Blackduck59

Or you could put all you laundry in before the cut off, which will mean all clean clothes except what you use on the last 2 days of the cruise. And you could plan your land based accommodation so there is laundry facilities there. That is what we will be doing for the 26 days we are away from home before we board the ship. We will book apartment style hotels with laundry facilities in suite in several places along the way including Melbourne and Auckland. Although if we do laundry in Melbourne we probably won't need to do laundry in Auckland, we can send that out on the first day.

So plan accordingly.

I guess you have to look at it in terms of the whole package. The early booking HIA package has the "crew appreciation", elite beverages, and enhanced wifi (whatever they are calling that now) included in the cost of that package. For some it represents good value others not as much. It would seem to me that if you think HIA is good value for you, get the regular package at $55.00 a day and prepay your "crew appreciation" it would still be less than the $100.00/day you say you were quoted.

I'm pretty sure I would mention it is a Library and she should tone it down. Sometimes the only way to deal with rude is to be rude.

I tried to look it up on my booking but alas it is technically a B2B so for some reason the excellent HAL web site will only give me the cost of the second leg of 29 days, it is $246.50 I have to assume the 14 day first leg would be about half that price. That is a cruise that starts in Auckland and ends in Seattle.

Really? Still?😠

Wow how are they going to operate that out of the airport? LAX is after all the airport for Los Angeles.

I think that one of the "upgrades" they should do during the next refits for all ships is to add Grand Dutch Cafe to all ships that don't already have it. Which of course is the majority of the fleet. At the very least add some of the special pastries to "cafe" venues on the non Pinnacle ships.

Do not use the taxis in Boston, they suck. We had great success with Uber, after 2 crappy experiences with taxis. Best of luck getting to the port, if we were boarding in Boston again. We would use Uber.

What a great gesture but for many Glacier Bay is the highlight of their Alaska cruise. If we decide to do another Alaska voyage, Glacier Bay will be a must on the itinerary and we won't be indoors when we are in Glacier Bay, you can't hear the glacier or feel the power of the environment.

My wife is jealous of the hammock. One of the things she wants todo when we are in the tropics next year. Hopefully we can find a shady hammock with bar service so she can relax with a book and sip a fruity drink.

That looks very appetizing Julie, very artistic. Lynn would love that because she often has trouble with corn. She loves the flavour and will eat it when it is in season but pays for it for a couple of days after.

I'm not sure what ship you may be on but the Pinnacle grill on Zaandam is a windowless space, I don't think I would choose that for Glacier Bay.

Fortunately for my wife she doesn't need to "convince" YOU. An hour a day is workable, the point is dinner at 9:00 doesn't work for us. Yes one does adapt and we do, there are also a long list of food intolerances she has to work around. As to the hour and a half dinners? We really don't have a big problem with them, until they start to encroach on the gap she needs between eating and her insulin. As for sharing tables, we have met some nice people sharing tables, other times not as much. As it turns out you don't have to dine when we do, so whatever works for you; for us dinner at 5:00 would be great.

We would prefer the 7:30 and 9:00 PM show times. We also prefer to dine early, we would like to see the MDR open at 5:00 for dinner, that way even the notorious hour and a half plus dinner would still allow for a choice of after dinner entertainment. While some members seem to like to mock the early dinner folks, there can be many reasons for dining early, medical needs such as diabetes, or perhaps requirements for other medical needs. Also I'm getting tired of the constant, HAL sucks, you should cruise on any other cruise line. If HAL sucks so bad and every other line is better, then move on and enjoy the other lines, posting your rosy reports of the great voyage you had on XYZ line on the XYZ line boards.

HAL, RCL, Celebrity, Virgin Voyage and NCL do not have self serve laundry, that represents a very large percentage of the passenger load on cruise ships. Some may find the comradery of the laundry room enjoyable. Personally I would rather find that comradery some other place; while the professionals wash, press, fold or hang my clothes per my request and return it to my cabin on hangers in a garment bag or wrapped in tissue in a basket on my bed. All for a very reasonable charge.

That looks a lovely plate Linda, am I seeing leeks in your vegetable ragout? Are you travelling Mic or is that an at home presentation? Either way it looks very nice. On another note it is exactly 1 year until we meet up with Mic & Rosie (and whoever else would like to get together) in Sydney, before they head off on a cruise, and we start our long awaited Australian adventure. The booking windows are just starting to open so we will see what we can find for accommodation. I don't think we ever really had any good success with car hire bookings the last 2 times, we never actually got anything booked for that. We will probably wait a bit for that but will take any suggestions anyone has to offer. This will be a one way rental and we are aware there will be an extra charge, and for us this is part of the cost of doing business.

The laundry service on HAL is outstanding, and very reasonable. While the laundromat on those few ships that have them may be great, neither my wife or I, am interested in using one when there is a very good laundry service available at a reasonable cost. For our next adventure which will be down under a year from now we will be so happy to get on the ship after 26 days on land touring, doing our own laundry in whatever facilities we can find. Once we board we will get the "unlimited " laundry package and not have to do laundry ourselves until we get home 43 days later.

We haven't done the "pressing" service, but when we send a bag of laundry out in the early morning it is often back later that day. If we send it out in the evening it is often back when we come back from breakfast the next day. That being said sometimes it takes longer. I'm sorry you weren't prepared for no iron being available, many cruise lines don't allow them.

Call me an optimist, even naive but I think ditching the "Brand Name" licenses is a good thing. People clearly want classical music, who cares if they are from Lincoln center. I'm guessing there are plenty of talented classical museums from all over the world who would love a cruise gig. My biggest problem with most "Rock" bands is that they plat too oud for the space they are in. Most bands use volume to mask missing talent. Also a common complaint is that vocals are so often lacking. I hope the powers that be will soon wake up and realize that HAL is getting thoroughly thrashed by the competition when it comes to "Entertainment". With that knowledge maybe find an "entertainment coordinator" who is in overall charge at head office with subordinate "assistant entertainment coordinators" in the various markets where ships are home ported. Hire the local talent and rotate them around the fleet in each market. How hard can that be. I saw an episode of "Mighty Cruise Ships" that was produced when Koningsdam was brand new (Lead ship in the Pinnacle Class), there is a state of the art theater on those ships and what do we have? Rather spotty performances that do not match the capabilities of the space. I just read my own post and it really is allover the place, What I am trying to say is find local talent who will be the core cast for your entertainment venues, add some extra acts that rotate around the ships in a given market and quit paying licencing fees for brand names.

When/how did you know that "Taste of Tamarind" was available? We would definitely be interested in booking that. I'm guessing that the temporary Tamarind runs will be very popular.

@mawvkysc Thanks for posting that link, it was a pleasant presentation. I would probably try Morimoto but alas there is no tamarind let alone Morimoto on Westerdam. I'm hoping they may do a Tamarind pop up once or twice on our 6 week voyage next year.

I find the concept of receiving a proper newspaper at sea a little odd. Wouldn't that require the ship to have a full printing press and the paper come digitally by satellite. For them to run the "paper". Call me skeptical but somehow I don't think a current issue of any daily paper was delivered to your suite.

It's nice to know the change was well received, and the world as we know it has not ended. For the "I don't like the piano bar" crowd, don't go there, there probably won't be room for you anyhow.

We never encountered any masking rules on Zaandam in August/September of last year. Not at the embarkation port of Boston nor any of the port stops including all stops in Canada.