Heni1805

Pete, thank you so much! Great review and awesome pictures! We can't wait to board the Fantasia on sunday in Abu Dhabi ! :-)

Enjoy the rest of your vacation!

Got new pictures! Today they were in the Geirangerfjord! What an experience!

I got new pictures this morning.

Midnight sun at the north cape (The aft verandah stateroom really pays off again ;) )

I am loving the gorgeous pictures. Do you know what camera they are using?

I think, the pictures that I posted so far are all taken with an iPhone 6. But they also have my camera with them, a Canon EOS600D. So I am really looking forward to these pictures, when they come back on sunday.

Good Morning everyone,

I just got a call from my dad. They are at the North Cape today. They had a foggy day on sea yesterday. And the Internet does not work well anymore since they left Trondheim. Therefore he couldn't send me any nee pictures.

But as soon as it is working again I will get new material.

So, stay tuned! ;)

Thank you all! I am glad that you like the pictures, because I got new ones today!

Leaving Alesund last night:

And today in Trondheim:

More pictures will follow.

Beautiful photos. It's nice to hear that your parents are enjoying the Koningsdam.

Yes I am glad too.

Before they mostly cruised with Celebrity. They also tried the Royal Princess, but didn't like it as much. But about the Koningsdam my dad texted me that it is their favorit ship so far! And that really surprises me, because they are absolutely loving Celebrity and at first it was hard to convince them to try something else. So, it seems like HAL is winning new fans in Germany. :)

Hello everyone,

my parents are currently on the Koningsdam. Their first cruise with HAL and they absolutely love the ship!

I thought that maybe it would nice to post a few pictures here.

Today they are in Alesund and look at this beautiful weather:

And here some pictures from yesterday in Eidfjord. What a change in weather within just a few hours:

I'll post more pictures as soon as I get them from them.

Cool photos...

Thank you!

Have a nice weekend.:)

Awesome pictures! Thanks for sharing....we are boarding in 80 days and are very excited! How did evening dining work? We were never given the option for regular main dining. Were the waits crazy long at dinner?

Unfortunately I can't say anything specific about that. We were on one of the three nights cruises and got the speciality dining package for that. We know the main dining room from other ships and thought that it would be even nicer to try the speciality restaurants, especially Wonderland where we have never been before.

Thanks for all your feedback! I am glad that you enjoyed the pictures. :)

I am so glad to her you enjoyed your cruise on the Harmony. Unfortunately, Webroot is blocking your picture site as it must contain something that is identified as Malicious Adware.:(

Hmm that is not good. I didn't get any notice of Malicious Adware and I tried different devices now. I am sorry that you could not enjoy the pictures. :(

Hello everyone!

I was on board on of the first sailings of Harmony of the Seas in the end of may. Except for the areas where you can see that the work of the french shipyard wasn't as great as the work of the german Meyer Werft ( :D ), the ship and the trip was absolutely fantastic. Especially I want to point out the crew, which did in my opinion a fantastic job considering it was their third sailing with passengers!

My three personal highlights on board were:

The Ultimate Absyss, because I just had never been on such a slide.

Wonderland was amazing! You should absolutely try this if you are on board Quantum class or Harmony!

And finally Grease! I didn't expect that I would like it a lot, because it is more like a "musical for girls". But I need to say the performance of all singers and dancers was outstanding! And the big amount of great singers makes it the best musical I have seen on board of a cruise ship! Even better than We will rock you on Norwegian Breakaway!

Last but not least I finally managed to upload some pictures from board on my site. You can find the pictures in the gallery here

I only could upload 50 pictures at this time. But I have hundreds of pictures still on my computer. So if you want to see certain venues or areas please let me know!

Cheers from Germany

Hendrik

It seems like the official delivery was successful this morning. RC posted the following picture on the german facebook page:

And here the translated text that they posted together with the picture:

"- It's a girl!

We are pleased to welcome our newest family member ‪#‎Harmonyoftheseas‬!

This morning our "Baby" was delivered from the shipyard to the proud parents. She is 362 meters tall.

Everybody is very proud and doing fine, we look forward to her first sailing in the end of May!"

Can't wait to be on board of this beautfiul ship in just two weeks! I will take lots and lots of pictures! :D

Cheers

Hendrik

You should receive an access code with your SeaPass card at check-in.

 

Could the tax be Spanish VAT tax?

Thank you! Good to know with the check in!

Spanish VAT would be very surprising because we are going from and to Southampton. English VAT is 20% I think, so that is close but not the exact amount. But hey who cares. It seems like Royal really has some difficulties with its booking system currently.

Two quick questions. When I pre-purchased the package, do I get an access code once on board, or how does that work?

And how much is the tax? I purchased Voom Surf for 2 devices for 15,29€/night, but my total comes to 54,40€, which means the delta is 18,6%...

