br111

Nothing else new from on board, we’re crawling at 8 knots (but that seems to be a function of us not wanting to get to Fort Lauderdale early, as opposed to the azipod issue since we were chugging along at 16 knots earlier on just one pod). 

And LocoLoco1, haven’t met anyone staying on for the next leg. There are so few on board not sure how many there would be. These days, maybe doing a B2B with nearly identical itineraries is the best way to actually visit all the scheduled ports if you’re lucky!

Yeah, I’m assuming my AAA membership doesn’t apply.

Captain just said that they’re unable to repair at sea - but they’ve located the part in Fort Lauderdale and we’ll be arriving at 7am on Sunday. He said they also kept the speed up for a while until he knew what the repair situation was (maybe he was trying to arrive early if it was a complicated repair?? It was unclear) but now that they’ve located the part, he’s dialing back the speed so we arrive at 7am as scheduled. 
 

And no testing in Cartagena, which was a surprise to me given what’s happened to previous ships.

HAL is giving everyone $100 non-refundable onboard credit and is currently throwing a pool party with free drinks and a raffle, so they’re handling it well. Especially since the COVID cancellations weren’t really within their control and I think we all pretty much expected at least SOMETHING to go awry given the current situation. 
 

I will say, though, that they could do a better job at separating people at tables in the dining room and Lido and in the theater. (No seats are blocked off anywhere, for example.)

Greetings from the 11 Day Panama Canal Sunfarer on board Eurodam!

First, let me say that the first half of the cruise went off without a hitch - we got into HMC, Aruba, Curaçao and even surprisingly  Cartagena without a problem. The captain said it was only the second time they were allowed to call in Cartagena. 
 

The only sign of COVID was the absence of the cruise director and one of the dancers (both have subsequently returned). 
 

Then, around 10pm the day before the partial canal transit, a letter was slipped under our doors cancelling all shore excursions because the Panamanian authorities had suddenly required all guests going ashore to be tested which was impossible with such short notice. Upside, though, was getting to see us transit through the canal both directions which was pretty amazing!
 

We did notice, though, that a Norwegian ship had managed to dock in Colon, raising the question if the testing requirement was perhaps related to the number of cases on board Eurodam specifically. Suspicions were further raised that night at 8pm when the Captain announced that due to “some” COVID cases being discovered among passengers and crew, Costa Rica was not allowing us to dock the next day. 
 

So, plan was for a day at sea and then to add Cozumel today. At least that WAS the plan until the Captain just came on this morning at 9am and said that overnight there had been “multiple failures” on the starboard azipod and despite working through the night, it is completely inoperable. So now operating with just the port azipod, we’re doing 16 knots and headed for Fort Lauderdale, still planning to arrive as scheduled on Sunday. Unless of course the port azipod goes down in which case I assume we break out the oars.

Fingers crossed for those boarding on Sunday. There was no further mention of how serious a fix is involved. 

Despite all of this, we’ve had a great time. There are only 659 passengers on board so it’s almost like a private yacht and the crew could not be more friendly or helpful.

Happy to answer any questions and will update if we get any further info on the Azipod for the benefit for those boarding. 

Hi Kevin,

Thanks again for all your insights - hope the rest of your cruise continues to be uneventful! We're taking your place on the Eurodam on Wednesday (just got our negative test results!) and were wondering if you had any special tips for sailing in these crazy Covid times. Any suggestions for trying to avoid crowds or Covid? 🙂 (Although I'm hoping the passenger count will be low enough to help with the crowds, at least!)

Any idea how many positive cases you're dealing with on board?

Thanks!!

We too are scheduled for the Jan. 26 departure, so really appreciate your insights. Fingers crossed everything goes as planned!

Same here - started late last night. Finally just deleted it and reinstalled it from the App store and works fine now.

Good to know! Glad to hear everything seems to be going well! Thanks!

Sorry to slightly hijack this thread, but we're on Eurodam on the Jan. 26 11 day partial canal transit. A question for @Gail & Marty sailing away who I see are on this week - was any testing required on board for the canal transit? It seems only required for full transits, but just wondering if that is a surprise that awaits us!

Thanks for your experiences! We've already pre-paid all of our excursions, so if they apply it to another excursion then I wonder if they would refund the cost of the new excursion it's applied to back to your credit card? Clearly this must happen pretty regularly (especially now) so it's good to know the on-board folks have a procedure.

I've been following this very closely since we have a partial canal transit scheduled on our late-January cruise. For anyone else wondering, it does SEEM that it is only for full transits. The Princess FAQ on their site about when they test on board, for example, says they do it only for longer cruises and full panama canal transits. There is also a a HAL Eurodam sailing currently underway scheduled for a partial transit on Jan. 12 and as of this morning (1/9) they hadn't been told of any testing yet.

We're still planning to take our chances and get on Eurodam later this month. We have the "Have it All" promotion and have used that to pay for our shore excursions in Cartagena. Well, now it's looking pretty likely that we'll make that port given their new restrictions. Obviously when that happens to an excursion paid in cash, they just refund it to your form of payment. But does anyone know how the handle a refund when it was "paid" for with your HIA credit?

Hi @jersey42 - thanks for the info. We're on that same itinerary at the end of January (Eurodam partial canal transit) and are very interested in how things are going on your trip - could you let us know if there ends up being any testing for the canal? Although I assume it would have happened by now if they were  going to do it. According to the FAQs on Princess' site, on-board testing is only required for FULL canal transits (even though that is from Princess, I'm assuming Panama's policies would apply to everyone).

