LnWG

We pre-paid our gratuity at the end of August 2023 for a Sept 2023 cruise. Our account was in Cdn, and so I paid in Cdn, and paid the total amount of gratuity shown as owing on the account. This was exactly the same amount that had shown on the account from the day we booked the cruise 9 months prior.

Our on board account debited at a rate of $16.00 US pp/per day, and it all balanced at the end of the cruise. Whatever exchange rate was used, the conversion appears to have been done at the time our cruise was booked and it never varied. 
 

You are well advised to ask Holland America for further explanation.

I will add….we disembarked on Sep 23, which is the day that the ship was held up at the locks and was late arriving at Amsterdam port. Our flight was scheduled to leave at 12:15. 
 

We had chosen to disembark independently, the line on F2 was long but once it started to move it moved very quickly. It is a longer walk to the taxis than one might expect. Although we had no pre-booked cab, there was no trouble whatsoever getting one at the terminal. There were people directing you throughout the terminal so you knew where to go for cabs, pre-booked cabs etc. 

Our driver told us that one of the routes to the airport was closed due to annual maintenance that weekend, and we were somewhat starting to panic at this point. Nonetheless, we pulled up at the airport around 8:40am. It was exceedingly busy. But our good driver had made sure to drive us to the correct entranceway for our airline. 

The check-in desk was staffed and there was no-one at all lined up in front of us, so our bags were checked within minutes and our boarding passes were printed there for us. 
 

Security was busy. We proceeded through ahead of our pre-booked time slot, it took us about 35 minutes until we were cleared and through to the gates. Our gate was a long way off, but we were at the gate by 10:00, having stopped for facilities and a coffee along the way. 
 

So even with a few hold-ups, we had no trouble at all making a 12:15 flight. I’m sure you will be fine for your noon flight.
 

2 hours ago, Trish Traveler said:

Sorry to hear about the Covid!  That's awful, especially because you were proactive.  I noticed more coughing as the week went on. I am dumbfounded by the amount of people who still cough and sneeze straight into the air.  We just came out of a pandemic!  I literally dash away from rude people now who do that. You have the crook of your elbow if nothing else (even Kindergarten kids learn that). I understand that some people might have non-contagious coughing from asthma, COPD, smokers cough etc.- but they should still cover too.   I also wish they would place an employee at the buffet entrances to enforce hand washing or sanitizing. Many pax skipped that also.  I guess it is a good thing that HAL serves most of their buffet food.  We used to sometimes enjoy table sharing in the MDR, but now avoid it for this reason.  My DH got a mild cold (not covid, we tested) 3 days after we got home, but that probably was from the long flight home. I was fine.  Glad that you had good treatment from HAL on the ship!  Hope you're feeling better now.  I'm happy you enjoyed my review. 🤗

 

 

We have recovered, my husband is immunocompromised and so the ships Dr. started him on Paxlovid immediately and all was well. We were able to enjoy the last portion of our second week. We were surprised also that there was no host at the entrance to the buffet areas because as you said, there was some bad behaviour going on. On another cruise line which we frequently sail on - even in the pre Covid era- there was always a host at each entrance to the buffet, welcoming people and encouraging hand washing. Those who chose to bypass the sinks (and before there were sinks) were given a generous squirt of hand sanitizer before getting past the host, who was armed with a big bottle of the stuff.  We made sure to mention this lapse to Holland America in our post cruise survey. 

I have really enjoyed this review, and especially your photos. We were on the same cruise and continued for the next sailing. I am glad you were able to escape the nasty Covid that was ravaging throughout the ship that week.  Unfortunately, and as careful as we were, (we were the two wearing our masks) we were not so lucky. As you were disembarking, we were entering our first days of isolation. It all worked out, the few ports we missed on our next sailing were ports we had been to before in the past. And the wonderful crew on the ship made sure we were well looked after. I suppose if you have to have Covid, make sure to get it in a place with a good Dr., Room Service and a great view! 

I hope you do get to Panama, that is a very memorable trip.

