newgirlhelpme

24 minutes ago, jsn55 said:

Interesting situation.  Makes me think that the tour provider may not be legit.  I don't think a pax could possibly know which dock the Oosterdam will use on January 1.  The dock might be planned and published ahead of time, but could change at the last minute; it's all governed by the Port Authority.  Tour providers are well aware of this fact, and know it's their responsibility to find the exact location of a ship once it's tied up at the dock.  I'd look for another tour provider.  But perhaps others here are wiser than I.  

I’m sorry, I may have worded it wrong, but from my understanding there’s 2 ports in punta arenas. So i believe they were asking me which of those 2 we will be coming in  

Hi! I’m doing my first south america and antartica cruise in december, on the oosterdam from HAL. When we are in punta arenas, i am trying to book a penguin tour. The tour provider has asked me which dock we will be at. There’s prat pier and mardones pier. We are arriving on January 1. Does anyone know how I can find this out?? It’s not on the navigator app, and i’m not sure how else i can find out? 

30 minutes ago, POA1 said:

You'll be fine. Just keep doing your research. There's a lot to know, but don't let it overwhelm you.

 

Ask questions galore here.

Do they make it easy to locate things on the ship and to know where to go for things? I know the ship is huge, I can’t even comprehend it right now without being on one before. But is it fairly self explanatory where things are located, how to use the buffet, etc? This is reminding me of my freshman year of college where I had to learn how things work on campus lol 

4 hours ago, VMax1700 said:

Hi, welcome to Cruise Critic, cruising, and HAL 😊

First cruise can be a bit scary but we all had a first one.

Have you downloaded the Navigator App from Playstore/App Store?  It is usefull (but not a necessity) for menus, itinerary and What is On around the ship at various times.

You will also receive a paper 'Daily Program' which gives you details of where and when various entertainment etc is open.  Most important is to look at the times for food!   The Dive Inn burger bar has been mentioned, but note that it closes early (maybe 6pm).

I don't think you will find many people about the ship after 6pm wearing shorts etc, so throw something longer into your bag.   

Just keep asking questions! 😉

Thanks!! This might be a silly question, but what are some examples of the entertainment on board in the evening? Yes, I downloaded the navigator app, and I see that they have different venues and stages, but what exactly do they do there? 

7 hours ago, crystalspin said:

Hi newgirl!

It isn't that bad! Please don't eat in your room except maybe breakfast on a port day. If you aren't already, get yourself changed to Open Seating for dinner (also called "As You Wish"). If you are marked "early" or "late" that refers to Main Dining Room (MDR) seating. You can change it on board -- ask where the dining maitre d' is on the first day (it's probably too late to change by phone as it's the weekend and then just the two days where no changes are made). Woohoo! Your first cruise is almost here!

 

You might want to take a culotte or capri or two. Feel like shorts but more coverage for any situation (not just MDR). My husband used to want to go to MDR and be waited on, but our back-to-back (B2B) cruises over last New Year, we ate only in the Lido (or specialty restaurants as we had some onboard credit -- OBC -- to use). Not only did we not have to change clothes, the food was just as good and at our own speed. Also still keeping some social distance where possible.

 

I don't think the Oosterdam has a separate Pizza Place. But may have a pizza station in the Lido Market. And, for what it's worth, Ooster rhymes with Toaster (not OOOster), so you'll be in the know!

 

Happy sailing!

Thank you so much!! When people say “dining rooms” (as maljo did above) what are they referring to? Is that any of the places where you get waited on? Also, the Lido market is the buffet place, correct? Where the dress code doesn’t apply? Sorry for all of the questions, I just want to make sure I understand lol. 

1 minute ago, Haljo1935 said:

What ship are you on?

The deck plan is a great place to start getting familiar with the ship before you board. Just review it deck by deck to get an idea of where things are located. Then when you get on, you can go find some of the places you located on the deckplan.

Halfacts.com is also a good resource for getting familiar with your ship - there are pictures and comments about many of the cabins, too.

We are on the Oosterdam! And okay thank you I will check that out. 

15 minutes ago, Haljo1935 said:

Welcome to HAL!!

The dress code is very relaxed, but how "dressy" you should expect to be for depends on your itinerary, so where you're going will impact what you want to wear for dinner. Longer cruises and European cruises, for example, tend to be dressier.

