cgolf1

We would have done fixed dining, but when we booked open was all that was available. I know Celebrity does anytime, but lets you reserve a tie each night and somehow that has always gotten us the same servers. I mostly feel bad for the open seating servers that are missing out on extra tips from people that get to know them over the week.

I will get to the gluten free in a bit, need to do some outside work in the beautiful weather here, but I will say that we never had the same table. We had notified them before the cruise as well, and we were very surprised we were always moved around. For 5 of the seven nights we had a set 5:45 reservation. On other lines we always have the same service team, even with anytime dining. This was one of the complaints about the cruise was the moving to different tables each night. It didn’t allow the servers to set a routine with us, and also limits the extra tips they get. We generally tip our servers above and beyond, but in this case we didn’t because we never got to know any of them. I feel for the dining room crew in this case.

So I want to start this with we will definitely be sailing HAL again, but I want to give our 100% honest feedback about everything, including the bad stuff. We started sailing Disney and got sucked into the Disney is magical thing, and once the cutbacks happened with the price increases, Disney used to be very thrifty, we branched out to RCCL and our eyes were opened wide once we realized that Disney isn't the best at everything. We then branched out to Celebrity and they have become our gold standard, especially with how they handle the gluten free experience. That said we have never had a perfect cruise, and we will be chasing it for a long time. Every cruise has its bumps in the road. I even had a bad cruiser moment when we had a reservation for the 4 of us and it sounded like we would be seated with another couple. I complained while walking up the steps, not loudly, but was essentially in panic attack mode. I get along very well with people I know, but when in a social situation with people I don't know, I say very little, and probably come off as rude. I just don't have the social gene in me. So if that couple is reading this and overheard my freak out, I do apologize. Not proud of it, but I said that I would be honest and that includes me having that moment. That said we did have a lovely couple from Halifax added to our table one night that were very easy to talk to and gave us lots of good intel on Halifax. We did have some bad matches in the past on Disney, so that is why we like to eat alone whenever possible.

What made this worse was that wheat was the second ingredient on the label. We are always very careful, but got in a spot where we each thought the other read the label and neither of us had.

About us, I am now pushing 50 and wife is still mid 40s. This is our First HAL cruise. This was our 19th cruise overall. Onboard we go to relax and don’t do lot of the more social activities. It was the same pre Covid, we just love a nice cruise. The Eastern Canada is a bucket list trip for us, especially a land trip to Oak Island once tours open up again. We were excited about the full promenade deck to walk on since many newer ships forget about these. We booked this trip last minute, a month out, and my wife’s parents decided to join us for the first time. As you probably noticed there were lots of questions from me, especially what would happen once we fly into Canada. We have been binge watching How to catch a smuggler on Disney+ so we had some crazy thoughts about how it would go. Also researching on Canada’s website makes it sound really difficult. I have been gluten free for 16 years and right before the trip I got a blind test of eating gluten again and it made me physically ill. We had bought a sour cream based dip on clearance, never seen one with gluten, and I was having a rough week before the cruise. Thankfully my wife found the source of the problem, the dip had wheat, and I started to feel better right away and by day 2 of the cruise life was good again. It was a great test to remind me I can’t ever stop the diet, but wow the timing could have been better.

We were down by the port, I believe old town, and saw none of that. Felt very safe walking around everywhere. Did see the tents set up in Halifax while being bussed to Lunenburg.

Due to late afternoon flights on Friday we got to our hotel near the port at around 11:45 at night. We did walk down to the port area at 8:30 in the morning to know where we would be going and hot a lot of nice pictures of the older buildings with all the details they now longer add to buildings. That was a lot of fun, but it was basically a straight walk to the port and we didn’t explore any more than that.

So is anyone interested in this? I have all the daily sheets and the main dining room menus. I will include the exceptional to the head scratchers and give our honest opinions as a first time Hal cruiser, but our 19th overall. It will take a week plus to get it finished, and I will start tomorrow as I start going through pictures. For some reason just tired today after traveling all day home. Overall it was a great cruise.

Quick question that a search didn't give me a clear cut answer on. Like Celebrity, when we board, can we drop our carry ons off at the cabin?

They might have now, but on our PC cruise the buffet was useless at night and no prime rib either. I also felt that the lunch buffet was repetitive and not as many choices as we saw in the past, even post pandemic. My review thread covered it post cruise. I made do at meals, but definitely felt more limited in choices. Thankfully with the exception of 1 or 2 dishes everything tasted really good. It just wasn't what we had seen on the Constellation the year before. I still think if we sailed in suites instead of insides we would have been more disappointed, but overall we had a great trip and the changes didn't impact us that much at all, other than changing our 2025 cruise from and E class to an S class ship. The E class wasn't as good for us the second time around for a variety of reasons. I guess it's good things are changing, but didn't help out a lot of us that sailed in that window.

