LAFFNVEGAS

Thanks so much Everyone!!! This is a first for many things for this cruise, first time to sail out of NYC, first time to Bermuda, first time on this NCL ship.

We are sailing in a Haven Suite but rather than actually be in the Haven proper we are on a different deck where the one bedroom Haven Suites are larger in Sq Ft and larger balcony Sq Ft plus price slightly less so wanted to check it out.We cannot wait for some of our favorite restaurants and food 😁 especially breakfast in Haven Restaurant Lobster Thermidor Le Bistro.

Love this itinerary!!! Have a Wonderful Cruise!!! 

Lots of opinions here and of course you will hear all favoring Holland America over NCL.

We are 5 Star with Holland America most recent HAL cruise was in December, then previous November and previous to that August. We are Sapphire with NCL but our last NCL was February of 2023 but in 12 days will be boarding NCL Joy. HAL and NCL are our 2 favorite cruise lines.

My view of both lines may not be the same as most because we cruise Haven on NCL and 95% of the time Suites on HAL. But even if we did not sail in Haven for NCL my take on them would probably be the same. For Food we only eat in the Specialty Dining on NCL, that is where they shine. They have always been consistent from ship to ship with what they serve. If you are one that does not want to spend the extra for specialty then possibly the food quality has gone down hill in the main dining room but then so has HAL. Our November cruise on Koningsdam was honestly one of the worst cruises we have ever had for over all food in 60+ cruises but HAL redeemed themselves when we cruised on Nieuw Statendam in December. And there lies the problem with HAL they are extremely inconsistent. One ship can be great, then next not so much. Overall I like the buffet better on NCL. NCL also offers more non pay options and places to eat  at all hours, Holland America does not. There is no Local on HAL and the buffet closes very early in the evening, then does not reopen with very limited items for about an hour at 10:30 at night.

Entertainment...I know that is actually a sore subject for both lines. NCL had always been far better than Holland America but with NCL going cheap on shows it is not good for them but HAL is still not good. Some nights it will be hard to even find something to do unless you can get to one of the lounges early and camp out for a chair. At least with NCL there is several things going on at the same time with much larger venues that for the most part is easier to find a seat.

Stateroom accommodations over all HAL staterooms are larger with more amenities but I find the regular staterooms on Koningsdam, Nieuw Statendam and Rotterdam to not be nearly as nice as the older ships and the space and balconies are much smaller.

Comparing Crew, this is where I feel they are tied, it was odd you mentioned that Officers were not out and about on NCL because that has been happening with HAL for several years and my previous NCL cruises I thought Officers were more approachable. I may find in 2 weeks that has changed. Over All crew for both I find to be extremely friendly and felt they are very similar. 

As stated if you can before you commit to a long expensive voyage I would try to do a quick 7 day cruise on Holland America or at least before you have to make final payment on the long cruise. And preferably on the same ship or same class of ship you are looking at with HAL to get a feel of what HAL is all about. If this was 15+ years ago I would say that HAL and NCL had far more in common than not with the exception of when they started up with the Free Style Dining which was about 18 or 19 years ago. 

Overall we like both cruise lines, and after our upcoming NCL we will be back on HAL for August, then November on NCL Bliss. 🙂

I have had the salmon on HAL several times, usually though just in Alaska and I do agree it is pretty good but was more than likely previously frozen and probably Atlantic Salmon but of very good quality. With that being said the Salmon Bake being offered and I have attended twice the first in 2004 and probably again in 2009 was more than likely frozen salmon. There is no way doing these salmon bakes from late April till October that those tour operators can provide FRESH Salmon. I will say that I did enjoy them but both times knew they had to been previously frozen especially because they were extremely dry and very small pieces. It was fun doing the salmon bake the first time we did it in Juneau and then later did it as part of our Whale watch that was on an island not far from Auke Bay. It was nice to have done it once but the prices seem to be so much more now that I agree you may enjoy what you would be served on the ship much more.

11 hours ago, Haljo1935 said:

My TA has also said they had to call HAL to finalize guft fard payments. Says they can enter them in the system, but the payment doesn't flow through to HAL; that part requires a call.

I can tell you it was done just yesterday with 6 AARP gift cards with absolutely no problems. It was also done with several others last week and no problems.

