terrydtx

Thank you for the video, we will be on the Koingsdam in November and looking forward to being on one of the new Pinnacle class ships.

Doesn't appear that there are any martinis in the Martini bar in the SDP and the large ones are $1 over the Premium $17 limit. That is real nickel and diming.

There will be shore excursions through HAL just make sure they are not ones that end at the airport. Also you can do private excursion with 3rd party vendors like Viator and Tours by Locals.

Have fun in Italy, we love traveling there.

Everything on the ship is charged in USD, so will your credit card be charged with no foreign fees. BTW you should find and take a CC that doesn't charge any transaction or exchange fees. That is the only type of CC we use anymore because we do so much international traveling.

To be perfectly honest, we did a Celebrity Reflection cruise in a Sky Suite last August from Rome and we followed it with a HAL Oosterdam cruise from Venice in a Signature suite. The Luminae had a lot of misses and all of us in our group thought the overall food quality was better on the Oosterdam MDR than the Reflection Luminae. Service and ambience was far superior in Luminae than the Oosterdam MDR, however. We will be on the Celebrity Apex in late September from Amsterdam to Athens in a Sky Suite, followed 6 weeks later by our Koingsdam Coastal California cruise in CO, so we will be able to do an even better comparison.

I remember last year that our tour guide in Croatia said that they would be on the Euro this year. In Montenegro our tour guide would not take euro for tips, he asked for USD, so I was under the impression the country would not accept euros.

We haven't been in Blu since pre covid and only have been in Celebirty suites with Luminae since, not expecting CO to be close to Luminae, but it is all HAL has that isn't the MDR.

It still has to be better than dining in the MDR with the masses. That is why we chose CO for our Koingsdam cruise in November.

We use one CC for taking off the ship or outside the hotel and keep or two from separate accounts in the safe just in case. This credit card we ONLY use when we travel abroad and has no conversion or transaction fees. We had this happen to us while on a land trip in California, and if my CC hadn't been able to overnight us a new card, we would have been stranded. BTW I have used our debit card to get Euros from guest services on both Celebrity and HAL in Europe. On land the best place to use an ATM is in bank. There are many private ATMS in bigger cites but they have huge fraud problems with CC skimmers and if legit they have huge fees that are lost in the transaction and translation.

Thank you for your experiences. I hope that the CO food and ambience is as good as the Luminae on Celebrity. I was told that on the non-Pinnacle class ships the CO food is all the same as the as it the same kitchen served is a roped off section of the MDR. That is why we never bothered adding CO. We have our first Pinnacle ship booked in November.

We used our CC many times for purchasing an expresso (2 Euros in Italy). We found some merchants that actually preferred a CC for payment.

Last year we found out that Turkey, Croatia and Montenegro would not take Euros too.

The gratuities for AI are for you room attendants, food servers and others covered by the daily service charges. Gratuities will be added for all drinks above you drink package limits in the difference between the cap and price of the drink. Gratuities are not included for room service, spa services, wine by the bottles, Gelato purchases, cabin mini bar, and specialty restaurants, a gratuity charge will be added to your account for those purchases for 18-20%

It boggles my mind too, but I think many people go to the buffet because they do not want to get out of their shorts and flip flops and clean up to go down to the MDR. On our Oosterdam cruise last August when I saw a passenger sneeze and then cough all over the bread in the Lido, I did not go back once. I then tried to get the staff member there by the bread to pull all the bread out and replace it, to no avail.

For me the difference between having dinner in the MDR and the Lido is like the difference between eating at Golden Coral and a nice sit-down restaurant. One is a buffet where you serve yourself and the other is a finer dining experience where you are waited on and served course by course. I want to be waited on for dinner. Also we always take the anytime dining so we can enter when we are ready for dinner, specially if we have a late shore excursion or nice Sailaway. On sea days, lunch is in the MDR, on port days we generally will try the local cruise for lunch on shore. Post Covid I have seen way too many passengers sneezing and coughing while serving themselves in the buffets which keeps me away from them as well.

We have CO for the first time on our Nov 4 Koingsdam cruise, but in the Navigator app it does not show the CO dinner menu, is this normal? We mainly added CO to this cruise for the smaller dining room and hopefully better cooked to order meals.

Our Nov. 4th Koingsdam cruise opened up for specialty dining reservations yesterday, April 28th. We also had no problem booking with our HIA credits. So it seems from reading the above there is no set time for releasing reservations for booking. Keep checking daily to see if your cruise has been released. That was what I had been doing and I did not receive any notice that our cruise was available to book.

I would 100% use a private transport. We are using on for our September cruise from Rotterdam but we are flying out of Amsterdam. We are using Private Transfers Schiphol | Private Transfers Amsterdam (viptravelservices.com)

Thank you, I was interested in the list as well.

If you are in the Retreat room service is still free. For all other classes $9.95 plus 18% tip seems a little steep for getting a pot of coffee or a mid day snack.

We usually sail in a Signature Suite with HAL and room service for all class of cabins is not available on the morning of debarkation. I am sure you know a Signature "Suite" is only a bigger cabin with no amenities. We also sail in true suites on Celebrity and they have the same policy.

I am with you on beets, and I also love Okra, either fried or stewed.

We will be on the Volendam in August next year and your home port is one of our stops. Looking forward to some of you great sea food for lunch or dinner. I hear you are known for exceptional oysters, muscles and scallops. We hope this cruise gets us out of the heat of August in South Texas.

bought a rack of lamb at Costco today for $14.95 lb about what it had been for over a year.