Tom O.

Sometimes when you land in port, there will be folks looking for customers to take on a fishing boat. These boats supply you with all the fishing gear you need.

But this may not be the case in HMC, but probably will occur at other ports on your cruise.

If you do this, just make sure the skipper knows when you have to get back, and I recommend looking at the boat first to make sure it looks seaworthy. One time, I signed up for fishing in Mexico, and found that the boat was a tiny skiff, with no instruments. We got lost in the fog, and I discovered the skipper didn't even have a compass.

My rule of thumb, is that I never book a return flight before 12 noon, regardless of the port. And SeaTac is not very close to the port. There is always a chance you can make a flight like that, but I would be a nervous wreck worrying about it. I would rather have to wait around the airport for a later flight than try to rush to catch an early flight

My recommendation is to change to a later flight.

They do make travel fishing rods that break down into 4 sections and fit easily into a suitcase. I have done this, but never on a cruise.

If I caught fish on a cruise (and I have), I would just release them. On a land vacation there is usually a restaurant that will cook your fish for you - some of the best seafood dinners I have ever had.

Prices of wine by the glass, beer, and cocktails on HAL ships are usually a bargain compared to other cruise lines. Take advantage of it while it lasts. HAL recently increased the price, significantly, of bottles of liquor for consumption in the state room. I think it is just a matter of time before they increase these individual drink prices.

For my cruise next week, we are staying at the Drift Hotel, one of the last small family run hotels in Ft Lauderdale. At $179 per night it is less expensive than many others. It has an excellent location near the beach. No shuttle, but the taxi ride is cheap both to the airport and the port, because they are both close by.

We have never stayed there before, but it is highly rated by those who have.

We will be cruising next week, we are having two dinners in the Pinnacle Grill and one in the Tamarind. We have never been to either before. I will post a review here that will include reviews of these restaurants. I will title it "Nieuw Amsterdam 1/18/2017 Review." It will show up around Feb. 1st.

Everyone raves about the Tamarind, I have never seen a single bad review about it. The Pinnacle Grill usually gets good reviews, but it is not 100%. The Cannaleto, gets mixed reviews - about 50/50 good and bad.

The atmosphere at the Cannaleto would be poor, since it is simply a partitioned space of the Lido (buffet). The atmosphere of the Pinnacle Grill and Tamarind, is rated excellent - better than the Main Dining Room.

We just returned from Eurodam last month. It's been about 5 yeas since we sailed on HAL and Princess is overall our favorite line.

 

The Eurodam cruise was just too low keyed for me. I found myself searching for things to keep me entertained during the day - really not much happening.

 

That's great if all you want to do is sit by the pool all day or read, but neither of those is what I want to do on vacation, so I was bored.

 

I might go on HAL again if the itinerary was exotic/port intensive, but I will never go to the Caribbean or an itinerary with many sea days again on one of their chips.

This is why we have different cruise lines. Each has it's own niche. When we go on a cruise, on at sea days, we spend the entire the entire time on our balcony. We usually only leave to eat or take a walk. On port days, we usually go ashore, but not always. For us, a cruise is a time to relax and watch the scenery. We do go on excursions in ports we haven't been to.

We never see shows or participate in any on board activities.

So for us, HAL is perfect, for others who like all those activities it is not.

I give the nod to Princess.

Oops, I made an error and now it is too late to edit.

I should have said, I give the nod to HAL.

We consider service and food and overall quality of the cruise to be about the same for HAL and Princess.

However, we do not like the design of Princess ships.

First, we don't like large ships. Princess has a couple of smaller ships and a few midsize ships, but mostly they have very large ships. The most recent additions are really huge. If you like being on a ship with thousands of other passengers that is fine, but it is not for us.

Secondly, many Princess ships have large numbers of uncovered balconies. We always get a balcony, and we find the uncovered ones unacceptable. It is not protection from the elements that we are after, it is privacy. In an uncovered balcony, the people above you have a view of your complete balcony, and often you have a view of the balcony below you too.

Of course, if you know, in advance which balconies are uncovered, you can avoid them, by reserving a particular room. This requires research, which Princess doesn't make easy, because they will not tell you which balconies are uncovered. People who book guarantees often end up in uncovered balconies.

If I had written this a few months ago, I probably would have rated Princess higher, because HAL allowed smoking on balconies. But now, with HAL's new smoking policy in effect (no longer allowed on balconies), I give the nod to Princess.

That's not why most people fish, or hunt. They do because they enjoy it not because it's a cheap way to obtain meat.

That is correct. In fact if I had caught a salmon, I would have released it.

One more thing, I had booked the boat for just the two of us - my daughter and I. The skipper was going to charge us extra because there were only two of us. But then another couple showed up at the boat and wanted to go, they were off another cruise ship. There were 5 cruise ships in Skagway that day, so there were lots of potential customers.

Sitka doesn't get as many cruise ships as Skagway, but you might want to check to see if there is another cruise ship in Sitka that day. You might find other potential fishermen on another ship.

I tried Salmon fishing in Skagway around June 8th a couple of years ago. I was told it was early, and the fish hadn't started collecting near the rivers yet. So we tolled all around the bay, I caught a sea trout, but no salmon. it was a lot of fun anyway, and we got real close to a bald eagle as he dove in - for the sea trout I threw back!

