ontheweb

Visa problems: Cruise ship with 1,500 passengers stuck in Spain's Barcelona | AP News I thought the people doing the checking in for cruises like @Ferry_Watcher were supposed to catch this sort of thing to prevent something like this happening. There is also a thread in Princess about someone whose MSC cruise was affected by this.

Wow, that is some story. I thought the people checking passengers in were supposed to catch that sort of problem to prevent exactly what happened there.

We are gold and even at that level were given two cartons of water (one each I guess).

I agree wholeheartedly and put it down on the survey they gave us at the end of the cruise as a MAJOR complaint. One fish dish had bacon added and another had some sort of Italian ham. The second one definitely was one I would have picked if not for the meat.

I wonder if any of the passengers knew this as we were all either Americans or Canadians. The time to change has not always been mid-March as it is now in the USA. I remember one year that I was unhappy 😢 as my birthday in late April had only 23 hours. There also seems to be here in the United States a movement to get rid of having to change the clock twice a year. But some favor daylight savings time to be the only time used while others would stay with standard time for the entire year. Is there any similar movement to change this in Europe?

I've also had important e-mail from a cruise line go directly to the junk folder. At least I have found with my e-mail that when I move it to my inbox, it gives the option of never having e-mail from that sender go to junk in the future.

LOL, just back from a river cruise and was only in the Netherlands and Belgium. There should not have been any reason for a time change, right? Well, no it seems the Netherlands did not do the changeover to daylight savings time until the last weekend in March. But to answer your question, you will be told just like we were on that cruise and on the Mediterranean cruises we have been on and the Baltic cruise we were on. (Go as far east as st. Petersburg, Russia, and you really get a time change.

Yes, one of the advantages of using a TA is that the TA has to deal with the cruise line's crappy IT, not you. And it is not just NCL that has a terrible IT department. It does seem that a talented IT person would not be working for a cruise line. I am sure there are tech companies that pay their It people way better than any cruise line.

Why don't you just call HAL to book whatever tours you want?

OP here, just back from our Gate 1 river cruise. The had colored ticket stubs and those determined which bus you took. There was 1 overall cruise director (Jorn) and the entertainment person, Laura, (I forget her exact title) accompanied buses.

Just back from a Gate 1 river cruise (Tulip time cruise) on the Monarch Empress. On the whole we were quite happy with the experience, starting with our cabin was upgraded. We had done two Gate 1 trips before, but escorted land trips, not river cruises. Just like those 40 person trips, we found all other passengers to be very open and friendly. A friend who has done river cruises on Gate 1 and other lines told my DW that the passengers on other river cruise lines are more snobby and less friendly. The one real complaint I had was that the dinner menu always consisted on 1 meat dish, 1 fish dish, and one vegetarian dish (+always available salmon and chicken), but on 2 nights the fish dish also included meat. Since we eat vegetarian and fish but not meat, the adding of meat to fish dishes caused them to not be something we would pick and severely limited our choices on those nights.

We solve the restroom problem in Europe by using the restrooms in museums, and since DW is an art teacher (now retired), we end up in a lot of museums.

They are not going to refuse a credit card payment!

And we are back, and we finally got there. It was worth it, but it would still have been better to have been able to go there this past summer as on our river cruise by going to Brugge, we did not get to explore Ghent.

Not really an embarkation answer, but I have found Australians on any cruise we have been on are very gregarious and into partying. Just back from a Gate 1 river cruise from Amsterdam, It was a very friendly crowd. We were told by a friend who has been on Gate 1 river cruises and river cruises on other lines that the Gate 1 crowd is friendlier and less snobby.

I believe that is what we ended up doing, seeing the steward early and making sure it went out.

Not 100% positive, but I do believe when we sent out the laundry special on the Prima this past August, it came back the next day.

Really looking forward to seeing Bruges. We are on a river cruise and booked an extra excursion to there for next Friday. (Not only Good Friday, but also DW's birthday!) We were supposed to go there last summer on our Prima ocean cruise, but Zeebrugges was cancelled for an extremely low tide. We were also supposed to go on a river cruise in the Netherlands and Belgium around 20 years ago on a Christmas/New Year's break that was chartered out from under us after full payment was made.

That is good, and planning is important, but you also have to be able to adjust and go with the flow.

That's generally the cause. "Water. water, everywhere and not a drop to drink."

I know the feeling. We had booked way in advance a cruise for our 30th anniversary a Baltic cruise on the Star Princess. And then that ship had its balcony fire the year before, and we wondered about that.

No, and they intended to extend it to the rest of the fleet, but it looks like the reaction to it led them to drop it. We were on the Prima last August and it was dropped before then.

So, to quote Bob Dylan, "the answer my friend is blowing in the wind." 😉

Not the one you asked, but I did notice the dance venues were more crowded when we sailed from San Juan, lots of danceable Latin music.

I believe by "dividend" the poster you are quoting is referring to the OBC as a added perk "dividend. And unlike a real dividend, it is not taxable.