old mike

57 minutes ago, TAD2005 said:

This is a media knee-jerk reaction to the protest incident in Kiel Germany of another HAL ship.   The press loves to "pile on" to make headlines, so for the present, it's open season on HAL ships.   If some passenger throws a plastic straw overboard, it will he headlines around the world.

So very true, once in the spotlight for whatever reason it's hard to escape. The environmental organizations such as Greenpeace, W.W.F the Sierra Club, and the Environmental Defense Fund have become big business and they depend on irrational fear and manipulation to keep their rent seeking activities alive,the dumb journalists in the MSM are their useful idiots. 

The Vancouver vision critical link does not go to their webcam,

try this one  http://webcam.visioncritical.com/

 tad 2005 said

1 hour ago, *Miss G* said:

Natural gas or coal?  Is that still a thing?  I thought most electricity was from hydro or nuclear plants.  I think I’m on a different planet.  lol

Closed cycle or open cycle gas fired turbines are a significant source of dependable power globally, look at  the UK power generation website http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/index.php the CCGT are natural Gas fired generators. there are similar sites for other countries, I have not bothered to list them. 

One of the dirty secrets of those pushing unreliable wind and solar energy is that somewhere on the grid l there has to be a fossil fuel  based generator on standby, one that is capable of being turned up to full capacity quickly when the sun is hidden by clouds or the wind stops blowing. The cost to keep these units on standby should really be a cost that is born by the owners of the so called renewable power source, however it isn't and instead the grid customers pay and they also pay for very generous and unwarranted  subsidies  to the wind and solar power facility owners.The so called renewable energy industry is one of the most corrupt and dishonest assembly of people you could ever wish to not meet.  A typical trick for example is to announce a new wind farm that can power x thousand homes when the reality is that over an extended period the system will only deliver at best 33% of the theoretical KwH's of the claimed nameplate capacity.  Check the cost of electricity in Germany which has one of the highest fractions of wind and solar power in the world.

One the most egregious and somewhat amusing cons by this charming group of industries took place in Spain.

Spain was playing the "virtue signaling game" and had the highest government subsidies for new solar power installations in Europe. An astute  individual noted that the  "solar"  power company was claiming high generation numbers at night? The company had installed a large number of diesel generators which they turned on after sunset.

On 6/11/2019 at 4:51 PM, chengkp75 said:

There are not really any "innovative" propulsion systems, but ships are being built to utilize cleaner fuels.  The newest ships that will be LNG fueled use the same diesels as the ships burning high sulfur residual fuel.  Only the fuel handling equipment changes, but there will still be challenges with LNG until the infrastructure for bunkering ships with this fuel meets the demand the cruise lines are creating.  RCI is experimenting with "fuel cells" on a limited basis, but this again is a long way from being practical for the amount of power a cruise ship needs.

Well said. hydrogen based fuel cells are a technology that has been quoted as being just 5-10 years away from  commercial viability, the problem is that statement has not changed for fifty years, it is like a ships bow wave, never to be caught.

Hydrogen is not a freely occurring  gas and the only truly commercially viable way to produce large quantities is to use steam methane reformation. When the furnace fuel is accounted for It takes 2 SCF of Natural gas to produce 1 SCF of hydrogen, all that has been achieved is to re-locate a carbon dioxide emission from an energy user to a centralized location at great cost not to mention high risk. Anyone who has practical experience knows that hydrogen should not be treated  casually, it's wide flammability limits and exceptionally high flame front propagation speed,  deserve respect.

Based on personal experience I would not want to even be in the same port as a vessel with the potential for a hydrogen leak into an enclosed space.

As a species we found the best way to utilize hydrogen as a fuel source centuries ago, it's called hydrocarbons where the hydrogen atom is combined with and stabilized by carbon atoms. 

Hydrogen Fuel cells of all types, are a pipe dream for general transport. ask anyone who lost their investment in the Ballard fuel cell company debacle, At the time it was trumpeted as the next great revolution in transportation and even mercedes benz  and others who should have known better were taken in by the hype. https://electrek.co/2019/06/11/hydrogen-station-explodes-toyota-halts-sales-fuel-cell-cars/

The problem is we have too many  journalists with zero STEM education and no critical thinking skills who just regurgitate  ideologically motivated rubbish for air time. 

The revelations above by Chengkp 75 point to an actively rotting, self-destructive corporate culture that without intervention will only get worse. The environmental performance is but a window onto the whole rotten edifice. It is inevitable that customers and employees well-being will be subject to unacceptable risks, let me re-phrase that, will continue to be exposed to ever escalating risk.

