debsea

Have been in line at the Terminal for an hour now. People have been here for 2-3 hours and no-one has been allowed to board yet. 

Hallelujah! So happy HAL is taking a step to keep up with their competition.

Medoc and Medipac both offer travel medical insurance to Canadians that cover you for COVID. They don't cover any expenses if you have to cancel your cruise before you embark due to COVID, but they do cover all medical costs related to a COVID infection while traveling.

I miss the extravagant floral arrangements, the variety of live music in different venues, especially the strings playing in the dining room on formal nights!!!  I miss the extensive menu, the exquisite presentation of desserts, the dining room decorated with seat covers and the banners of the country visited that day. I miss that the concierge in the Neptune Lounge is no longer an officer. 

Realistically though, HAL has to compete with the mainstream cruising market because HAL is not a luxury line, and HAL's prices are about half, not withstanding inflation, of what they were when I started cruising this line in 1995.

I would just take a cab. It's a 10-15 minute ride, depending on traffic.

We booked our July 21st Maasdam cruise in March and received our cabin assignment last week (three weeks before departure).

We are regular HAL cruisers and are looking forward to our second Celebrity cruise this December. Both are excellent products. We are sailing Celebrity again because we are traveling with extended family, including young people, and the broader demographic is appealing. Also, the suites on Celebrity are far superior to HAL. Celebrity's standard cabins and balcony cabins, even Concierge Class, in my opinion, are extremely small. While we have had food ranging from good to excellent on HAL cruises, I would class the food on our first Celebrity cruise as only "good." And I much prefer the selection on the Lido buffet to the equivalent (I don't remember the name of the deck) on Celebrity. The onboard charges for specialty restaurants, alcohol, purchased for cabin consumption as well as cocktails and wine in the dining room and lounges are significantly higher on Celebrity. I love Celebrity's non-smoking policy, although, except for the casino, we have never really had a problem on HAL. HAL's beds are more comfortable, but I think they're the best in the industry. I absolutely love HAL's teak wrap-around deck, and that was probably what I missed most on Celebrity. I also missed the fresh flowers throughout the ship, the wooden steamer chairs with cushions (aluminum and plastic just aren't the same), and I did miss the comprehensive navigational report from the bridge each day at noon. The Celebrity Millennium definitely felt more like a floating hotel than any HAL ship I've been on. For these reasons, I don't subscribe to the view that they are equal products, but both provide great vacation experiences, and I don't think you can go wrong with either one.