TAD2005

On our 28 day South Pacific cruise on the Eurodam last March, the Cellar Master Dinner was being pushed by the waiters in the Lido pool area.  It was $79 per person, and we accepted the offer.   We enjoyed the dinner courses with the paired wines.   We would do it again.

The whole reason the health forms were dropped is because people will lie.   You have spent thousands on the cruise, flown to the port, and you are pumped and ready for a great vacation.   Does anyone seriously think that after spending all that money, someone would check the box saying that yes, I am sick with a fever.   In today's times, that is almost a certain denied boarding.  So people lie to get onboard, and they hope that the cough, sniffles and slight fever goes away.    So killing a few more trees to print those forms, only to have people lie when filling them out is a waste of time.   The forms are there to protect HAL, showing that they are being pro-active..

I have always enjoyed the Dutch beer Grolsch.  It comes in that pop top bottle, and is about 18 oz.   It has always been served on HAL ships, but on the Eurodam, last March in the South Pacific, they told me they ran out.  They did have Heineken on draft in some bars.   My next cruise is on the Rotterdam, and it originates in Rotterdam for 29 days to Ft.Lauderdale.   There should be no reason not to have a good supply on board.

On 2/8/2020 at 6:47 AM, eurolady said:

Well here is the downside to Flight Ease.....I will never use flight ease again with HAL.

The virus is  an unusual happening, and because everything in the far east is in turmoil,  this is a one-off situation.

To state "I'll never use Flight Ease again" is a knee-jerk reaction to a temporary situation.   On most of my cruises, I only need a very long, one-way international business class flight.   Booking with the airlines, I would be paying 4 times what I would pay with Flight Ease.   In one case, I had a domestic round trip to get to a cruise port on the US west coast.   There was no price difference between the airlines and Flight Ease, but I had to cancel that cruise before final payment.   I got 100% of my deposit money back with no arguments.  If I had booked the flights separately with an airline many months before the cruise final payment,  I would have  had to pay for the flights upon booking, and I would then be stuck with 2 round trip ticket credits that I might never be able to use.   

51 minutes ago, maandme said:

In your experience, Do the bartenders allow you to purchase 2 drinks at a time?  

If you are charging the drinks to your cabin account, you can buy drinks for everyone in the bar at one time.  That also applies to the paid beverage cards if you have a sufficient balance on the card.   However, if you have the SBP or EBP, then you can only purchase one drink at a time, but that one drink can be a double, in one glass.   It just counts as 2 of your daily 15.   The limit of one drink at a time is to prevent you from buying 2 drinks on your package and sliding one of those drinks across the table to a friend who doesn't have the SBP.   If you try it and get caught, the penalties are a total loss of your package with no refund of purchase price.   The bartenders and waiters are very good at catching this.

You can specify the class of cabin you want.   Foe US domestic flights, first class is the usual front cabin.   For international flights, most airlines offer business class for the front cabin.  There is a pull down menu where you can select whatever class you want.

For US domestic flights, there is no substantial price advantage with Flight Ease.   The major advantage is the ability to book your flight 300 days out from your cruise and not pay anything until final cruise payment.   If you buy your own domestic ticket,  and sometime before final cruise payment, you need to cancel, your cruise deposit is protected (providing it is refundable), but you are stuck with an airline ticket you may not be able to use.

18 minutes ago, AncientWanderer said:

Weird...I read the original post as emphasizing health concerns more than the refund -- except insofar as offering refunds will keep people from cruising in the region and thus prevent spreading the virus.   

H'mmm....

 

 

The OP's post first paragraph totally blasts Carnival Corp for just offering a credit for a 2020 cruise, and then continues on saying he expects a full refund of all money.   Because that was the OP's headline, it sure seems like the complaint is about refunds.   They are using the virus issue to justify the demands for a full refund. 

Bottom line..... buy travel insurance.   You will be made whole if something like this happens.   And we all know that kaka happens, when you least expect it.    But no, people think they are healthy so who needs insurance ?   Famous last words !!   So because you made the decision to not purchase travel insurance, now it's the cruise line's fault that your ports have been changed.  

In every bar onboard, when you order any drink, be it a specialty "cocktail of the day" or a simple vodka and tonic, the drink is priced by the base alcohol that is in it.   The mixers and fruit are included.  So just look at the basic alcohols in the menus and that will be your drink price.    

