locks/access cards which spits out info as to who/what day/what time that specific cabin door was opened. If that lock read shows anyone other than the cabin occupants having entered, that does not automatically imply that those individuals, i.e. cabin steward and plumber, are the suspects in this crime. Cabin stewards are in cabins everyday to perform their job. Same with a plumber if he is inside in response to a plumbing issue. As the SECO stated, an interview, not an interrogation, should have taken place with both individuals and a follow up investigation by him should have been conducted if those interviews developed leads/warranted same. This may include a potential crew cabin/personal property search which requires the authorization of the staff captain who is the SECO's immediate supervisor onboard. The cruise line's corporate security should also have been placed in the loop. Again, you cannot start accusing crew without concrete evidence of potential illegal activity on their part! That's the purpose of an internal investigation! CitiBanks' fraud department has the ability to find out on which day/time/location the card was actually used fraudulently to the tune of an "over $1,000" loss to the cardholder. They should also conduct a follow up investigation. Go to your local San Jose, CA Police Department station/sub-station and bring the shipboard documentation you are in possession of, as well as CitiBank documentation of the fraudulent use of your debit card, with you. Explain the circumstances to the, more than likely, front desk person is your first start, and request to have a 484g PC incident report filed per the request of CitiBank's Fraud Dept. If they concur, San Jose PD will more than likely not file this as a crime report, rather an incident report, and there will not be a follow up investigation by one of their fraud investigators since this crime did not occur within their jurisdiction. Send a copy of that San Jose PD incident report, along with the aforementioned shipboard and CitiBank documentation to the cruise line involved, attention the President/CEO as well as a copy for their chief of corporate security for potential follow-up. Lastly, please keep your valuables incl. credit/debit cards/wallets, etc. inside your locked cabin safe 24/7 and only remove those bad boys when/if you want to take them ashore for potential use. It is very hard and time consuming for someone else to try to successfully open that cabin safe without the correct combination! Your valuable are "safe" in that safe! Finally, please consider changing your Cruise Critic user name to anything other than your real name! San Jose Sharks fan would be a good one although they're not doing too well at the moment! Then again, you could be an Anaheim Ducks fan, the bottom dwellers of the NHL 😉 Good luck to you!

There is no rhyme or reason, no pattern to predict how many, or when, medical disembarkations take place on HAL, or other cruise lines. I have worked itineraries (the security officer is very much involved in all medical disembarkations), anything from regular one week long Carib or Alaska cruises, to Atlantic and/or Pacific crossings, to two-week Panama Canal transits, to a full world cruise where we went weeks without medical disembarkations. Then the next week, on the same itineraries, there were multiple! Of course, the longer the itinerary, i.e. a grand world voyage, the higher the odds you will have a, or multiple, med. disembarks however, you can never tell ahead of time how many, if any, you will have! Just a bit as to how a medical disembark works; the ball starts rolling with one of the two physicians onboard - each HAL ships has two; one with primary responsibility for the passengers/guests; the other for the crew. The doctor(s) will be presented with patient who suffered a medical emergency. The infirmary on the ships, and the staff who run it (doctors and nurses) are there to stabilize the patient, similar to an E.R. on Terra firma. Yes, the docs are E.R./trauma hospital qualified as are most of the nurses; they can run blood and many other tests onboard, take X-rays, administer meds from their on-board pharmacy, place patients on oxygen, apply splints, get you crutches and a wheelchair, etc. but they are not specialists in all forms of medicine like you'll find in a Level 1/II trauma hospital on land such as LAC Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in my particular area. If a medical emergency, i.e. heart attack, stroke, major trauma, etc. presents itself no matter what time of the day or night, you will hear the announcement made over the ship's P/A system by the officer of the watch on the bridge (the recipient of the 911 call) and a team of 1st responders will come running (the old "Bright Star" call). The patient will be transported to the infirmary by the stretcher team and the two docs and staff will attempt to stabilize the patient. If the latter's condition is not stable, i.e. he/she requires advanced and or specialized treatment ashore, the senior doc will make that recommendation to the captain for a medical evacuation of that patient. The captain has no medical background so will rely on his doctor's expertise and will 99% of the time go with that recommendation. He will bear the final responsibility for that decision The next decision to be made is how fast to get the patient to a land-based critical care facility and that has to do with where in the world the ship is at the moment, how far that critical care facility is in relation to the ship's position, and how to get the patient there as fast as possible. Options will be a) a medical evacuation by air (read helicopter), b) a medevac by boat, and c) a medevac by land, meaning the ship will steam as fast as possible to the nearest port where the patients is taken off the ship via the gangway to a waiting paramedic/ambulance. Medevacs by air are inherently dangerous, no matter what. Something can always go wrong when a helicopter is hovering in very close proximity to the bow (usually, at times the stern - the aircraft commander, not the ship's captain, has the final say as to the location) of a moving ship. That's why it's SOP to have at least two of the ship's fire teams standing by with charged fire hose (water and/or foam) lines when an aerial medevac is in progress. In the case of a military organization like the US Coast Guard, or Royal Canadian Air Force performing the medevac by helo, a flight surgeon (yes, that's also a medical doctor) from that military unit will discuss the patients condition via radio with the ship's doctor and he/she (the flight surgeon) has to sign off on the medevac before it can take place. Criteria like the helicopter's range/fuel/loiter capacity will come into play. If the ship 's position is beyond those criteria, the mission is scrubbed and you will have to go to Plan B. Now, in the past, a medevac by helicopter has taken place beyond the normal range of USCG helos. There are very few helicopters around that can be refueled in mid-air to extend their range. That was the case in May 2013 with the Westerdam medevac in the Pacific far off the coast of Baja California where a HH-60G Pave Hawk helo from the California Air National Guard out of Moffett Field, near Sunnyvale/Santa Clara County received fuel in mid-air from a HC-130J Combat King II (the combat rescue variant of the Lockheed C-130 Hercules) in order to extend its range and then successfully medevac'd a patient from the bow of the Westerdam to fly him/her to a trauma hospital in San Diego. That's the exception to the rule! If the helicopter medevac is a no go, the ship will have to steam post haste to the nearest land fall where either a coast guard vessel or rescue boat (again the land facility has to have such a boat and trained crew available - it can not be done by a glass bottom boat or whale watching vessel) can meet up and where the patient can be transferred to that boat via the tender platform of the cruise ship. Or, as stated if that's out due to, i.e. bad weather/rough sea/rolling swell conditions, the ship will have to sail into port and dock where a transfer directly to land can take place. Lastly, not every country in the world has the capabilities, be it aircraft/boat, trained crew, logistics, etc. to perform a successful medevac from a cruise ship. There is a difference if you find yourself on a cruise ship off the western or eastern seaboard of North America or Western Europe, compared to say, western Africa, Antarctica, certain parts of Southeast Asia, or even certain areas of Mexico and Central America. That's not a secret and it's not to take anything away of the hardworking and brave military units of the countries concerned in those areas of the world! As far as how to prevent medical disembarks from cruise/HAL ships? It's just not that easy! I have been involved in medevacs of an 86-year old male who suffered a stroke, but also of a 32-year old crew member who suffered a heart attack with no prior adverse medical history. Where are you going to draw the line as far as "You can't sail with us?"

