erdufylla

I know there’s always a lot of people pointing out that “check-in“ and “boarding” are not synonymous, and as far as the physical act of checking in vs walking onto the ship goes, I understand the difference, but I’m not sure I know what the difference is in this circumstance. I assumed “priority check-in” meant you’d be given an earlier check-in time, and once you clear that and customs, you’re free to board the ship. Are there different lines for boarding (“priority“ vs non) once you’ve passed through customs? Or is there some other boarding perk that’s only available to Neptune Suite passengers, etc. that CO doesn’t include? I know one of the other perks of CO I’m looking forward to is priority boarding for tendering, when that’s necessary.

When I priced it on my upcoming 14-day, the stateroom upgrade alone paid for it. I was able to downgrade my guaranteed non-obstructed verandah to the lowest class/obstructed view, add the CO buy-in, and then select my upgraded verandah stateroom from any that were still available. (I think the one I ended up selecting was a VB class, but I qualified for up to VA). It actually brought my booking cost down. Granted, I’m traveling solo, so there was only one person to charge for CO instead of two, but I think you’d still just about break even with adding CO for two people. FWIW, CO for this itinerary was $15/day/person, $210 for the 14-day cruise.

Oh man, that makes me want to go on another New England / Eastern Canada cruise again! It’s not quite at the port, but I love the yarn shop in Ketchikan, AK that’s right off Creek Street. I bought some lovely hand-dyed yarn by a woman based in Sitka last time I was there. 🙂

Others have answered your other questions, so I’ll just give my $0.02 on these. There is likely to be a very small triangular shelf in the shower, but it won’t hold much. When I was on the Koningsdam last month, I brought a mesh bag with pockets and grommets at the top I bought on Amazon. It’s intended to be hung on shower rings, but since I only had a glass door, I brought good suction cup hooks to hang it by, and it worked perfectly for the additional shower items we brought. I never found the MDR or specialty dining rooms to be any cooler or warmer than other indoor areas of the ship. I think it was probably kept around 70-72°, at a guess. For me, since I tend to run warm, that meant I was fine in short sleeves. For someone who runs colder, you might appreciate having a wrap you can throw over your shoulders, if you don’t think the light sweater will be enough.

My mom is a former yarn shop owner. Her yarn stash is… well, it dwarfs some actual yarn shops. She’s also a spinner, an occasional dyer, a weaver, and has recently gotten back into sewing and quilting. She’s not anywhere close to the end of her life, of course, but my own stash already meets SABLE criteria, and combined with hers… It’s overwhelming to think about sometimes. 😂 (And yet, every time I visit a new city, I still always try and hunt down a local shop to find some unique hand-dyed yarn or fiber to add to my stash. And I refuse to feel guilty for it. I’m supporting a local industry and artist(s), and yarn is squishably easy to pack.)

Thank you all for such wonderful information and advice! @Heartgrove, I will definitely look up those websites and use them in my planning! I’m also interested in hearing about Marriott Bonvoy vs Hilton Honors, as I currently have the former, but not the latter.

I know the discussion of travel agents / agencies is strictly controlled here, so I’m hoping to keep this conversation completely above board. I’m not looking for specific names or references, just some insight into what type of assistance I should be seeking for my trip next summer. I’ve got two cruises booked, not quite back-to-back. The first is a transatlantic that will get me to Amsterdam, and then I’ve got roughly a week to kill before I’m due in Copenhagen to board the next cruise. This will be my first time in Europe, and I’ll be traveling solo. I’ve always booked my cruises and other domestic trips either directly or through a big box store, and while I’ve booked these two cruises themselves directly through HAL, I think I’d be best off with more personalized assistance for that week in Europe between the two cruises. But I’ve never used a travel agent aside from the big box stores and their pre-packaged offerings before, so I’m not sure what’s the best approach or where to start. What do you all find the best type of agent/agency to work with, for a combination of cruising and other trip planning, and how do you find one that’s right for you? Do you fill out a form on a larger online agency’s website and let them connect you with someone? Do a local search and find a reputable agent in your own town? What questions do you ask when you’re talking with an agent, to tell if they’ll be a good fit? Any advice is much appreciated!

I just wanted to pop in and say thank you to everyone offering advice and info about Club Orange. I just talked to my PCC, and after crunching some numbers, it came out cheaper to change my reservation to a lower-grade stateroom option and add CO, which gave me not only the same category of room I was aiming for in the first place, but also a room I got to pick myself (instead of just guaranteed class) and all the other CO benefits on top. It never would have occurred to me to do that had it not been for you all. So thanks! 🙂

Hey, I’m booked on that cruise as well! I can’t answer whether there are HAL Club offerings on all cruises, though I would expect on a shorter summertime one, there would be. I‘ve heard some of the longer itineraries and World Cruises are the ones that tend to not have them. I also can’t offer a ton of insight into what types of activities they have for younger kids, but I know my 14yo *adored* the activities they planned for the teens. He spent most of his time on the ship hanging out with the other kids on board and participating in the various activity (Uno tournaments, video game tournaments, basketball, pickle ball, etc.) And I feel like if they can win over angsty teenage boys, they can win over younger kids, too. 🙂 He said the clubhouse was a really cool space, and the liked the teen club supervisor.

And this is the perfect example of how different people want different things. I love a smaller ship and seeing people again and again, and making friends with people on board. For me, that *is* having a good time. 🙂 I would also never get on a ship that removed the MDR to expand the Lido. I eat at the Lido as a last resort — when timing doesn’t allow for me to go to the MDR. I like the slower pace of seated dining, but I don’t want to always have to pay extra for speciality dining just to get that. The chaos of the Lido puts me in an anxious mood, and the food generally isn’t as good as what I can get in the MDR.