Sorry that you missed Cartagena, it seems like all the lines are having the same issues with the testing. I read one post that they were requiring not only 72-hour PCR testing but also some amount of testing as guest disembarked which would obviously be logistically complicated. 

Thank you so much for posting your experiences! And so sorry this is happening to you. Like many here, we have a reservation later this month and are trying to make that impossible cost/benefit analysis of cancelling or not. 

On the food, the other couple in quarantine (now out) seemed to have been able to order from the specialty restaurants as well. In the unlikely event you haven't seen it, here's a link to their thread that others have mentioned if you want to see how your experiences compare:

https://boards.cruisecritic.com/topic/2821111-anyone-knows-what-quarantine-is-like-on-board/

Thanks for all your reports! Is the testing being done specifically because of the canal do you know? Or due to that and the length of the cruise? We're on a partial transit on Eurodam later this month and trying to figure out if we'll be tested too. Upside is that it's obviously good for the ship as a whole (and probably what every ship should be doing at least during Omicron). But it would seem pretty nerve-wracking too! I wonder how many asymptomatic people the mass-testing will catch.

Let us know if there's any info on how many positives come back!

Hi - quick question if you don't mind - was your testing done specifically because of you canal transit? Or is this a standard thing these days? Are you being tested just once during the cruise or multiple times? I can imagine this would be a somewhat stressful experience!

Thanks! Will be waiting to see how this goes!

Ahhh - thanks. I saw conflicting info for your itinerary when I was looking online. When do you actually transit? (Wondering how far in advance they're testing.) Thanks again for this first-hand info!

Wow... Thanks for posting! This seems to be a rare case in which EVERYONE on board a ship is tested. Not that we'll probably ever know, but it would be very interesting to find out how many test positive, given that this could easily pick up a large number of asymptomatic passengers that would be missed by the usual "test only if there are symptoms" policy. And that would mean a lot more people in quarantine.

Please let us know if there is any intel on the overall numbers on board!

Is the itinerary I'm seeing online correct that you're doing a partial transit on Jan. 9? (Asking because we're booked on Eurodam on the 26th and wondering what to expect.) Thanks!!

5 hours ago, travelbug615 said:

We are on the Rotterdam as well, 13 night itinerary for us, with two visits to Half Moon Cay.  If the PCR test is required, I beleive HAL would have to cancel Half Moon Cay as it would be too hard/expensive to test everyone  with a PCR.   

I  believe I have read that HAL has cancelled other ports when the port call was mid cruise and the port wanted a 2 day prior to port AG test for everyone, which would require on board AG testing of all passengers.

 I am trying to figure out the impossible, i.e.  what are the chances of actually visiting each port of call on our intinerary?    It would  be nice to know if anyone was keeping tabs on the number/percentage of port calls that have been cancelled in the last week and being able to watch if the percentage of cancel port calls is rapidly rising or staying constant.  

For those trying to get a handle on how bad the port diversions have been in general, the blog that follows Royal Caribbean closely reported that RCI said in an investor update last week that to date it has "cancelled or significantly modified 16 destination calls out of 331." - But I didn't see exactly what timeframe that refenced.

And, as sad as this is, no matter what the PLANNED occupancy is, my guess is that there will be a fair number of pax who test positive two days prior and therefore won't be able to sail, given the high positivity rates of testing these days.

From elsewhere on Cruisecritic, it seems that Carnival has also changed their cancellation policy, at least for cruises through Jan. 14. to allow for a full refund. Given that Carnival and HAL share the same parent company, it seems plausible that the new HAL cancel policy mentioned earlier in this thread is legit.

Plus, it would make sense (at least from a health perspective, if not a financial one) for any cruise line to reduce their passenger counts as much as possible for the next few weeks.

See this thread on the Carnival board: "New Email From Carnival - Change of Ports, Masks, Full Refunds" here's a link to the email from Carnival mentioned in that thread:

https://view.carnivalcruiselineemail.com/?qs=c77e5e59b973f05d6f00c504624fd9e5869118035a3e1bb51b366f486e2b52b2c2974004e651f67c5c9155010fc2be39b45b57c3e2aa413769fa228920330f790020b0dd52048f6f8afe493fe3b5f157

Good to know! I had visions of trying to avoid being within six feet of any other human on board to avoid the possibility of being identified as a close contact and being immediately isolated.

Thanks again for all your posts - it's so helpful to have first-hand info!

Thanks for the info - interesting that they're not isolating the folks travelling with you, although certainly good that they tested negative. I thought some lines are also isolating close contacts regardless of testing, although I assume that could quickly yield unmanageable numbers of people to isolate.

So sorry this happened on your vacation. And to have to leave a Neptune suite on top of it! 😞

Thanks for sharing your story! We sail on Eurodam in late January and the thought of this happening has obviously crossed my mind! Do you know, by chance, how they're handling "close contacts"? I'm wondering how they're defining "close contacts" (being near someone at a show? sharing a shore excursion bus? etc.) since other than testing positive, that would be the other obvious way of ending up in quarantine.

Hope you stay healthy and thank you on behalf of everyone for doing the right thing! Maybe with the new CDC guidance of only isolating for five days there's the possibility of getting out of jail after symptoms subside.

Another option would be to have a test-at-home test with you, such as the one from Emed:

https://www.emed.com/

Just note, though, that the test must be one of the at-home tests that is supervised by a medical professional (done via a videochat on your phone) for it to be acceptable. For a cruise last month, I got tested at CVS with no problem, but boy did I feel better having one of these at-home tests ready to go as a backup!