nyold

This is a 3-night sailing, and prices per day are 90, 41, and 15 SGD. So in USD using today's rate it would be 67, 30, and 11. So around your estimates, plus minus a little bit.

Yes it shows deluxe, refreshment, and soda.

Hello, I am sailing the Spectrum of the Seas in March, and am buying a beverage package. My questions are: 1. For things like water and soda, I assume every lounge will have it? So if I'm doing things far away from the buffet (say near the shops, or near the theater etc) then I can get these pretty easily? 2. But for things like iced tea and lemonade, are they only available in the Windjammer? I know the restaurants will have them too but I supposed I can't get them easily without "sitting down" in the said restaurants. 3. For the tea and coffee shop on deck 4, what kind of specialty coffees are they serving? Is it like lattes, frappucinos type, similar to what you'd find on a Starbucks? TIA!

The maitre'd will sit you down. You get to specify if you would like your own table or share with someone else. There will be 3-tiered snack trays already waiting on your table, and there are waiters going around with pots of tea. They will refill your empty cups. In general the atmosphere is "supposed" to be upscale and calm, but I've had occasional times when it was a bit louder than necessary, or people come in lido-deck outfits. I'm not judging them but it does subtract from the atmosphere a bit. The snacks are okay. There are hits and misses but generally less than what you'd get in an MDR appetizer or dessert (in terms of quality, I know they are different kinds of food). The tea is standard English black tea.

Does anyone know what scent they're using in the greenhouse spa? What I mean is that, whenever I pass by the spa on my way to the gym I caught a whiff of the scent that they're using and it's wonderful. I think there's some eucalyptus, but I don't smell lavender, which is unusual for a spa, but either way it's very relaxing. If you know the name of the lotion or air freshener that can produce that same smell please let me know.

The shows are not crowded. There were a lot of people but everyone kinda knew to space themselves out and not pack every single seats. Between buffet and room service, you should have plenty of food available. Of course they're not going to be plated as nicely as MDR food. Maybe if you ask, they can make an exception to have MDR food delivered to your room. One data point: we were eating in the Pinnacle Grill and got too full for dessert so we just asked it to-go. They put them in plates with cloches and gave us the rolled napkins with utensils. We just took that to our room as if they were room service. We ate it later that night, and it was fine. Of course you can't do this with warm desserts, but for like cake and cheese plates it's perfectly viable.

There are 2 lines, veriFly and non-veriFly. Thing is, people don't know what it is so they just get on the shorter line assuming it's for them, so the staff had to redirect some of them to the non-veriFly line.

Congrats and enjoy the cruise! Also enjoy the anticipation between now and embarkation day !

If you show up at the port right at noon, prepare for a long line. The line might move fast, but it is still long. If you show up at 1, the line is most likely shorter. If you have verifly, you can just waltz right in. That being said, most hotels' checkout time is noon. So if you are staying at a hotel the night before, there is no reason to artificially delay your arrival at port. Just check out, leisurely get to the port and hope you dont have to wait too long.

No, it just means that it is either 5:30 or 8 pm. If you want to confirm to double check, you can email hal_ship_services at hollandamerica dot com. I am spelling it out because sometimes the forum rejects posts that have email addresses in them. Just email them saying you want this time slot and confirm the number of guests in your party, whether you want a table by yourselves or mixed with other guests etc. If you have several staterooms you can also confirm that all of them are linked so that you sit together etc

That is absolutely disgusting, covid or not. What makes him think it's okay to do that? Even before covid, I had been hoping for more "served" stations in lido because of behaviors like these. FWIW my MIL caught covid PROBABLY on the ship. She began showing symptoms the day after we disembarked, and testing positive 2 days after. So lucky that it wasn't earlier. She is having very mild symptoms.

5:30 pm and 8 pm. So if you do the fixed hours, you can do 5:30 OR 8, but you cannot switch willy nilly. The flexible one is always flexible of course. The issue is that if say you usually do 5:30, but on ONE day only you want to do a flexible dining, they can do it but they said you're making it difficult. They'll still do it with a smile of course, but out of consideration we try not to do this one unless we have to.

1. Best to keep count yourself. I didn't know you could ask the servers, but I did ask guest services and they could pull up your account. However, there's always a line in the guest services, that's why I started counting myself. 2. Midship is better than fore / aft. Lower floor / deck is better than higher deck, but of course higher decks usually give you better rooms, so there's that. For the particular ship you're interested in, try to find out what deck the embarkation gangway would be on (or you could ask here). That tends to be very crowded first and last day, and super noisy in the morning of the last day. 4. Wifi is available in the room. Move closer to the door if it's an issue because I think the router is somewhere in the hallway. My wifi strength diminishes as I move closer to the window. For room service, drinks are NOT counted towards your package and would be charged extra. But in the covid case they might be willing to make an exception.

I can also attest that the tap water is perfectly safe to drink. The water that the servers refill in your glasses in MDR / Lido is probably the tap water as well and they taste about the same. That being said, the canned water in HAL has a slight flavor to it (and if you read the ingredients, it has electrolytes added). So I like it a bit better. I take them on port days as well because you never know when you'd be thirsty without easy access to a drinking fountain. But when I'm in the room, I drink the tap water.

I agree with this. In this day and age it's easy to feel like you have everything you need on the phone because all confirmations etc are always emailed to you. But I've lost count on how many times I'm frantically searching for that info on the email whenever the person behind the counter asks for something I wasn't prepared for, so now I always print everything (even in half size if you want to save the trees) and bring them in a folder, ready to show. That being said, for Zaandam boarding in Montreal, the no verifly line was absolutely a mess. The verifly line was short but it still moves slower than expected because people still had to fumble with their apps, and their phones locking on them, etc.