OD2

Looking for solo cruise winter 2023-24

Anyone know of one that sails from northeast coast, like New York? Or Halifax? 

We have sailed HAL, Celebrity, MSC, Seabourn, etc. We have noticed some people like to drink a bit too much, but it doesn't bother us usually, and if they know they have to pay at the end usually they are more moderate. We ourselves like a drink of wine with dinner usually, although not always. Mind you we have avoided Carnival (Ahem)..I hope I haven't offended anyone .

However, I must say that Seabourn ships are lovely, more pricey. and they include all liquor and any drinks you want in the price. It was on Seabourn where I noticed people heading straight to the bar on embarkation and staying there. Every morning when I got up they were at their favourite bars, and stayed all day, and some all night until close! Some didn't even bother to go for meals, just had fast food brought to them where they sat. It was so sad. And it set a tone I was uncomfortable with.

Re: Dialysis at Sea/Notice to Ontario Canada residents:

If you are an Ontario resident you can apply for a repayment of $210 per treatment. We just received today our rebate for 7 treatments on board 3 months after our return.

We cruised August 2017 on Celebrity Eclipse to the Baltic from Southampton. Nice ship and nice cruise. We had our first experience of Dialysis at Sea, a company in Florida that provides dialysis on board.

My husband is on home haemodialysis. But he was nervous to try to fly with all his equipment and have his supplies delivered to the ship, and it was his first time trying to cruise after his kidneys failed, so we decided to play it safe.

If you cruise with Dialysis at Sea you will be well looked after. It is expensive, you have to book everything including your cabin through them at much more than full price, and the paperwork they require is a nightmare. But once on board everything goes smoothly.

OK - let's calculate folks.

Standard pkg $45 US pp/pd

So for 2 people on 19 day cruise = 45 X 2 X 19 = $1710 US

We are Canadians and so must add 25% - that's way too much for us! We don't drink enough to justify this amount ( and wouldn't want to!).

Hi -

Can you tell us who to contact at Princess to get permission to take our NxStage cycler on-board? My husband does short daily. We cruised before he started dialysis but not since. We had to cancel our dream cruise to Spitsbergen in 2014 because I could get nowhere with Princess when I called about it. We booked a mini-suite so there'd be room to set it up, etc. And we are Platinum with Princess, too. But regardless, I was told they don't accept the risk.

So how did you arrange it? Do you have contact info?

Anne

P.S. I also posted on the Roll call for your upcoming cruise. We are the same people. I wasn't sure if you would respond to such an old post.

Thanks Essiesmom. I will get in touch with him that way ASAP. Happy New Year from Ontario!

Thanks for noticing the date, but this was the only post that mentioned NxStage and Princess cruises. I wondered if they ever got that sorted out, and they managed to cruise with their dialysis machine on Princess after all?

VTSAIL....I'll be interested to see how you do on your cruise with your machine. My DH just started dialysis in late summer and we have now transitioned to home hemo (Nxstage). We have done many cruises and are interested in how traveling with our own dialysis machine will work.

 

Best of luck and let us know how you do.

Dear Sue -

Did you travel with the NxStage? Did you cruise? If so with what cruise line? Did you link up with other Nxstage users and cruise together or how did you arrange things? Any advice would be appreciated. My husband is stable and doing "short daily" home haemo. We are platinum with Princess but have also cruised with HAL and Celebrity.

Let us know if you get any replies to your post ? My husband has been on home haemo for almost a year, and in-centre before that. He is stable and feels well. We want to cruise with our NxStage and are platinum on Princess, so were very discouraged when we inquired about taking the cycler on-board. They don't want the responsibility. However, if we have 2 couples going and we have 2 cyclers and all the extra supplies, I don't see how there can be an issue. Especially when we can assure them that we can deal with any problems ourselves because we would have backup.

This machine is small enough to be carried on-board and it is run by my husband with me assisting. The NxStage company will deliver all needed supplies to the ship. But we are looking for another couple travelling with a NxStage machine to go on the same ship. That way if anything happens we will both have a backup.