3 hours ago, ChinaShrek said:

Yes, my TA notified me that they have to call when making a payment with a Gift Card with HAL. She also said it makes more work for them. LOL

Not sure why your TA cannot do this in POLAR, TA's definitely do not need to call in the Gift Cards. The only reason would be that they have not tried recently or they are not attempting to do it. They need to start it like a credit card payment but in the drop down box mark gift card. Absolutely no reason to call into HAL which in itself is extremely painful lol.

It was not just end of the month, it can be at any time as stated. I caught 3 different sailings changed in the middle of March. They did usually change late in the evening. It truly works on supply and demand and the algorithm. Although if they are also getting ready to change to a new promotion they do always raise the prices one to three days prior to adjust/pay for the new promotion. 

3 minutes ago, POA1 said:

By the way, she's planning to try to get the key lime pie as her dessert at PG lunch #2, an Idea that I believe she got from you.

Hopefully it will be as good as it was on the  Nieuw Statendam 

Enjoy and Safe travels on the next segment of the Volendam!!

Hi Brian and Michelle, I am just getting caught up today with CC, will look forward to following along. It's another 2 weeks till our next adventure but that will be out of the Big Apple on NCL.

At any rate love following along on your adventures but something that caught my eye and maybe I missed it but I definitely do not remember the upcharge Lobsters for Pinnacle Lunch, I vaguely remember it said the Lobster Roll but not the entree of 2 small lobsters....interesting.

Enjoy your cruise!!

Wishing Everyone Safe Travels on their Upcoming cruises!! 

4 hours ago, ger_77 said:

Good morning, thanks for the Fleet Report and Daily!  Diabetes and epilepsy are two diseases that should be recognized, as they affect so many people.  I think we all hope to live long and prosper.  Jonas Salk's vaccine saved many from the ravages of polio.  Our friend got polio before it became available and sadly, now suffers from post-polio syndrome.

 

First thing I saw this morning on my news feed is the bridge collapse in Baltimore - oh my gosh, how awful!  The latest is that it is still a search and rescue, but realistically the water and air temperatures are such that any chance of finding anyone alive are exceedingly slim.  Prayers for all involved, the victims and the first responders who will do their utmost to find people.  

 

It's a cool one again this morning; although the sun is shining, we have a strong wind bringing the wind chill factor to -25C (-13F).  For what it's worth, we heard a crow the other day, and DH said yesterday he heard the finches back in the spruce tree beside our bedroom.  Better remember to fill the feeders so they have something to keep themselves warm over the next week or so until the temperatures smarten up.  Spring on the "frozen tundra" is like that.

 

@kazuthank you for your beautiful photos of Maverick - what a gorgeous creature he was.  I can see why you loved him so much.

@Seasick SailorI'm sorry Allen's test results weren't great yesterday; prayers for better health to come his way soon.  He's just so fortunate to have you as his wife and health advocate.

Extending Happy Anniversary wishes to @LAFFNVEGASLisa and Tom as they celebrate 47 years of marriage today!

 

Today will be spent with a little more tidying up around the house, getting it ready for the family's arrival later in the week.  I'm also going to pack up and deliver the blankets I've made over the past couple of months; I haven't counted them yet, but I'm thinking there are at least 25 in this bunch.  I've always got one on the go so I have something to do while watching TV in the evenings.

 

I'd like to try the drink of the day - I think it would be quite refreshing.  The wine?  Yikes!  Sure, if someone offered me a glass I'd take it, but unless I win the lottery, there won't be a bottle sitting at our table any time soon.  Not sure about the menu suggestion, as it looks like a lot of work just for the 2 of us; I'm all about fast and easy.  While making some space in the freezer the other day I found a container of beef stew that is currently thawing in the fridge and will be heated up for us to enjoy with some fresh-bought crusty buns at the kitchen table tonight.  And wine.

 

Prayers for everyone who is in need, in pain, in grief, and in turmoil.  Cheers to all with celebrations happening today.

 

Smooth Sailing!  ☺️☺️☺️
Gerry 

 

Thanks so much Gerry 🥰

30 minutes ago, Roz said:

 

Silly me, I'm one of those people. 😁

 

HAL has been coming up with some unique, longer itineraries, which I appreciate now that I'm retired.  Those types of cruises would appeal less to families due to the higher cost and time away.  But maybe I'm entirely wrong about this.  

