rodndonna

Dry January is coming up - there's a good time for a trial! More non or low alcohol options I think are good. The demand could be there I think if it were there and folks knew about it.

Thanks. I guess giving it more thought, it might be more difficult to keep something like that in stock unless there was a higher demand. Unlike beers and mocktails, if they open a bottle of wine and only serve one or 2 glasses, it would then so to waste. I am going to inquire about it in our upcoming cruise, and mention it in our post survey. I guess it will have a be spritzers. Not a fan of the carbonation and would really rather just a glass of wine (with little or no alcohol) at times, but maybe the general demand is just not not there yet. Between getting older and having my tolerance to alcohol diminishing and what seems like wines getting stronger - I just can't win 😑

We have sailed HAL and am familiar with the non-alcohol and low-alcohol beer and cocktail (mocktail) options, but have never noticed or heard of any low or non-alcoholic wines. Do they have any that we could try?

Are these 'envelopes' special? On our last cruise, we decided to book a specialty dining so would not be going to our fixed MDR on the final night, but wanted to tip our MDR waiters. We went to guest services and asked about an envelope to leave them a tip (as I had heard from here on CC that could be done). We were handed a plain envelop and just put the bills in it and wrote for MDR waiters, their names and our dining timeslot. Would that have worked? Honestly, it seemed a little dubious, and I though we probably should have went to the MDR to hand it to them instead.

What you are missing is, the piece of paper will not count for anything officially, other than a personal reference (which can be of value to you personally) We are cruising in 2 days, I can take the pdf of my boarding documents, edit them (easily in pdf) change my balcony room to a high end suite ! I can change my $300 OBC,...to $3000 OBC! If my husband and I have a big fight tonight, I could knock him off, find a new 'beau' tomorrow , replace his name for my husband as the new passenger! possibilities are endless with what I can show on a printed document - but what they have in THER system is what matters.

We seem to be getting into a much more generalized discussion - but with regards to your question - ultimately, everything you have should be "in the cloud" in which case you have to get a new phone. I think what some folks may not get, is a 'paper' copy of anything (not including ID like Passports - but just things like boarding passes and booking confirmations etc), are really just a "nice to have reference" but they are not valid proof of anything. If I show up at an airport or cruiseport with paper documents, but the airline or cruisline (or hotel) has a conflicting info (or no info), what they have on-line is what ultimately rules. What I have on paper could easily have been altered before printing, be out of date, etc. In the end, beyond having solid ID, you shouldn't need to print anything out. You may want to for ease of reference, but it's not the definitive source. Baggage tags do need to be paper, but I have learned I can get then when I arrive rather than pre-print at home.

I kinda knew your response was sarcasm .. I just didn't want to respond in a way that sounded like I thought Canada was superior in terms of employment benefits (and laws).. 😉

Thanks - That is our back-up plan now having decided to remove our inkless printer from the home. We can just print anything we might need at a Staples - they have self-serve printing. It makes me feel young to ditch our printer - I really can't imagine anyone in their 20's has a printer (unless they live with their parents)

That's our general packing plan for vacations - don't sweat forgetting something, or bringing the "maybe or not likely needed" items ....

Thank you all! I think we have our answer - I should have stated my question better - it was really "Can I (the passenger) arrive paperless (i.e. avoid printing materials to bring with me). We will keep copies of the boarding documents on our devices (not rely on internet). I am not concerned with this, and if anything, I think I would have a hard time getting anywhere nowadays with a paper copy of something that says I belong when they can't verify me on their system. What they can load based on my ID will trump any paper I bring so not too worried there and we have flown this way some time now. My main concern was those darned ink-heavy luggage tags - uughh. I realize at some point, luggage tags (paper) are required, I just don't want to have to supply them, and it sounds like that is an option. Our ink-less printer can now be relegated to the 'to-go' in our decluttering pile 🥳

You can still review options on-line as you would when booking independently. The advantages (when it works good) are if you get a good 'flexible' rate (does happen for some cases) you can change the flight if something better comes up. You can do this up to final payment for your cruise is due. Pros and cons... we have had mixed experiences so far but will still always look at using it as an option before booking our flights.

As Rafind said, they do these on generally all their cruises, normally for Cancer research. We always participate and enjoy them. Carnival does something similar (but lazier - haha) called "Groove for St Jude" where you all donate, get the tee-shirt then and dance on the Lido together briefly, money going to St Jude hospitals. Maybe someone knows - but I suspect something similar on all CCL cruiselines...

Maybe still a little better here in Canada, most companies still provide benefits, but the days of the pensions are long gone and have been for many years, unless you are employed by the government.

