shrimp56

Got my refund yesterday. Was for April 27 cruise.

On 5/12/2020 at 1:50 PM, ATC said:

I wonder if his leaving bonus will be delayed 60-90 days

You made me laugh!

On 5/13/2020 at 6:22 AM, doone said:

I totally agree!!!!

Oh god. Please NO!

On 5/15/2020 at 7:37 PM, eroller said:

 

 

I agree this could absolutely happen.  I've been saying Princess might go because they might be tarnished beyond repair, but they are still more well known than HAL.  The have the Love Boat history and all that.  That might work in their favor for survival.  Plus a large modern fleet that probably earns more than HAL.  

 

I so think it's quite probable that either Princess or HAL will get the chopping block.  They are the most similar brands in the Carnival portfolio with a very similar demographic.  Plus lots of overlap.  It Carnival Corp is looking to reduce expenses and simplify, one of these brands seems like the obvious choice.  

Yep. I think Princess deserves to go with at least 4 ships with multiple coronavirus deaths. All the medallions in the world don't overcome that.

But I think HAL will be the sacrificial lamb, which is a pity given the professionalism of the HAL officers and crew. I always felt safe with HAL. I'll be royally pissed if our star status doesn't go with us to Princess. Although I'm not sure I could stomach Princess' big ships. Diamond Princess was too big for us, although a beautiful ship.

You know, we all respond differently. No judgement is needed.  BTW the judging going on here is why I seldom come to cruise critic. I wish Westie and her passengers and crew a safe landing. Over and out.

34 minutes ago, Vict0riann said:

QOn another note, I had an interesting message from Tours by Locals today.  - "As excited as we are about the travel landscape in 2020, we need to acknowledge what’s on many people’s minds right now: the Coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan, China. While we are hopeful that the current outbreak will be contained, if the CDC advises avoiding nonessential travel to ANY destination, our travelers will receive a full refund under our FORCE MAJEURE cancellation policy. You can rest assured we treat every booking with fairness, and aim to make your future travel plans as smooth as possible. "

 

I think that is very good of them to advertise this and I wonder if other travel companies have the same policy - for example, HAL  

I am not surprised at TbL’s response. We have been using them almost exclusively for tours around the world since 2015 and have always been treated with honesty  and compassion.

Thanks. That makes sense. 

Marine Traffic is showing DiaPrin at sea outside the Yokohama/Tokyo harbor heading away from shore. Doing 14 knots and have been underway for 4 hrs. 

Just now, Mary229 said:

There is not much difference.  Fear and hysteria are carrying the day.  There is no difference from others calling it a Pariah ship.  Same difference.  Sorry but it is shortsighted to think we cannot repeat the errors of our ancestors .  No nagging please

If I were a passenger in an inside cabin on DiaPrin, breathing recirculated air and getting food delivered sporadically, I might be thinking along those lines.

BTW have sailed on Diamond Princess around Japan in 2018. She's too big for us, but she is a beautiful ship,

Poor Westie, but at least they’re not (yet) confined to their cabins with sporadic food service as they are on DiaPrin. I bet there are a lot of empty mini-bars by now on that ship.

Not sure this has been posted here yet.

https://japantoday.com/category/national/Coronavirus-cases-on-cruise-ship-in-Yokohama-jump-to-61?

Westerdam has been refused entry to Japan.

“Transport Minister Kazuyoshi Akaba told reporters Japan had asked another cruise ship, the Westerdam, not to make port calls in the country. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had said earlier that non-Japanese passengers on the ship would be denied entry”

They should have taken you to The City Museum of Northern Peoples instead. It's a short walk from The Brick Warehouses.

And yes, 3 hrs for the market. PERFECT!

Safe travels my friend! Enjoy Japan for us!

I'm sure this is old news, but sheesh.

https://www.npr.org/2019/06/04/729622653/carnival-cruise-lines-hit-with-20-million-penalty-for-environmental-crimes?utm_campaign=storyshare&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&fbclid=IwAR3w9Ae4h3wlqY1HHEC7NdlrUeFWvpVdi-f0cDA3Y-DJoubBfjsngq-fXTc

On 11/23/2018 at 6:53 PM, catl331 said:

you could abbreviate "7 day" to 7d (etc) and pick up room for another 63 or so characters

 

Also eliminating the periods in "W. Carib." and "E. Carib." and "N. Pacific" would give 7 more

Thanks!