We contracted Covid while on a HAL cruise in mid Sep 2023. We had taken our own test kits with us, the Medical department did not retest us since their tests were $38US each. My husband was prescribed Paxlovid ($750 US) and a cough syrup. The cost to see the Dr/nurse was $150ish, US. My symptoms were so mild, I didn’t even realize I had Covid until I tested myself. Although I went to medical with my husband and they checked me out (temperature check, oxygen level check and BP check) I was not charged any medical fees whatsoever. 
 

We were isolated in our room for five days from the day that we first felt symptoms. In my case, this was the same isolation as my husband, since I’d had no symptoms other than tiredness. Medical called to check on us twice daily as did Guest services and housekeeping. Medical provided us with a thermometer since we had not brought one, they always wanted to know our temperature when they called. We had a shore excursion planned the day our isolation was over and the day before that we had a call from the Shore Excursion folks to make sure we were feeling well enough to go, and still wanted to participate. If we had not wanted to go, we would have been refunded in full. 
 

Room service was provided….they were terrific! We could have called as many times as we wanted. We were given as much bottled water as we liked, free of charge and it was delivered with our room service. Housekeeping could not come into our room, but they called every day to ask if we needed anything. If we needed new towels or fresh sheets they were delivered and when we heard a knock on the door we knew they would be waiting outside for us. A bag was provided for our used linens and we called when it was ready to be picked up….same for our used room service trays, they were not to be left out in the hallway for pickup. Always wait for the knock at the door…..then mask up and push the old tray out, someone was there to take it straight away.

We were refunded port fees for any missed ports. Luckily, most of our isolation was on sea days, or at ports that we had been to before. We received a letter stating that we would receive FCC based on the pro-rated costs of our cruise for the days we spent in isolation. And at the end of the cruise we were provided with all of the documentation that would be required for our private medical insurance.

And the day our isolation ended, our room was cleaned top to bottom with hospital grade disinfectant.

I purchased a very nice compact size lighted mirror through Amazon for $20. Magnifies 15x

I also think you were very wise to take the ship’s train into Berlin, and even wiser to use the time in Berlin to see things on your own. 
 

Our story: We had never been to Berlin before, and are not likely to ever go back. So we took a very expensive excursion that included the train and a guided tour of many other sights. Everything was going great until the early afternoon when we were leaving the Brandenburg Gate. The count had been correct when we arrived, it was not correct when they counted people on the bus - one woman was missing. We sat on the bus for a full hour while our guide went looking for her, and when he could not find her our tour eventually resumed. But we had no tour really…our guide was on the phone non-stop, and we were so far behind that we had missed our time slot for a museum. By the time we got to the area where we were to have free time in a “shopping” area we had a full five minutes. Which was no big deal for us, but many were highly upset. The train had to be held back because by then every single tour group arranged by the ship had been searching for this woman. 

And while we were on the train, our guide came and spoke to everyone in our group to let us know that the woman had been found. She apparently was back at the train before most of the tour groups who had been looking for her arrived. And she’d been spotted stepping out of a cab and she had a bunch of shopping bags. Hmmmmm.

Yes, you did things in Berlin the exact right way, in my opinion anyway. I’m glad you are having a great trip.

Miss G, we are wondering ourselves if we will see differences when we next travel. I will make note and if remarkable will be sure to post a thread of observations.
 

Although pandemic precautions are waning, we are essential caregivers for a high risk individual who lives in a congregate living arrangement. So we are still required to mask and have become quite used to it. And only recently had to stop daily testing.  My nose has been swabbed so many times I feel as if it must have developed callouses by now. It will be good to get away to the beautiful scenery.

Miss G, I’d like to thank you for such an entertaining series of posts. We are soon taking our first cruise since the fall of 2019, and haven’t been on an HAL ship for quite a number of years before that. We liked our last HAL experience quite a lot and since they have a good back-to-back itinerary for the Norwegian fjords, we chose HAL for this voyage. Although we will be on a different ship, it has the same layout; our cabin will be a little further back than yours was, but on the same deck….we prefer midship and low! So your photos from the balcony of your cabin were great, because we had wondered what our view of the lifeboats would look like. 