With that said, we're really talking about what you wear in the dining rooms - not around the ship. It is all dining rooms, not just the "pay extra" or "fancier" dining rooms, though, so on Dressy Night if you wanted to wear shorts and a t-shirt you would want to consider eating in the Lido or maybe pizza place, not the Main Dining Room, but no need to squirrel away in your cabin w/room service.

Dressy doesn't mean formal or fancy, just no beachwear, shorts, etc. So you could even wear a sundress with a short jacket and not be out of place.

What ship and where are you going?

Thanks! We are doing a 28 day mediterranean cruise! I didn’t even know about the pizza place or the Lido market until you said that. I have done so much research but I fear I am still woefully underprepared 

Hi! I’m leaving for my first cruise with HAL on Tuesday and I am slightly confused about the dress code situation. From what I’ve gathered it’s only really applicable during the night time too? We are not planning on going to any of the fancy restaurants or the ones you have to pay extra for, just whatever ones that are included. On the itinerary it says things like “smart casual” “casual” and “dressy”. I was under the impression that these dress codes only apply to the fancier restaurants but I think I might be wrong? I obviously wasn’t going to show up in a string bikini or anything, but just a tshirt and shorts for most nights is what i was planning. Is the dress code for going to restaurants or just if you leave your room at all after 5 pm you have to be dressed up or whatever? If I don’t have clothes that are appropriate could I just order room service and eat in my room? Like I said, I’ve never been on a cruise before at all so I am new to all of this and I don’t really get it. 

1 hour ago, terrydtx said:

I suggest that you check with your airline to see if you can change to a flight that arrives in the morning before 11am. There are many flights to Rome from JFK that get to Rome much earlier. We flew to Rome last year, 3 days early, and it took almost an hour to get our bags and through Italian customs. The drive from the Rome airport to Civi can be an hour or more in traffic. Best case with a 3:15pm arrival is you are at the cruise terminal by a little after 5pm, and you need to be checked in at least an hour before the ship's departure or 6:00pm. For me this is cutting it way too close. Since you booked your own air, the ship will NOT wait for you.

 

If you can fly in the day before the hotels in Civi are not as expensive as in Rome.

I’m working with the airline to move my flight. If I was to fly in the day before, do you know if HAL offers transfers usually on just the embarkation day, or would they possibly be able to do a transfer to Civi the day before? I already bought the HAL transfer so I hope I could still use it. 

11 minutes ago, thinfool said:

The ship is going to dock in Ephesus?

 

At one point, yes. 

20 minutes ago, rodndonna said:

 

As a crazy fly "day-of-er", one guideline is the allowable flight arrival times if booking within HAL Flightease.  I will do a flightease search for my cruise, and take a look at the arrival cutoff time they allow. As an example, if they allow flights arriving as late as 1:00 pm for my cruise, then I would use that as a starting guideline for booking my own flights. 

 

Edit: Also I think they meant "do not arrive later than 3:00" 

This is seriously so smart!! I just checked, and the latest arrival time is 3 pm that HAL offers. Our is 3:15. Maybe I should pay to get seats toward the front of the plane so we can get off quickly? If i completely cancel the flight, I will only get $20 back. I can reschedule it with the same airline (Norse), but they only do one flight per day so I would have to arrive 24 hours early then pay for a hotel, etc. That was such a good idea thank you for that! 

3 minutes ago, VMax1700 said:

I wouldn't even consider arriving the day of the cruise!

The transfer time from FCO (Rome airport) to Civitavecchia (cruise port) is 60 - 90 minutes depending on traffic.   Getting your bags etc in the airport will take up to 60 minutes.

Where are you flying from?  What passport do you have?  Can  you change your flights? 

I don't believe that any HAL transfer will be available at that time on embarkation day. 

