jeff74

Good news… The casino manager saw me and said that they got an email that the rest of the chips were available. I also saw on my statement that the credit for my wife’s spa appointment appeared in the past couple of hours. We only have the issue with getting charged again last night’s specialty dinner remaining but I consider this a win from where everything stood this am.

No resolution as of yet on the casino chips. The issue was that in addition to there not being a slip of paper in my cabin showing the purchase the records that both guest services and the casino cashier have are showing that I only purchased $2740. I have all of my emails showing the various transactions purchasing the chips that I can show guest services and I also took a screen shot off my itinerary the day prior to the cruise showing my total purchase of 522 $10 increments of chips that I presented to them. Guest services had me email them it so that they could send it along to their main office. I assume the issue with them also only seeing $5 of my onboard credit that I purchased, the missing specialty dinners and the missing credit for the spa appointment are all related. Regarding the last point, guest services told me to talk to the spa then the spa told me that I needed to talk to guest services since any pre purchase should have shown as a credit on my onboard account that the spa would then draw down from.

We’re currently on a 10 day Panama Canal cruise and unfortunately it’s been a mixed bag at best so far. Negatives: We didn’t receive acknowledgement for many internet pre purchases that we made including almost $2500 of casino chips, $50 of onboard credit, 2 specialty dinners and a spa appointment for my wife. I have gotten the dinners sorted out but I’m still waiting on resolution for the rest. The room that we booked for my mom is being used as a storage closet and was filled to almost the ceiling with toilet paper. That issue has since been resolved with her being moved to a different room. I’ve attached a pic. Positives: The food quality has been good and on par with previous cruises. The ship is well maintained in appearance. The staff as always has been friendly and helpful. Net/net, I am really hoping that the rest of the issues get resolved today otherwise I’m out several thousand dollars. I’ve already spent 4 hours with guest services and it feels more like a working vacation to this point.

I would be fine with paying a month early but wouldn’t do it for a cruise that was a year away from final payment. My in-laws have one coming up on May that they are going to pay to get the OBC. $100 for paying $1500 around 6 weeks early seems worth it imo.

Thanks! Too bad it excludes on board purchases or gifts/services otherwise I would buy on board credit for our cruise later this month.

I thought that I had read the TVs were upgraded to the new interactive ones (with no more DVD players in the rooms). I guess I'll find out in a few weeks. There are 4 sea days on our cruise so I can guarantee that there will be some time spent watching a couple of movies and NFL games (especially since it'll be during the fantasy playoffs).

We’re in the same boat with a complete lack of emails. No luck so far with being able to correct the issue. I’ve been relying on looking for $200 rates online and keeping up with threads like this to be aware of offers.

CCL's stock price is unfortunately more important to my decision making process about future HAL cruises than I wish it would be. The stock price is nothing more of the expected future value of a company's cash flow and profits and as such the going concern of the company can weigh heavily into the calculation. From comparing CCL's performance to the broader market or the cruise industry in particular I can get a sense of whether or not their lackluster performance is systemic and a reflection of the entire market, if it's more within the cruise industry or if there are potentially challenges that are more drastic with HAL's parent company. IMHO, CCL's stock price is getting to a level where I have to ask myself if HAL will be around for a future cruise that I might book in 2023/2024 or if could they be operating in perhaps a radically different fashion than current operations. My in-laws and their friends have a cruise next year and while they like to pay off their balances early I've suggested that they wait until the payment is due so that if a worst-case scenario of not only a bankruptcy but ceasing of operations did happen that they wouldn't be out much money. Maybe this is extreme but in general I'm not a fan of giving someone else my money before I'm contractually obligated to do so. Just my 2 cents and I appreciate that opinions can and do differ...

No idea if HA has this option but this summer on a RC cruise they brought up a portable fridge for my wife’s insulin. That was much more convenient than having to store it at the med center.

That makes sense. There can definitely be outliers on individual trips but the longer you play the more your cumulative outcome should move towards the expected outcome which favors the house. $400 is nice! I've only seen $150 outside my door.

It's more a function of the combination of the size of your bet and how long you're betting right? I'm much more likely to get a casino offer for future cruises if I won $2k betting $100 per hand at blackjack on a trip playing 4 hours per day on avg than if I lost $500 betting $15 bucks per hand playing only 2 hours per day on average.

As a fall back you could purchase discounted gift cards from the Raise app. The discount is only 6% instead of the 10% on AARP but it’s a better alternative than zero if you need to get something done by tomorrow and the AARP site isn’t back up.

If you do decide to fly home please wear N95s on the bus, plane and the airport.

At the end of the day this is a first world problem for us. I can think of many reasons to get upset for not being able to go on a cruise but if it’s because the ship we’re supposed to be on is still housing refugees that had to flee their country then I can be fine with that.

Since the contract to house the refugees ends this Friday I would assume (or maybe hope?) that any deviations from that plan would have been made known by now. They announced the extension housing the refugees 51 days before the first cruise back was set to begin. Currently the new first cruise back is 17 days away. I wouldn’t be surprised if things don’t go smoothly on the first sailing back but hopefully it doesn’t get canceled. Of course I’m biased towards being optimistic since we have a sailing on the Volendam booked in December.

No luck unfortunately. I’ll have to periodically keep tabs on any casino offer threads on this board.

Was there an issue with the gift cards earlier or was it due to you having already hit the 5 gift card limit last month? I hit the limit last month so I had to wait until yesterday to purchase again.

You don’t need to be a full blown aarp member to buy the gift cards. Just sign up as an aarp rewards member: https://www.aarp.org/rewardme/?cmp=KNC-BRD-MC-REALPOSS-GOOGLE-SEARCH-REWARDS&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI_5Pm0Yrt-QIVgic4Ch2eaQbmEAAYASABEgKtePD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds I’m 48 and bought 5 gift cards earlier this month.

Ah, was not aware of that with Princess. Good to know for the future. Thanks!

They would be new ports when sailing out of Galveston though which was the point of my perhaps pipe dream wish from this morning. Yes, I have a whole world of different ports besides the traditional ones in the Caribbean but there are only so many currently that are available on sailings that originate within an hour drive from my house.

I agree but I would think that a modestly longer itinerary would allow for the possibility of including places like Panama, Curacao etc…

FWIW, Princess is resuming sailings out of Galveston starting in December. I'd love it if Holland started sailing from there and offered longer cruises besides the normal 7 day ones hitting the same ports that the other cruise lines visit when sailing from TX.

DaveOKC, how do you check your account to see what casino offers are available? Is it just logging into the website to see which cruises show up as costing $200 pp and assuming all those are also casino offers as well? Unfortunately I've been in the situation for the past 18 months where all communication about casino offers have been going into a black hole somewhere. When I called HAL they said they've been sending me about 5 offers a month to my email but they haven't been showing up in my inbox, spam or anywhere. I gave them a different email address and they said that should take effect in about 14 days. I've got my fingers crossed that works but unfortunately I've missed out on a ton of free cruises and only found out about this when I received a random email from a PCC that an offer was about to expire. Thanks!

You don’t need an actual aarp membership to purchase the gift cards. I signed up for the free rewards membership and purchased the gift cards last week.

Would it be safe to assume that the casino layout on the Volendam is the same as the Zaandam?