AV8rix

I'm a HAL gal so I still favor the brass and mahogany look of the R-class and S-class ships, with tons of nautical artifacts throughout. BTW -- TRUE STORY HERE -- growing up in Miami Beach, we were next-door neighbors of Joe Farcus and his brother Morey. My parents were buddies with his folks. Yeah -- directly next door, houses adjacent!

I know that this has been a hard time (heck, a hard almost 2 years!) for you so I haven't been asking you to post my cruises. But I think about you a lot and hope (not a praying person) that everything is going to only improve in the future -- starting now!

Like you, @goldsmip115, I have always had the steak tartare for my main. Although started with forest mushroom soup. Now both are gone. Don't know what I'm going to do now. HAL has changed so much in so many ways.

Well, it's me again. On with the same information every time there's a reference to HALs "IT team". Bottom line is that there is no HAL IT team. CCL outsourced IT to Capgemini way back in December 2016 and it has been a disaster ever since then. Capgemini is nominally a French firm but they in turn outsource the actual coding/maintenance to India.

Wow! That's gotta be tough for the Filipino crew!! Bad enough for folks on for just a week or two but those guys are on for 6-9 months at a time!

Following your thread, as always. But a question...I know that you're staying in an inside for the first few legs. Do you have PG breakfast access because you're PC? Do all PC folk have PG (or CO dining room on the humungoudams) breakfast access? That's a COOL perk!!!

Well, did you let your bank know that you'd be using the card(s) in Europe? I bank with BECU and they allow the customers to inform them of travel plans while online. Don't have to talk to a CSR or visit the bank. Anyway, if you neglect to do that you have difficulty using the card away from your home state or country.

The reason for that is that the lines generally publish their price adjustments on Tuesdays. So I think that's when CruisePlum publishes their updates.

Can't believe that they did away with the forest mushroom soup! Everyone who has ever tried it seems to rave about it. I will certainly miss it. Sad that I'll have to go down to Oz to get my favorite steak tartare. Off topic alert: Hey Brad @InTheWASide, what's with the Las Vegas on your profile info? Why have you deserted the PacNW?

Me too -- or rather, me neither.

Look at this quick before it is deleted. Name of site is cruise+fruit before being dried into a laxative 😉

The cruise site sporting the name of a fruit is what I look at for tracking fares. Just find the cruise in which you have interest and you'll see its price history from time it was announced to current time. It is always updated.

I am a retired engineer and naturally there were quite a few of us on the tours I did (I did them every chance I got -- so much to learn!!). All of us engineers agreed that we'd be willing to pay a lot extra if a tour were to be offered for engineers. We didn't care about visiting the entertainers dressing rooms or the cold storage, etc. But we loved talking to the guys in the HVAC dept, the water (and even garbage!) dept, the bridge and -- of course -- the engine control room. Hope I'm not too old to cruise when (if?) the tours are resumed.

Not the excursions desk. In the past when they were still doing the "Behind the Scenes" tours, you made your reservations at the Guest Services desk. However, they have not resumed the tours. They are still showing "City on the Sea" in the theater as a substitute (a poor one, IMHO).

Not to worry, Bruno. Next time we sail together I'll explain how to make it at home. Spoiler alert: DO NOT USE HAMBURGER MEAT!