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jeff74

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Everything posted by jeff74

  1. @2252phxcrzr, that's wild that you all encountered bears twice while on zodiacs. For our excursions they sent out polar bear guards on zodiacs to get positioned in a perimeter outside of the area we had to stay in prior to sending out the guests. The guards saw polar bears once and our excursion was delayed until the bears moved away. How was your visit to Churchill overall? We thought about doing that instead of the cruise but I was a bit worried that it would be like eating ice cream in that while I enjoy it I'm not sure I would enjoy an entire trip of eating only ice cream :). Was there anything else to do or any other animals to see? I'm guessing that there had to be other animals there for the polar bears to eat lol.
  2. We concluded a 10 day cruise around Svalbard last week with Hapag Lloyd and saw 3 polar bears over 2 separate encounters. At no time was there even talk about going out on the zodiacs to get a closer view. During the time when we passed one on a small island I could see it with my own eyes but not well enough to make out any features since it was sitting down and facing us. They were all nicely viewable through the binoculars that the cruise ship provided. My thought is that it’s like going to a professional sporting event. While it’s true that you’re going to get a much better view of the game if you stay at home and watch it on tv there is the element of watching it in person that can’t be replicated from sitting on the couch. If you really want a close up view of polar bears you should try visiting Churchill in Manitoba. My understanding is that they take you out in these big vehicles and that the bears come up right to them.
  3. Well, we finally got back in town from our trip where we took an Arctic cruise on the Hanseatic Inspiration and it was really incredible. There were about 20 people on the cruise that preferred English over German which was nice when it came to the excursions on the zodiac because the guides only had to speak English since they grouped us together in the same color group. The trip was more scenery based than wildlife based but we were still able to see quite a few animals including checking off polar bears from the list along with many different types of birds, some reindeer, walruses and even a blue whale. One aspect of the trip that I thought would be useless for us but proved to be very convenient was having a butler. That service was included with the jr suite that we booked given that was the only cabin class besides the grand suite that would accommodate our family of 3. Going that route was also cheaper than booking 2 rooms which was what we had to do for the Celebrity Flora last year. Our butler was a very kind and thoughtful person that helped us with getting our parkas and boots on the first day and often brought us dinner to eat at our cabin. The dinners take quite long (2+ hours) in the main dining room and we ended up moving towards just choosing what we wanted from the MDR and had our butler bring it to us so we could eat at the much less drawn out pace that we're used to. While I have almost all positive things to say there were a few negatives. While the food was mostly good to very good there was not a huge selection and my wife said that the fish dishes were mediocre. The smoke from cigars was a little unpleasant at times when we would walk by the pool and it would sometimes waft down to our balcony from other cabins upwind from us. My final negative was that although the excursions were great that they were also often short (45-90 minutes). As far as pointers for anyone that books an expedition cruise with Hapag-Lloyd in the future I would say the following: Pay in Euros. They have an unfavorable exchange rate if you book in USD (1.2 vs the actual 1.08 at our time of booking) They only supply one set of binoculars for the cabin so bring along others from home if possible. You can also try asking for an additional pair from the front desk which is what we did. Our paperwork said that you could only bring 1 piece of check-in luggage per person and 1 "personal item" to carry on the plane. We asked our TA if that meant we couldn't bring a roll-on suitcase and we were told that was correct. This turned out to not be the case and a German family that we spoke to told us that personal item meant a roll-on over there and that it was generally understood that you could also bring what the US considers a personal item on top of that. With this being an expedition cruise, the dress code for dining is much more relaxed than other cruise ships. Wearing nice jeans and sneakers wasn't something that would draw attention in the MDR for dinner with the average attire for men being business casual clothing. In the Lido, I would often go to breakfast straight from the gym.
  4. So the local TA contact was unavailable and I called the main HL customer service office in Germany. They assured me that everything would be offered in both German and English despite me relaying your experience to the contrary from last month. Hopefully your case was an extreme outlier otherwise the “ ugly American” in me might appear in a few weeks lol.
  5. I’ve sent an email to the Hapag TA and will follow up with a call this morning. I’m glad that I read your review. I have cautious optimism that since it’s an Arctic cruise that there will be a more international crowd. Thanks for the helpful info!
  6. Hopefully what you had mentioned about it not being a dual language cruise is not the case for our cruise that is in 20 days on the Inspiration because the extent of my knowledge of the German language comes from watching reruns of Hogan's Heroes on tv.
  7. I’m having a hard time getting a straight answer from Princess of what can be purchased pre cruise using the gift cards. I’ve been told 4 different answers ranging from “everything but specialty dinners” to “only the cruise fare”. I know that it’s not like Holland America where I can apply them to purchases straight from the website but I hoped that I could instead call Princess to have them manually apply them.
  8. Thanks for the heads up! I had already used this offer for my amex and my wife's the other month when we booked our 2025 New England cruise but the offer didn't show up on my 14 year old's amex. After reading the updates yesterday I had him check again and there it was :). We used it to pay down another $1k. Normally I am not in any hurry to pay the balance owed until the last minute because there's no reason to give anyone an interest free loan but for 30% off that changes things. Since our cruise isn't for another 19 months it's quite possible that we'll be able to see this offer come around next year to further pay off the balance.
