ontheweb

My DW like you would just as soon eat at the buffet. She says she would rather make her own salad with exactly how much of each ingredient she wants. She also has said several times that she gets tired of people waiting on her.

As long as none of the 3 Covid cases are you, Hank, or Hank's wife, we are ok with that number.

Thank you once again, very helpful.

What a great story! Thanks for sharing.

I think that "in transit" passengers means they are on a back to back. They are not "old" people; they are staying on the ship for the next cruise.

👍 I hope we can say the same after our Prima cruise this summer. 😊

You note that passengers get better service when there is little activity on the corporate net. Is there generally a time when there is little activity on the corporate net? Conversely, is there a time to avoid for passengers as it would almost always be a busy time with the corporate net?

Good point. Less people drinking on the ship when they are in port, and of course the casinos and shops are closed then.

The point remains they have to get from point A to point B, and going slower saves fuel.

No matter how long the ship is "parked" in the port, no fuel is used. The fuel is used going from point A to point B. If you can do that going slower, you save fuel. So, I am factoring in time in port as that is no fuel burnt no matter how long or short the ship is there.

Let's see winning my first ship on a stick for a trivia. And then there was another cruise where they had the men against the women for trivia, and we guys won all 4 contests (which seemed to freak out the assistant cruise director who was running the trivia contests). And also taking the Bob Marley bus excursion in Ochos Rios, Jamaica.

When we do end up filling out the forms for NCL, will they then forward our passport information to the airlines, or do we have to fill that out for both?

I'm guessing that they save fuel by sailing at a slower speed. Less time in a port means more time to get to the next port which allows them to sail at a slower pace. I hope this helps.

OK, I had thought they immediately needed that information. Thanks for the correction.

I think my mother had a picture id from the senior citizens, I'm not sure, but I believe it was issued by the county. Would that have qualified? She once had a passport that she needed when my parents went to Japan. She had to get help from our representative in Congress to obtain that. She had come to this country as a toddler when her parents escaped the Ukraine and came to America, I really do not know whether she ever had an official birth certificate. She had served in the WAVES in WWII (which is where she met my father who was in the Navy). If she still had that picture id which would have been very old, would that qualify her to board a ship?

The only Baltic port for which you really need an excursion is St. Petersburg, and since no cruise is going to take you there, you do not need any excursions. You can get a Rick Steves or other travel book and plan for yourself what you wish to do.

They did get both our middle names right when I gave them to our TA who gave them to NCL. I assume they will still be correct when NCL give them to the airlines.

We were once on a cruise (not HAL) on which after the first trivia contest that I won, they decided that trivia should be a team event, the men against the women. We, the men, won all 4, and the assistant cruise director said that that had never happened before, one side winning them all. On our plane back we noticed a woman and her son in front of us who had been on our ship. The youngster looked at me and said, "you're the trivia guy!". It's one of the things that I really enjoy about cruises, we can each do our own thing trivia for me and swimming laps for DW, and still get to spend a lot of quality time together.

And how can the crew be instructed on moving all the passengers when they do not get to drill with the passengers?

Just out of curiosity, what government photo id would work other than a driver's license? For instance, my late mother never learned how to drive so never had a driver's license.

We've all been there. Don't worry about it. (Or you could claim you were just seeing if people were paying attention to what they read on these forums. 😉)

We had no ballroom dancing on our last HAL cruise. ((But the Maasdam is no longer in their fleet, and they claimed there was dancing on their larger ships.)

I don't know how long one stays at Stonehenge on the excursion back to Heathrow as the one we were going to do never happened as the cruise was lost to Covid, but I can say when we did something similar walking around Dover and then spending time at Canterbury doing a Princess excursion from Dover to Heathrow, we had plenty of time before departing for the airport.

Neither of you had commented on it before. Bad assumption on my part. Now I hope I can just get the blood flowing again after getting out of this uncomfortable lotus position.

We first started dancing on an NCL ship, the Crown in 2006. We also danced on the Epic in 2012. And hope for dancing on the Prima this summer.