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Jacqueline

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Posts posted by Jacqueline

  1. I appreciate that you asked about this Jazzbeau. I think that people don’t know where to go, which is why they drop in here!  I also think that there is a bit of, if you build it they will come. The luxury board doesn’t feel like a “home”.

    I think of PG. One ship and a lot of the same people, year after year. But it’s a home base. 
    I have been here for nearly a quarter of a century, before there as a cruise critic. It was actually an AOL forum. I have a lot of hobbies and interests and pop in and out, depending on my travel plans.

    Given how busy FB forums are, I would think that the powers that be would be happy to creating more communities. I saw many people in the luxury group complain about this over the years.

    and I think Havila is going to be very popular with three departures a week !

  2. Does the shop onboard sell warm clothing? Or maybe we can pick up a few things in Bergen beforehand?

    and yes, Jazzbeau, I am also thinking about the luggage service and having it sent to Bergen. Do you have a recommendation? It would be a few weeks from when we leave to when we get to Bergen. Thanks for mentioning this,

  3. I am looking at this 7 night northbound next September. We want to tour Poland and the Baltic countries beforehand and I am trying to figure how we will have warm enough clothes for the cruise while traveling with just carryon bags.

  4. There is bound to be COVID. It’s everywhere now.

    I would agree with the earlier poster that the explosion in expedition cruising with new ships and captains new to the routes likely play a role.

    Last season there was the fatality on the new Viking ship in Antarctica.

    when we did that route we picked the ship that had done that route 100 times with a similarly experienced crew.

    It’s no joke.

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  5. These are the least desirable cabins and are often the last booked according to both the information I read on here and also based on my last sailing, (only remaining suites in QG), I was trying to move my cabin.

    The configuration is awkward and the shades are pulled down every night as these cabins are under the bridge and interfere with navigation.

    I looked into this and did a search on the board and found this and more,

  6. Here is actually video from the zodiac. Also, one person was thrown into the water with the force of the explosion that took place and was rescued by the passenger interviewed, it is lucky that they were fit enough to survive being thrown into polar waters. Passengers reported that they were thrown several feet into the air.

     

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  7. We don’t drink a lot and just ordered a bottle of vodka which was largely unused. Butler was quick to get beers and loaded me up with a full array of tonics . Elderflower and another variety that I am fond of. Lots. It takes a day to get the beverages ordered and up in quantity.

    Water galore.

    He even got us zip lock bags. Offered to make up lunches to take ashore. 
     

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  8. @Windsurfboyno cruiseline does this and don’t expect that this will be the case ever. 
    I agree with previous posters like @Victoria2that we trust the captain to make decisions that are in the best interests of the passengers. Sadly, I also agree with previous poster that Covid is going to be a part of the landscape for sometime to come. And for that reason, a cruise might not be the best option for those who previously favored them.

    A poster on another social media forum lost her husband to Covid/ pneumonia last week which he contracted on the QV which is down under, where summer should be taking some pressure off the Covid/pneumonia season. They boarded on Nov 7 and didn’t look very old or fragile. Just over a month ago she was posting all the excited questions we often do before boarding, 

  9. I am still waiting to hear how anyone thinks that it is responsible to offer kayak excursions in the Antarctic. And how the magical ICU on the Viking ship will save them. 
    Hearing all the “expert” apologists on this thread defending a ship that couldn’t make it thru it’s first season without a fatality is a thought worth pondering. 
    If the Hanseatic is “the same” how has it managed all these decades without a similar incident? 
    Just google rouge waves and Drakes passage crossing to see how common these seas are. This isn’t Disney land.

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  10. The portion sizes are really very reasonable which is a help. I had dessert every night and a scone with clotted cream and jelly every day. Small breakfast and light lunch.

    I did find after a while, it was hard to look at all that food!

    We went snorkeling and diving at all the stops. I wasn’t as active as normal due to a bum hip. I also boarded at a weight that wasn’t ideal.

    I had a heart attack when I weighed in yesterday,

    I lost four lbs. I did eat a whole cheese plate I ordered for the room over a few days. 

  11. No one said that they were miracle workers. But ten to twenty years working in the same ship gives one a high level of expertise. He was allowed to assemble his team and had control over who worked on the ship. Do we have to take every post to a ridiculous? I never said that these were the only people that ever fabricated a part.. There is a lot to be said for German engineering.