Thanks for the replies, I will give it a try and see what happens. We have Open Dining, and I thought it would be better than dealing with all the confusion in the MDR on the first night.

I will report what happens when I do my review.

We will be going on a HAL cruise next week. It has been several years since we last cruised HAL - we have been cruising on Princess a lot recently.

We are going to try, for the first time, having a complete MDR dinner delivered to our room via Room Service.

Is this possible on the first day? I was thinking the room service people might be busy helping with the luggage.

If this room service thing works out, we may have several dinners delivered over our cruise.

What kind of apple would you compare HAL with ? :D

Maybe a Granny Smith?

This entire thread is silly.

You cannot compare any hotel, or hotel company, with any cruise ship, or cruise line.

It is like comparing apples to oranges.

The official told us in both NZ and AUS that the food must be commercially pre-packaged to be allowed. Never had any issue with Nature Valley bars or nut packages. Now we can do the egg debate as natural packaging but ...

This is true in most ports around the world, including the U.S. Any food item taken off a cruise ship must be in an unopened commercial package.

As others have pointed out, it depends on the itinerary across many lines. We did the New England cruise last fall on the Anthem and I thought I was on a HAL cruise. A couple of kids and a migration of walkers and scooters.

 

On our Allure cruise a few years back, we have an over abundance of baby strollers and almost no walkers or scooters.

 

Dan

New England cruises are very popular among seniors. I did one a couple years ago on Princess, and it was the oldest crowd I have ever seen on a Princess ship. I loved it.

HAL cruises are very popular among senior citizens. Also itinerary plays a big part. Longer cruises and cruises to colder climates have higher number of seniors than others.

So if there are lots seniors, there are going to be lots of walkers and scooters.

I am a senior as well, but luckily don't need one of these devices yet.

I much prefer cruising with fellow seniors than young people. But, there are always some young people on every cruise.

The real determiner is life-boat capacity. If no one has said that already.

 

I think that capacity is about the same as 2person/room, so if there are a number of 3 or 4 people in room, they actually have to leave other rooms EMPTY.

 

We sailed 2 weeks around Cape Horn (no Antarctica) on the Zaandam and it was only about half full! I forget the numbers, but it was a little eerie! the venues were so sparsely populated.

 

Service was great though!

Crystal,

I believe the life boat capacity is much greater than the total number of beds on a cruise. In addition to the regular life boats every ship has inflatables as well. They have to have a large passenger capacity in case some boats cannot be launched in an emergency. This can happen when a ship is listing (leaning to one side). If the listing is bad, boats can only be launched from one side.

Probably count as two even if solo since the revenue is about the same but one less person for onboard purchases. Interesting to speculate if a whole ship sailed with solo cruisers with single supplement pricing how much the total revenue hit would be (less the food cost savings)..

The little bit of food savings would be more than offset by huge losses from fewer cocktail, wine, and other beverage sales. Not to mention losses from excursions, photos, specialty restaurants, and all of the other things that cost extra. Is it no wonder, cruise lines try to discourage single travelers?

I am not for this type of technology.

 

I don't have a smart phone or an iPhone. Just a regular cell phone -- no picture taking or texting, etc.

Same here, I just bought a new flip phone, and I even found a model that doesn't come with camera. No internet access. If I want to take a picture, I use my camera. If I want to use the internet, I use my notebook.

I don't mind this medallion thingy for use as a door key or buying drinks at a bar, but I don't want some device following me around the ship. I might be tempted to jump in the pool with it.

As several previous posters mentioned, you cannot judge the number of unsold cabins by doing a dummy reservation.

Here is why:

Say a cruise is sold out except for one cabin. On this cruise are 100 cabins sold as guarantees.

When you start the booking process, you will see 101 cabins to choose from - the one that is unsold and the 100 that are sold as guarantees, but not assigned yet.

As soon as you book your choice of cabin, the other 100 cabins will now show as unavailable, because they are going to be assigned to the guarantees.

So on a dummy reservation, since you never complete it, it will appear to have a lot of cabins unsold, but this is untrue.

This is an over simplified example, to show how the guarantee reservations make a cruise look like there are lots of rooms available.

This is very common for cruises early in the season. The cruise line hopes these areas are free of ice, but it is quite often not so. If you want to have a cruise that for sure will be ice free, don't schedule one in May or June. BTW the possibility of ice is one of the reasons cruises in May and June are cheaper.

On our June 5th cruise on NCL, we were told by the captain, after embarkation, that Glacier Bay had too much ice and it was being replaced by the Sawyer Glacier. Sawyer turned out to be the highlight for the cruise.

I wish all lines would just include the fountain soda at DIY dispensers. I don't drink it but for it's costing them, they ought to just include it like tea and coffee.

I have always heard that the main stream cruise lines make little, or no profit on the cruise fare. So, they have to make their money selling drinks, excursions, photos, extra cost restaurants, etc.

So, I guess we have to expect them to make money on sodas. For those of us who do not spend much on all those extras, we should thank the people who do - they are paying part of our fare.