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. 

16 hours ago, TRLD said:

Actually the problem is most likely to surface in the period 1-3 weeks before the cruise date when they assigning all of the guaranteed cabins.

 

This is not a case of a large party being able to request a specific cabin and get someone bumped out of it upon request.  This is when you have a number of 3-4 size parties with guarantee booking and the cruise line needs to find a cabin to put them in.

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. 

Wishing Everyone sailing this next week a wonderful FUN cruise!!🌞

Wishing you a wonderful FUN cruise!!! 🍸

4 minutes ago, Menocchio said:

Yeah. I was wrong. That's a substantial number of cabins held back. Wonder if they'll open them up if the big parties fail to show up closer to sailing. 

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. 

3 hours ago, cruisemom42 said:

In the last 12 months or so, I've watched with increasing dismay some of the questionable practices launched by the cruise industry under the umbrella of greater profitability. 

 

Personally, I've thought for years that the cruise contract gives cruise lines way too much latitude at the expense of customer rights. I'm no lawyer -- but have heard it opined by others who are -- that some of those clauses really should be challenged as there are such things as consumer rights and protections. However, as long as people keep booking and the lines sail full, I very much doubt there is any likelihood we'll see change.

 

As a solo passenger, welcome to my world. Some cruise lines (not HAL, at least not in my experience) won't even let solos book cabins on certain cruises -- not even at a full supplement. Some won't let solos book Guarantee cabins. Others, like Celebrity are aggressively making solos feel unwelcome in other ways -- such as charging way ABOVE 200% supplement if they want to book. As an example, a good (on CC) friend who's sailed Celebrity solo for years wanted to book a cruise later this spring on X. For a cabin that was listed as $1099 per person, double occupany, she was quoted a rate of $5500 for a solo....

 

 

 

 

 

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.

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.

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.

16 minutes ago, richwmn said:

Isaac Newton once famously said, 'If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.'

 

Y’all have said some very nice things about me today, and I am truly honored. But, to be very honest, the Daily would not exist without the foundation provided by @LAFFNVEGASLisa and I believe @luvstotrvl, who provided the information before me.

 

Like those before me, my original intention was just to post the location of the fleet each day, and that lasted, according to @rafinmd Roy’s post, just short of a year. Then the world was thrown into chaos. The ships were all over the place, trying to find a safe harbor. At the time, I was just trying to provide a little content to keep the report interesting. I believe Roy has a list somewhere that chronicles when each feature was added, I’ve written it down a couple of times but never can find it.

 

In addition, this thread would not be what it is without the daily efforts of what is lovingly called ‘the Food and Beverage Department’. That would be @dfish Debi, @cat shepardAnn, and @summer slope Dixie who manage to come up with descriptions of whatever I happen to come up with for a meal, a wine, and a drink of the day. We also have @StLouisCruisers Sandi who does the pictures and descriptions of the ports each day. Again we have Roy who is currently posting the fleet maps, and also started the Care List, currently maintained by @JazzyV Vanessa. We also have @kazu Jacqui who is a constant backup, and each of the people who have taken over for the various prime posters during the times that we are lucky enough to be on a cruise.

 

It would be impossible to thank individually each Cruise Critic member who has ever posted on one of the Daily threads so please accept my thanks for their contribution to these threads.

 

I also thank those who I have met and have been privileged to be on a cruise with.

 

 

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. 

On 3/9/2024 at 7:32 PM, Host Jazzbeau said:

Thanks for the continuing thread and this last report.

 

(1) Do you find the Barbados airport better organized than SXM?

 

(2) Not to quibble, but I couldn't interpret this:  "MIA airport ... 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."

 

Does this mean that you did get to use TSA Pre as an arriving passenger?  We have Global Entry and usually find that facial recognition speeds us straight through the immigration and customs process when returning on an international flight.

 

(3) We are booked on our first Windstar cruise next January (Star Pride).  Looking at their itineraries I see that Wind Surf and Star Pride seem to share the Caribbean.  Have you sailed on Star Pride, and if so how do you compare it to Wind Surf?  [I'm thinking we would need a Suite on Surf, because the Staterooms (188sf) look very cramped.  We are in a Balcony on Pride (277sf)]

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.   

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!!!

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.

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.