  9. I’m guessing there were at least 100 kids on the Christmas cruise last year. It’s true that there are very few kid amenities but these days a lot of kids are just on their laptops playing online or locally networked games against each other.
  10. We were on the Volendam last year for Christmas and thought that it was fun being on the ship during that time. We didn't have any issues with the number of kids being on the ship but we're biased having a son who was 13 over the holidays. The only time we really noticed the magnitude of kids was at the "Meet Santa" event during Christmas which of course should have been expected.
  11. @frogfish12, the charter flight is included for my wife and I but not our son. The cruise we are on is from Tromso to Longyearbyen. I know there is the option to not take the charter flight but I’m not sure what that involves. I hear you about Germany and that is partially why we are flying into Amsterdam.
  12. I will say that one huge plus for Hapag with us having a kid in tow is the added cost was just 1,600 EUR including the charter flight to bring him along as a 12-15 year old. 11 year old kids and younger only have to pay the charter flight cost which was 700 EUR for our particular flight. We were limited to choosing either the of the two types of suites which bumped up the cost but it's still cheaper than the alternative of getting 2 separate rooms. Compared to the Galapagos cruise on the Celebrity Flora that we got back from earlier this month where we had to get a 2nd cabin with zero single supplement discount it feels like a great deal. A piece of advice that I'd give anyone stateside that is booking on Hapag is to request to pay in euros. At least at the time when I booked, the conversion rate to USD that the cruise line was using was 1.2 USD per EUR which was at the time and still is a fair amount over the spot rate. Going this route will end up costing us about $2600 less and I've bought a EUR/USD ETF to hedge FX risk for my remaining amount that is due next year. If you don't want to go through the trouble of hedging you can always "let it ride" and go ahead and pay the balance early if the fx rate starts moving adversely.
  13. @frogfish12, I was told that it was more like 6 months ahead of time. Even this is less than ideal but I went ahead and booked flights that bookend the cruise by a day or two on each end in Amsterdam as a placeholder. I can decide at a later date to either keep the flight and tour around the city we fly into before taking a train to the Chester l charter flight city or rebook to fly into the city where the charter flight is.
  14. @frogfish12, it might be worth even trying to get a hold of Gary as well.
  15. @frogfish12, we are booked on the inspiration since we don’t speak German at all. I thought that all the lectures would be in English but I could be mistaken. Hopefully any limitations on excursions would just be by timeframe at worst and not scope. I just assumed that since Hapag is trying to make a push into broader markets that the not understanding German won’t be too much of a hassle on their bilingual cruise. This one blogger named Gary Bembridge is currently on the inspiration so ideally he will post some good info on this topic.
  16. @frogfish12, yes we are booked for next summer😀.
  17. We are booked for June/July 2024 on Hapag-Lloyd for a 10 day Svalbard cruise. I'm only hazarding a guess but I think that maybe small ships wouldn't work as well up there since they need to have some ability to break the ice. We considered Hurtigruten and Silversea but decided to roll the dice on Hapag-Lloyd despite not being able to find much at all in the way of reviews for their arctic sailings.
  18. Thanks! I’ll definitely post a review after the cruise. It feels forever away at this point.
  19. I can’t help but think about that one Seinfeld episode with all this talk about the Drake.
  20. Last week I booked a Svalbard cruise on Hapag Lloyd for my family for next year. The price was just under 27,000 EUR for the three of us for a Jr suite. It would have been maybe a few thousand cheaper to book two separate cabins but there weren’t any connecting ones that were available. We also looked at Hurtigruten and Silversea when deciding on a cruise line. Hurtigruten was coming out to be more expensive while Silversea was slightly less after adjusting for the fact that flights were included. The cabin size on both of these other ships would have been much smaller than where we ended up. FWIW, I decided to pay in euros because the quote in my local currency of USD was at an unfavorable exchange rate to what I believe my credit card will charge when the payment in euros comes due.
  21. In particular, I was curious as to any thoughts that people might have on their expedition ships. I'm about to pull the trigger for an arctic cruise for summer '24. The overall product looked nicer than Silversea for roughly the same price but it would be great to hear first hand experiences. All the reviews I could find on youtube are in German. Thanks!
  22. We had a 10 day cruise on the Volendam over Christmas. I was pleasantly surprised at the overall condition of the ship. There were definitely a few issues that I heard about from others on board including a couple that had a leak in their room for multiple days but I kind of feel like those things unfortunately happen to some people on any cruise. I did notice the broken water/ice machine in the Lido that was mentioned above and I had to crank the A/C to the lowest setting to feel comfortable for my taste (but my wife was happy since she likes the room warmer than me). There were also multiple issues not related to the condition of the ship such as several pre-paid items missing in the ether for several days and my mom's assigned room being repurposed as a storage area and filled to almost the ceiling with toilet paper (she ended up being moved from an inside cabin to an ocean view so in the end I can't call that a negative). In the end, all of the problems we encountered were sufficiently addressed, we had a relaxing time and I even managed to not lose money at the casino.
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