AryMay

We got lucky a few years ago and were able to book a one way to Hawaii on the NCL Pride of America following a drydock in San Francisco. The cruise stopped at 5 ports including an overnight in Kauai. We added a few days at the beginning to explore San Francisco and a few more at the end in Honolulu before flying home. A perfect mix of sea days, port visits and time on land.

For our Panama Canal cruise in January, it appears that our stop in Cartegena, Columbia is the culprit.

I do have it on mine, unfortunately too late since final payment for me was in October. I kept hoping the previous offer would show up for me, but it never did. I did purchase AARP gift cards with a 10% savings so that helped.

I have a couple of cruises in early 2023 and checked this morning and was able to input my booking numbers and name and get the protocols for the cruises.

My PCC said that as long as the person who received the offer is sailing additional rooms can be booked at the same rate.

Thanks! Sounds like I was concerned for nothing. In fact, our day at Half Moon Cay may end up better with the bonus music!

Thanks. As of now our port times are 8 am to 3 pm.

I have discovered that on a port stop at Half Moon Cay (we are on the Zaandam) the Nieuw Statendam will also be there with a sold out ship for the Legendary Rhythm and Blues cruise. Will the fact that this is a charter cruise anyway impact our visit other than the island being more crowded than usual? The reason I ask...a few years ago we were at Amber Cove on the Nieuw Amsterdam at the same time as a chartered Carnival ship. Our plan for the day was to just enjoy the pool but found out once we got there that the pool was reserved for the charter guests only and we were not allowed in. I am wondering if there will be areas off-limit to us at Half Moon Cay? Will the food service on shore be combined for the two ships or will we be segregated? I was hoping that the Zaandam may arrive first (so we can get our favorite spots in the shade! 😉) but since the charter cruise is not listed on the HAL website, I'm not sure what time their arrival is scheduled.

Since we have a future cruise booked on the Zaandam, the current menus from your cruise are showing up each day on my Navigator app. I have been looking at the menus regularly and some of the items are quite interesting. I saw octopus stew was being served today! Still enjoying your blog and appreciate the time you invest each day to keep it going.

We did the HAL South America/Antarctica cruise in 2019 so my info is "pre-pandemic". We flew down several days before our cruise and stayed at the Hotel Plaza San Francisco in Santiago. The price was very reasonable, included a nice breakfast and was within walking distance of what we wanted to see (Plaza de Armas, Santa Lucia Hill, HOHO bus route, Mercado Central, etc.) Click HERE to read my blog post on the hotel. Also we chose to take the public bus from Santiago to San Antonio. We took a taxi from the hotel to get to the bus station. At the time there were frequent busses between the 2 cities and the cost was around $6/person. Click HERE to read the blog post. Besides the blog links I provided, there are a couple of other posts from our stay in Santiago plus daily posts from the cruise if you are interested. The cruise was probably our favorite of all we have done!

Yay! Enjoy every breath of that fresh air!

Glad your 2nd day in quarantine wasn't quite as bad. Hoping the whole ordeal doesn't turn out to be as dreadful as you feared. I am amazed that you could get 5 miles of walking in even doing it in small spurts. I know your cabin has been marked with you being covid positive, but are you prevented from leaving (other than your word of honor?) I know I read that some people who were moved to different quarantine cabins (this has been several months ago) were not given a key card. Hence they could not get back into their cabin if they left. I'm sure it must be hard to see the people walking by your cabin on the promenade deck and know that you are so close (but yet so far away) from the fresh air. I saw the photo of your "information wall" on your blog and wondered what kind of magnets you are using? We have sailed on the Zaandam a couple of times and were only able to get our magnets to stick on the outside wall by the window. I know we also used a couple of hook magnets on the ceiling and that worked well.

Does the Zaandam still have the DVD players with a long list of DVDs to check out…or do you have movies on demand now? My husband likes to watch movies on a cruise but learned on the Zaandam to check out several DVDs at a time because so many of them were damaged. What are your choices for meals? Can you order from the MDR menu? Dive In?

I am so sorry that you will have to endure the coming days of quarantine, but glad to hear that so far you aren't feeling too bad. I hope you will continue your daily blog, even if in an abbreviated form. With future cruises planned, I know I am interested in how things are handled. Hopefully once you get on the other side of this infection, you will have much stronger immunity to Covid and can truly enjoy the rest of your journey.