I think it was 2 or 3 weeks, I don't remember

My husband just transitioned to home haemo with a NxStage just over a month ago. It took us 2 weeks and 2 days to learn. Go for it! Not only is it wonderfully freeing compared to having to go to a hospital 3X/week, but he feels sooo much better doing more frequent and gentler dialysis. It has changed his life. We had to stop travelling 2 years ago, but now are beginning to think about travel and especially cruising again.

What is the best cruise line for NxStage users, in your experience? We want to cruise again, but my husband is very concerned it will not go well. I just want him to have a good time without worrying.

Wow! This is such a wonderful and complete report. Many many thanks for sharing your experience with NxStage. My husband has just transitioned to home haemo. We have a NxStage and it is going well, but he is still anxious about trying to travel with the machine. We used to cruise all the time and travel was our chief activity once we retired. I think I will send this to him ...maybe he will be willing to consider cruising once again ?

Checkout my report of our wedding on Pacific Princess during the Black Sea/Crimea cruise 2013.

Princess organized the entire thing including the license. Because the ship is registered in Bermuda our license was obtained from Bermuda, and our wedding certificate came from there

We planned our wedding with ROE - the office in B.C. is the one we used. ROE has the contract for all weddings on Princess, so there is no choice.

Our wedding turned out fine in the end, but there were a few hiccups in the planning department! Our assigned wedding planner was away when we first contacted them, so the receptionist Sarah took some of our details, sent out the forms we needed, and said that the planner would be in touch when she returned in 2 weeks. That was OK we thought. The wedding planner Sherryl finally phoned us, and we started all over with her. She didn't have much information it seemed and had not really read very closely the forms we had emailed back to ROE. Then when we thought we were getting organized with Sherryl, she went suddenly on stress leave ( nothing to do with us). We had a call from Sarah to tell us this, and tell us that Sherry had left no records of our wedding, so we had to begin again to explain what we wanted.

In the end the crew of the ship itself were amazing, and all the wedding details were taken care of very nicely by them, so it all turned out great. My advice: chose a wedding date on a sea day that is NOT right at the start of the cruise. Then you will have some time to sort things out if necessary once you get on board.

We were married on Pacific Princess on Nov. 8th 2013 while cruising the Black Sea.

This cruise was 12 days, and we had several sea days to chose from. We decided on a date toward the end of the cruise, to provide some time in case there were any missing details which might need to be cleared up when we arrived.

We chose this ship because we love the Library on her (and her sister ship the Ocean) and wanted to be married there. The larger ships have wedding chapels which admittedly can accommodate a good sized crowd, but on the 2 Princess smaller ships, the weddings are held in the small Library with its charming dark wood panelling and fireplace which can fit 12 guests or so. We are both in our 70s and have been married before, so a quiet intimate wedding suited us perfectly.

We began by calling the Princess wedding planner in B.C. , and were sent all the forms to fill out and fax back. As we do not have a fax machine we scanned them and attached them as emails, which was quite acceptable. Notarized copies of our divorce documents had to be submitted by mail however. They had to sent to the law court in Bermuda (where the ship is registered) no later than one month prior to the wedding. This is the only requirement that I would caution others about, as you can't decide to do this at the absolute last minute, as some suppose.

Once on board we met with the Customer Relations Manager to go over the details and review the wording we wanted, as there is no Wedding Co-ordinator on these small ships. I arranged for my hair and nails appointments in the spa. He had his rented tux delivered to our stateroom and tried it on. That was it.

We simply asked a few couples we met on board to attend, and they seemed delighted to be asked to come. That is how we obtained our witnesses.

Captain Lorentzen officiated very nicely and seemed genuinely glad to do so. They have few weddings on board these ships, so for the crew it appeared to be an occasion they enjoyed too. The ship's photographers, both of them, showed up and one took still photos while the other videoed the ceremony so that we would have a record to show our children and friends back home.

Martin Seelan, Customer Relations Manager, looked after all the details and indeed went above and beyond our expectations. He personally went to the market in Istanbul and bought gorgeous peach roses for my bouquet and found fake mini roses in a matching colour for my hair. Thanks also to JJ in the spa for so cleverly making my thinning hair look fluffy (!) and cleverly working the flowers into my hair.

