Jump to content

ddaley822

Members
  • Posts

    32
  • Joined

About Me

  • Location
    San Diego, CA
  • Interests
    Design, hiking, musical theatre
  • Favorite Cruise Line(s)
    Royal Caribbean, Holland America
  • Favorite Cruise Destination Or Port of Call
    Greece

Recent Profile Visitors

The recent visitors block is disabled and is not being shown to other users.

ddaley822's Achievements

Cool Cruiser

Cool Cruiser (2/15)

  1. Funny, I booked my AMA Rhine cruise last September and they didn’t yet have the functionality to book online so I was forced to “request a quote.” The TA that AMA set me up with happens to be located in my city of San Diego! Purely coincidental. I am happy to have her as she has garnered me a room upgrade, included tips and $75 OBC for each of us which I certainly wouldn’t have been able to do on my own. She also researched and found a travel insurance plan that was better than the one I’d Googled myself. Which direction did you end up booking? I am doing A to B in August on AmaLucia and plan on writing a live (more likely semi-live) review.
  2. Does any of this nice Viking-specific information change for AMAWaterways sailings? We’re hoping to drop our luggage and continue roaming Amsterdam before a true check-in in the afternoon. Does AMA serve lunch on embarkation day as well?
  3. We found it easy but I did learn Greek before we went. My husband didn’t, and as our driver, he was still able to read the signage when I told him what exits we were looking for. They use the same road symbols, and the signage that lists exits should be easy to parse even without knowing the language. If you’re looking for an exit at Πλοκαμιανά you should be able to discern by way of matching the letter forms, that you shouldn’t turn instead at Κεφάλι, you know what I mean? I will say that when I learned Greek, it was all in sentence case. However, when we got there and I was reading all the signage, EVERYTHING is in all caps. I did learn my capital letters back in my sorority days but trying to actually read a sign in all caps when you’re used to sentence case was tricky for me. Again, if you’re just trying to determine exits and street names, you should have no problem matching up the letters on signs to what’s on your map. I will suggest making note of Greek for please (phonetically - parakalo), thanks (efcharisto) and sorry (signomi) before you go! People loved when I spoke just a bit in their language.
  4. This video was awesome, much more flooding than I was picturing. I am learning German for my Rhine cruise this summer so I listened to the audio and could pick out about every 10th word! haha Sehr gut!
  5. I always hope for rain on Christmas, it’s the closest to snow we can get! Perhaps I will settle for overcast so you can still get your beach walking in. 😆 The worst are the blissfully sunny 79º Christmasses, I dislike having to change out of my flannel pajamas!
  6. My Viva cruise from SJ in 2025 went up $100pp since booking, but I signed up for tracking on Cruiseplum, happy to have that resource! Thanks!
  7. @notamermaid Not sure where, but somewhere on this River Cruising forum you suggested this map! As a map lover, I had to order it and it finally came (from Australia) almost 2 months later. I love it so much! This Koblenz section immediately stood out since I recognized the Moselle/Rhine meeting point from the pictures you’ve posted above. Excited to bring it along and refer back to it on my AMA cruise this summer. Thanks so much!
  8. The main reason I chose AMA over Viking (and that has yet to be mentioned) is that the final payment schedule is absolutely wild. Yes, they had a super low deposit of $25pp instead of $400pp but the ENTIRE cruise needed to be paid off around 30 days after deposit. At least with AMA I have till 3 months before the cruise to scrape together my $10k. Viking wants all that money 12+ months before sailing! What!! I do prefer the clean Viking (Scandinavian) interior design to AMA but the all-included excursions and normal cruise payment schedule were the main draws for me.
  9. Just booked our first river cruise with AMA and found they’re currently (or they were Oct 12) offering a cabin upgrade. I was able to put my deposit down on the price for a French Balcony but we were upgraded to a BB with the twin balconies. The AMA-assigned TA also was able to get us $75 OBC each and included gratuities. Couldn’t say no after all that! We are huge balcony sitters on ocean cruises so we will see how much we actually get to use it on the Rhine. Like you, I figured go big for this first one and I can always come down to a cheaper cabin category next time!
  10. My husband always has every major sporting event available in his pocket! How do you get your TV provided at home? He just logs in to our provider and can watch any channel right on his phone or laptop. Even RedZone! When we sail in the fall we always need a 2-device internet plan because he commandeers it on Sundays. 😂
  11. I have a Rhine river cruise booked on AmaLucia in August and the gratuities were pre-paid as part of the deal the AMA-assigned TA was able to get for me. Does anyone know if having prepaid gratuities includes the additional tip for the Cruise Manager? I will plan on having extra cash for the room attendant on the last day as well.
  12. I really liked our cruise on the Celestyal Crystal in August 2022. We sailed the 7 day Idyllic itinerary as a section of our Greek honeymoon. We had a full suite and I wouldn’t recommend one. The junior suites have a much better room layout if you don’t need the extra space! In the full suite, the bedroom is completely walled off from the living area and balcony (read: no view at all from bed). The bedroom also has no secondary tv. It says included drinks but you’ll need the package if you want bottled water or brands of liquor you’ve heard of before. Fortunately it’s super cheap if you’re used to big brand causing! I believe we each got a drink package for ~$350 total, which is a far cry from the $1050 I spent recently for a 7-night on Royal. We did a ship-sponsored excursion in each port (you can see my review of each excursion here) and really loved all of them. Best would be swimming in the pirate caves in Kleftiko, Milos. The ship was small and dated but was perfectly fine if you’re going for the amazing ports. They have a dedicated restaurant for suite guests which was almost always empty. The food in the main dining room was perfectly fine, I don’t remember being overly impressed but it certainly wasn’t bad! The staff were all very friendly, bartenders especially. I didn’t like that the best bar on the ship (on the top deck, center) only opened after 11pm!! We certainly were never up late enough to experience it, but the daytime view from there was great. The Thalassa bar at the aft of the ship (Greek for ‘sea') was the best spot for sail aways but gets packed quickly at the end of a port day and after dinner. Overall we would go with Celestyal again, simply for their jam-packed itineraries! We were originally slated to go on the Experience before they had to sell it and were swapped to the Crystal. I would love to try the Journey and get a slightly newer ship next time.
  13. The only place I saw water dispensers was in the buffet. We ended up having to up our included drinks package to the premium version simply for the ease of getting water! It had better liquors included as well and at $300 or so each was way easier to stomach than 7-day beverage packages on other major cruise lines.
  14. This tour started (after tendering) at about 5pm, it first went to Megalochori for a quick stop, then back on the bus about 5:30. Made it all the way around the back side of the island and were set free in Oia by 6:20pm. We were told to be back at the bus by 8:30pm. I am not sure how much this will vary for you since your ship leaves so early! Crystal was in port for us till 2am so we had no worries about getting back. Our bus actually broke down before we re-boarded so we stood in the parking lot in Oia for about 30 min while they brought us a new one and we were back in Fira (town with the cable car back to the tender) by 9:45pm. We were set to anchor at 4:30pm too, but according to photo time stamps, I was already seated on the tender for our excursion by 4:39pm!
  15. Hi! These were all taken on my old iPhone 11 Pro. Hope you have an amazing time!
×
×
  • Create New...