mleng

@Laminator and @electro thank you for your input on the HAL smoking policy. I know there is a dedicated discussion thread on HAL smoking and it ran thousands of entries. I cannot possibly read all of them. Can you (or anybody else who is knowledgeable) boil it down for me regarding a couple of simple questions: 1. Why does HAL have different smoking policies for different ships? Is it due to a specific quirk in a ship's layout/hardware, or is it due to a geographic area and the cultural preference? What's the key difference between the ships that allow smoking in casinos (Koningsdam, NS, Rotterdam, Zaandam, Volendam) and the rest of the fleet? 2. Do you think the ships that currently allow smoking in casinos are going to gradually ban them? Thanks.

Can you tell me where to find the discussion thread? Is it on CC or somewhere else? My family just started cruising with HAL (did one in 2019 before COVID, then did one in 2023 and another one last month). We really liked the nonsmoking casinos and may end up doing most of our cruises on HAL going forward. It would certainly be nice to know a little more about the ins and outs of the HAL casino and their offers.

We were on Nieuw Amsterdam last week. Our cabin was 4079. A few doors down, there were 3 cabins named UP001, UP002... They don't show up on the deck plan, but they look like regular cabins. They even have the normal mailboxes by the door and once I saw the daily program in the mailbox. I was on Eurodam last year and I remembered they had cabins like that too. Anybody know what they are?

My family just finished our cruise on NA from Jan 6 to 13. BB King has been officially rebranded as Rolling Stone Lounge. Billboard on Board is not a room, but an area off the hallway, without any wall, right across from the casino, which doesn't have any wall either. They use the area for trivia during the day, but the noise from the casino makes it hard to hear. At night, when the pianos are going on at BOB and the slot machines are going full throttle, it's not a pleasant place to be for your ears. Also, during our week, the ship was plagued with bad odors. Something must have gone wrong with a broken pipe or something. Deck 2 and 3 midship had a strong sewage (human waste) smell. The carpet in the hallway was stained and the maintenance crew were there everyday. Outside, on the walking track around the ship on Deck 3, at a certain section, there was a strong smell of garbage (spoiled food). Same smell at a certain spot on Deck 10/11.

Just came back from the Nieuw Amsterdam trip and wanted to provide an update to my own question. Yes there was a motion activated light under the dresser/closet by the door. However, the light was not ideal for what we needed. First of all, it only stays on for 10 or maybe 15 seconds. Basically, it goes off while you are still in the bathroom. Secondly, the light is actually quite bright (when the room is dark) and is visible to the person sleeping in the bed. Not a good thing if you are trying to not wake up the other person. So for us, we brought a night light and plugged it into the bathroom Shaver outlet. It's much dimmer than the motion sensor light, but that's enough for one to see and not trip over things. Then we put towels on the floor to block out some of the motion-sensor light, but leaves just enough light to see the path back to the bed. Also, two valuable FYI: 1. The bathroom door on NA can be opened completely and be held in place by a strong magnet on the wall. We left the door open at night so that it's easier for these middle of the night pee trips. 2. The shaving outlet has a toggle switch to choose between 120 and 220 V. Make sure you select the 120V if you don't want to burn out the night light.

My family will be on Nieuw Amsterdam in 2 days. We will be in an Oceanview cabin on Deck 4. I am wondering if the bathroom has some kind of built-in night light? If not, I will have to pack one.

I liked their Pizza, especially the white pizza. The dough was very good. I have been on more than a dozen cruises and Venezia's pizza was the best.

So sorry to hear. That's winter cruising for you -- weather from week to week could be so different.

I could be mistaken. It's been a few years since my family last went on Carnival. I may be confusing Carnival with HAL. I am pretty sure HAL app provides free chat, right?