Enjoy all your future travel pursuits! 

Miss G, how I miss you. I do hope you have been busy enjoying the last few days of your cruise, and that you have not picked up any kind of a bug from the bad coughing you mentioned that was going on. 

4 hours ago, SharkieRools said:

Yes, Accenture was brought in to assist with development of the entire platform, as evidenced by their name printed on the free lanyards you receive with the medallions, not sure if they were specifically involved in the app development though (although they very well could have been.)  However Global Experience Innovators (aka Carnival Corporation) owns and operates the platform and app, worried that a 3rd party was involved in its creation would be akin to refusing to have your passport scanned at the TSA checkpoint or when going through immigration at the air/cruise port as those platforms were also created by 3rd parties.

4 hours ago, SharkieRools said:

Yes, Accenture was brought in to assist with development of the entire platform, as evidenced by their name printed on the free lanyards you receive with the medallions, not sure if they were specifically involved in the app development though (although they very well could have been.)  However Global Experience Innovators (aka Carnival Corporation) owns and operates the platform and app, worried that a 3rd party was involved in its creation would be akin to refusing to have your passport scanned at the TSA checkpoint or when going through immigration at the air/cruise port as those platforms were also created by 3rd parties.

We were in E428 on Regal this past summer. Those midship obstructed view rooms are in the best location on the ship. I would book one on any of the Royal class ships in a heartbeat.

On 1/8/2020 at 3:47 PM, SharkieRools said:

Which third party are you referring to?  If it's Global Experience Innovators that is a subsidiary of Carnival Corporation.

Global Experience Innovators partnered with Accenture for development and deployment of the app.

newsroom.accenture.com

We have never scanned our passports into the Oceans Ready App, we are simply not comfortable with providing such information via a third party developed web based app and have shared our concern about this with Princess.
 

We present our passports when checking in at the cruise port and there is no problem whatsoever in waiting until this point to do so. So if anyone is ok with using the app for scanned passport info and has difficulty uploading the information I would not be concerned. You can always show your passport at the port and your boarding will be unhindered.
 

We were booked on the Enchanted for the Oct 24 2021 cruise and decided at some point to also book the Nov 4 transatlantic because it was back to back and our favourite cabin was available for both sailings. This transatlantic had a good itinerary and the price was perfect. Although I have to admit, I wasn’t 100% sold on doing the back to back because it meant repeating some of the same ports.

Princess made our decision simple when they decided to change deployment after already publishing sailing dates. We cancelled both cruises. Lots of time to make other plans.

I am not sure how much uptake Princess is going to get for the Discovery from cancelled Enchanted transatlantic passengers. We received a phone call from Princess while we were still pondering our options and she excitedly offered the Discovery transatlantic to us. I told her it was too late in the season for us to want to be coming home from Europe. From her deflated sounding response, I don’t think I said anything that many others may have already told them.

We cancelled a cruise once three weeks out because my husbands brother had a severe stroke and my husband was power of attorney. We were travelling with another brother and his wife....who were not power of attorney. Technically they could have gone ahead with the cruise, but they chose to cancel as well.
 

None of us had any problems whatsoever. Our rep at Princess processed all the refunds immediately that were under the control of Princess (shore excursion payments etc) and put us in touch with the Princess Protection underwriter. We needed to have a Dr fill in some paperwork and I would say that we had a full refund (minus the cost of our Princess Protection premium) in less than two months.
 

I once contacted Princess to inquire about cancelling a cruise basically because we’d booked it to get away from winter....and winter turned out not to be too bad that particular year. We were within a window where a cancellation fee would have applied, and for that reason we went ahead with the trip.

I found that most people dressed nicely on formal nights; much better than I have previously seen on Caribbean itineraries.

Good to know. If the baggage weight can handle it, I'll toss in the long gown!

What nights were the formal nights? What did the people wear for formal nights?

We will be sailing soon....my husband has a summer weight suit for formal nights, and I plan on wearing black slacks with a fancy top.

We used Viatours in Paris on the recommendation of our travel agent. All of the tours ran like clockwork and exactly as advertised. I would use them again.