jlawrence01

NCL and Carnival have very similar programs. To their credit, the RCCL program is the easiest to apply to your reservation.

I have never seen one that is more than L or XL and my stewards have not been able to get a larger one

I listen to so much of the cruise press that tells me I need to "book now" as bookings for ALL of the large cruise lines are "at record levels" and that all of the good ships will be sailing full. If that were truly the case, why is HAL offering $1 deposits? Why is Carnival offering $25 deposits on a lot of their cruises? Maybe these cruise lines are doing some "window dressing" to keep Wall Street happy. By the way, in the past two weeks, RCCl has dropped the price of their cheapest fare on the Icon of the Seas from over $2900 to $1899 for a December 7th sailing and that is one of the "latest, greatest ships". Personally, i think that we are going to see a lot of discounting in future months and i think that I am going to hold off booking anything past September 2024 until i see the deals available.

When you are on a 31 day cruise on HAL, how often do they change the menu? Or is it 4+ weeks of the same menu?

Personally, I found the steak on the Regal Princess in the MDR to be mediocre at best. Admittedly, we did not pay extra for a steak. That was our only complaint about Princess food on the cruise.

Some thoughts: 1) There is so much more information out there on cruising than there was 25 years ago from so many different sources. In the past, you would talk to a CLIA travel agent or attend a travel show. The travel agent could "hold your hand" and answer MOST of your questions. 2) While there is a lot of information out there, there may actually be too much. And there is very few filters. You have to evaluate a lot of the sources of information as there are so many influencers who are quietly sponsored. After a while of watching hundreds of YouTube videos, I can pretty much guess what will be stated about the particular cruise. 3) Personally, when friends ask me about taking a cruise, I get some basic ideas as to what they are looking for and steer them toward lines that would work for them. I always ask them to pack some patience and try as hard as possible to do everything on the ship. I also try to get them to try different lines. We have done eight cruises on seven lines.

I have been on Konigsdam and Eurodam in the past eighteen months. I did not find either one of them crowded even though they were both nearly full. I will say that we avoid the MDR on the first day of any HAL cruise as it can be frustrating as everyone gets down to the MDR as it first opens. It seems that after the first day, the crowd at opening thins out.

I have been very impressed with the laundry service on HAL. I think that in 30+ years of drop off laundry, I have never seen it folded so well. I don't know about the television but you can always access it via the Navigator app on your phone.

The Dive Grill serves a good variety of hamburgers and sausages. The menu is creative and well executed. All food is made to order. The Celebrity grill was disappointing in that the hamburgers are made well in advance and the staff on the Millennium could not cook French fries properly. I have been on two HAL cruises and never had problems eating at the Lido on Embarkation day.

Actually, when I am on HAL, I prefer a cruise with a number of sea days as there is always something going on. I would prefer sea days over port days at places like Bimini, Half Moon Cay, and Falmouth.

I have been to Falmouth twice. The first trip we took an excursion that was a 45 minute van ride. I am glad that I was not driving as there were so many near misses with vehicles trying to pass on narrow two lane highways. I do not remember much about the excursion other than it involved too much shopping and a promised restaurant meal that turned into a carryout. When we returned to the cruise port, we left the port area heading into the town itself. It is not something that I can recommend unless you have numbers. On our last trip, we stayed in the cruise port.

We paid a guide who took us all around the island. Other than the Dolphin House and a stop at the bakery, it was a real waste of money. I would probably take a shuttle ride in the AM and then head back to the ship for lunch.

I always carry my own insulated coffee mug to the Lido and fill it up by pouring the coffee from the glass mug into my travel mug so as not to break any rules I prefer doing that over carrying a china mug and having to find a place to return it.

In general, my wife and I order three appetizers, three entrees, and three desserts as we like to try a wide variety of dishes. Honestly, we have never had to send back a dish in two cruises on HAL as they are so well executed. I have had more execution problems on the RCCL lines and any steak product I have had in the MDR with Princess.

And you do not have to be age 50+ to join AARP at $12 per year.