I'm sorry to say I've experienced this kind of self destructive culture first hand, the turning point came when three fatal incidents occurred over a short four month period, it took extreme measures and tough decision making to reverse the decrepitude, it had to start at the very top and still thirty years later requires constant attention and renewal.

Holding board members and senior executives accountable verbally is one thing, but unless they are made to feel that accountability where it hurts either in their bank accounts or by loss of personal freedom they will continue to rationalize their poor decision making as amply demonstrated by recent performance and they will do whatever they can to isolate themselves from real accountability for operational activities. 

The HAL website just  like their accounting system is steaming full speed astern and has been for over a year now.

At this rate the whole of the HAL IT department will disappear in a cloud of pink slips when the  cash flow dries up due to frustrated customers voting with their wallets.

Well done Orlando, almost single handed destruction of an outstanding corporation. You should learn from how Jeff Bezos handles customer complaints, sending a legitimate e-mail to "Jeff at amazon.com " will get an immediate response from a senior manager within 24 hours. Orlando is too busy looking for celebrity photo opportunities to bother with such mundane matters as customer satisfaction.

On 4/10/2019 at 10:23 AM, dag144 said:

According to Customer Service HAL has a computer glitch which  does not allow the customer service agent to cancel these reservations and refund the charges.  She is not sure when this will be problem will be corrected much less addressed.  She will notify the ship of these cancellations, but given my experience with getting problems corrected with the front desk I though it best to make sure that I do not have to pay the $210.00 in question.

 

I told the customer service rep. that I would put a dispute in with my credit card company.  She had no objections.  If and when the $210.00 is addressed to my satisfaction, I most definitely will cancel my dispute. 

The above sounds like the same "Glitch excuse" that we were told was the reason for our experience on our fall Vancouver to Singapore B2B on the Westerdam. We were on board for about two months and it was the very last night before our account was finally fixed to reflect the credits for our 4 star discounts on pre-purchased items. We were in a Neptune suite so had the services of the concierge, but by the end of the cruise I was fed up with having to show them  hard copies of our pre-purchased alcohol , specialty restaurant meals and excursions not just to receive the owed discount credits but sometimes to actually receive the items in question?

  The final kick in the teeth was that  I  again had to produce  my credit card records to prove to HAL that when pre-purchased items were included we had earned 45 days of credit for on-board spending and not the 3 days they had given us. The whole experience detracted from our enjoyment of the cruise.

HAL has had over 6 months to fix computer glitchs since we sailed out of Vancouver last fall.

I have zero trust in the HAL accounting and IT departments, and I do mean ZERO. Check your on board account carefully, keep your own records  and be prepared to have to have to argue to get what you are owed. We will never pre-purchase anything for our future HAL cruises  our money will stay in our interest earning account until we receive our final on board invoice. 

If they don't clean up their act soon our upcoming fall cruise will be our last with HAL.

yes there are slippers

       We cancelled pre-booked meals and wine packages with no problem

The website seems to be going downhill fast. I noticed recently that both Carnival Corp and HAL both posted jobs for senior systems architects,  maybe a sign that they have realised they are facing some serious IT problems.

We had a price drop after final payment for our fall cruise. We received some OBC and a future cruise credit. Not sure that applies to all but you can only ask. 

Ouch

Curious about the lenses you are using on your Cannon SLR cameras.

That yellow boat reminds me of our visit to the island in the fall of 2017, it was nicknamed the "yellow submarine"as it appeared to spend most of the trip to the island burying it's bow under the waves.  Happy memories, and we'll be doing it again this fall on the Zaandam re-positioning cruise. 

Last fall we also had problems with our mariner point credits for on board spending. We were only given 1 point for a 29 day leg of a B2B. The response we received when we enquired about the deficit, it should have been 19 points, was that we had only spent enough for 1 point. Duh,  I'd challenge anyone to spend less than $600 on a 29 day cruise!! 

The majority of our spending was pre-purchased items, wine packages, spirits, Pinnacle Grill dinners and shore excursions. I had kept copies of all our credit card transactions with HAL so I was able to do some forensic book keeping with transaction reference numbers as supporting evidence. I submitted it to the mariner society and a few weeks later the correct mariner point credits appeared on our mariner status page.

We had a series of issues with our on-board account during the cruise,  at times it was wrong by as much as $1,500,  not just minor stuff. Whilst all the issues were eventually corrected it took weeks before the corrections were applied. We will never pre-purchase anything again as it appears this is where the problems arise.