I considered coming the day before, but it’s just so expensive for a hotel and the flight prices are way higher. I am flying from JFK, and I have a US passport. I’m 90% sure my flights I can change for a fee, but I would have to look into that. When I was booking the transfer, and when I did the online check in, they both asked for my arrival flight numbers and times. I feel like if it was really not available they wouldn’t have allowed it or there would have been an error message or something. Maybe not though. I’m planning to get on the phone again with someone to confirm that everything is fine, but I am really hoping that it is 🙃

Hi! Going on my first HAL cruise this summer, and I was wondering if anyone has experienced what I am seeing on the navigator app right now? We booked the transfers to the port from Rome and then to the airport from Venice. Got the emails saved and payment went through and everything was confirmed about a month ago. However, on Navigator, when I am looking at “my itinerary” the first transfer from the airport to the ship doesn’t show up on the days schedule. At the bottom, we do see the transfer to the airport on the last days schedule. Is this something I should be concerned about? 
Going off of this, I was wondering if anyone had an input on the situation we have with arrival flights. We did not book with HAL (I know the risks and everything) for the flights. On the itinerary it says we leave Rome at 7 pm. I couldn’t get a straight answer about what time we needed to land in Rome by, and after several phone calls with different answers, it seems like the general consensus from team members was “don’t arrive before 3 pm”. This sounded kind of weird, maybe they meant don’t arrive any later than 3 pm? But they surely said don’t arrive before 3 pm. So, I booked flights with the arrival time of 3:15. After I did that, I found this website and found that we should arrive 4 hours before the departure time. I am worried that we might be arriving too late, by time we clear customs and get our bags. Does anyone have experience that they could share with this? Or any input? 

43 minutes ago, Markanddonna said:

The internet has good instructions on how to use the tram. I was told after this experience that rush hour gridlock is a daily occurrence. How does your tour suggest you return to the ship? Our experience at the end sort of ruined an otherwise very nice day. 

 

Some advice: stay together. One of the women in my group was off on her own after lunch when we had free time not far from the square in front of Hagia Sophia and was assaulted by teenagers. They tried to grab her purse. They didn't know who they were messing with and didn't get it. I understand women should not be alone in Istanbul.

The tour suggested a taxi or the public transportation. The tour ends in the grand bazaar (which i’m assuming is a very busy place). When I look on google maps, it says that the distance from there to the cruise port is 22 minutes for both walking and public transportation. Wondering if we should just walk but stay on main streets? We are 2 21 year old girls, but we’re both very tall (6’0+) and full bodied so I’m hoping that won’t make us a target or anything. 

6 minutes ago, Markanddonna said:

Like Cruiser Bruce said, the highly rated excursion companies work hard to keep on schedule and to get you back to the ship on time. 

That said, here are two caveats: Several years ago, the ship and local time were different.There was a little blurb in small type on the daily informing people of that. Good thing that our close knit group worked hard to get the word out or some would have been an hour late. That is the only time out of hundreds of ports I've been to where there was a time difference.

If you are in Istanbul, consider looking for a tram-based tour. The rush hour traffic at the port is often severely gridlocked. Nothing was moving, so it didn't matter if you were in a car, on a bus or van. Only the tram was moving. We had to get out of the van and fast walk to the port to make it on time. We weren't confident that the ship excursions suffered the same problems, but they did. As it ended up, the ship was at least two hours delayed in leaving port. The crew told me that night that they all took the tram because they had been there before. Maybe we should be getting more excursion advice from the crew!

This is great news! Thank you so much! Yeah the excursion we booked for istanbul picks us up from the port, but none of the excursions offered return service, I wonder if that’s why? I planned on getting a taxi but it is good to know about the tram! Thank you so much! 

Hi! I am going on my first cruise with my friend next month. It is a HAL 24 day mediterranean cruise. I worked at a HAL hotel and I knew that the excursions we sold to people were almost double the regular price, and so I decided to book all of the excursions in the ports independently. I know the risks that come with this and everything, I gave us 2 hours on either end for excursions, and 3 hours if there was a tender. That being said, I was following the times given on our cruise itinerary. I’ve been doing some research regarding ship time vs local time and everything that I am reading is mostly about mexico and the caribbean. We will be in Italy, greece, montenegro, turkey, and croatia. I think that we will be fine, but I just want to double check if anyone could help me? As an example, on the navigator app, it says we arrive in Ephesus at 7 am. So, the excursion I booked (in local time) is picking us up at 9 am. Navigator says we are leaving at 6:30 pm, so we will be dropped off by 5 pm (local time). Is my method of doing this correct or am I mistaken? I can cancel any of the excursions booked so I am trying to plan in advance! Thank you!