Since everyone has the choice of turning sigs off I will ignore the criticisms of long ones. It is as much for me as you.

1 minute ago, POA1 said:

You may want to type your list into a text editor, like Notepad. Then paste them into your signature. Just don't hit the enter key more than 9 times. The text lines will wrap automatically. You can see that in my example, where some lines have white space at the end. In hindsight, I should have typed something like 'End-Of-Line 1**,' 'tEnd-Of-Line 2** ', etc. at the end of each line to make it more obvious, but you get the picture. 

Understood. BTW I will steal your lucky charms.

2 minutes ago, POA1 said:

@shrimp56 The limits are based on lines, not characters. You can place a ton of text in your signature - as long at there are 10 or fewer lines. Lines are based on line-breaks or carriage returns.  Just keep typing without hitting the return/enter key and you can go on quite a while.

 

I added 600 words of Lorem Ipsum sample text to my signature, which you can see if you expand it. I could have added more words, as long as I didn't have more than a total of 10 lines. This will come in handy in case @Hlitner decides to list all his cruises in his signature.

 

Let me know once you've seen this , because I don't want to leave this stupidly long demo signature up more than a day or so.

 

Here's a screen cap in case someone's reading this after I set my signature back to normal.

Thank you for you helpful response. I will give that a try.

BTW Hiltner's response reminds me why I don't come here much any more.

.

4 hours ago, Hlitner said:

LOL, we would have no idea.  One wonderful CC option allows us to simply turn off all signatures.  They take up a lot of space, bore me in a major way (no way do I read that stuff) and we also figure that anyone who can even remember all their cruises probably does not have that much experience :).  If I post information or a suggestion where I think that experience might matter, I will often say something very simple such as, we have spent over 1000 days on cruises or we stopped counting at 100 cruises.  And even this kind of short statement annoys some folks.  I cannot imagine trying to develop a signature with the cruises we do remember.  There would be a few lines of the post and then this silly long signature?  Makes no sense.

 

Hank

My issue is that I had 9 lines and 1 image and it wouldn't let me save.

Thank you for your kind answer. Some of us haven't been as fortunate as you have.

Tell me what I did wrong. 1 image and 9 lines.

I think HAL is trying too many new tech programs and each one is trying to outdo the previous one. Thus making a mess of things.

Amen.

To all of you offered upsells, I’m curious. Did you book directly thru HAL?

I use a TA. She saw the big price drop and called them.

We were weak also. Went from an outside CaT C to a Signature Suite for about $450 or so each. We lost our prepaid gratuities, but still come out way ahead.

I don’t think the staff member gave you correct info on the events leading up to the failed inspection. They were not running to and from Bermuda (unless the ship has flunked more than once).

I have followed events on this ship closely because we were on Veendam one cruise before the failed inspection. We sailed around the horn of South America in March, the ship was doing SA. After we disembarked, the ship continued on to FLL and was inspected. I believe this was in 2012.

Conditions on board were as bad as they get, entire floors had no AC, HVAC was not ventilating, smoke haze everywhere. Buckets in multiple hallways collecting dripping water? Or who knows what.

Non working plumbing in many cabins and public restrooms.

I felt very sorry for the crew dealing with it all. And the ship seemed understaffed, especially in dining areas.

And this is not where Veendam is now. The last 6 inspections have been either 99 or 100%. As I've said, pay attention tocurrent reports, not old ones.

thank you all...it's hard to know what to think! Where was the horrible ship smell? How/when did the ship fail inspection? Thank you for the feedback-both good and bad!

The failed inspection was 6 years ago. HAL put one of their best captains on the ship to fix the problems. Since then Veendam has passed all inspections. Her scores since the failed inspection have all been in the 90s, most in the high 90s and two 100s (perfect score) So stop worrying about that please. How the ship is doing currently is what is important and she's doing fine.

We have sailed on Veendam 4 times starting less than a year after the failed inspection. We had 0 problems (other than having to disembark). The crew is always great and we just love her smaller size.

You will be as happy with your experience as you let yourself be.

Been on Main desk on all the R class ships and 4 times on Veendam.Other than an occasional chair scraping sound it was absolutely quiet. I also second the recommendation of the Main Deck OVs.