I have to wonder if the same IT group that continues to destroy the HAL website is actively messing up the HAL enterprise systems.  

If you booked on line or through a HAL PCC you should have received a confirmation e-mail. The pdf file attached to the confirmation e-mail includes the itinerary and via the footnotes on the itinerary it shows which ports of call are tender ports. 

For what it is worth here is our experience in Vancouver from the fall of last year.

As stated above standard boarding time is 11.30.

When we boarded the Westerdam in Vancouver on September 30th it was a three ship day and one of them was the Norwegian Epic. We were not looking forward to what we thought would be a stampede of passengers. We needn't have worried, the Norwegian Epic passengers were handled via an upper level in the terminal and the HAL passengers, the Noordam and the Westerdam, used the "normal" embarkation levels of the terminal.

We had received an e-mail from HAL which advised us not to arrive at the terminal until after 10.30. The expected large number of passengers disembarking was going to keep the longshoremen busy and they would not be available to accept boarding luggage until after 10.30. The scheduled departure time on our boarding pass was a relatively early 3.30, 

We took a walk to the cruise terminal the evening before embarkation to figure out the best route and by chance we met an agent from the company that handles the HAL service contract for Vancouver.  The agent recommended we ignore the e-mail, the longshoremen would have a holding area set up for early luggage and she also told us that US immigration would be open very early, an unheard of time for a Sunday of 8.00 am, in anticipation of the large volume of people to be boarded. 

We took her advice and went over to the terminal at just after 9.00 am, we also arranged for the Hotel to take our suitcases over sometime after 10.30. We walked straight through the US immigration, there was no queue, and we then ended up in a holding area for about 30 minutes before the HAL check in desks opened. Following check in we had another short wait in a holding area. We boarded early just after 11.00 but had to wait in the public areas on board until 11.30 before the cabins were available. We were in a Neptune suite so that meant we were in the first group called to board. 

Cookies, lemonade and water were being served in the holding area after check in. Overall a painless process and it's hard to imagine a happier crowd of people to be in than one composed of those about to embark on an adventure. 

I think CC must have used the same IT support group that HAL used. 

Using those famous words,

"Hi, I'm an IT specialist and I'm here to help you"

8 minutes ago, sppunk said:

Hopefully that happens quickly here.

Hope so too.

Our friends caught one of our Neptune Lounge concierges in a bare faced lie on the penultimate day of our fall Westerdam cruise. It  involved communications to/with the Hotel Manager. We had more than a sense from the Hotel Manager that "correction" would be swift and severe. 

Carol,

I think your comments on the middle level management are spot on, they want to be "a big fish in a small pond". I also think that HAL has some serious management communication problems that need resolution. 

Thank you for your perseverance.

Ask your PC if she has reviewed your request with one of the HAL "Pricing Specialists".  If she hasn't then ask her to do so. 

Had the same issue on the Westerdam. We had a confirmation e-mail from the mariner society with us after reading about Kazu's experience.  It was almost an insult that the staff did not accept the e-mail statement until they had confirmed the statement with the mariner society. It was eventually honoured two weeks later.

We were in a Neptune suite and the lounge concierge service was not even close to the quality we were used to on other HAL ships. A nice smile is good but executing a role sincerely and efficiently is far more important. There was far too much finger pointing to other departments as being the cause of problems. That behaviour always irritates me and is usually a sign of poor management, a "stove piped" organisation and a lack of team building.

1 hour ago, RDC1 said:

The report is a PR stunt, not a true study to determine the actual amount and scope of air quality. 

Plus 1 on that RDC1, see my earlier comments up thread.

The client organisation, stand.earth, are an anti fossil fuel activist environmental group based in Vancouver. They have a long history of duplicity and manipulation, their primary skill is in PR and they are especially skilled in fooling the MSM hacks that pose as journalists today. (There was a similar "study" done by channel 4 in the UK in 2017, they used the same instrument and approach.)

A lot of the funding for the Vancouver based incestuous groups of environmental activists comes from vested interests via the anonymous Tides organisation. See https://fairquestions.*****.com/rethink_campaigns/about-the-author-vivian-krause.html

The published exposure limits and standards for particulates are based on their size and mass per volume of air and not the number of particles. The particle count for a perfectly safe level can vary from 1.2 to 2,400,000 per cc for the particle sizes likely measured.  

Without size distribution, and a host of other parameters, the report is meaningless and I stand by my original comment.  I do not make that statement out of hand or base it on an emotional response but rather on decades of commercial experience in the measurement and reporting of environmental parameters.