OlsSalt

Crystal's Prego for "Italian" was perfectly awful too. Unfortunately "real Italian" starts with perfect in-season ingredients that cannot successfully be stored on board. Anything else is Italian wannabe. That said the most recent iteration of Canaletto on the Konigsdam Holiday cruise a few months ago, was very good, but not necessarily "Italian". Sorry to see it go. However, emphasis on "fresh pasta" can be an art form. Worth giving it a try. When fresh pasta is good, made with proper ingredients, even just butter and some lemon zest is good enough for a sublime taste and texture experience.

We had very good "roast goose" on the Konigsdam Christmas Eve. ... could it really have been duck, which is why they were out of "Duck ala Orange" at Rudi's a few night later? Traditional US Christmas Day Meal - often similar to the Nov Thanksgiving meal, but not always for Christmas which can also offer roast beef or ham: Roast turkey, mashed potatoes, dressing/stuffing, gravy, sweet potatoes, various vegetables, rolls, cranberry sauce, used to also have a jellied salad in the past, pumpkin pie, pecan pie-closest to a sticky toffee pudding offering. (Not really but at least kind of gooey and nutty with a pie crust - not a steamed pudding. The Lido will have German stollen bread.) We noticed on past holiday cruises, this dinner is available on Christmas Eve and Christmas day itself is quieter in the dining room but very active with families and kids in the rest of the ship. "Santa" arrives in the main show room with a gift for all the kids, and we even saw families in matching pajama sets during this public venue festivity. Extended family groups also move in very large packs during holiday cruises, taking up many seats in row and spread out over tables and fill elevators with their own family groups.

You are not supposed to leave your balcony door open as it ruins the ventilation systems in any other cabins on your circuit, and the door is water tight so I suspect trying to run an electric cord under the door or leaving it ajar would be a forbidden activity. Hope our resident Chief Engineer can offer his insights.

I miss the individual granola boxes and cartons of yogurt which I always kept in the refrigerator for breakfast, along with an orange. Let me get ready at my leisure in the mornings. While DH was dressed and ready to go far earlier, and could indulge in a full breakfast deal at the Lido. But alas, those individual serving container items are no longer available. Work-around required.

Depending on the HAL ship, the "term suite" gets attached to regular verandah cabins. But naturally verandah are not located on the very lowest decks. Sorry you are starting out with so many early disappointments. Hope this does not ruin what could be a great cruise - itinerary wise. Being able rent an optional refrigerator for your lower deck cabins that do not have them. Seems like a win-win solution for those who require them, but by choice need to pick a lower deck cabin. HAL offers cabins at various price points, which is a real boon for many who like to cruise to the wonderful itineraries HAL offers but have a limited travel budget. That is a bonus quality for HAL; not a down grade.

Lots of people love inside cabins. What do you think you will miss out on for seven days, not having a veranda. Which ship will you be on.

Can't be cost-efficient when similar cruise lines within the CCL family compete with each other. The "covid" downtime debt was/is staggering. There is no bailout for revenues lost and massive expenses incurred during that unexpected time frame - only probably very sad, hard-nosed decisions ahead for all of CCL.

Since you are used to Viking prices, why not upgrade yourself to a cabin that does have a refrigerator?

It was sold everywhere. Quality unknown. Not cheap. Try a few and see which one you like best.

Middle East has significant geographical advantages - one way is the Mediterranean, North Africa, Black Sea and Europe. The other way is India and Asia. Last trip a number of years ago into the UAE, one guide explained their goal was to create a tourism center since approx 6 billion people lived within an 8 hour plane flight to the UAE. Medical tourism, entertainment tourism, shopping tourism, cultural tourism, amusement park tourism ....... build the hotel and airport infrastructure for that and you also built the infrastructure for a central location cruise port. Middle eastern cruise tourism, extending out in every direction of the compass is reasonable for this part of the world. Dubai Ports has long set the standards for commercial port facilities, again why not cruise port facilities. So is UAE in competition now with the Saudi's -- particularly since so many of the western economies are rushing headlong into the elimination of fossil fuels - good to have a back-up revenue diversification plan and a place to park all those electric planes flying in from 8 hours away.

WSJ just today ran an article about "reviews" for Lyft/Uber and what a joke they have become. Totally meaningless since most now feel forced to leave top reviews ...or else. Even when obviously not earned, which is sad for those who did actually earn the top ratings. Most customers quoted in the article just wanted to be gone, with the least hassle.

Cliff note version: Holland and Seabourn now "somewhat partnered", while other CCL brands stay administratively intact. Not bad company to be in. This to me feels like more emphasis on the travel and service part of the cruise equation; perhaps less on the floating resort hotel aspect. Time will tell. Those must have been very interesting discussion and something had to happen - you cannot carry as much "covid" debt as the cruise industry was forced to accept.

OP: You have chosen to sail on a middle market, mainline cruise line. Might want to readjust your expectations about highly individualized personal service and on board product demands. Best to know this ahead of time, and be pleasantly surprised rather than setting up so many early personal taste expectations that may well not be met. This cruise line, even with this fabulous itinerary, may not suit you. A cruise line like SilverSea is better known for accommodating to those personal preferences up front; not HAL Can you take a shorter HAL cruise before this major pole to pole cruise commitment and see if HAL will work for you?

