TAD2005

In August,  I asked the Ship's Coordinator for the Rotterdam, Kelli Gould, about the next drydock.   She said that the Rotterdam was not scheduled to go in for drydock until December 2020.   We had asked her about the HAL "Ships at a Glance" chart where they show the Rotterdam getting a major upgrade on deck 5 where the entire "Mix" area is ripped out and Billboard Onboard replaces it on Dec 6, 2019.   That level of renovation in a major area of a public deck adjacent to the shops and casino could only be accomplished in drydock.   It appears that the Ships at a Glance chart is wrong and needs updating.

In March 2019, HAL ran en experiment on 4 of its ships, where they would charge a guest $10 for a 2nd entree.   On 2 of the ships, the $10 surcharge was on all main entrees.  On the other 2 ships, it was only charged on nights when they had lobster tails.  You could get as many appetizers or deserts as you wanted.  And this surcharge did not apply to the Lido Market, where you could go back as many times as you want for 2nd, 3rd or more helpings.

I was on the Eurodam in March when they ran that trial, and the MDR staff hated it, and the Food & Beverage Manager was not speaking in very positive terms about this policy.

Thankfully, the experiment ended in the first week of April and has never been heard of again.  May that policy, and the moron bean counter in Seattle who devised it, rest in peace.

We have never had a problem getting an extra entree to share with DW on all HAL cruises, even the Eurodam last March.

HAL just leases the terminals used for embarkation and disembarkation, they are managed by the Port Authority.  Any specialized equipment that US Immigration chooses to implement in passenger clearance would be controlled by DHS, not the individual cruise lines.   But anything that will speed up the long lines after claiming your luggage would be very welcome.   Global Entry really helps beat the lines, but many people do not travel enough to justify the time and expense to get Global Entry.

7 hours ago, bennybear said:

We had a great cruise other than this incident but I could not believe people talked over the captains announcements when it was clearly so important!

People talking during the captain's announcements is a daily annoyance.   For important announcements like port information,  upcoming rough weather, schedule changes, or just the usual 12 noon position and weather report, some folks just can't seem to pause in their conversations out of courtesy to the people who would actually like to hear what's being said.  In actuality, the people talking just raise their voices even louder to override the captain's announcement.   I guess whatever they are saying is so important that it is OK to deprive others from hearing the announcements.

The reason HAL prohibits sodas and water (or any bottled or can liquids) in your checked luggage is during the security scanning process,  if they see a case of cans of some kind of liquid,  they have no idea if its soda or beer.  Soda is OK, beer is not.   So they have to pull the bag and call you down to open the bag.   That takes time and labor in the luggage distribution process and delays everyone else's bags.   You may have the best of intentions, but HAL doesn't know that.   They assume any liquid in cans or bottles in your luggage is beer, wine, or liquor, and they will pull the bag.   To prevent all of that hassle,  carry it on.   

If you have your wine inside your checked luggage, HAL security may get the impression that you are trying to sneak a bottle onboard and beat the $18 corkage charge.   They will not know your intentions.   It will be caught, and you will be called to open your luggage and show the contents.   In most cases, they will allow you to pay the corkage fee.  But I have heard reports here on CC where the wine was confiscated and held until you disembark the ship.   

20 hours ago, Copper10-8 said:

 

Rotterdam was last in dry-dock in Oct/Nov 2017. She is not on the schedule for a 2020 dry-dock. HAL, at this point, has five ships scheduled for dry-dock in 2020 and Rotterdam is not one of them

Fantastic news.   This guarantees that the Mix area and the traditional Piano Bar will still be there for our 29 day cruise on her in October 2020.   Much better entertainment than the Billboard Onboard dual pianos. 

For some insane reason, the US government considers miniature horses as acceptable as "comfort animals".    Some of these miniature horses can weigh 100 lbs.   There was a recent picture and video of a woman walking through an airport with this horse, slowly trotting behind her.   She boarded an American Airlines flight.  I have no idea where this horse stood during the flight.  But there were pictures of the captain and flight crew taking selfies with the horse, all of them smiling.   I wonder how much that captain would be smiling if they had an emergency landing and the passengers had to evacuate the cabin using the emergency slides ?   Can you imagine a 100 lb horse, slowly trotting up the aisle to the emergency exit door with 150 screaming, panicked passengers trying to reach an exit ?   And once you get this 100 lb horse to the exit door, will this woman be capable of picking up this horse and throwing it down the emergency escape slide.   The horse will not do that on his own.   And if you somehow can get the horse onto the slide, his hooves will cut the slide to ribbons.  Women are advised to remove high heel shoes when using the emergency escape slides for this reason. 

Allowing horses of any size on airplanes is absolute insanity just to be politically correct.    I sure hope the cruise lines exclude any animals other than trained, legitimate service dogs from boarding ships. 

On 10/2/2019 at 7:15 PM, RuthC said:

Are wall-mounted TVs with a DVD slot in the side still made? That's what we had on Oceania. 

Optical media, (DVD, Blue ray, Compact Disk) are all being phased out.   I doubt that you can find any flat screen on the market today that would have a DVD player built-in.

