smokesmom

New blog added to www.mmmtravelmemories.com - Two seven-day cruises in the Caribbean on the Carnival Celebration.

On 12/13/2023 at 7:32 AM, khist said:

How many countries you have travelled so far? 

I'm not sure. I lost count but there are still lots to go. 🙂

18 hours ago, sid_9169 said:

"Lady" at the table to my left decided to take her shoes off, so now I've got a birds eye view of her ugly feet... It'd be different if they were pretty feet:)

Just eew!😵‍💫

Will be on this cruise! Looking forward to reading about the shenanigans and hopefully getting to see them in action too. Always love your live reports.

New blog added to www.mmmtravelmemories.com. Thirty-six-day Holland America cruise - 7 days in Norway, 14 days in Baltic, and 15 days TransAtlantic back to Florida. Ship - Rotterdam.

7 hours ago, renee00 said:

 

It was Werner Timmers. I hope I get to cruise with him again.

He was the one who did our vow renewal on the Rotterdam in March. Very personable and kind. I was hoping he would be the Captain in September but I believe he takes a break before we embark.

New blog added to www.mmmtravelmemories.com. Eleven-day Atlantic Coast transitioning cruise from Ft. Lauderdale to Montreal on the Holland America Zaandam.

We embark in 2 days and the Health Assessment on the check-in disappeared and has not reappeared on the website or the Navigator app. I am wondering if we will have to fill the paper form out the day of embarkation like we used to do prior to COVID.

New blog added to www.mmmtravelmemories.com. 21 day southern and eastern Caribbean on the Holland America Rotterdam.

19 hours ago, Banditswife said:

Slightly related question:  Can you make reservations on the Navigator app when you are assigned anytime dining?  We just want to make reservations an hour or 2 ahead, depending on our days schedule.  I couldn't figure out how to do this on a previous NS cruise- or maybe it was because the Wifi was really bad on that cruise.

   Carnival's HUB app is easy to request a table & for how many people, the the app alerts you when your table is ready.  This made it convenient whether we were getting dressed or hanging out somewhere on the ship.

Love the Carnival HUB app for anytime dining. I have never been able to use the HAL Navigator app for reservations for main dining room for anytime dining. I have made the suggestion on every survey that since HAL and Carnival are all part of Carnival Corporation that HAL should copy this aspect of the Carnival app.

18 hours ago, regan3 said:

Good question about the app, curious what others say. I like the idea of anytime dining as it is more flexible depending on our schedule for that day. 

We have never been able to use the HAL Navigator app to make dining reservations for the main dining room like you can with Carnival's app. I make the suggestion on every HAL survey that they need to copy Carnival's dining portion app because it is far superior to the Navigator app in this aspect IMO (since they are all Carnival Corporation)

We typically go to the HAL main dining room around 7:00 and usually wait no more than 10 minutes for a table (less if willing to share). Dressy nights can have a longer wait.

New blog added to www.mmmtravelmemories.com under the South America Antarctica category - a 22 day cruise from Chile to Argentina passing through the Antarctica Peninsula on on the Holland America Oosterdam.

New blog added to Travel Memories in the Caribbean category. We took a back-to-back on Carnival Paradise out of Tampa to the Western Caribbean.

We are on the Jan 11 Santiago to Buenos Aires w/Antarctica sailing so really looking forward to your review of the ship and ports.

I've been writing my travel blog to chronicle the fun times and maybe inspire others to make fun travel memories of their own. 🙂

Fondest Travel Memories – Wonderful Memories of Fun Travel (mmmtravelmemories.com)

I was getting the same error message. I had to switch from using Microsoft Edge to Chrome. Then, I deleted my departure airport from under our names and retyped it. When I selected the "Book and Manage Flight" button, I didn't get the error message and the flight booking page came up.

40 minutes ago, Rascal Brown said:

How do you use the gift cards to pay final balance in your cruise?  

I went online at the HAL website to my booking and then to the section - "manage payment" When the page came up and showed me the remaining balance and the payment options - I chose pay with gift cards. You are allowed to enter 10 gift cards at one time. The process is a little tedious but the website accepted all my gift cards and I paid off the cruise.

We are still optimistic. We have one booked for Feb 2021, one for July 2021, and one for Feb 2022. Fingers crossed. 🙂

Your upbeat post and optimism inspired me to book this same cruise. It's been on my husband's bucket list for a long time and I will celebrate a birthday during it so we said "let's go for it and hope for the best." It was so nice to be calling our PCC with "we want to book" instead of what we have been doing - "we are cancelling."  Thanks for making our day better!

Please add:

March 22, 2020

Volendam

14 days

Southern Caribbean

Celebrating 27th wedding anniversary

Thank you

Loved the Banks Mansion. Great location for walking and sight-seeing. Wonderful amenities. Easy Uber ride to the port.

We had self-disembarkation (No priority, no FTTF) and were off the Breeze by 8:30. No issues getting through Customs. Very well organized. 

Loved that tour. Did have to get up early to catch the bus to Seward but the Fjords were beautiful and we saw so much wildlife. We stayed on the outside decks the whole time but we were bundled up. Got to the ship about the same time the train arrived from Anchorage with the rest of the people from our tour group.

I feel your pain. 😉

40 minutes ago, Copper10-8 said:

Wondering if the bartenders are now cross-trained as baristas and if they subsequently did away with the female Filipina baristas

I was on the Zuiderdam in November and the female baristas were always there in the morning. I didn't see anyone ordering alcohol at opening although I guess they could have so I don't know if the baristas also bartended. In the evenings, at least one of the two bartenders was able to work the coffee side but they were happy when people ordered simple coffee drinks.