Horizon chaser 1957

On 4/20/2024 at 9:29 AM, PDsquare said:

I checked HALs site this morning and there are still about 60-ish cabins left on the cruise. I, myself, have received three paid upgrade offers to go from an obstructed to an unobstructed OV for $149 pp. Not worth it to me. I’ve noticed that all suites and lanais are unavailable. 
 

I feel good about my friend’s chances at getting on board. If she does, this will be a tremendous value for a solo cabin. Her original quoted price was around $1500 all in. 

To be continued…

As a heads up, the appearance of 60-ish cabins left on the website can be deceiving. Supposing they have 10 cabins unsold and 50 cabins booked at the lower price guarantee rate.  The website will show all 60 cabins that aren’t specifically assigned to someone paying to select their cabin. Once those 10 vacancies are taken, sales close. The remaining 50 cabins no one specifically chose are assigned to the guarantees. 

2 hours ago, TRLD said:

Except they are not doing that every sailing  Certainly have not done it on any of my recent sailings  Just as they do not take over Skywalkers on Princess.

 

They do have 1 or 2 sailings per year where they invite their best customers, offer "special" showings, usually gave one of the artists whose works they carry on board for presentations. During those sailing then yes they do take over space for their private events. In this case Crows Nest for 5 hours. A good portion of which is after dark. Same as they do Skywalkers on Princess when they do the same on that line.

OK, thanks for clarifying. That was not made clear, and I was already donning battle gear for my fall cruise on Oosterdam.😂

The thing is, Park West is NOT a specialty group taking over ONE cruise. They are the company with the art contract for EVERY SAILING. If they paid big bucks to bring lots of people aboard and took over everything for one sailing, so be it. To let one of their contract service providers shut down the Crows Nest every evening of every sailing is a different thing entirely.

Good morning, all! I have almost been to Scarborough, but weather kept us from docking so it was not to be. We have one last day on the island. Our spring cleanup is finally done (almost) and our neighbour is coming over for a bbq tonight. Then tomorrow we’re off to the mainland. My sister and BIL are staying with us there before they fly off to Athens for a Regent cruise. Meanwhile, we’re on the standby list for an Alaska cruise on the Noordam. The sailing shows as sold out, so I’m guessing we’ll be coming back here instead of going to Alaska.

Bon Voyage to @kazu today!

Happy Sunday, everyone, and best wishes to our Dailyites who need them right now.

Bon Voyage, Jacqui! 
Have a wonderful time on your inaugural Merry Widows cruise. We are booked on the Volendam for the 24 day Greenland/ Iceland roundtrip later this summer so I have an ulterior motive for following your cruise!

It only takes a moment to write a complaint on the Navigator app, and that feedback goes up the chain as well. Send one daily. Get everyone who wants to use the Crows Nest to send one as well. In addition, go to the art showing. Buy a specialty coffee. Enjoy it as you look anywhere but at the art.

On 4/14/2024 at 8:09 PM, Ileneilene123 said:

Thank you — all good suggestions, but this time I would like to purchase shipboard credit with the gift cards. Would like to do this online, otherwise I’ll give HAL a call. Thx. 

You can do this onboard as well. I went to Guest Services with a list of gift cards, and they were added to my onboard account as OBC.

6 minutes ago, Real NHDOC said:

If you book and pay for a specific cabin then you should expect that you should get that cabin...not whatever they want to give you.

Especially since during the booking process they offer you the choice of letting them assign your room for one price, or choosing your own room at a higher price. Basically, an upsell.  If they offer me an upsell and take my money for it, I expect them to deliver on it. 

Good morning, all! I love Sydney as a port, and we always get an overnight there on the cruises I’ve been on.

We are on the island now, frantically completing yard clean up before the burning restrictions kick in. Yesterday I got all the dead wood cut out of the apple tree. It now looks like an apple tree in spring, and not a spectre from a haunted forest. We’ve also done a lot of decluttering. Two glass topped round tables that had been taking up real estate in the loft went to a good home yesterday. It’s so nice to have the free open space. Now to fight the urge to fill the bright airy space with more stuff…

I was trying out HAL’s Standby program. The cruise I booked is now sold out, so I guess we’re out of luck unless there’s a late cancellation. All in all, I think I’d rather just go for last minute deals if I’m looking for a bargain. But we’ll see how this plays out.

