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LAFFNVEGAS

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    Cruising NCL,HAL & PCL
  • Favorite Cruise Line(s)
    NCL, HAL & PCL
  • Favorite Cruise Destination Or Port of Call
    Japan

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  1. No, you are not wrong, HAL wants their Cake and to eat it too 😀 The cruises that are 10 or less days or cruises over and near Holidays they are going into overdrive to sell to family group. Prices are higher than they have ever been but family groups tend to not be as concerned for prices which is what HAL likes. HAL is still going to also sell the longer exotic itineraries and in looking at those itineraries I am not seeing the restrictions they are giving on not offering the triple and quads for for the shorter cruises. Where I am seeing it being very obvious is on the Pinnacle Class Ships, I am not seeing it at all on the S class ships or the longer voyages of Vista Class. I did find it on some sailings of the Signature Class.
  2. I have to disagree with your assumption, as of right now and has always been HAL will NOT sell a guarantee cabin for a triple or quad so the assigning of staterooms at 1 to 3 weeks would not apply. It actually would happen much further out from the sailing when HAL has a request from either a TA or their own PCC with a group wanting several cabins with staterooms that need 3 and 4 passengers. Often a family group wants 3 to 6 cabins all close to each other or connecting. In the past going back many years this was done once in a while. Now HAL is encouraging and accommodating these types of requests. These types of requests happens most often close to final payment but not 1 to 3 weeks from sailing. As a side note Princess has been doing this since prior to the shutdown without informing their passengers even if marked do not upgrade. HAL is aggressively wanting family type groups and will do what they can to bring these small groups on board.
  3. This is my understanding that after final it will open up but many like to book well in advance as well as the better promotions with pre paid crew incentive are well in advance. I see where this concept will work for Royal Caribbean, Disney and Carnival but not sure that it is the way to go for HAL, Princess and Celebrity. Totally different demographics. Celebrity start this bit of charging 400%++ for single supplement and just this week added a new promo that was for single pricing that is appearing to be closer to what it use to be right at 200%, one I saw was actually at 180%. I think they started to see lots of lost sales. We can only hope that HAL will also see their mistake in this in the next few months when cruise sales drop.
  4. I have not read every comment in this thread but wanted to comment on this because this is exactly what is happening, it is really terrible with the single price gouging. But I just saw a single price an hour ago for X and saw that there was a special price code for single supplement that was not showing yesterday. The pricing was more in line with the 200% and not the 300% to 500% that X has been doing the last several months. Another thing that that cruise line with the really big ships is doing they may have 19 Junior Suites available all have occupancy of 3 to 4 and they absolutely will not sell a cabin to a couple even if there is a triple cabin in their party booking. Interestingly enough Carnival has been doing something very similar to this for over 10 years now. Disney is also going this route. Basically they want to fill these ships up to max capacity, have as many passengers they can paying paying crew incentive (remember 3rd and 4th are not included in Have It All Plus). Right now the only cruise line I am aware of that is not pulling this is Norwegian Cruise Lines.
  5. This is a picture I found of the aft on the Noordam, the the balconies are covered and are all close to the same size. They are for the most part smaller than those of the other Vista Class Ships. More like Nieuw Amsterdam or Eurodam.
  6. I will say you really cannot compare Oosterdam to the Noordam especially on the aft, side cabins are similar but Oosterdam was built totally different with more tiered aft facing balconies, then after Noordam came out they added more cabins and changed how the balconies that were facing aft for decks 6, 7 and 8.Decks 5 and 3 remained the same for Zuiderdam, Oosterdam and Westerdam. Noordam they totally made the aft different and more chopped off for the aft facing staterooms. The Deck 5 of the Vista Class always had the more sq ft o balcony space, that totally changed when they built the Noordam.