    Hapag Lloyd was running three ships every season in the Antarctic. Our cruise was 20 days.  This level of commitment and experience was important to us when we chose a vessel. Other companies have similar levels of experience in the region.

    An ICU room is whatever you want to call it. The Queen Mary has a well equipt medical CENTER with multiple doctors and nurses and they evacuate passengers on a regular basis. I worked as an EMT and in a serious emergency you went to a trauma center, not a local hospital. Medical care is extremely limited on these ships, which off the bat makes them inherently more dangerous.

    Good luck when your kayak flips over.
    And yes, while not the highest level of ice breaker, it was for a CRUISE SHIP. We were able to navigate thru ice fields. 
    In two decades over there fleet, They didn’t loose a passenger to a “rouge wave” . Which are not uncommon in this region.

     

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  12. When we decided to go to Antarctica, we selected Hapag Lloyd’s Hanseatic for our voyage (been sold to Heritage cruises). With over 150 successful trips and a seasoned crew and captain we felt as confident as we could that we would be safe. We had thirty foot waves for over a day which was considered nothing special by the captain. Rough weather is common in the Drakes passage. High winds and seas are to be expected.
    When it came time to go to the approved landing sights were were able to see more and take advantage of the expertise of the captain in securing an additional landing. We crunched thru the ice in the Wendell sea.

    We toured the engine room where some of the people have been working together for decades and said that they could manufacture anything that they needed onboard to repair or replace the engine and associated mechanical parts. 
    Many of the ships that have been doing this for decades were icebreakers in another life and constructed to those standards,

    The same season we sailed, the refurbished Silversea ship didn’t make it out of the harbour. And a captain of another well regarded ship died of a heart attack on the return voyage to Ushaia. There is no intensive care at sea. Any accident can have serious consequences. Definitive help can be over a day away,

    I also feel that all these new gimmicks like kayaks and submarines are asking for trouble for these reasons, not to mention the advanced age of the passengers onboard.

    The industry has rushed to do excursion cruising and I agree with the previous poster who commented that there is no substitute for experience. Most of us will pick an experienced surgeon, not someone whose training has recently been completed but lacks experience. Antarctica has unique challenges and risks. Just got off the QM2 this morning and we had a helicopter evacuation in the Atlantic, not gonna happen on your Antarctic cruise. We did have someone loose a finger in a door and managed to get it reattached on the Hanseatic which was pretty amazing.

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  13. I agree

    18 hours ago, ballroom-cruisers said:

    Also anyone unvaccinated on board who contracts Covid during a voyage would have a greater chance of being more seriously ill and then need more intensive medical care.  Given the number of incidences of some percentage of personnel on board testing positive on most voyages, then anyone who is unvaccinated may require a level of care that is only possible in intensive care wards in a hospital, should they contract Covid, and that is not something available in the medical centres on board, and would likely need a medevac transfer to a facility on land in order to treat anyone who needed to be on a ventilator for example. So it would be surprising if anyone who is unvaccinated, even if for for good medical reasons, to put themselves at risk in a cruise environment in that kind of way.

    This is really the point. Many of the cruises on the Queens are longer in duration as well. On shorter cruises, people often fall ill after they disembark.  The Cunard line tends to attract and older demographic than some other cruiselines as well. A cruise vacation for a person unwell enough or in such fragile health that a vaccine is contraindicated seems like a poor option. 

    And to be fair to the rest of the ship, emergency evacuations affect everyone. We arrived in Barbados a half a day late due to a diversion required for a helicopter evacuation. 

  14. Many people had already purchased tests and used them. I had no interest in sailing with Covid. I brought enough tests that I have self tested every four days or so.

    I am sure that people did bring it on board. Sadly, even with testing, Covid was being brought onboard. The antigen and lateral flow tests are very imprecise, although better than nothing.

    I was on a cruise this summer with required vaccines and testing and it was estimated that 30% of the boat ended up with Covid . Disney ran four day cruises and people who were doing back to back had to disembark (zero out the ship in Miami) and test AGAIN before reboarding. There were so many cases that those passengers had to pack all their bags prior to disembarking so that if they were positive they didn’t need to get back on the ship! Sitting at a table with a person who had Covid or anyone in your party having Covid could not sail! And still so many cases.

    Covid is endemic and some people still do get very sick. 
    I don’t know what the answer is. probably the best case was our summer cruise, a few weeks after we all had Covid at home. Still had strong immunity.

     

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