This so doesn't make sense. We generally tip 15%ish at home for decent service and 20% or a bit more for excellent. So if I go by your logic poor service, standard service, and excellent service get the same tip, which doesn't sit well with me at all. We will reward service above and beyond with an extra tip, along with a comment in the survey, which on the other 3 lines we have sailed is almost as important as the extra money. The only money we have ever shifted to less was the head waiters on Disney that were truly awful and shifted that money to the serving team instead. Hindsight not sure we would do it now, but they were really bad and I think we did it twice, so we aren't perfect. Overall those 2 cruises our tips still were more than the suggested.

January and February were pretty brutal on here and then I think more people started sailing and found that while there are cuts they may not be quite as bad as was thought, or didn't impact them. I know they really didn't impact us all that much, other than I would have liked a few more options in the MDR at night. That said, it sounds like the suite prices are up, doesn't impact us, but would change the value factor for many that cruise that level. Inside rooms, for now are still a really good value and still cheaper than what we used to pay for Disney cruises a decade ago.

For you that may be the case, but for me in particular that is not the case at all. I would rather be tied to a cruise ship that samples multiple new destinations than fly into one destination and have to stay there for a week. The worst would be the all inclusive resorts where you literally stay in one spot for a week, which may kill me lol. I also enjoy sea days and being disconnected from the world with no wifi. It is one of the few places that my brain slows down and stops thinking about 5 things at once. The one trip I can stay in one place for in a week is a fishing trip, but again I am out on my boat all day doing the other thing that is relaxing to me.

We have yet to sail with her, but all I read about her and and hear on you tube reviews is all positive and how she makes the cruise better for people that interact with her. She is probably the one captain that I really would like to sail with. She honestly sounds like a very nice person. We had Giuseppe as our CD on the Edge and his positive energy added to the cruise experience. The other day on social page someone mentioned that they had a view of the bridge wing from their sky suite balcony, and when they were out on their veranda, Capt Kate would wave to them when she went out to the bridge wing. Sometimes its the small things in life that create good memories, or bad ones, and she seems to get that.

Totally agree. If we get it that is wonderful, if not no big deal. We are just looking forward to trying HAL for the first time.

How did you get this applied retroactively? My wife was approved, but only sees the option for booking a new cruise.

Seeing this, I am wondering if my wife would qualify. She works in a district office for a school system here. I will have to have her try to sign up.

So I just saw yesterday one of the moderately prominent cruise you tubers complain about being filmed while onboard. It was really strange and they should have reported it, because it was in the bathroom. They should have reported it because whoever did it had some issues. That is some very strange stuff and the downside to phones having good cameras.

So I am guilty of taking pictures of menus, for my cruise critic post cruise thread I do, and I for sure take pictures of some of the more unique foods because my daughter wants to see them. The only pictures I do for social media are a few with different fishing hats, sponsors, but they are always me solo either while looking out at the water or with the ship in the background from shore. I don't think doing my thrifty cruiser trip reports on here counts as an influencer. That said I will be doing one on my upcoming HAL cruise so maybe;)

The ones that do it well, it is a pretty good source of income to cruise a lot and report back on it on you tube and other social media. There are worse jobs in life than that. Well I guess even the ones that don't do it well, but get clicks get to cruise a lot more than I do too.

We saw the same on our Partial PC transit on the Edge. We put a min bid in on the Infinite veranda and lost, but they were higher than we have seen in the past. This cruise Basically ended up as a sellout, so that is likely why the prices were so high. Much different than a year ago when we upgraded to an oceanview on the Connie for a really small bid to then get upgraded to a veranda at the port.

The issue I think I have with all this is the term influencer. The people I mentioned after the Celebrity cruises search above, provide helpful and informative content that helps the cruising public make better decisions and maybe learn how to pack better. Yes they do it for clicks and to make some money, but at the same time they provide a service. What I think of as influencers are the people trying to continually try and get the viral videos and the most clicks and likes by posting videos that are wastes of time for me to watch and don't provide any benefit other than maybe making you laugh. Those posters might be more likely to be more obnoxious and to not care how they impact others peoples experiences. Right now I have gone down the every day carry rabbit hole on you tube and there is a ton of helpful information there to help me make smart purchasing decisions along with the cruise videos I watch, so there is a good side to this.

so I see Celebrity, Gary aka tips for travelers, and life well cruised dominate the first page on iPad and two random videos I don’t know. Gary and Life well cruised do fine tasteful videos and one can skip the ones they don’t like. This isn’t like some of the stuff I see in fishing vids that look like the old MTV Jack*** shoes that get lots of likes and views. The ones at the top imo try to provide helpful information. Yes I subscribed to both I listed above. Results may be different on TikTok but I never got the purpose of that app.

From other lines, I know the rough guess on timing, I am just curious if we will get an email or if it will shop up in the app or if we will need to login regularly online to check once we are in that window that it could be assigned.

I have watched some of the videos, including some to prepare for our upcoming HAL cruise, I have yet to see someone onboard filming yet. To your last, that is sad, but if they do it right there is money to be made there. Maybe with a lot of jobs becoming automated, they have the right idea after all, but lets hope not.