  7. Rich, I will further the history a bit. I started the Where’s the Fleet in 2005 or 2006, I had just started doing the Web Cam Wave from the Oosterdam out of San Diego. Because we frequented that ship became good friends with the Hotel Manager James Deering who actually encouraged me to start the Where’s The Fleet, he provided me with a pdf file for the fleet, he and other HAL Officers assisted in getting me this for several years. what is nice is that Tom and I are still good friends with James Deering and were able to sail with him last week where he is the Hotel General Manager on Windstar Wind Surf. Just over 30% of Officers and Crew on that ship are former HAL employees including the Captain. It really felt like being on HAL 18 years ago.
  8. Let me try to answer your question, 1. I cannot compare Barbados airport to SXM since I have never flown into Barbados, But over all the St Maarten airport is a bit disorganized I think. We flew American airlines and there were no signs to where the American Airlines check in counter was till about 2 hours prior to checking in and no sign priority but it ended up there was but no signage of having it. 2. I agree I have never ever been able to use our TSA check in when coming in from another country with the exception of flying in from Canada. Although I have heard you also can do it in Ireland but the MIA airport was crazy busy with lots of delays. After claiming our luggage from the St Maarten to MIA flight we dropped off our luggage to check back in, that was easy but then we have to go through TSA and no there is no TSA Precheck but the lines was so long that it appeared was taking well over an hour and one of the TSA people came up to the people just in front of us and said the rest of you go through this other gate 4 into the main terminal and go through TSA through the main terminal. So we did, we went down to TSA Precheck 1 near all the American Priority check in counters and totally by passed the very long line of regular TSA. We got very lucky. 3. We have not sailed on Star Pride so I cannot compare but we are suite cruisers, . On Holland America we usually have a Neptune Suite or a Signature Suite, Or we sail NCL in the Haven, for this cruise we were in a category AX forward deck 2. No balcony but oddly we did not miss not having a balcony and the stateroom was actually roomy with so much space we did not use it all. The bathroom also was nicely laid out. The shower was fantastic with instant hot water, great shower head and the most water pressure I have ever felt on a ship. Possibly more than my home shower. We booked again to cruise on Wind Surf for September 2025 for same category.
  9. Well the cruise has ended and we are traveling home. SXM St Maarten airport was as I expected confusion with little to no signage. Flight did leave on time and we got in on time, but the MIA airport was extra busy and lots of wrong information as to which luggage carousel then the need to recheck bags and long lines of TSA , the lines were so long they sent a bunch of us into the main terminal but since had TSA pre check we left caked out not doing it like they normally do. Normally coming in from an International location you do not get to use your TSA Precheck. The down side now is our out going flight was to leave at 7:10 it’s now not leaving till 9:10. Its been a long exhausting day much like how our journey started. We had a wonderful week on Wind Surf, definitely would do again. We booked Surf for September 2025 out of Venice while on board . We heard many say they would now only sail small ship, while I love the small ship I still love all cruising and look forward for our next cruise in 5 weeks on the NCL Joy. We loved everything about Wind Surf, thought the ship was in great ship for her age, food and service were excellent. I think the only flight down side is no sea days on this itinerary and way too much tendering. That was a bit exhausting. But everything thing else was great!!!
  10. A late what’s for dinner but a combination, we ate in Stella with James but could order off with Amphora or Stella so we had a little of both What a great way to end the week. It was so great great to be with James Deering who we have known for over 18 years. James had the Duck Salad , I had the Roquefort Salad and Tom had the Caesar Salad, James had Scallops dish , I also had scallops but added on the Lobster from Amphora and Tom had the Prime Rib from Amphora with Lobster , we all had Creme Brulee and a lot of Champagne and wine 😉😁😂 It was an amazing end to a wonderful week on the Windstar Wind Surf.
  11. Got off the ship and tendered into St. Barths, very hot and humid today. Lots of very high end stores. Tom did find a T-shirt he liked but not in his size so we just passed on spending any money they stated the were $39 euros, yes it’s also very expensive here. Lots and lots of fancy ships and sail boats.
  12. Sadly we end tomorrow in St Maarten, there is a stateroom we could get last minute to stay on another week but logically will not work especially with the first class air we upgraded to . We cruise in 5 weeks on NCL Joy in the Haven to Bermuda so it not like we do not have a cruise coming soon.
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