We had a wedding supper just the 2 of us in Sabatini's that night. The next night we had the wedding cake delivered to our regular table in the dining room to share with others at out table, as we did not intend to take it home with us.

We sincerely thank the crew of the Pacific Princess and highly recommend this ship for others in our situation.

Sorry I had trouble uploading the photos - hopefully this time will work?

Cabin B106 has a very small balcony with hardly room for 2 chairs sideways. It is the very first cabin forward portside, after the suites.

The balcony has a solid half-wall of metal, rather than glass, so that if you sit down you can't see out. The obstruction of the view is the wide white support for the Bridge above. It didn't bother me that much, and you can see around it. If you are someone who wants to sit out all day on your balcony watching the scenery and waves while you read a book, this is not the cabin for you. On the other hand, if you just want to step out and look over the side once in awhile while coming into port or leaving, this is perfect.

We hardly used the balcony because mostly the weather was too cool to stay outside when sailing from Beijing to Singapore in February 2012.

Other things about the cabin. There is only a small shower with a curtain. My husband couldn't take a shower without getting water all over the bathroom floor. I just took 2 pool towels to our cabin room to mop the floor each day. There was a sharp needle like carpet tack, just in front of the bathroom door. I cut my toe twice on it, then learned to put a hand towel over the spot as a mat. I will try to attach 2 photos.

Cabin B106 has a very small balcony with hardly room for 2 chairs sideways. It is the very first cabin forward portside, after the suites.

The balcony has a solid half-wall of metal, rather than glass, so that if you sit down you can't see out. The obstruction of the view is the wide white support for the Bridge above. It didn't bother me that much, and you can see around it. If you are someone who wants to sit out all day on your balcony watching the scenery and waves while you read a book, this is not the cabin for you. On the other hand, if you just want to step out and look over the side once in awhile while coming into port or leaving, this is perfect.

We hardly used the balcony because mostly the weather was too cool to stay outside when sailing from Beijing to Singapore in February 2012.

Other things about the cabin. There is only a small shower with a curtain. My husband couldn't take a shower without getting water all over the bathroom floor. I just took 2 pool towels to our cabin room to mop the floor each day. There was a sharp needle like carpet tack, just in front of the bathroom door. I cut my toe twice on it, then learned to put a hand towel over the spot as a mat. I will try to attach 2 photos.

Hi Joanie

I have photos to share but the link for your email doesn't work on my computer. Could you send me your email?

I am at mawilson at hay dot net

Great job you are doing.

Anne

OD2

Hi Dubrovnik lady - We arrive on Magnifica July 1st, 2011. Q1.Do you know if we will dock or tender, and where?

Q2. What is the weather forecast there - will it be HOT?

Q3. I read on one post that it will take us 1 hour from the port to the old town? This has me concerned since Magnifica is only in Dubrovnik for 5 hours (not enough, I'm sure you will agree, to see anything much!). Will we have time to walk the walls and see the old city? What about the cable car? Sheesh!

Thank-you very much!

I have an extra referral coupon and my parents do as well so IF you have already made your final payment or your will be doing so in the near future please contact me. I have had 2 folks back out after committing some time ago, so please only respond if your are making your payment in the very near future or if you have recently made the final payment.

 

lisa.hyskoatrexam.com (sub @ for at)

Dear Lisa -

We are making our payment today. A coupon would be lovely if you still have one.

I will send you my details by email.

Anne (OD2)

We are taking the Odyssey Jan 5th, 2011 sailing, and a coupon would be much appreciated! mawilson at hay dot net

Sorry - that Odyssey sail date is Jan 4, 2011. As I mentioned, we would be most grateful to receive a Seabourn coupon. Every little bit helps!

I'd like to invite any interested persons to please join the roll call for that cruise which I just started.

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1242103

A referral coupon, when submitted to your TA upon final payment, will give you and the party referring you, a $400 onboard credit.

 

If you send (answer me below) your email address, just replace the "@" with "at" I will send you a referral coupon.

 

T&T

We are taking the Odyssey Jan 5th, 2011 sailing, and a coupon would be much appreciated! mawilson at hay dot net