Toofarfromthesea

In a world where many many businesses have far larger and more complex websites than HAL's and manage to have them virtually bulletproof, it boggles the mind how HAL tortures their customers by cheaping out and outsourcing their website to an incompetent contractor.

It doesn't make sense for a ship to have an extensive library when anyone can easily bring thousands of books they personally select without adding an ounce to their luggage weight, IMO.

To be honest, it doesn't sound as if a family cruise is a good choice for you. Everyone wants different things that are pretty incompatible and, to a degree, mutually exclusive.

His strategy worked! LOL

Try again. Sometimes the phone agents don't know what they are talking about. If you get turned down again, ask to speak to a supervisor. Other people have gotten it, why not you?

“If you look for the bad in people expecting to find it, you surely will.” ― Abraham Lincoln You can substitute cruise line, ship, or passengers for people in that quote

How nice that this thread affords snobs the opportunity to look down their noses with disapproval. Everyone needs an outlet.

That's great for you, but I assure you that the people having problems aren't lying about it.

So Carnival is at $12.26 today. I can buy 100 shares for $1,226. And then I get 250 OBC for my January 17 day cruise and another 250 OBC for my 14 day cruise a year from now (assuming they extend the program as is)? Do I have that right? Seems like a no-brainer if so. Does it matter if you own the stock in a regular brokerage account or an IRA/rollover account?

It's not classes. Classes is when you can't get the better stuff because of who your father was. People are paying for these extra benefits, not just getting them because of the class they belong to. Is it classism when one pax sails in an interior and another sails in a suite? Is it classism when one person orders and gets a hamburger while another orders and gets a ribeye? Is it classism when one person sails in a Carnival interior while another sails in the owner's suite on Regent Seven Seas?

I haven't been through the boarding process with CO yet, but the benefit sheet says we get priority check-in, not boarding, so who knows?

No company ever experienced an increase in customer satisfaction by out-sourcing their customer service.

Do you need to own the stock when you book or is owning it before you sail sufficient? Do you need to hold the stock for some particular length of time? How much OBC do you get?

The Yacht Club has controlled access for a private restaurant, a private lounge, a private pool deck with mini-buffet, Butler service, priority access to just about everything. It is a ship within a ship but you can still access the things the whole ship has on offer. The food in the private restaurant, the poolside buffet, and the lounge snacks are a cut above.

Just be sure you board before the last boarding time.

I don't really care about OP but just wanted to note that if you start a thread with incendiary claims (dogfood and no fresh food) you will tend to get roasted. As happened. Intentional or not.

If you are referencing my sad story I won't be rebooking for 2 reasons. My wife passed in Feb.,😒 and my kids have banned me from taking winter trips to cold places. 😘 On the plus side, my daughter and SIL are enchanted with the idea of Christmas in Poland, so they and their kids may do the trip in a couple of years. So I may get to do it vicariously.

I am of Polish extraction, and I spent 6 weeks there in 1974 as a student. Then in 2016 I convinced my wife, who had never done any traveling to go there for an organized tour and she loved it. So in 2018 I planned a trip where we would spend 4 days in Krakow during the pre-Christmas season, then take the night train to Budapest, stay a day, and then get on a Viking river cruise down the Danube, visiting the Christmas markets. We got to Krakow, had lunch, walked around a bit, and then went to the hotel to change for dinner. I stepped out onto the balcony to take in the ambiance of the city. The balcony was icy, and my legs slipped out from under me and down I went. Completely tore the quads in my left knee, and poof, out dream trip was gone and 3 days later I was back in an American operating room.

Cooties? 🤣

I don't know the answer to that, but HAL's laundry service has a reputation for excellence. If you go on YouTube there are videos of the laundry operation on cruise ships and I'd guess the clothes are commingled, yet they know whose is whose. The machines they have are pretty amazing.

That's good advice, always do the math. My analysis was as follows. 17 day cruise, so 850 for HIA. Usually I don't care to go on ship excursions, but in this case there is a Pearl Harbor excursion I want to go on and the cost is exactly the amount of the 200. excursion credit. I would buy the internet package, which I value at about 200. And I would go to each of the speciality restaurants so I would get full value of about 100 on the 2 included. That adds up to 500, meaning I'd be paying 350 for the drink package for 17 days, or about 20 per day. I'm on vacation so I would probably average 3 alcoholic drinks per day. Plus I enjoy specialty coffees. Buying them all a la carte would easily exceed 20 per day, so the HIA made sense for me. It all depends on which features you will utilize and what the cost would be individually.

Where on the website do they offer 'buy in advance' bottles of liquor?

OK, but I doubt they would publicize it if it happened. I give more credence to the almost universally negative opinions I hear than to the bean counters. Listening to them is how we got that wonderfully efficient HAL website. Snort!

They really are, and @crewsnews & @crystalspin are 2 of the best.

Personally I dislike this kind of "sale" unless the deposit is nonrefundable. It just encourages some people to book several cruises when their intent is to just go on one, at the cost of temporarily tieing up a few hundred dollars. Thus taking those cabins out of inventory for people who might want to book for real.