PDXgranny

I was just on the 1/2 - 1/13 cruise and BB King played on 8 of 11 nights. (They have 1 night off each week and one member got sea sick one day so they didn't perform.)

 

They are in the crows nest and I preferred the sound to their venue on the Eurodam in which we have cruised 23 days with BB King. I like the more "in the round" feeling of the venue and it was more intimate. The lights are not as nice but the volume didn't require ear plugs like on the Eurodam.

 

A new BB King group boarded on 1/13 so I can't speak to their skills, but the one we had was the best we had experienced on any ship and we often skipped the main shows to hear them perform. One of the best things musically that Holland has done. (we do like the classical musicians like Adagio or Lincoln Center Stage but those musicians perform and don't engage those attending.)

 

I hope you enjoy them as much as we did

Thank you! Sounds like HAL brings in great musicians. We're blues/rock lovers so this will be great. DH is in a local geezer band - so he'll be really glad.

Hi y'all, Redneck Bob here.

 

On our first cruise me and my DW Thelma contacted a TA. We wanted to sale on a theme cruise. I am a little hard of hereing and thought the TA booked us on a brews cruise; just right for me; plenty of beer. When we got on board we realized we mistook what our TA booked. Instead of a brews cruise, it was a nude cruise; and I forgot to bring my birthday suit :eek:

Well dam lucky for other pax that you forgot it!!!

Yes. They play at Crow's Nest. In june (Norse Legends cruise) they were amazing. It gets loud due to the low ceiling, but the energy of the vocalist Tempest was out of this world. I wrote a longer review of that cruise...

Very cool - we'll be spending a lot of evenings there!!

How was it??

Cruising Acct wrote: "My grandmother used to babysit me as a child, and we would watch the The Love Boat together. I wish I could have thanked her for that, the time together, and the seed that she planted"

 

We actually sailed on the sister ship and stand in for the Love Boat - the old Island Princess which had become the Voyages of Discovery ship. After spending time on her we re-watched the Love Boat episodes to see how we too formed our ideas about "cruising". It was a kick to see how many departures and artistic license the show took from the actual state of a real cruise ship at that time, mainly in size and layout.

 

In the show, the hallways were huge allowing at least three people to walk abreast talking to each other. In the dining room, it was always long gown formal night, with two tiers of generously spaced tables and a bar in the same room. The cabins were multiple room suites. The pool was a grand deck space. People would come and go with one small suitcase in hand. And of course the staff all worked together constantly to fix individual affairs of the heart for each grateful passenger.

 

Real ship: cabins were very cramped - 130 feet, very little closet space. Halls were narrow. Dining room was at the water line level with closely packed tables. The pool was a circular pit that was extremely hard to get out of, more like a shark tank.

 

But the staff was great and oh the places we got to see on that wonderful old ship. I think both she and her sister the real Love Boat - the Pacific Princess - are doing short hauls and charters in Europe these days.

I love it! Back in the days of Love Boat on tv, I never dreamed I'd ever be able to go on a cruise! Thought they were for the very wealthy - or at the very least, a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Bringing too much stuff, especially shoes. I'm getting better. Last cruise I only brought thirteen pairs... :D:o

YES! Sounds exactly like me. I've got it down to 3 prs, but I bet at least 5 find their way into my luggage.

Back to the subject of this thread...... on our very first cruise, a 4-day "try it you'll like it" cruise on the Carnival Fantasy, we were in a very small verandah cabin. We unpacked and lined the empty bags along the outside wall of the cabin next to the bed. That meant one of us had to crawl over the bed or bags to get in bed. We kind of suffered with that arrangement for a day plus when we happened to meet our cabin steward. He kindly mentioned "you know you can put your bags under the bed". :o

:D My friend clued me in to that trick! I would've thought of it - our beds at home are so low to floor, nothing fits under there - except dust bunnies!!

I pulled up your HAL itinerary for your cruise on 1-28-17 and see that you will be in Puerto Vallarta MX on the 1-31-17. We are also in PV on that same day staying in a time share condo two blocks from the cruise ship dock. :eek:

 

Also, we have some friends we met on another cruise that sent us pictures of the Rotterdam that I have been posting on our CC Roll Call page. Here is the link to the first pictures I posted. We have also done the Panama canal but in the opposite direction that you are taking. You will love the experience. We enjoyed it so much we have done it twice....:D

 

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2336918&page=29

 

If you page forward to other pages, I have more photos that you can see. I posted more pictures on pages forward of this page. They were taken in the spring of 2016 as our friends went on the Rotterdam to Norway.

 

Sorry for high jacking this thread....:o

 

Rick

 

Great photos - thank you! Enjoy PV!!

this was not on my first cruise but on my first world cruise. I thought it was wonderful that we had a self-service laundry - i could save so much money doing the wash myself. I did this for about 8 weeks. Go to the laundry - wait for a washer (could be as much as an hour) - wait for washer to finish - wait for dryer (again maybe an hour wait) - wait for dryer to finish - oops, clothes still wet, add a few minutes to dryer - press the couple of things that need it - lug it back to cabin - hang or fold everything and put it away. All of this took 3-4 hours of my time.

 

Then i saw the light. If i really want to wash clothes, i can do it at home - as much as i want, whenever i want. Can i watch the see, smell the salt air, swim in the pool, play trivia, go to a lecture, etc. Every day at home? No! So now i pay a few dollars and my clothes are collected, washed, ironed, put on hangars and delivered to my cabin and i have not wasted my precious cruising time.

 

 

yes!!!!!!!!

