crystalspin

Hi Mitch and welcome to Cruise Critic! Here is your Roll Call where people on your sailing 'meet' and sometimes arrange private tours. There are 94 (!) pages of 25 posts per page, so you might want to flip to the end using the double caret between the "NEXT" and "Page 1" above the first post by Zelker. Flip to the end, introduce yourself and admit you haven't read the 2300+ posts (and may never!), and ask for post #'s of open tours (if you are interested in them) -- then ask your question, as many people on the S.Pac tours are REPEATERS! can you believe!!! I was once on this Roll Call but cancelled the cruise for a shorter one that will make us 4* by the time we do sail to the S.Pac in Feb of 2024.

Hi Dave and welcome to Cruise Critic. If you look up near the top of any screen, there is a blue banner (the second blue banner), and the first link is Forums. Click that, scroll a little, and you will find the following. Forum Assistance section, with three "boards": Need Help Using the Forums? Check Here! TEST FORUM -- you don't need this, you're doing fine Announcements (usually posted in several places) New Cruisers section, with three "boards": Ask a Cruise Question Cabin Selection Tips First Time Cruisers Scroll some more and you will see special interest topics that may or may not apply to you. To confirm (in case you doubt yourself), your cruise does not have a Roll Call yet. You may not feel comfortable starting one! But you can keep watching, and if there is not one by the time you have got your CC sealegs, start one by the same format in the title as others you observe. As far as shared private tours, all contact/negotiations should be done within your Roll Call. Ideas and companies may be found on the Ports section. Hey, you might like to look up HALFACTS.com and look at passenger submitted photos of actual staterooms and some other aspects of your ship. (Oosterdam is a Vista Class ship, and photos from all four of them are indexed on one long 'page'. The arrangement of furniture etc will be the same from ship to ship in a Class, although the decor may vary.) There is another site, CruiseDeckPlans.com, that has more photos (from all major lines), but it is subscription to see anything but tiny thumbnails. So check HalFacts first! Also, you can try searching the web and especially YouTube, for videos of the Oosterdam and sometimes get lucky and find a cabin in the same floorplan (same deck, same category) as yours. So far my favorite HAL ship has been the Zuiderdam, sister to Oosterdam! We were booked to go to the So.Pacific on the Oosterdam in late March 2020... 😞 Finally, fyi, the Vista ships are named for the cardinal points of the compass: North -- Noor East -- Ooster (ooster rhymes with toaster) South -- Zuider West -- you guessed, Wester! -- E. Elizabeth

If you can handle all of your luggage, you can be in the first group off. I can't tell you what time that will be (it's been too long!), but someone will be along that has done it more recently. It's pretty early!

Alice -- this happened to me a couple days ago. I think I solved the problem when I "logged out" several times and then went to Already Booked. At that point it brought up the Sign In window and then asked me which booking number I wanted to go to. This was although it said "Hello Elizabeth" in the banner all along, when it was telling me it couldn't access the requested page(s). Sort of like rebooting your device when it hangs...

Aha! Finally a definitive explanation! TYVM

What @happyglobetrottermeans, is the value OF THE DRINKS is (or has been) applied to your Bonus Days Mariner points. Before HIA, we had the SBP as part of the fare and we ended up with the maximum (cruise days times two) on our Cruise History -- the only way that could have been possible was if the VALUE of the drinks was used in the calculation!

If you go by the bag, fold or roll items and leave NO airspace (you know what I mean, of course there's always air). This is what I got in a bag:

We paid for an upsell OV to Vista Suite on the Zaandam, and got only one set of points. In 2014. Good luck!

I have seen those rooms on the floor plan but did not know they qualified as Neptune Suites! We are in Spa Verandahs (party of two couples) on the Nieuw Amsterdam in October -- we don't use the balcony much, but I decided on being able to at least sit outside if desired was worth it... In COVID times!

The ships' laundry on HAL is very good, and the by-the-bag deal is reasonable! I am attaching a list of what-all I got in one bag. If the assortment seems odd, we had spent a week or so on the ground in Florida before sailing for Copenhagen! Also, I believe that Koningsdam will be like all the HAL ships I've sailed on and have a clothesline in the shower, for any truly delicate things you might want to swish out in the sink.

I wish I could say I was looking forward to Bora Bora, as I was in March of 2020! I guess "just the whole thing" is the right answer: we are not snorklers and my husband burns if he so much as looks at the sun! (Funny choice of destination, but he picked it!) With three transAtlantics under our belt, we like seadays just fine. In a world without responsibilities at home, or really even with (!) -- I would not cruise for less than 14-days, or for that matter pick a short road/bus trip either. The effort to plan and get somewhere is enough work that a shorter time just doesn't seem worth it! The exception would be a short tour or cruise with some time on in one place at a location at either end of the tour. P.S. This destination was picked for 2020 to observe my husband's retirement on 12/31/19. So by Feb'24 it will be four years late!

