gaudi89

Our HAL Alaska cruise starts in a few days and we have a few things we are not clear and hoping those here can answer 1) It will be my wife's birthday and we wanted to know if we allowed to bring on board a special bottle of wine? I know some cruise lines allow one bottle of wine to be brought onboard 2) we booked through HAL and it said we were supposed to get $150 on board credit for each person.We can't find that that credit shows in our HAL app anywhere. We did book 2 excursions online weeks ago on our computer but we don't know if they took our $150 credit off the charged price or what. Would they have used it for our HAL excursions? If not then how do we get to use the credits and we can't even see on our HAL app account that they exist? Thanks

Thanks for replies to my question yesterday. I have another question, can you take a small heating pad for sore muscles on the ship? I keep looking and there are a number of electric things you can't bring but I can't find out anywhere about electric heating pads. Anyone know?

Because of my wife's physical conditions we have booked a suite with a larger balcony and my wife may be eating many of her meals in our room so we have questions about room service. Never been on HAL nor used room service before on a cruise. She's watched many videos recently about ships and saw that on some you are not limited to the short room service menu but can actually order other items that they are already serving that day in the main dinning room or lido. Is that true with HAL Noordam or is one limited to the brief room service menu given?

Thanks for your response. My husband called HAL about this question a few days ago and after a long wait on hold he got a HAL rep who told him she didn't know if you can get on and off when you want. He asked her to ask someone else there the answer and after another long hold she came back to say that getting on and off was at the control of the crew and they knew nothing else. Your answer is much more helpful. We've never stayed on board in a port before but wanted to do it for part of our time so we can experience the ship when it's quieter.

We will be on the Noordam on an Alaskan cruise next month and haven't been on HAL before. When we are at dock for a day can we get on and off the ship when we want or are we restricted in some way (so that once you get off you can only come back on once?). There are a few ports we don't want to be on shore all day and wanted to exit the ship around noon or so. is that possible and if so how about coming back on?

yes, my wife has been doing research for a hopefully last minute cruise and first trip to Alaska and was super shocked by the prices such as $387 a night at a Holiday Inn Express. We could never afford that and are looking at non chain hotels but most get bad reviews.

After 4 years of no longer trips we have finally gotten a house/pet sitter so we can go on another cruise. She can housesit only in June or July. We want to go for 3-4 weeks and Alaska seems the easiest to plan short notice from where we are. We live on an island that is only ferry served so always have to plan extra time to get anywhere. Both Vancouver and Seattle are about as far away as the other to us although getting to Seattle without driving is far easier. We would ideally like to have a 7 or 10 day cruise that goes to to Alaska and then fly back however my wifehas hit some impasses. We would rather come and go from Seattle as we could do it without a car and having to park it long term in a city but the only cruises she can find in June fromseattle are just 7 day ones that return to Seattle and don't give you time in Alaska. And also we see if we fly back from Anchorage that the flight cost in Alaska air miles is less and there are direct flights to Seattle but there are no direct flights to Vancouver which is another drawback to Vancouver departing cruises. She's even thought of taking two cruises, one from Vancouver to Alaska and then coming back on another ship from Alaska to vancouver after hopefully staying up in alaska for some time first. Has anyone done that? Any advise is appreciated to plan this.

After 4 years of no longer trips we have finally gotten a house/pet sitter so we can go on another cruise. She can housesit only in June or July. We want to go for 3-4 weeks and Alaska seems the easiest to plan short notice from where we are. We live on an island that is only ferry served so always have to plan extra time to get anywhere. Both Vancouver and Seattle are about as far away as the other to us although getting to Seattle without driving is far easier. We would ideally like to have a 7 or 10 day cruise that goes to to Alaska and then fly back however my wifehas hit some impasses. We would rather come and go from Seattle as we could do it without a car and having to park it long term in a city but the only cruises she can find in June fromseattle are just 7 day ones that return to Seattle and don't give you time in Alaska. And also we see if we fly back from Anchorage that the flight cost in Alaska air miles is less and there are direct flights to Seattle but there are no direct flights to Vancouver which is another drawback to Vancouver departing cruises. She's even thought of taking two cruises, one from Vancouver to Alaska and then coming back on another ship from Alaska to vancouver after hopefully staying up in alaska for some time first. Has anyone done that? Any advise is appreciated to plan this.