Thanks. I found the 2nd email hiding in my Spam box.

I felt honored that my opinion matters... But when I opened the survey, this is what I got. Guess I'm not really the "valued guest" that they said I was! 😆

Yes, I also received an email from a John Harvey with a link to take a survey. I have not clicked on the link, but curious if it is legit.

No answer to the mystery yet. Our cruise isn’t until February, but I will report my findings then.

To really enjoy Antarctica, you need to dress for cold and wind. We did this cruise in 2019 and spent a lot of time outdoors...and I mean a LOT. Here is an excerpt from my blog describing how I dressed: My clothing amounted to either Cuddle Duds long underwear or a pair of fleece-lined leggings under my jeans and then topped by a pair of REI rain pants to block the wind. On top was a warm sweatshirt or sherpa top, my Columbia fleece jacket and finally my parka-length Eddie Bauer packable down coat. For headwear I had a fleece lined knitted beanie covered by a microfleece hood that I got at Kohls. This protected my neck and I could pull it up over my chin and mouth. I also pulled up the hood on my down coat...so 3 layers on my head altogether! I had purchased convertible wool mittens that could be folded back to expose the tips of my fingers to use my camera but these I never wore. Instead I put Hot Hands hand warmers inside my snuggly fitting gloves and my hands stayed toasty warm. I had also brought along foot warmers, but never used any. Wool socks kept my feet plenty warm. Getting dressed was time consuming, but we stayed outside for long periods of time and were comfortable. The link to my blog is in my signature if you would like to read about our trip...our favorite of many cruises for sure!

Which AMEX card did you get the offer on?

I've always gotten these offers on my Blue Cash Everyday card but I don't see it this time. ☹️ I remember in the past someone had posted a link that would get you into an offer without having it added to your card. Does anyone know of such a link this time? In the good ol' days we could add these offers to multiple AMEX cards (which we did), but more recently (pre-covid) they restricted the offer to one card only.

A happy ending for me... I emailed SheerID support and received the following response today: Based on the notes left by our reviewers, the reason why the requests didn't go through was because there has been a mismatch of organization name on the document sent and on the verification form. No worries, this has been corrected already. That said, our records now show that your request was approved today, no further verification is needed. I also talked to my PCC who has now added the credit to our two upcoming cruises. 🙂 I wish I would have asked if the OBC will be added automatically if I book any other future cruises.

Thanks for the suggestion. I just uploaded an online copy of my pay information as well but got the following reply: The online document shows it is coming from the teacher retirement association and doesn't have any reference to the school where I taught. I have emailed SheerID and am waiting for a response. To make things even more complicated, the public school where I taught is now closed (which was why I retired.) I called my PCC yesterday and he is trying to figure things out as well... Fingers crossed I can get this done...

I see that this promo is for educators too...both active and retired. I am a retired teacher but when I filled out the form to verify my status I get a message saying that more information is needed. The information they are requesting needs to show that I am currently employed (which I'm not.) We have two cruises booked in early 2023 and it would be nice to get the credits applied to these cruises, but doubt it is going to happen if 1) the offer is only for new bookings and 2) there doesn't seem a way to get status verification if I am retired. Have any other retired teachers been able to get verified for this offer?

I was the one who posted the photos of 3339 on halfacts. We spent 23 days in this cabin in 2018. Most of the time this cabin was great. Loved the location and how easy it was to get out to the promenade deck. The bathroom had also just been updated with the big shower which was very nice. I will mention that the cabins on Deck 3 are a bit smaller than ocean view cabins on Deck 1 and 2. As for noise...the only time we had issues was towards the end of our cruise. For several nights when we were in rougher seas, there was a loud banging in the ceiling. The cabin is directly below the Wajang Theater which at the time was being used for America's Test Kitchen demonstrations. I thought perhaps there was some cabinet door banging, but was told everything was locked up when not being used. Crew came to check out the problem, but at a time when we were docked so there was no noise then. The sound only affected us for a few nights when the ship was rocking a lot. Here is a link to my blog post from when we initially had the issue: https://mysouvenirmemories.blogspot.com/2018/04/sea-day-7.html We had booked the cheapest inside guarantee cabin for this cruise so we were more than happy to have been upgraded to this cabin.