Happy Thursday, and my best wishes to all facing medical and family matters. @kazu I’m so glad you can make your cruise, and your foot issue is resolving, even if it will take time.

A 42 day cruise on the Volendam shouldn’t be crowded. As much as I love HAL, the Konigsdam is my least favorite ship. It’s either HAL pretending to be Carnival, or Carnival pretending to be HAL. I’m not sure which. I find it crowded, noisy, and more mainstream than most HAL ships. There’s more of a HIA party vibe. The crew is more detached than on the smaller ships. My cousin loves it for the same reasons I do not. If you aren’t liking your experience on Konigsdam, you’ll probably love the Volendam.

15 hours ago, jimdee3636 said:

I don't like the $2.00 deposit idea at all. What's to stop people with nothing else to do from making numerous "what the hell" bookings, e.g., booking nine or ten cruises for the same time period or destination and waiting until the final payment date to cancel all but one of them? Plenty of sailings will "artificially" sell out, forcing serious customers to either look elsewhere or wait until after the final payment date in hopes that something might open up.

 

It just seems ill-conceived.

 

Jim

I love those sales for the flip side of the same reason. The cruise looks full, but at final payment time there’s a lot of cancellations and great last minute sales. We’ve scored many a discounted cruise that way.

Bruno, I am so sorry for your loss. You gave him the best care a son could give, and made sure he enjoyed life as long as he could travel. Hugs.

17 hours ago, Wehwalt said:

Those are the stairs. I am on Oosterdam and walked by them this morning getting coffee from the crow's nest. I've never seen a passenger exiting the stairs but the crew seems to use them fairly often, I've at least twice had to dodge a crew member exiting with momentum. There is as I recall, an elevator limited to three people there but I don't think it's where the handicap symbol is, but close to the elevator lobby.

Since COVID, the crew outdoor area is above the Crows Nest. Those stairs give access to both The Retreat in one direction and the crew smoking area in the other. That’s why you so often see crew on them.

My husband and I always share one wifi account. I have to log out of my Navigator and log in to his for it to work. I can do that from anywhere on the ship, so logging in from two,different cabins would be no different. The only thing is you need to be comfortable with your friend having access to your account in Navigator.

Good morning, all! Broccoli and cheese egg muffins sound good, but more like  brunch than dinner. We’ve been to Alaska many times, but never done the overland to Denali.Yesterday was raining here, so no glimpse of the partial eclipse we might have seen. @smitty34877 when we did have a solar eclipse visible,here a couple of years ago, the colander trick was my favorite viewing method. I don’t know why it works, but it’s impressive! Because of the rain, we had the day off from yard work. We went to Vancouver island for supplies and plumbing parts. We also had lunch out. It was a good day. Happy Anniversary @ger_77 and Maurice. May there be many more!

Happy Tuesday, everyone!

22 hours ago, ORTravelGal said:

Can you call HAL and just ask to be moved to the "confirmed" group of sailors and off the standby list?

Part of the deal is that it’s non refundable unless you’re still unconfirmed 48 hours before sailing or if they can’t get you on at all.

22 hours ago, ORTravelGal said:

Can you call HAL and just ask to be moved to the "confirmed" group of sailors and off the standby list?

21 hours ago, HappyInVan said:

Personally, I would rather wait for a late or last minute deal. Get the price and location that I find acceptable. 😌

That’s why we only booked a five day cruise as a trial run. If it costs us a few dollars more, it’s not like it’s a bucket list trip or long enough for the money to add up. I’d only use Standby for cruises out of Vancouver anyway, and those show up as last minute discounts quite regularly. I happy we gave it a shot, but think I’ll stick to last minute deals instead after this.

