polySeraph

I used to see the military credit listed under my OBCs and it’s no longer there so something didn’t happen correctly when I renewed last December. OTOH, there is a record of my having re-verified my eligibility last December. My guess is that SheerID’s database shows my record as having been updated but somehow it didn’t get passed to HAL. ….and like the OP said, it’s not like my previous service in the Navy is going to disappear. I may try calling the Mariner Society’s 800 number tomorrow and see if they can help unravel this. I’ll post back if I can get a resolution.

I originally applied for the military OBC in 12/02/22 and was able to use it on two cruises in 2022. When it came time to renew my eligibility one year later, I was able to successfully renew on 11/30/2023. SheerID even sent me a happy little email saying that my eligibility had been verified successfully. Today, while tidying up loose ends for my upcoming cruise in May (my first cruise since renewing my status), I asked my (big box) travel agent to call HAL and ensure that my military OBC and my husband's AARP OBC were applied to the cruise. To make a long story short, I was told that HAL had nothing attached to my mariner number showing that I was eligible for the military OBC. The HAL agent told my agent that all I needed to do was re-verify, wait 3 days, and then call back to get the military OBC applied. That didn't sound right to me but hey, what did I know? Just now, I resubmitted all my info (again) and the immediate response was that I had already applied and been verified. So, clearly there was a record of my eligibility having been verified successfully (attached to my mariner number) somewhere in a database somewhere in HAL. So what should I do next? Wait 3 days and call my TA again? Cry into my gluten-free beer?

Thanks! This is good news. We enjoyed the Petroleum Museum and (weirdly enough) the Sardine Museum on a previous visit to Stavanger and were looking forward to doing it again. We thought Stavanger was very walkable but, hey, the Ho-Ho Bus works as well. Enjoy the rest of your cruise!

Hi, I’ve really enjoyed your review. I’ll be visiting Norway aboard the Rotterdam in July so I’ve been taking good notes. Thank you for all the great info! Could you tell me a little more about how you got to Stavanger from Sandnes? You said you took a bus…. Did you book the bus through HAL? Did the bus go all the way to Stavanger? The reason I’m asking is because the only shuttle I can see on HAL’s shore excursions page for my itinerary goes from the pier to the tourist information site in Sandnes and HAL hasn’t been exactly forthcoming with how we are actually supposed to get to Stavanger. Any details you could provide would be greatly appreciated!

A hearty thanks for the suggestions to "aggressively click the credit card box. This morning I positioned my cursor over the grayed-out credit card box and repeatedly clicked with all my might. After a couple of seconds of this, the pop-up box appeared telling me I had 15 minutes to input the information and I was able to input the credit card info to pay for the shore excursions. I used Edge as my browser.