Our first cruise we went to the front desk and lowered the daily tips (Hotel Service charge), then made individual tips to our dinning wait staff and room stewards. Unknown to us, because of lowering the daily tips, those individual tips could not be kept by the staff but had to go into "pot" for all service staff. So now we leave the daily tips on our account untouched and tip exceptional staff service accordingly. This way those staff that we give extra tips to get to keep those tips and they also share in the main tip pool. We have always received great service from staff and find rewarding them extra no problem.

 

Hey, I see you will be on the Rotterdam this month and we will be on her the end of March. Sorry we have never been on her so can't give you any suggestions.

Yes, Rotterdam next week - first cruise ever. You're from Springfield - we're from Portland.

Thanks for sharing about tips. We're leaving the daily tips as is and will tip our steward at end of cruise.

Totally up to you. Generally normal service = normal gratuity. If you prepay gratuities no more is needed. We always seem to find better than normal. :)

 

Back on topic, our first HAL cruise was 2005, too long ago for me remember mistakes. :rolleyes:

Would a $60 tip be reasonable for a 15 day cruise for normal service?

Being dazzled by those getting awards for 100 days of cruising at a Mariners Luncheon (guess this was our second cruise) - wow I said, how could anyone be so lucky to reach 100 whole days on a cruise ship. Impossible.

 

And it seems in an eye blink, we are now over 350 days. Like a lot of good advice, one does it one day at a time. I couldn't have been more mistaken this would be an impossible dream. As we will reach over 400 cruise days before the year is over. So I still pinch myself a lot.

We are brand new to the cruising world. I had no idea that some people actually have over 100 cruises under their belts. That is too awesome!!

Well, speeds in peoples' homes today commonly range from 10 or 12 Mbps (Megabits per second) up to maybe 60, depending mainly on how much you pay, so something around 2 or 3 will seem very slow to those people. Latency is another important factor in how fast the throughput is. At home I get 30 to 40 ms (milliseconds) so 10 times that much on the ship's satellite connection is poor by comparison.

 

If you'd like to know how fast your home service is, go to speedtest.att.com and click Start. It takes just a few seconds. If your home service is comparable to the ship service numbers I quoted you will not be too unhappy on board. :)

Yes - that's pretty slow!! Thank you for explaining :)

Last month on the Oosterdam four speed tests during off-peak times gave download rates ranging from 1.75 Mbps to 2.81 Mbps with latencies from 308 to 376 ms.

LOL!!! I don't know a Mbps or ms from a hole in the ground!! Was that fast or not? :confused:

I wrote an answer for you and then my Hot Spot got out of range - so I lost it. I'm just on the ship and just signed-up - speed is decent right now. Who knows once we get away from the US and more people sign up. I will report back if it seems to falter or get real slow. A case of no news is good news, I hope.

Thank you - would appreciate it!! Have a great time!:D

Misunderstanding that "Tipping not required" is not at all the same as "No tipping". :o

To this day I wish I could find Basri (my dining steward), and my cabin steward (can't remember his name) and make it up to them. :(

Ruth, is it appropriate to wait until end of cruise to tip our cabin steward or should we tip him daily?

Unused portions of purchased beverage cards (not "beverage packages") have been deducted from my final billing statement.

 

FWIW soda cards are soda dispensed from a fountain gun into a glass. Beverage cards include cans that you can take back to your stateroom minibar for chilled storage.

Didn't know that about soda cards - this is great - DH would much rather get fountain dispensed Coke.

Choosing itinerary over cruise line.

That's something that I hadn't given a lot of consideration to. But I had heard wonderful things about HAL, and we've always wanted to see the Panama Canal. The size of the ship was important. The huge huge new ships don't appeal to me.

Without a doubt, showing up at the time it told us to arrive to board on our boarding passes

 

Arrive noon at Vancouver, and there is half of the Zuiderdam complement waiting to go through security and customs ahead of us.

 

Two hours to snake through to get on board.

 

Now, barring last minute catastrophes in terms of ship turn around or arrival/mechanical issues, we have the time from leaving cab to walking on ship down to less than about 20 minutes.

 

For the most part, if you can hit the sweet spot where they have kicked off the final guests and opened processing, but just before the airport transfer folks arrive, you breeze through (at least in Vancouver and Seattle)

Excellent! Never thought of that. You may have saved us a big headache. Thanks!;)

Sorry I didn't get back to you sooner, but I see kazu has more than adequately answered your questions. I would have said pretty much the same things.

 

I, too, like to purchase a beverage card, for the same reasons kazu gave. I don't want all those little slips of paper, and I sure don't want to proof them out on the last morning when I'm trying to finish up my packing & breakfast.

I know approximately how much I spend for beverages per day, multiply by the number of days in the cruise, subtract anticipated free drinks, and buy a beverage card that will pretty much cover it. That last night I charge the difference on my cabin card, so don't normally have a refund.

Thank you, Ruth, you and Kazu helped a lot! Going to buy my beverage cards now! Thanks!

I over packed. I've since learned to travel light and make use of the ships laundry. I even pack disposable clothing to make room for trinkets.

 

 

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We're pretty light packers. But I may pare it down even more. I believe Rotterdam has a self laundry. I hope.

Booking the most expensive cabin on a cheap ship.

What would be considered a cheap ship?

Flying in on the same day. Through Atlanta no less. Never since.

I've heard that one before! We're flying in a day early - so so glad!;)

Biggest mistake = Booking a 7-day cruise ;)

Happy to say that won't be the mistake we make!

Thanks for sharing!:D

Good for you for starting the thread ;)

 

My biggest mistake was not rewarding those that made my cruise special with a bit extra tip ;). I haven't made that mistake again ;)

Thanks -you are my CC mentor!!