The Diamond Princess has an actual passenger onboard right now who is confirmed with the virus.   He is 80 years old, and traveled from Hong Kong to Yokohama, Japan to board the Diamond for a 5 day cruise.   He has symptoms before boarding,  and he was quarantined on board.   The whole ship is quarantined in Japan for a minimum of 24 hours and no one can leave until Japanese authorities check every passenger.   

I manage a website that features bridge cameras from many cruise lines.  They usually allow us to grab their bridge and stern cameras, and Crystal allows us to post their internal internet lab camera.   HAL is one of the few lines that do not upload a live stream of their onboard cameras for use by websites.

A few days ago, Hong Kong had closed it's border with Mainland China for exactly this reason.   

1 hour ago, LoveHAL said:

The band in the Ocean  Bar was quite good, but the BIG win was the Piano Bar, featuring JAMM. He is amazing. He did share that, when the ship went into dry dock in the near future, The Mix/Piano Bar would be enlarged and go to the Billboard on Board style of two pianos (in the few times I have seen the concept, it was mostly "fixed sets" of music and not as much interaction with the audience.

 

 

 

 

I agree with you about the abandonment of a traditional Piano Bar for the fixed format Billboard Onboard.   I have been on most of the Vista class ships before and after the "upgrade" to Billboard.   The very talented single piano bar musicians were versatile and in many cases, they brought additional instruments like harmonicas, alto sax, and a sideman for percussion and bass.   They interacted with the crowd, played exactly what the mood of the audience dictated, and also stayed around between sets to chat with the people.   Billboard Onboard musicians are usually hit or miss.  In many cases, the 2 musicians have never performed together before boarding the ship.  And their knowledge of a variety of music from the 60's to the 90's is very restricted.   Sure, they all can perform Billy Joel's Piano Man, or Neil Diamond's Sweet Caroline, and of course the Beatles.   But their ages are usually so young that they weren't born until 1980 or 1990, so their repertoire of music favored by the typical HAL customer is limited to a play list from Billboard Corporation.   

On a Rotterdam cruise a few years ago, we had a very talented piano bar musician named Paul C McD.   He was great.  I asked him during a break if he was considering joining Billboard so he could continue entertaining on HAL ships.  He said he did apply, but Billboard told him "sorry, but you are too old for us".  Paul was 58.   That tells you something !! 

Bandwidth throttling only occurs when you have hit an unspecified download total over a certain time period.  This is controlled by the IT technicians onboard.   They specify 500 MB per day but, as many have said, it does not seem they enforce that, depending on the overall data usage on the ship.   If you sit in your cabin with the Premium package and stream HD movies all day and night, you may be throttled, which will cause buffering and the dreaded rotating circle in whatever you are watching.   Yes, the service is unlimited, but if you are a couch potato in your cabin,  your streaming movie will be very frustrating to watch 

We are on the Rotterdam, Oct 3 sailing for 29 days to Ft. Lauderdale.   We were able to get a non-stop flight from Tampa to Schiphol (Amsterdam) on Delta, and then a private car to the Suite Hotel Pincoff in Rotterdam (on the canal) for 4 nights.  We will taxi from the hotel to the pier on Saturday the 3rd.   

We booked the flight with HAL's Flight Ease and got a great one-way price for Business class.   The private car from Schiphol to our hotel was 115 Euros, but we are splitting that between 2 couples,  

The elimination of sugar, catsup, mustard, mayo, packets might save some paper, but replacing them with bottles of the same condiments causes more problems.  Large numbers of people who have coughed or sneezed (or worse) in their hands will be grabbing these bottles of condiments and transmitting whatever they have on their hands to hundred of other passengers.   Are we now required to wear gloves to dinner just to save some paper sugar packets ?  This is all getting out of control with companies falling all over themselves for press releases saying how "woke" they are.

The booking engine that HAL uses is the same that Princess uses.  But occasionally, (like now) Princess offers discounts on air fares.  You can see the base price, and the discounted fare on Princess, but not on HAL.