The four HMC tenders - Henry Hudson (245 pax), Anne Bonny (245 pax), Rookie (140 pax) and Stingray (250 pax) - are always first up when ships call at the island. When there is only one ship tendering, that is what you will get and see as far as getting pax back and forth to the island. When there is a second HAL ship (HAL ships do not visit HMC with non-HAL ships, i.e. Carnival), the smaller of the two will use four of her own tenders to get pax to the island. However, during the morning and afternoon rush, the larger ship will often "loan" one of the big island tenders to the smaller ship to help out. As has been stated, the Hudson and Bonny are wheelchair accessible with ship's crew providing assistance in getting the mobility impaired guest onto the island tender via a gangway supplied by the tender. Each of the two sister/identical island tenders have a ramp located at the stern of the upper deck which will take you from the upper deck to the lower deck from where disembarkation takes place from a "landing craft-type" ramp at the bow which is hydraulically lowered at the island's marina/tender dock. Bottom line, you should not have any issues getting your loved one in a wheelchair back and forth to HMC

A Sinterklaas song 🙂

You just brought back a lot of memories, Tony! Thank you! That's me, my two nephews Pete and Karl, and part of our family with Sinterklaas and two Zwarte Pieten on December 5 in the sixties in Amsterdam

You can only reach the NL concierge (or his/her backup) if they give you their personal contact info. be it email and/or social media. They do have a shipboard email address but that's internal only and not shared with guests. Good luck with the wedding; should be a nice one onboard

Been to Paju and inside the 3rd infiltration DMZ tunnel. Interesting experience!

I'm thinking chances are descent Nampo, DPRK instead of Vladi.................with a daytrip to Pyongyang.................. 😉

I'm pretty sure that's spelled "Bouquet", first name Hyacinth, the lady of the house! I happen to have a pic of her

Make your dining reservations from inside the MDR or from inside their specialty restaurants, is how I read it! But that's just me. not the sharpest pencil in the little box

Very nice and yes, correct on assuming Bishop of Myra! Yeah, the carrot is for his horse since, unlike Santa, Sinterklaas doesn't have a sleigh with flying reindeer! If I remember correctly, I would also place a bowl of water, again for the horse, next to the carrot at our fireplace when I was a young lad. When I got older, I always wondered how that horse was able to get on the roof/other roofs without making any noise - hooves in silent mode, I guess. And, oh yes, I had an awful lot of respect for the "Zwarte Pieten" / "Black Petes," Sinterklaas' helpers like most Dutch kids have, because if you had been a bad boy, you had a pretty good chance of being put in a large bag and taken back to Spain (Sinterklaas lives there, instead of at the North Pole - He's obviously not stupid! 😉)

Yes, I've been reading about that, unfortunately! Sad, the world we live in! A great tradition going by the wayside!

Plumbers! Some of the busiest and hardest working crew on a cruise ship! Lots of respect and kudos to those gents, on HAL all hailing from the Philippines