It was also offered on the Koningsdam last month. I’m a seasoned knitter, and I thought about joining in, but I never got around to it. I don’t know this for certain, but based on what I heard about the other arts/crafts classes listed, I would assume that it was a very basic introduction to knitting and that they would provide the supplies, as there’d be no way for passengers to know ahead of time they should bring anything, much less what to bring.

Yeah, I read a little while ago that they stopped the online renewal option, which was in beta testing. I heard the backlog on that was insane, and it wasn’t going very well. It’s a shame, because from a consumer standpoint, it would make things so much easier to be able to renew online!

I had that smoothie on my cruise, and I agree — it is incredibly beet forward. I’m someone who adores beets, and I couldn’t finish it. Mine looked identical to yours, very dark in color and very thick. No one at my table finished theirs. As we were walking out of the MDR, I saw servers carrying trays with smoothies that were lighter in color (and fuller glasses), and I wondered if they hadn’t left out an ingredient in the morning’s first batch of smoothies — yogurt or milk or something that would tone down and balance out the beet flavor a bit.

Given the options, I think I’d prefer to reschedule to arrive the day before and eat the cost of a hotel for that night, rather than risk any potential delays meaning I’d miss the ship. With your current schedule, any minor delay — a 30-minute flight delay, or slow baggage claim, or being pulled aside for a brief additional screening at customs, etc. — could mean the difference between getting on the ship in time and arriving at the port watching it sail away without you. That kind of stress isn’t how I personally would want to start my vacation. 🙂

And I do recall reading recently that the application has to be renewed annually, and can’t be applied retroactively to already-booked cruises.

They do, for both. I’m not sure if the two benefits are combinable. Here’s the documentation about the shareholders benefits:

Yeah, it can be a major ordeal here in the US. Mine expires next spring, and I’ve got a cruise booked for next summer I’ll need it for. In order to renew it, I have to mail it in (along with the form, a new photo, and payment) and just wait for it to be returned. If I mail it in now, I will probably have the new one back by October, but it could potentially take as long as 17 weeks according to the website (though that’s the extreme end of the timeline window), and that makes it risky to book anything for October or November of this year. There are places you can go for one-day turnaround on passports in emergency situations, but they’re often fully booked up and don’t take walk-ins, and they’re often not close by. I read one story of a woman who drove 9 hours to one such office that could fit her in (and then 9 hours back home, where she was flying out the next day).

I’ve heard lots of people complaining about the Princess app (among others), and I had zero problems with the HAL app. I’m not discounting the issues people have had with the Navigator app, just pointing out that it seems to be one of those hit-or-miss type things and individual experiences vary quite a bit.

No worries! It doesn’t help that the generation names can be so fluid at times. I’m an older Millennial, on that cusp with Gen X, and I know when I was a kid, we were often referred to as “Gen Z” or “Gen Next” or any multitude of names before the term “Millennial” was solidified. I just wasn’t sure which age group you were referring to. 🙂

Perhaps I just wasn’t paying close enough attention, since I don’t follow sports, but I don’t recall any of the bars on the Koningsdam having large-screen TVs airing sports (or anything else). I do know I had conversations with two different groups while I was on board last month who had major games they wanted to watch who resorted to trying to stream them on their phones/tablets using the ship’s wifi, to varying success.

I don’t disagree with your general response, but I’m not sure which generation you keep referring to. Young Baby Boomers and older Gen Xers are the ones reaching typical retirement age right now, and I’m not sure sustainability has ever been an overwhelmingly typical rallying cry from either of those generations on the whole. The next generation down the ladder, Millennials (the oldest of whom are in their early 40s now), and the one after that, Gen Z (the oldest of whom are in their early 20s), tend to be much more invested in sustainability as a hallmark of their generations. If I had to guess, I’d assume HAL is trying to target a 30-50yo demographic (younger Gen Xers and Millennials) with this sustainability approach, to lock in some loyalty with a younger audience that’s pre-retirement but might have some acquired wealth and will be retiring within the next 15-35 years.

I personally find the fixed dining option to be too restrictive schedule-wise for my taste and generally prefer to do open seating. But that’s easier to do when you’re only one or two people with no dietary restrictions. If/when I’m traveling with a larger group (5 or more people) and/or traveling with someone with specific food restrictions (vegan, dairy-free, gluten-free, whatever), I would definitely book fixed seating, both to ensure we didn’t have a lengthy wait each time, and to ensure we had the same waitstaff each night ho would know about and oversee our dietary needs.

You would think in this post-pandemic world we find ourselves in that they would have some official policy for how to handle things like this. Their solution, to simply refare the remaining guests at the non-promotional rate only provides an incentive for people to travel when ill and risk transmitting whatever they have to others on board, which isn’t good. You would think maybe they’d have a program for these types of bookings where instead of outright cancelling the one individual’s booking and refaring the rest, they’d maybe offer to keep the booking as-is, with no refund given, but then issue a limited-time FCC for the one person’s booking. Or some other compensation to incentivize them to stay home and not travel when they’re sick.

I noticed a few times that if I hadn’t been in the app for a while (several hours or more), notifications didn’t always come through, and I sometimes had to re-log in when I’d open it again. I’d say to best increase the odds of receiving notifications, keep the app open on your phone and bring it up and click something in it every now and again, just to make sure it’s staying open in the background.

It sucks going the other direction, too. Our airfare between Memphis and Vancouver for two in basic coach in May cost almost $3k! And that’s with no upgrades or anything. Once you added in checked baggage fees, it ended up being more expensive than the cruise fare itself! (Worth it though. It was an excellent trip.)