It was just one in a string of disconnected communication mishaps on that cruise - everyone was sincere and solicitous, but there was no connection to the desired results. Nothing major, just a string of these little incidents to the point it became a running joke for us. (It was a GREAT cruise - Black Sea - Barcelona to Athens via Black Sea and Istanbul on this small, and highly flexible ship.) It started when the perfectly charming Neptune hostess called us in our suite at 7:30 in the morning on our very first day. Since we had flown into Barcelona the night before we were jet-lagged and deeply sleeping that first morning. So the jarring phone ringing and her chirpy call asking us if everything was okay, was "well-meaning", but definitely not welcome nor sensitive to the actual experiences of most first morning passengers who had traveled great distances to be on board. Well-intentioned, but disconnected to passenger realities. (Yes, first world problems I know.)

Once we did leave a specific negative comment. Right now, (I don't even remember what the incident, was but it was on the Prinsendam for some real, almost comical service failures. We were in a Neptune Suite at the time, so we were still thinking this was going to be super-special on this super-special HAL ship. Our own naive error at the time. Our report was followed by a note card apology that hoped the plate of chocolate strawberries would help make up for the service failure incident - except there were no strawberries - just the note. Always felt HAL still owes us a plate of strawberries. We got a good laugh over that one. And we had a perfectly nice HAL cruise anyway, just not "over the top" the way at the time we had assumed a Prinsendam Neptune would provide. But here is the kicker, for several later cruises on other HAL ships we were inundated with cards left for us on later cruise embarkation and follow ups to see if everything was okay. The follow-up felt so oppressive, we never bothered to make any relatively pragmatic "suggestions" in the future. Overly solicitous follow-up can be just as bad the lapse of service that triggered the original "complaint". We feel everyone is trying to do a good job, and we remain very happy with the level of professional hospitality on HAL ships. And recognize as a main line cruise line (excellent value for price) any "personal service expectations" really are asking too much for the price. Even in a Neptune Suite on the Prinsendam.

That is when I order the lox and bagel room service breakfast. Love it. Don't have to worry about it arriving hot, and filling enough to be a good start of the day.

Don't stick your potentially contaminated hands in your mouth, eyes or nose. Think of the entire chain of contamination. If you watch where you use your hands, you can avoid the hazards of where you put your hands.

I hate it, and think it is very degrading - this has happened from time to time in the past too, sorry to hear it is back - give 5 star ratings or else, even encouraged by the Cruise Director. Which makes the whole official feedback benefit useless and annoying. We go our of our way to give personal feedback, and know others continue to do so as well.

Zaandam 360 degree promenade deck is far superior to the one on the Pinnacle class ships. Plus everything feels like a very long hike to get anywhere on the Pinnacle ships. Comfort and access to various venues, can be as important as the variety of them, when they are scattered longer distances away. We are small HAL ship lovers too, and it was one and done for us on a Pinnacle ship. I would never want to be stuck on her during port days and having to hike around to get anywhere. My vote: stick with the Zaandam.

Plastic trash floats all across the Pacific Ocean and does come ashore - to islands with traditional lifestyles, which obviously do not include municipal waste hauling facilities. This is not trash generated by the islands, nor their traditional lifestyles which in fact are respectful to nature because they must be. They probably don't like the invasion of plastic trash any more than you like seeing it.

For a mainline cruise line to accommodate personal dietary demands is quite formidable. It requires a little give and take, or a pricier cruise line that can accommodate the multiple dietary demands that have become common today: low-salt, low-cholesterol, low fat, sugar-free high fiber, gluten free, no nuts, no shellfish, vegetarian, vegan.......... I am surprised HAL does as well as it does, knowing one must deal with storage, supply, display space and exclusive-preparation issues. "Traditional" diet passengers had to give up some of their own favored items in order to provide more space for the emerging specialty diet demands. But is also has given the more "traditional" diet passengers the opportunity to explore more novel items. Giving up freshly made bread was my own biggest loss. But the "gluten contamination" of from-scratch bread baking onboard ended that favored offering, to be replaced with only pre-made frozen dough products. Which are still often very good, but just not over the top good like the former in-house produced bread items. In the past, HAL was far more a "meat and potatoes" cruise ship -more routine midwestern menu choices. Vegetarian did not go much beyond steamed vegetables in those days. The introduction of all the various new dining stations to accommodate new passenger dietary demands is relatively recent. And now critical to the future of cruising.

Tends to be a 24-48 common traveler's affliction. Wash your hands continues to be good advice. CDC has a special page for traveler health precautions for more information about "noro" -- almost a ritual problem in the early days of global travel and known by dozens of often amusing nick names; though not funny at all when it hits.

Make that heavy duty (rare earth) magnets with hooks, for hanging things from either the ceiling or the walls -some walls aren't to magnetic but the ceiling usually is. DH also brings the heavy duty button magnets to hang up maps on the wall too, but they were so strong he almost could not get them off. Same thing for some super-duper hook magnets, that stuck together and we had a heck of time trying to wedge them apart. Almost thought we would ask the ship's machine shop to see if they could do it for us. Magnet hygiene ...who knew? 😵‍💫

This is a great survey of Pacific Ocean stops - Fanning Island and Fakarava were our very favorites on 50 day HAL Tales of the South Pacific. HAL does a good job with the Crossing the Equator ceremonies too. I think you will have a great time - good pick. This might be a good cruise to seek out the "extended balcony" Deck Four verandah cabins - mid ship. Plus as a San Diego RT you don't have to fly out of Papeete, which is the worst possible flight back to the US- the flights typically leave at midnight, the airport has few to no amenities if you have to wait out the time at the airport, and check-in was chaotic. You will avoid all that with this cruise. That its a bonus.