Not sure about the US, but most Canadian companies provide life insurance as a standard benefit. I know I always had insurance when I was single through the companies I worked for.

We are getting ready for a cruise this weekend, and preparing to print boarding pass and luggage tags. Nor surprisingly, we are our of ink, again! When was the last time we used the printer - print tags and passes for a cruise in September. When was the last time before that? To print boarding passes and luggage tags for a June cruise,. When was the last time before that ... a cruise last December..... (and I am pretty sure that was a new cartridge) ......you get the idea ... We have no use for a printer anymore except for cruising stuff and would like to just move past it and go paperless. Not ready to bite the bullet just yet, so are just printing out our baggage tags at Staples and staying electronic for the boarding pass for this cruise. Has anyone migrated to pure paperless to board a cruise? I "believe" if you arrive without baggage tags, they will just write your room number on a bag tag.

We are on the NS this weekend, and was literally just saying to my husband yesterday "you know, I don't see much chatter anymore of people picking up C...d on their cruises... " Our last 2 cruises (Alaska and Norway) appeared to have an inordinate amount of sick folks and subsequent reporting of catching Covid (including us in Alaska), so am really hoping this cruise is a little tamer. Hopefully will be a quick recovery for you both.

a tad snarky. I think the poster was just responding to multiple poster's insinuation that only inexperienced and novice travellers would attempt such a thing. Working at an airport I would imagine they have a good working idea how to make their way around the airport.

It is confusing - but yes - it will still always show the box to add them, even if you have the "crew appreciation" or "gratuities" included as part of your booking perk. Assuming you have them in your package from your booking, it will all be done after you board. I can't remember how it shows up in your accounting on-board, but you will not be charged for gratuities. If I recollect - it will appear daily and then have a reversal (credit) against it, don;t quote me on that though.

In our case, I eventually just decided it wasn't worth the effort or frustration anymore trying to get it resolved with Fligtease. At the time ( a few weeks ago) I still had a glimmer of hope it would just get changed again before departure or that potential weather issues would come up in the days preceding our flight which would allow us to reschedule our flights to avoid the weather system (we have done this a number of times with Air Canada in the past). Alas, no luck with either, so a pillow and blank-y it will be. Maybe try calling at a different time of day than you did before. Not sure when they are the least busy, but I think someone on here said the best time to call is towards the end of the day.

Thanks - I think it should be up for the worst ever planned flight award. 🥳

Indeed - your flights stink - are they this bad though ... London Ontario to Fort Lauderdale next week - our flight was changed due to earlier departure of cruise ship by one hour. Was originally an early London departure to Toronto and then in Fort Lauderdale arriving around noon - it is now ... London around to Toronto 7:30 PM Friday - 4 HOUR layover in Toronto Toronto - to Ottawa - another 4 HOUR layover in Ottawa Ottawa to Montreal - 1 hour layover Montreal to Fort Lauderdale - arrive Saturday 11:45 Uggh - we made some attempt to have it changed (it is on AC and we can see decent flights available, but have to go through FE and they just said - "too late it was ticketed" after spending an hour being bounced around the phone with them to different people looking into it. We just gave up. Funniest part is when I go into Flight Ease it comes up with a big warning that we 'a' 4 hour layover - I'd be happy if I just had 'a' 4 hour layover at this point. Anyway - trying to make the best of it and bringing a pillow and blanket to snooze at the airports. 😑

We typically do insides for the obvious cost saving reason. For our cruises, I like to look at that savings as money to be spent elsewhere on that cruise. Usually spent in port or for excursions, so it's not so much that we 'save' on that holiday, but we spend with a different priority. This is especially the case when sailing for a unique itinerary like Alaska. We have a cruise next week which is an exception where we are treating ourselves to an aft balcony. It is a Caribbean/Bahamas cruise where we are not anticipating any major expenses off ship as its more about floating around the ocean in warm weather type of holiday.

This wasn't just a typical fight. This was a drunk obnoxiuos passenger harassing other passengers to the point where a Carnival Casino employee called in Security to have him dealt with (this implies he was identified by Carnival as an instigator and a threat to other passengers). For whatever reason (others for Security to deal with elsewhere), Security never came to deal with the problem passenger. I won't pretend to imagine I know how I would behave after being harassed for 10 minutes and then called racial slurs (I am not a visible minority). I don't think they were not equal parties in this altercation, from what I understand of the original post (and it would seem that was Carnivals opinion)

It is sad that HAL is faced with having to be the parent to the parents who allow their kids to use the adult only areas. Hopefully it was an anomaly for the holiday week having more kids on board, and it won't be an issue next week (on our cruise). At least we are sort of braced for it now anyway ...😑

Thanks. That would definitely be a downer for us.