Just remembered another "pet peeve": Carnival charges $5 per person if you want to use their Hub app to text other guests. I deliberately chose not to buy WiFi package, so that I could truly disconnect and not be tempted to pick up my phone every few minutes. That worked well. Their Hub app was quite helpful -- no need to carry the paper version of the daily program, and you can see the restaurant menu and scheduled activities in advance. It's really useful to plan which entertainment option to take, if I know that the same option is offered 3 days later. However, on past Carnival cruises (before COVID), we had used their app to text each other while on board. It was a free feature. This time, they wanted $5. So if you were a group of 4 people, all 4 had to pay $5 each. The money was not a lot, but out of principle, I refused to pay it. I don't know when they started charging for this, but that's another thing (same as herbal tea) that I consider to be petty on Carnival's part.

My wife and I took HAL in April 2023 on a Panama Canal cruise. Enjoyed it. And yes I remember they had good herbal tea selection. 😀 Unfortunately for that HAL cruise, we were looking forward to Lincoln Center and other Classical music offerings and we were disappointed to find out that they didn't offer them anymore.

If they want to give me Art of Teas for free, that will be nice. I may even be converted to a regular customer when back on land. But I cannot see myself paying $3 for each cup. So if we go on Carnival again, I will just bring a couple of boxes of Celestial Seasoning.

@madamerkf Sorry to hear about your bad experience. My family just got off Venezia on Dec 10. What was the reason for not able to leave NYC until Monday morning? Was it due to weather also? Half Moon Cay is our favorite stop in the Caribbean. We almost always book a Carnival or Holland ship so that we can visit HMC. I just wish they would invested in some infrastructure to build a real pier at HMC, so that they didn't have to do the tender and didn't have to be at the mercy of the weather.

Seems like some of the posts on this thread are going on a tangent and becoming not productive. Since I started the thread, I will attempt to bring it back on topic. A few other things that I forgot to include in the original post: 1. Melting lava cake -- still my all time #1 dessert on all cruises. Venezia didn't disappoint. Its lava cake in MDR is very warm and very melty and very chocolatey. 2. In general, Venezia had good desserts. I remembered a good Pistachio cake, and several good chocolate cakes of different varieties (peanut butter, coffee, etc.) 3. Weather -- when we woke up the first morning, the ship was next to Virginia Beach, which is almost to North Carolina border. It was warm enough to wear shorts that day. We had planned to be cold for the first 2 days, but in reality, it was only cold for the first night. 4. MDR no wait -- we were on My Time Dining and each time I requested a table, we got one assigned within 2 or 3 minutes. The meal itself is pretty quick too. We always finish the whole meal (all 3 courses) within an hour. 5. Not happy about the fact there was no free herbal tea. Lido and MDR only have black, decaf black, and green. When I asked for a herbal tea after dinner in MDR, I was told that it would be $3. I don't need fancy tea. A regular Bigelow or Celestial Seasoning Mint or Chamomile tea costs 10 cents per bag at retail. How much can Carnival save by not offering herbal tea? So if you are a herbal tea drinker, bring your own!!! We are going with my other side of the family on a Holland America cruise in Jan, leaving out of FLL. It would be an interesting comparison to this one. Stay tuned...

@pe4all @kona_wahine Regarding the clientele of the ship, I don't think it's fair to simply say "New Yorkers are rude". A big factor is that people that live in big cities (NY or Miami) tend to be louder and are used to smaller personal space. It's just a different social norm. I had a friend in college who came from a different country. He was told "back off, you perv" when all he did was standing maybe a foot away from the middle aged lady in front of him at a supermarket checkout line. Obviously that lady preferred to have more personal space and felt that he was encroaching to the point of being offensive. Regarding Venezia, I noticed that a much higher percentage of the guests were black, appropriately reflecting the racial makeup of the population of major cities of NYC and Philly. Also, a lot of them were first time cruisers -- I knew this because the comedians always asked the audience, and they were always surprised to hear the answers from the crowd. And, (I don't know if it's correlated), based on what I saw, almost all the first time cruisers were black, at least on this ship. So, it's a combination of regional culture (tough Northeast vs polite Midwest), social norm (urban vs surburban), cultural difference (black vs white), and cruise experience (new vs old), that makes this cruise different from the typical cruise that people would expect with an overwhelming Caucasian AARP crowd. Just to be clear, I am not making any judgment. One is not better than the other. I am just making an observation and trying to come up with an explanation why some people would consider the guests on Venezia "rude".