I understand that the insides on K'dam are quite small. The earlier ships (in the S-class) had quite spacious insides even for three adults. Of our seven HAL cruises, two were insides (3-adults!), a balcony (Vista suite) that we didn't use very much at all, three oceanviews (last two on the deck with the actual Promenade, which is the biggest balcony on the ship), and an inside-with-a-window on the Observation Deck -- where the Crows Nest is like your own living room. However, in the world since COVID, I am only booking balconies ("verandahs" on HAL). Speaking of rooms, let me direct you to HALFACTS.com where you can find photos of specific staterooms (that act as category types) according to the Class of ship: R-class is the smaller Volendam & Zaandam, Vista is Zuiderdam/Oosterdam/Westerdam/Noordam, Signature is Nieuw Amsterdam & Eurodam, and Pinnacle is Koningdam/Nieuw Statendam/Rotterdam. It is not only K'dam that makes this trip so I mention them all! https://halfacts.com/ BTW, if you click on the bold-face "February 17, 2024 Hawaii and Tahiti" in the previous post [ETA, or right here], it will take you to the Roll Call.

Can't say that I ever saw those 2009-2019. Since four of those six cruises included my mom, who prefers instant coffee (but was fine with the "brewed" supplied and would only drink an Americano if I placed it in her hand while playing Scrabble) -- I would say no.

We saw Denali out of the clouds, but that first photo is amazing. That is an award winner if you can find somewhere to submit it!

Hi JWB! I am "maintaining" the spreadsheet although I did not start the Feb-Mar'24 Roll Call. You are welcome to join and follow along! It's a bit far out for anyone to be lining up private tours, or anything. Following Inside Cabin's narrative is probably more helpful there. My history is seven cruises with HAL, nine cancellations with HAL (since COVID!), and two current HAL bookings. Four of the cancellations were So.Pac! One was 51-days and visited Fiji and points west of the 35-day route! But that is just too long to be away from home and family at this time. Re: Laundry. I have done all of the following: Done no laundry but packed an enormous duffle. Made it through a north-bound AK cruise without doing laundry (which was closed due to a NORO outbreak), then searched out coin-op laundries in AK during the 2-week self-drive (this wasn't as awful as it seems). Used the self-serve laundry on board (before they were all removed). Did all laundry including men's pants in the sink on a 26-day transAtlantic/mediterranean. Packed resourcefully and did no laundry (7d) or only a little pay-by-the-piece ship-laundry (14-day). And finally, packed lightweight/carry-on only and sent out one tightly-packed laundry bag mid-way in 16-day transAtlantic (twice, one on RCI). What I have not done is paid the $7/day for daily laundry. I can see that option as a value if you NEED to pack as little clothing as possible -- perhaps you are a photographer, or a snorkler/diver bringing your own gear??? You could pack as little as 4-days of clothing, remembering that you can't send laundry out on the last few days of a cruise and keeping in mind whatever shoreside travel you have at the end as well.

As @Cruise Suzy's link shows, the Stockholder benefit extends to AIDA, Carnival, Costa, Cunard, Holland America, P&O Cruises, P&O Australia, Princess, and Seabourn.

Yes.

I'm sure your son will love to swim with manatees! Have a great cruise!

I thought of another thing that was very useful about the cubes, even on a cruise where "you only unpack/repack once" -- we had an Inside with a window on the Observation Deck on the Holland America Zuiderdam. There were hardly any drawers (I'm thinking one or two per nightstand?) and the cubes were priceless in keeping things sorted on the shelves in the one closet.

Also, if you get your Vista suite via an upsell (lower price point) -- you will not get double Mariner points. I know because I did in on the Zaandam. Where it was a much better cabin for three adults (that 9-drawer desk meant a column of drawers for each person).

It's been so long since I've travelled (January 2020 to be exact), I had almost forgotten about cross-packing! For sure that is another optimal use for packing cubes. Even though we pack carry-on only, we still cross-pack because you never know when you might have to "surrender" a bag due to no room at the inn.

For land-based "If this is Wednesday" trips, I had obtained and used variously colored cheap sets of packing cubes from eBay. With some success. For certain, they added an organizational benefit when spending only 1 or max 2 nights in a place! And travelling carry-on only. Then came the transAtlantics with flight legs on extremely low-budget lines that claim to restrict carry-ons by weight not just length/width/depth. I weighed the cheap packing cubes and was dismayed! I shopped around and got two sets (different colored zippers for DH and me) of Eagle Creek Specter packing cubes. These don't seem to be carried anymore. I don't know if the Isolate or the Reveal lines are lighter weight. Or you can search eBay and pick up some Specter there. I weighed each and ever thing I packed and the lower weight of the cubes DID make a difference of one or two items of clothing per person. But remember it's a matter of organization; it doesn't actually get more in your suitcase any more that rolling over folding.

Coffee beverages are not mentioned on the HMC drink page, does anyone know if coffee/cold-coffee type beverages are available on HMC? We're there from 8-3 and don't even know if we'll get off the ship!

Nieuw Amsterdam is booked; the COVID situation is just so fluid, it's hard to be confident. We have over USD8K in FCC that expires at the end of 2022... all the other travel is refundable, including Platinum CPP for my brother&SIL's cruise. So we're all hopeful!

Hmm. Can anyone confirm that frozen daiquiris or margaritas run close to the $11 limit?