Mary Ellen

3 hours ago, The-Inside-Cabin said:

No - just the few and mighty!

This is our second attempt at Tuxedo Junction but we haven't found you. 

A lot depends upon the port authorities. SF was a no-go in our experience. We were on a Disney cruise with our TA (close family). Some time before sailing, on our behalf, he tried to get a friend of ours onboard in SF. DCL was fine with it, but the port authority in SF was a firm no. They were allowing travel agents to board for the day, but no one else. Between that and the probable Covid limitations I wish you luck.

We’re also among those who won’t sail on Oceania again. I’m sorry, but I wouldn’t trust them with our health/safety in a normal situation, certainly not now.

1 hour ago, michaelfl said:

 

in case you hadn't noticed....i was joking about the dirty underwear.....

No way to tell, besides I know of some who definitely left dirty clothes in their luggage. One didn’t let his wife know until after they were home.

1 hour ago, rkacruiser said:

Maybe because they were slow to finish their dinners because their wine glasses had the same problem that my wine glass always seems to have:  there is a hole in the glass. 😁 

Nah, they were slow because they didn’t give a rodent’s posterior about anyone else.

4 hours ago, michaelfl said:

when we were kicked off the ship on march 20 or so nobody really knew how this pandemic would develop. over time i think it was more important to holland america to repatriate the crew. to a certain extend this is understandable, these guys really had a tough time and for these "little boys and girls"  getting back to their families was more important than our tuxedos and dirty underwear......

Exactly. While we look forward to getting our luggage ‘someday’, we have absolutely NO problems with the crew being repatriated first. Although, we don’t have any “dirty underwear” (or any other dirty clothes) in our luggage. Even if it had only taken the expected few weeks for the Amsterdam to get to Florida, I didn’t want anything fermenting in our luggage. All of our dirty clothes flew home with us. Now, being in a non-climate controlled container for awhile, even our clean clothes will probably have accumulated some aroma..... 🥴

On 8/25/2020 at 5:51 PM, rkacruiser said:

 

And were probably enjoying a continual refill of their wine glasses?😀

Ah, NO.
 

We were just left cooling our heels for 20 minutes after the scheduled start of the show because the heads of HAL and CCL hadn’t finished their dinners. 

54 minutes ago, iancal said:

I also suspect that paying customers will play second fiddle to the cruise line executives, supplier executives, and travel industry types who are probably cruising gratis.  No doubt venues will be occasionally closed to accommodate gatherings/meetings for these people.

This is exactly what we encountered on the E’dam inaugural and why we won’t ever do another again. We expected to have things/crew a little rough around the edges. We could have lived with that. To be treated as an ‘inconvenience’? Never again.

3 minutes ago, Mandalay1903 said:

There undoubtedly will be. Amsterdam and Rotterdam are also reported as being on their way toward Suez per Vesselfinder.com

Yes. To get to their expected layup in Cyprus the shortest route is through the Suez Canal.

They are doing their layup in Cyprus.

The Maasdam and Veendam were built earlier than this press release of the sale indicates. While the ships aren’t named, the tonnage and year built are given.

https://www.bonheur.no/latest-news1?SelectedRelease=http://publish.ne.cision.com/Release/GetDetail/7CDB812CA7F9D5C5

24 minutes ago, cccole said:

"Good grief."  Yikes.  Sorry to have said something that was so outrageous. Thank you for the "kind" response Sir PMP.     I thought possibly all crew members might  be tested regularly and have a bit of freedom.  I know it was wishful thinking but they may be there for a very long time.  I'm sure they are well taken care of and the captain's wife seems to be trying to keep their spirits up.  Cherie  

I’m glad you realize how “outrageous” that suggestion was. They are keeping basically in their own cabins (passenger cabins) and meals are delivered to them. Going ashore... NOT going to happen. 🤯

10 minutes ago, cccole said:

Will the crew be allowed off to enjoy some "free time?"  Lots of options...Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia.    I hope so.  Cherie

 
NO. Once they leave the ship they are off. O. F. F. There is NO coming back. Right now they are safe and healthy onboard - and they want to keep it that way. No one went ashore in Fremantle, not even to do the normal wheelchair assistance. Good grief.

15 hours ago, rkacruiser said:

 

Not on Facebook and have no intention of doing so.  If the Captain can book there, why can he not post on Cruise Critic?