For our upcoming Harmony cruise (5/26) it is more expensive now, as well. I purchased the PP at 51€/night now with 20% it's 55€.

But all passengers, that didn't check the price before and purchase the package now will think they made a great deal.

A great example how to successfully communicate higher prices! ;)

There's no reliable luggage storage in Southampton, but there is at Southampton airport.

 

To avoid the heavy expense of a car & driver for the day:

Head first to the airport by.............

- Taxi from the cruise terminal to the airport - the 20 minute trip will cost about £20 from the line of taxis, or less pre-booked eg http://www.westquaycars.com

- or a 15 min walk to Southampton central train station, trains to the airport (station is Southampton Parkway/Airport) every 15 minutes or thereabouts take about 10 mins & costs £3.70

(a taxi to Southampton central station costs about £6, then add the train fares means if you're going to jump in a taxi at the port you might as well take it all the way to the airport)

Stash your luggage (desk in terminal)

Go to the airport station - about 100 yards from the terminal - & take a train (every 20 mins or thereabouts) to Winchester. Day-return costs £5.40 & the journey takes only about 10 mins

http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/

 

Winchester is a historic city, with an impressive cathedral

 

JB :)

Thank you! Great advice with the luggage!

Unless cost is a big issue I would suggest you hire a private driver/guide who can take you in his/her car to tour Salisbury, Stonehenge and other nearby places, have a stop for lunch as well and get to SOU in time for your flight. Your luggage will go along with you in the trunk/boot of the car.

My guess is you will find many if you Google "private driver/guide Southampton."

Oh yes, I completely forgot about Stonehenge! That is a great idea! Thank you very much!

Hello everyone!

We will disembark from our upcoming cruise in Southampton. Our flight back to Germany is not leaving until 05:20 pm (17:20) from SOU, so we have plenty of time to fill. I think we should be at the airport around 04:00 pm.

My first choice is to stay longer on board of Harmony of the Seas. But probably this will be hard to achieve, because they usually don't offer a late check-out during the first few cruises of a new vessel.

Therefore the question is, what can we do in and/or around Southampton, knowing that we will have our luggage with us. (1 big suitecase & 2 little ones)

What are the must see things or must do activities?

I would be thankful for your advices!

Cheers from Germany

Hendrik

For our last cruise with Indy out of Port Everglades two weeks ago all members up from Platinum were allowed to use the priority line. We arrived at port early at around 11 am. Both lines (priority & normal) were almost empty at this time. All C&A members (Platinum & higher) were seated upstairs and boarded together. We were on board by 11:30. So the process was really smooth and well organized for us!

Thank you so much for pictures of only the ship! I have been wanting to show some to my father before we leave on our cruise.

You're more than welcome! Enjoy your time on board. The ship is fantastic!

Awesome Pictures. I am now drooling.. cant wait to board this Friday!

Thanks for your review and I enjoyed the pictures! Can't wait for our cruise on the Allure this month!

I am glad you enjoyed the pictures. I wish you guys a fantastic trip on board Allure of the Seas!

Hello everyone,

a friend and I were on the 3-night sailing from Civitavecchia to Barcelona on board of Allure of the Seas.

I uploaded some pictures, which you can find here.

I just needed to reduce the size of the pictures a little bit to make them all fit, therefore the resolution is not really perfect, but I think it still works. ;-)

My thoughts on Allure:

Amazing ship!!!! And even better crew, except for the Guest Services desk.

I think there were a lot of things said about the amazing possibilities for entertainment, activities and dining. For dinner we did Chops Grille, Main Dining Room and Izumi Tepanyaki. The food in both speciality restaurants was fantastic, even though they shortened the menu in Chops Grille compared to my last trip with Royal. But it's still great.

We went to the Oceanaria Show and the Ice Games Show. In both shows the level and quality of performance by the athletes was really really high!

We only had one small issue that the pre-booked all-access tour was not confirmed and guest services just couldn't find a solution to make it work, so we missed the tour. :-(

But the rest was simply amazing and I was more than sad to leave the ship already after three nights! If you have any questions, I will be more than happy to answer them if I can. ;-)

Cheers from Germany

Hendrik

I highly doubt they would keep a bar open for it, so your only chance would be they have it on the stateroom TV. Despite all the complaints by Americans of soccer being shown all the time, they do tend to err on the side of bigger US sporting events (which any night NFL game would qualify). A couple of years ago I was on a Med cruise where they were showing the one-day cricket championships (I think that's what it was :confused:) from the UK, and they pre-empted that in the middle of a match to put on NBA basketball.

 

That said, I probably wouldn't plan my day around being up at 2:30am to watch the game.

Yes I think we will not plan the day around being up until 2:30 am. Maybe we are lucky with the Bundesliga soccer match of our local team from Cologne saturday afternoon. ;-)