As many have said on this board, there have been almost no examples where an airfare booked with Flight Ease has gone up and the passenger has been charged the higher price.   It have never happened to me, and the fares have gone way up close to final payment date.   My fare stayed the same

Other than the fantastic fares available, especially on international one-way flights, the big advantage of Flight Ease is that you do not have to pay until your cruise fare is due, usually 75 - 90 days out.   If something comes up and you have to cancel, you are stuck with a useless one-way ticket.   If Flight Ease fares would go up after you booked and you would get hit with that increase, passengers would have to pay at booking and then one of the big advantages of Flight Ease would go away.   One-way international fares are horribly expensive and if cruise lines didn't have this arrangement with airlines, the entire cruise industry would suffer.   Who would be happy to pay more for a 9 hour plane ride to an international port city than you pay for a whole 14 day cruise ?   So, there must be an agreement with the airlines to restrict fare increases after the flights are booked through the cruise line.

20 hours ago, Kfrech said:

Really wish a package that included alcoholic did not have to be purchased by both adults in the cabin. My DH hasn’t touched a drop in 16 years. 

If you can get a doctor's statement that he cannot drink alcohol, you can get an exception to the "both must buy" rule for the beverage packages.

7 minutes ago, sunnut said:

Can the soda card be shared between two cruisers?

 

Thanks!

With a soda card, you can treat the entire bar with a Coke if you like.   

23 hours ago, Billthekid said:

Sometimes the extension cord gets in the way, so we ask the cabin attendant to have some one tape it up off the floor and out of the way.  They did an excellent job and it was nice and neat and I did not trip on it in the middle of the night.  Also our TA sprung for the distilled water.   A bottle of wine would have been better however, but it was a nice thought on their part.

I unplug my extension cord each morning and stow it along with the face mask in the drawer of the nightstand.  I always worry if I leave the face mask and hose attached to the machine, it may be kinked or damaged when they make up the beds.   I bring a European to US plug adapter and use the 220 volt desk outlet for the CPAP, and keep the 120 volt outlet for my laptop charger.   All CPAP machines will work from either voltage.

10 minutes ago, GreenValleyDogWalker said:

 

I have ordered the distilled water - but what about the extension cord - can  you somehow order it in advance, also ?  Or do you just ask the Steward for it when you board ?

When we sailed on Celebrity last year - I had an extension cord in the bag with the cpap machine - and the cord was confiscated 

 

(Sailing on the Oosterdam in a couple of weeks) 

 

THANK YOU  

I always bring a straight 12 ft extension cord, with a single receptacle at the end.   Cruise lines will grab any extension cord that includes multiple outlets or surge suppressors.   I never have a problem with a straight 12 ft cord..   But yes, you can get one from guest services after boarding.  

Most ships use geostationary satellites that orbit the earth over the equator.   When the receive terminal on the ship get so far north (or south), the "look angle" to the satellite is only a few degrees above the horizon.  That generates a lot of terrestrial noise in the signal and the data rates get very slow for all services, including TV and internet.   You may experience extremely slow or no internet when you get that far north.   It has nothing to do with HAL, it's the physics of satellite uplinks and downlinks.

I am not a proponent of this HAL policy because it causes people to have to play games with their shore excursions by booking online, then cancelling either just before the cruise or right after boarding, then booking inboard using OBC.   For some very popular tours, you may be placed on a waiting list using this tactic.

However, from a business point of view, it makes sense for HAL's bean counters.

They want you to use your cash to buy as much as possible before the cruise, like drink packages, shore excursions, internet, wine packages, and specialty dinners.   Then, when you board, the OBC is used for the HSC, shop purchases, drinks, etc.   This is the same reasoning that HAL charges a $10 per day premium if you wait to buy a drink package onboard using your OBC instead of using your own cash to buy it online, before the cruise.

Because you are at the extreme aft part of the ship, when the swells are large, maybe 15 ft or bigger, and the bow goes up to climb over the swell, the aft end goes down and vice-versa.   So you will get more pitching (not rolling) in a aft cabin, but we love it.  Plus the balconies are longer, and the cabin is usually a bit longer.   We always pick deck 4, the lowest deck.   When you stand at the railing and look down, you don't stare at the tops of the heads of the passengers below you, all you see it water and the ship's wake. 

Ear monitors are critical for musicians and vocalists.   When you are standing a few feet in front of a huge drum kit or a 6 ft Marshall stack, as a vocalist, you need to hear the proper mix of the band and possibly another vocalist that you are harmonizing with.   You can't do that without monitors in both ears.   Yes, it does reduce the sound level of the band, but the primary purpose is so you can hear the proper mix of the other musicians so you don't go off time.