terrydtx

It is offered on our August Volendam Boston to Montreal cruise. With a couple of late ports departures, I think we can do better on land with fresher seafood than what is probably frozen on the ship. The sample menu shows it includes Dungeness crab, lobster and salmon. Here is what I Copied from the website for our cruise. New England SEAFOOD BOIL Lobster and Corn Chowder Parmesan Grissini Sticks Dungeness Crab, PEI Mussels, Boston Clams, Shrimp, Atlantic Salmon, 1/2 New England Main Lobster Bucket Old Bay Sauce, Whole Wheat Cream Cheese-Garlic Bread Twists Maine Warm Blueberry Pie Whipped Cream, Vanilla Ice Crea

Over the last year we spent 32 days in E Class ships, Apex and Edge, in the Retreat and I never felt like the Facilites were crowded even though the Retreat was at 100% capacity. We spent so much more time in the Retreat Lounges with the high deck spectacular views and open covered verandah area. The bar in the huge Retreat Sun deck was our second favorite place to spend time. The upper deck 12 location of Luminae also offered much better view while dining. The lower deck location of the same facilities in M and S ships to me are a big negative.

After being on the Equinox in June and then the Apex in September both in the Retreat, I would not pay the cost of a suite again in any non-E Class ship. The Retreat facilities on E Class are 200% better than the rest of the fleet. We were also in the Retreat on the Edge in January for 22 days in Australia.

Last year while we were on a tour of the Equinox, the Captain was asked the question concerning the completion of the Retreat Deck and he said there were no plans by Celebrity to do any further work on the deck. If that was true, there is nothing being done to the Retreat deck during the current drydocking. I would hope that the suites furnishings are getting an upgrade, the furnishings in our SS were in terrible shape and well worn.

I just talked with our TA for our Marina cruise next March. She was able to apply the May promo sale to our current booking. We are in an A3 cabin in a great location on Deck 9. We had 2 options, move up to an A1 cabin on deck 10 in almost the same deck location and save $50pp, or stay where we are and save $250pp on the fare. We decided to stay in the same cabin on deck 9, close to the Concierge lounge and save $500 total. So, it seems that you can use the May sale even if already booked.

This is the Press Release from Last November about the May '24 Marina refurbishment, has this changed at all? She is due to go into dry dock on May 18th according to this article.

That is true, in 2019 we had a Signature suite on the Noordam and we got a crappy run down hotel in Anchorage that smelled of cigarette smoke and was filthy. We complained to the hotel and HAL and they refused to move us to a better hotel or room, they said all hotels and rooms were sold out.

We are sailing on the Volendam in August (Zaandam sister ship) in a Vista Suite to get a balcony. Both ships do not have standard Verandah cabins. If you have two beds together the window will be blocked by the bed, see my picture below.

I am sure your favorite bartender would give you a couple of rum shots on you drinks package to take back and keep in your cabin. On one of our cruises last year we ordered a bottle of Gin for our cabin and only ended up drinking less than half the bottle, so shots would have saved us a lot. We couldn't take the unused bottle home as we were flying internationally.

I forgot I had previously printed the tags for our August cruise back in early April and that language was NOT on them. When I printed them out today the language was there, so I am not sure if this is a new policy. It would save a lot of printing and paper of new disembarkation tags at the end of a cruise.

I do not remember this for our Konignsdam cruise last November, we had CO and got disembarkation tags for that cruise. I printed out our tags for our Volendam August cruise and it does have the new language @LAFFNVEGAS mentioned here. We also have CO and are in a Vista Suite for the August cruise.

Often the packages are less in cost than buying al a carte. I would order the package and throw away the cokes if not wanted. With the premium drinks package you can always order drinks at any bar and bring them back to your cabin. We prefer that to having a bottle in the cabin.

That is the way I often order my burgers at Dive In.

On the Noordam in July 2019 we had one of those small TVs sitting on the desk in our Signature Suite. After her refurbishment late 2019 she got larger wall mounted flat screen interactive TVs.

I agree, but much better than the 19" TVs on a desk or shelf pre covid.

Same for me, can't see menus for our August Volendam cruise. This is so frustrating, just makes no sense why HAL CAN'T FIX THEIR APP!!

I just did this and it still doesn't work, even after a restart.

I found this picture from 2023 of a Vista Suite on the Volendam, so it looks like that category got upgraded wall mounted TVs. I found this on the Cruise Deck Plans website.

The picture @richwmn posted above was from his Volendam cruise he just got off of, and looks like the old small screen TV's. Nothing close to what the other class ships have.

Those little screen TVs on a desk must be at least 20 years old, time for HAL to upgrade.

I removed the data storage as suggested and the menu came up, but if I tried to open the menu a second time it goes back to the same old error message. Then if I removed the data once more it worked but only one time. I them removed and reinstalled the app and it worked just as before only one time. Maybe if HAL hired some real IT people they could fix this worthless app once and for all. I have Android devises.

Hasn't the Volendam been upgraded to the larger wall mounted TV's? We will be in a Vista Suite in August and some recent pictures showed a wall mounted TV. We had a small TV like that on the Noordam in 2019 and it was next to worthless and took up valuable counter space in our Signature Suite. The Noordam drydocking after our 2019 cruise added the wall mounted large TV's to all cabins.

We never leave home without our adapter cubes that includes 4 USB ports on each. They are also good in hotels in over 220 countries. Almost everything we take uses USB for charging.

We have always been able to change form of payment once onboard at Guest services and/or shore excursions desk. Last year on the Koningsdam we had CO and I was able to make the changes at the CO guest services line. This is true for both HIA credits and onboard credits from either HAL or our TA.

If its not too late, you may want to look at 3rd party insurance. We always buy our travel insurance through our TA and it is usually cheaper in cost with more coverage including non-cruise line airfare purchased. We made our final payment today for our August Volendam Cruise and the HAL platinum quoted cost, without air, was higher than our premium TA's coverage with our airfare covered.