POA1

See the attached PDF. It's for the Grand Voyages, but the same info allies to the Lesser Voyage, the kind we take. 103122_Communication_At_Sea.pdf

If you are on a Pinnacle Class ship (Koningsdam, Nieuw Statendam or Rotterdam,) try heading up to the Panorama Deck. That's deck 10, above the Lido. You have NY Pizza & Deli and the Panorama Bar. The pizza is surprisingly good and made to order. They have two salad options. (DW recommends the Motown salad,sub in Caesar dressing.) The sadmiches are excellent, but order double meat. The pastrami sandwich, which I should have ordered "double meat." Motown salad Tribeca pizza While they're making your order, you can grab a drink at the Panorama Bar and any of the plentiful tables. If you want to let your geek flag fly, you can order your food via the Navigator app. That will allow you to head directly to the bar. From the Panorama Deck, you can look down, both figuratively and literally, at the people scurrying for seats on the Lido Deck. Raise your glass and smugly toast your superior planning & tactics. Hopefully the menu will be readable if you click it. If you are on a phone, you might want to turn it sideways. You have no idea how hard it was to resist "Pro-Tip-ping" the crap outta this post. 😉

If you choose correctly, you can have a lunch that pretty close to a Pinnacle Grill dinner.

There are two chairs and a small table on the verandah. Each chair has a footstool tucked underneath. You can make it out in the photo above. When you pull it out, you sort of have a chaise. Note to self: Go out on the balcony and take a picture next time.

Apologies for the delay... It was a long day at work today. Here are the room photos. The bed in the Vista Suites is closest to the balcony. The TV is opposite the bed. That's not great for TV addicts, but we watch no television on most of our cruises. The bed is described as a queen or two twins, depending on how you have the bedding configured. We have a king size bed at home and this bed is much closer to a king than a queen.

Thanks, everyone! It's a long slog between 4 stars and 5. I just want to see some progress after being stalled for five years.

Now that we are off the ship and don't have to worry about being hassled by the poohparazzi, I can disclose our secret location, which we cleverly concealed with a light up, wrapped "Christmas gift" on our door. I will post room photos later today and send the full size ones to HALfacts. (If you think of it, take photos of your room and send them in to them. We find it helpful to look at the rooms we're booking and we want to pay it forward.) We were in 7087, a category A Vista Suite. There are only 4 Vista Suites on Deck 7 (Schubert or Poohbert, depending on who you ask.) We were here:

Does anyone know how long it has been taking lately for a cruise to show up in your history on the HAL website? We returned on 12/17-2023, 12 days ago and our activity is still not showing. I need to grab a copy of my folio PDF and I would like to track our ever-so-slow slog from 4* to 5* Mariner. We were a mere 250 cruise credit days away before our cruise. (Half way.)

There is a definite ebb & flow to the line. We lucked out with very short lines each time we were there, but the line could get long quite quickly.

What do you normally drink? Our scientifically certified reference drinks are Ketel One & Soda with lime and Maker's Mark on the rocks. Both are top shelf liquors and are now - and have always been - covered under the SBP.

There was a woman on our cruise who had a door decoration to help her elderly mother, who has some cognitive issues, find their room. While there are numbers near all of the doors, some people do get lost. Something obvious and unique can help identify the cabin. In our case, I wanted something Christmas-y, and with lights. It was attached using 3M Comand removable velcro. We had to remove the "gift" to get to switches for the lights. The velcro allowed that. The Comand strips remove without damaging the door surface. It's the first time we've done a door decoration. If I had only realized that it would help identify the Ebenezer Scrooge, Grinch fan club...

I should mention that the excellent fries come with you mayonnaise and peanut sauce. The cafe has a curry ketchup, but you'd have to ask for it. They may have regular ketchup. I'm not sure.

We wound up sharing one of the high tops in the window area a couple of times. Other times we got lucky and scored one of the tables in the atrium area across from guest services. Michelle gave really high marks to ham and gouda sandwich. She's not a big sandwich person, so it must have been really good. The fries, as mentioned earlier, we excellent.

As a point of nomenclature, HAL calls this a Booking Confirmation. So do most of the other cruise lines. If you are asking for the Invoice, you might confuse the issue for the person to whom you are talking. The thing that shows your payment is the Deposit Confirmation. If you book HAL air through Flight Ease, the paperwork is called Air Notification. Hopefully that will help you to get the paperwork you want. It's always a PDF.

The BC (booking confirmation) should be sent any time there is a material change to a reservation. We got one when we added Club Orange. We received another when we made the CO room upgrade. Another when we added Have It All. I wish the BC would show an OBC breakdown and not just the total, but other than that, it's pretty good.

Our pleasure! We have had a Retreat Cabana on every sailing we've done since 2014. It's one of the first things we book, usually moments after the cruise is confirmed.

Well, there goes my plan for a vertically mounted miniature toy train...

This:

I was serious about needing research project suggestions. We need some structure and focus. (Although "photo catalog of all the art on the ship, by location, is a bit beyond our scope. 😉) If you want to know something, please post it.

Usually, unless one of your team is off or sick. I think that's happened once for us - since 1994.

No, not at all. We were on the Nieuw Statendam, inbound, when the Rotterdam was coming out of Port Everglades. (We probably overlapped in the storm by 3 days.) Many of our cruises have been in November and December in the Caribbean. Bad weather happens, but usually not now.

Here is the Westerdam MDR layout. Both levels. Current as of late September 2023. It's a PDF so you should be able to zoom to your heart's content. Please stop complaining about HALfacts. They work hard. They charge nothing. And anyone who has been around here for a while knows they provide a valuable resource. Don't make me have to use my outside voice. Westerdam-MDR-Layout Layout.pdf

We hope to get into the groove of things on our Rotterdam cruise. We missed a lot on this voyage. I'm hoping it's because we were out of practice after being away for five years. But, it's always possible that it's due to dodderage. For example: Lido visits? None. Main show lounge production shows? Zip. MDR lunch? Nope. High, Low, or Middling Tea? Zilch. Enrichment presentations? Fuhgeddaboutit. We have to do better in the Spring. We simply must! What we need is... Ze plan!! (You know it's serious because there are two exclamation points.) I know we're going to try to get thicker milkshakes and see how many glasses of cabana champagne (cabanapagne?) they'll give us before they start asking questions. I'm pretty sure that there were one or two more research projects, but for the life of me, I can't remember. I won't wake DW because it's after midnight and I doubt being torn from slumber - even in the name of scientific curiosity - would be a good idea. If you have any suggestions for research on our upcoming cruise, please post them. If you haven't learned by now, no idea is too stupid. (I'm hoping to get some interns. They can do the dangerous stuff.)

I forgot to mention that the opening of the U shaped section of the cabana area faces forward. The base of the U faces the Lido pool roof or the Panorama deck area.

I admire your candor. Now, every time someone asks if you are okay, you can say, "I'm fine. It's just the old taco bar injury. It flares up from time to time."