 

This situation with the sudden lack of information from the Captain simply does not seem right to me.  

 

 

You choose not to be on FB. He chooses not to be here. I don’t see any problem.

I know for a fact that (at least in the past) senior management in Seattle (senior as you can get) was well aware of what gets posted here. A family member was involved in one of those discussions.
 

From what I was told their opinion wasn’t necessarily positive and I can’t say I blame them. My relative didn’t admit that they knew someone here, let alone related. In this particular case they were discussing the reactions of posters here to an event that was reported in a ‘Live from...” thread. Some posters were having snit fits and management thought it was funny because the people on board the ship were doing something that was how that piece of equipment was intended to be used. 
 

After hearing about this, I told my relative that it was probably a good thing they didn’t know during the discussion, that I was there when this particular event took place. Not a participant, but part of the group that evening. I agree with management that the ruckus from the peanut gallery here was ridiculous. 
 

I have never, and will never, put a Cruise Critic sign on my door. 

11 hours ago, KirkNC said:

It also could be they don’t think the 21 WC is a go and they can just reuse the itinerary.

We sure hope they don’t just reuse the planned 2021 itinerary for 2022. That itinerary has absolutely no appeal to us. We’ll be trying to find alternatives to use up all of our future cruise credits from 2020 and we’d rather take another WC.

We’ve also done this crossing twice. Both times the seas were extremely calm - because the Captain changed the original plan and went further north to avoid storms. I’m one who gets seasick very, very easily. I didn’t have any problems, but I was prepared. The first time we had very heavy fog for a few days. That meant the fog horn sounded for 5 seconds every 2 minutes - around the clock. In our inside cabin we heard nothing but everyone else had the opportunity to attempt to sleep to the sound of the fog horn. We could hear it in the passageway outside our cabin but once our door closed, absolutely nothing.

The only time zone / jet lag issues we had were arriving in Asia. Our crossings were back to back or Collector’s Cruises as HAL calls them. We sailed from Kobe the first time and Hong Kong the second. We also did the cruise before our crossings. Given how many time zones were involved on the trans-Pacific portions, particularly in such a short time frame, our clocks were set ahead at 2 p.m. rather than 2 a.m. We loved this arrangement. For us it meant that dinner was an hour earlier rather than losing an hour of sleep practically every night. We could live with that.
 

We arrived in Japan a week before we sailed. Due to the availability of frequent flier seats in our preferred class, we flew into HK two weeks early. Flying all that distance and only arriving a day early isn’t something we would do, but others have no problems doing so.
 

Both crossings we saw a LOT of whales.

We’ve sailed through both the old and new locks. The actual locks are definitely more interesting going through the old locks. Like your wife I wanted to see the difference. Once through the new locks was enough for me.

There are four now. Two heading to shore and two still by the Amsterdam.

40 minutes ago, Storylady said:

Philip had an update late last night on Facebook. Now they are looking at the 6th. I imagine that is the 7th here?

Other way around as they are a day ahead of us. Hopefully on the 5th in North America.

6 hours ago, Cruising Is Bliss said:

Amsterdam is moving at 10 knots.

They had to temporarily leave the harbor area to get less dirty water to desalinate. The Amsterdam is back. 

26 minutes ago, prescottbob said:

Goodness, my soiled skivvies should be really ripe by then.

We brought all of our dirty laundry home with us. It was obvious that it would be awhile before the Amsterdam got to FLL (as originally planned), even if going straight there. I didn’t want our dirty clothes ‘marinating’ for that long.

The Captain just announced we’re deviating our course so we can medi-vac a passenger. This is precisely why it would be unsafe for passengers to continue past Australia given the current pandemic. Australia is sending a helicopter. HAL can’t be sure any other country on the way back to Ft. Lauderdale would also do so. The odds are actually extremely low. 
 

This couple would probably be screaming loud and clear if it was one of them and help wasn’t available.

We're currently on the Amsterdam. I'm attempting to be tactful - but since the beginning we've been aware of the couple mentioned in the article. We'll be happy not to sail with them in the future.

We were recently on the Maasdam. She had a “Cruise and Travel Director”. For us he was underwhelming as he basically only introduced the evening show and read the Where and When after the Captain’s noonish update. I missed an actual port lecturer and a (visible) real Cruise Director.