We RARELY book cruise ship tours. I found this through either Get Your Guide or Viator. They are cheaper and exactly, what does a cruise line add to it? It is a fifteen minute walk at the most and it is a very easy walk. To be honest with you, the walk from the Carnival cruise ship port to DT Cozumel is a 30 minute walk and is very pleasant on cooler days. However, cabs are readily available.

When we were on the Eurodam, the doggie area was still there from the last cruise when we arrived. On the first full day of the cruise, the staff was towing it away as there was no need on our cruise.

if the dog is a legitimate service dog, the dog accompanies the passenger everywhere. And if the HAL ship has a dog on board, the crew rolls out a small pallet with grass and a "fire hydrant" for the dog out onto the Promenade deck in the aft portion of the ship.

On the last cruise, I had $200 in HAL gift cards that I purchased from Krogers. I went up during the middle of the night when there were no customers at Guest Services. The clerk took the cards and immediately applied them to my account. At the end of the cruise, I had only spent $125 and they applied the credit balance to the CREDIT CARD that was associated with the account.

For years, I purchased foreign currency contracts on the Euros as a hedge to currency fluctuations as my company had significant exposure to Euros as we had a lot of sales in the EU. It is NOT something that I would really recommend speculating on as you have NO control over the events that will happen in Europe. Having said that, there is nothing keeping you from buying currency and holding it for later trips. Do realize that you may come out ahead and look like a genius OR maybe not. The ONLY currency that I have been able to predict with a small amount of certainty is the Canadian dollar which generally is pretty much tied to the price of cruse oil.

We paid $760pp for 14 days for an Oceanview cabin on the Nieuw Amsterdam leaving from Vancouver on September 8th. It is a great deal in that we are scheduled on the 7 day Inside Passage on Celebrity Solstice the week before. By no means is that the BEST deal that I have seen. I have seen B2B & day cruises from Vancouver to Seward in May on NCL for closer to $500. You are right in saying that port fees are as much as the cruise fares. Sine we live in Arizona and airfare to MOST cruise ports other than LA and San Diego are so expensive, we try to book back to back cruises OR one cruise plus 1-2 weeks in a port PLUS another cruise

Random thoughts: 1) On my first (and last) NCL cruise, they were pretty adamant as to what time that the ship would be leaving and the time you needed to get back. However, time after time, that was ignored and you could see 50-75 strolling casually through the cruise port 30 minutes after departure time. 2) I nearly always take 3rd party excursions from very reputable operators using companies that have several vehicles in the area. And I schedule them very early in the port stop. If you head out at 8 am on a two hour excursion and your return time is 5 pm, I do not think I have much to worry about. 3) A lot of ports have fleets of taxis or have attractions that are within two miles of the port. Again, there is pretty limited risk.

I was on the Carnival Splendor in February 2019 on a seven day Mexican Riviera cruise. It was our first cruise since 1992 and we had low expectations. We thought the food was very good and the service was excellent. In all fairness, we ate almost all of our meals in the MDR as we had great and attentive service. We also liked the included casual restaurants - Indian and BBQ a lot also. We really did not stop at the buffet as it was so busy. We did not like the "frat boy" entertainment but we would occasionally head to the main theatre and would watch a lot of the movies on deck, We were happy enough that we started to plan to do a repositioning cruise on the ship as it was heading over to Singapore. However, the week before booking, I received an invite to a family wedding that I had to attend. I think that the cruise lasted as long as the marriage. My biggest reservation about booking another Carnival Cruise is that we did not like the fact that there was more drunkenness on that ship. Also, some of the patrons just do not know how to behave in public. The crowd is very loud and can be aggressive. I will not be any more specific. Since then, we have done six more cruises on HAL, Celebrity, Princess, Royal Caribbean, and NCL. We have enjoyed the Konigsdam and the Eurodam overall with very few issues. The only line that we will not consider again is NCL.

1992 Costa Riviera - Alaska Inside Passage Honestly, it was a cruise ship designed for the Mediterranean and sent to Alaska. There was so little to do on the ship Swore off cruising until 2019.

The whole process was done online and took me no more than about ten minutes. Celebrity got back to me in about 24 hours. I did the same process with HAL and it took about three days to get back with me.