To get more outlets, just bring a couple of European round prong to US blade type adapters and you can use all the outlets at the desk.  Just about every electronic device in the last 20 years will work on any voltage from 100 v to 240 volts.   The exceptions are heating devices like hair dryers,  coffee cup immersion heaters, heating pads, etc.  But you shouldn't be using those onboard anyway.

Based on bandwidth comparisons between the Surf plan and the Premium plan,  there is no difference in download bandwidth, so there is no throttling going on.   The Premium plan allows streaming video sites such as You Tube, Netflix, Hulu, and  any VOIP services like Skype.   Those URL's and the ports they use are blocked on the Surf plan.   Just to test my theory, I had the Surf plan and accessed a website that includes links to some You Tube videos.   They were blocked.  But I then connected to my VPN, and I could access You Tube and Skype with no problems.   The differences in the 3 plans, Social Media, Surf, and Premium are controlled by URL and port blocking, not bandwidth.   Because I could get around the URL and port blocking by using a simple VPN, indicates that the control is not done from the ship, but at Carnival Corp in Miami.   If you do a "IPLocation.net" search while connected on the ship, you will see that your IP address is owned by Carnival Corp, Miami.

20 hours ago, AtlantaCruiser72 said:

 

The ships that have the wall mounted TVs no longer have the DVD players - those are as antiquated as the VCR these days - everything is digital content nowadays!

CC members were asking if the R & S class ships had the wall-mounted flat screen TV's.   Some comments said that some of the R & S class ships had the larger wall-mounted TV's, but it was still the old style analog service, fed by coaxial cable, not the ethernet cable.   If they place the larger TV's on the wall, but do not offer the digital interactive service, then you have no movies.   And the front desk will still have the DVD lending library.   My point is that it would be difficult to still use a desk mounted DVD player into a TV mounted on the wall.  Cable issues.   Yes, all optical media is going away, and most content is digitally delivered.   But you can;t deliver digital content on the old, analog RG-6 coax.    So, no matter where they would hang a large flat screen,  to provide access to movies, it is either digitally delivered (which is not going to happen on the R & S class ships), or it will be optical media using an old style DVD player and a DVD lending library.

HAL could install the larger flat screen TV's on the wall in the S & R class ships.   But the problem is the cables for the DVD player, still mounted at the desk.   The RG-6 coax cable for the TV would be easy to snake through the wall to the TV, but the yellow, red & white RCA cables for the DVD player would be a problem.   And the resolution would not be any better, even with bigger TV's because the coaxial delivered system is still analog.   

2 hours ago, calteacher said:

I, perhaps mistakenly, thought that it was a good idea to use flight ease in order to protect a flight--price, etc.  However, I just tried to use flight ease for our cruise in August 2020 and discovered that the fare is not protected until final payment.  Seems that if the fare goes up, the price also goes up until everything is paid for.  The only benefit I can see (please correct me if I am wrong) is the ability to cancel the flight in the 35 days between final payment and the 45 days before the flight.

 

Please let me know how to best use flight ease.  I would like to get the best air fares.

We use Flight Ease for international one-way and open-jaw flights.  The fares with Flight Ease is far less expensive that you can get by booking on your own.   Domestic (US) round trips are not much different in price than booking with the airlines directly.   The big advantage to Flight Ease for all flights is that the fare is not payable until your cruise final payment date, which is usually 75 days out from sailing, or 90 to 120 days on some cruises.   If you book your own air, and have to change or cancel you are stuck with a change fee or an air ticket that is useless.   With Flight Ease, you can change your flights or cancel at any time up to final payment date with no penalties or fees.   We have never had our fare increase after booking with flight ease.   

Anybody that is spending $5000 and up for a European cruise and has to fly 5000 miles with multiple connections in today's nutty airline environment, and wants to arrive the day of sailing to save a $200 hotel charge is begging for a disaster.   Anything can and does usually happen.   No matter how many on CC will tell you they did it with no issues is not a guarantee that disaster will not happen to you.   There are so many variables to a successful multiple flight connection.   Weather, ATC issues, traffic delays, bumping, denied boarding due to overbooking, etc.   And even with insurance covering your expenses, you still have to front the money and wait for a reimbursement.   Plus, in some European ports, there is very little access to regular scheduled flights.   And you will be missing 2, 3 or more days of your cruise in a living hell, until you catch up with the ship.   Just don't take the chance.  It's not worth it.

22 hours ago, kazu said:

Our Hawaii, Tahiti Marquesas cruise was in the spring.

 

We had the unfortunate experience of going in the worst spring in 50 years.  (We had a few locals tell us that).  We missed a number of ports and had to have the itinerary changed in the end so we could get supplies and some decent weather in a couple of ports.

 

We still had a great cruise as Captain Van Eerten went above and beyond with pool parties, entertainment, etc. To try to make amends and then a future cruise credit although HAL is not responsible for weather.

 

Normally that is a great time to go - the moral of the story - no one can predict weather or what King Neptune might bring.  Choose what works for you and go with the flow 🙂 

It’s a great itinerary.