11 hours ago, rj59 said:

That's weird, I applied in Stockperks and was denied. It said it was a promotional fare not eligible for stockholder OBC. The same thing happened on Carnival several years ago, when they started randomly denying stockholder OBC, since the CCL shareholder page says anyone sailing at a 'reduced rate' fare isn't eligible. I think I got denied once, which made me cancel some cruises, so they evidently figured out angering loyal shareholders isn't a bad idea

Stock perks may be the problem. Don’t ask me what she does, but our TA doesn’t go through Stockperks, and we have a confirmation letter from HAL that the stockholder credit has been applied to the booking. And you’re right, I’d guess that how they treat their stockholders may be different than how they deal with third party offers.

So three weeks out and our Standby cruise is now on sale through HAL for $3/ day less than what we payed for standby. That’s for an inside guarantee, which is what Standby gives us. For about $70 more in total, we could have chosen and locked in our favorite Special K cabin. However the point of this was to try out the program, so nothing lost.

4 hours ago, SetAnOpenCourse said:

Do you need to be cleared (i.e. have a cabin) for the stockholder obc to be applied?  I’m still waiting on standby for a sailing that embarks this Sunday, and do have 150 shares.

No, you don’t need to be cleared. In fact, by the time you’re cleared it may be too late to have them apply it. Our standby sailing is April 30, so we won’t know if we’re cleared for quite some time.

Our TA was able to attach our stockholders benefit to our standby booking. She sent us a copy of HAL’s confirmation. 
So while the standby program can’t be combined with other offers, the stockholders benefit doesn’t fall in that catagory and still applies.

3 hours ago, ChinaShrek said:

Maybe we are just paying for transportation?

I hope not. Otherwise on cruises that end in the port it started in, things could get dicey.
I don’t want to show up at the Vancouver cruise terminal and be told “ We’ve given away your cabin and you can’t board, but not to worry because we promised to get you to Vancouver, AND HERE YOU ARE!!! Have a nice day, Ma’am, and thanks for the cash”

OK, now you’ve got me worried.😄

There was an interesting discussion about waiting for passengers at an Ask The Captain session on the 2023WC. He told us that’s it’s not company policy to wait for non-HAL tours, but… A certain amount is up to the captain’s discretion. If it is a large group, they aren’t too far out, and they call the ship or port agent, they will usually wait IF the port agent allows it. If it’s a small group and they don’t hear from you, or you overstay your time at Senor Frogs, your passport will be waiting for you at the empty pier. His personal cutoff was 10 people, all things being equal. And if the Port Authority needs the berth for an incoming ship, or just wants to flex their muscles, or the tide is only favourable for a short window, then all things are not equal.

From the articles I’ve read, it was 8 people. When someone noticed time was short, the guide assured them he’d have them back in time. Instead of insisting they cut and run for the ship, they carried on with the planned agenda. And indeed, their passports were waiting at the empty pier. NCL had them fly to Banjul, Gambia on their own dime. Banjul is a tricky port to get into, with sandbars and tides that can ground a ship if tackled at the wrong time. We have sailed there twice, and were able to actually get in once. The NCL ship was unable to get into Banjul to pick them up. At that point, NCL footed the bill and responsibility to get them to Dakar.

Good morning, all! Galway was the first place I ever travelled to outside of North America. It was a land trip long before my cruising days. The potatoes we had at dinner one night were actually potato croquettes. They became a family favorite at home, and I always told the girls we were having Galway Potatoes. Thank you, Deb, for posting a link to potato croquettes on the same day we have Galway as a port!

I'm relieved to hear that @USN59-79 and family are safe after the Taiwan quake. DD has returned to Taipei. Her apartment is a newer building, and just fine. She thinks a book fell over on one of the shelves, but nothing else has even moved. She expected to come home to a mess. Thank you to all for thinking about her. We came over to Salt Spring yesterday to open the cottage up for the season. Lots of work to do here! DH is giving me the eye, so I should get going.

Happy Thursday, and stay safe, dry, and warm!

On 4/1/2024 at 3:47 AM, Haljo1935 said:

I had to ask for for mine. Then wondered why I did cuz it's still in the suitcase where it attracts less dust.

They actually make decent Christmas tree ornaments if you take them off the ribbon.