We also did the Hawaii, Tahiti, Marquesas cruise on the Eurodam, March 9 to April 6, and we had wonderful weather the whole cruise.  The usual choppy seas for the first 2 days out of San Diego and the same coming back in.  But the rest of the cruise was sunny and calm.   The Hawaii cruises before the March 9 cruise did have weather issues where many ports were cancelled.   But those cruise were not continuing down to Tahiti, they cruised through the Hawaiian islands and came back to San Diego.

3 hours ago, ChinaShrek said:

 

I think cruise lines should hire people to sit at tables in their specialty restaurants. It would attract me to eat there much more than what people post in this forum. 

Hmmm.... HAL should hire people to sit at empty tables to make the restaurant look full.   Gee... I wonder how much the cost of the specialty restaurant would go up with all of those costly employees sitting at tables doing nothing ?

Usually, the Explore-4 promotion ends just before US Thanksgiving in late November.   And they have a Black Friday sale for a few days starting the Monday after US Thanksgiving.   It lasts a few days, and they usually include pre-paid HSC.   

I think the casinos onboard are operated by a contractor who supplies the personnel and handles the money.  HAL provides the tables and machines, the floor space, and they get a percentage of the action.   So, this change in policy might not be HAL, it may be the contractor's choice.

Cans or bottles of soda or water bursting all over other people's luggage is one of the reasons why HAL requires you to carry on all soda and water.   Another reason is if the 6, 12, or 24 pack of cans is inside a bag or wrapped in duct tape, those cans could be soda or beer.   HAL doesn't want their employees scrutinizing every piece of luggage to determine if the cans or bottles of liquid they see on the x-ray are legitimate soda, or maybe beer.   You can't bring beer onboard, no matter how you attempt to smuggle it.  

I agree with others who say that they don't need to be humping 30 pounds of soda or water onto a ship to save $100.   

We were almost "stuck" with a guarantee veranda cabin on the Zuiderdam.  We were assigned cabin VD6006, all the way forward on deck 6.   Our TA thought she was doing us a favor and complained to HAL and asked for a better cabin.  HAL gave us VA5098.   We thanked our TA, but started checking the pictures of the VA deck 5 mid-ship cabins on cruise deck plans dot com.   What a disappointment !!  The balconies are not very deep because the ship narrows in that area to accommodate the lifeboats.   They shrink the cabins a bit and the balconies.   Also, because the lifeboats are suspended from their davits just below these veranda cabins, there is what I consider a partially obstructed view.   If you are in your cabin looking out, the view is great.  But if you go out on the balcony and lean on the railing and look down, all you see are the tops of the huge orange lifeboats.   If you want to checkout a sail-away band on the dock, you won't see them.  Same for any dolphins swimming alongside the ship.   These mid-ship deck 5 cabins on Vista Class ships used to be a much lower grade veranda cabin.   But HAL needed verandas to upgrade guarantees to, and some people think that mid-ships cabins are superior due to less motion in rough seas,, so HAL re-classed these cabins to VA and raised the prices.   

After seeing the pictures, we told out TA, "thanks but no thanks" and she got HAL to move us back to VD6006, which was wonderful for a Med & Trans-Atlantic cruise.

3 minutes ago, catl331 said:

You've lined them up wrong - the elevators don't match. But the point is still valid: 1120 is under part of the galley.

Yes, I noticed that.   The elevator shafts should line up.  But that is the way cruise deck plans dot com builds the custom PDF, and they do not give you the ability to adjust the vertical alignment.   

The use of plug strips with built-in surge protectors is one cause of fires, but so are the lithium-ion batteries used in every phone, tablet, or laptop.  Just about every passenger has one or more of these battery powered devices in their cabins, many times, on charge, either through an AC power adapter, or directly charged by the HAL provided USB charging ports at the desk and next to your bed.   Sometimes the lithium-ion batteries get overcharged and they start to heat up.  This heating can cause runaway heating to the point where the device melts and catches nearby items on fire.

Agreed,  when the OLD Explore-4 promotion (the one that included the SBP) was linked to a cruise,  the price of the cruise would increase by almost the amount of the SBP, $51.70 per day, including the 15% SC.   But occasionally, HAL has a short promotion that adds the SBP for little of no increase in cruise price.  We were watching a particular 29 day cruise on the Rotterdam in Oct 2020.   The price of a Vista Suite was $6400 P/P., and it has been that price for more than 6 months.  When we booked the cruise last March, while onboard the Eurodam, the cruise consultant told us that we also has the 29 day SBP.  I immediately asked what the new price was.  She said it was the same, $6400.   We got a 29 day SBP, valued at $1499.30 P/P for no extra charge.   That was the Early Booking Bonus, which ended on June 30, 2019.

Remember, the Panama Canal opened the new sets of locks a few years ago, and I'm sure that they want to see a quick return on the country's investment.  So canal passage tolls are going to be much higher that they were years ago.   Also cruise ships agree to pay a premium price for a scheduled time for their daylight passage through the canal.  Cargo ships lay in wait on either side of the canal to be called for their passage.   Cruise ships have a guaranteed passage time, and that luxury costs money.   After all, no cruise ship passenger will be very pleased starting their once-in-a-lifetime Panama Canal passage at 10:00 pm in the dark.