Sea Hag

Alaska. It goes lots of places. 🙂 Cats. They're so great, but they do tend to take over, don't they?

That's a good sailing, but the one I'm salivating over and wishing I could do is the 22 day roundtrip San Francisco. Would love to do that, but we just can't leave our cat for that long. She's well taken care of when we cruise, but she's very dependent. I hope you enjoy your great LA roundtrip!

I don't know how readable this screenshot will be, but I'm trying it. This is on a HAL Alaska sailing in September of 2025. Basic balcony pricing. $60 a day for HIA, and it has a really nice selection of goodies.

This is true, but Princess Plus or Premier don't correspond to HAL's Club Orange. HAL's Have It All is the nearest thing to Plus or Premier. Club Orange gets you priority boarding, priority customer service line, cabin upgrades within the meta category you book, and either special section in the dining room or separate dining room entirely on the new ships. I might be missing some things on Club Orange, but those are the broad strokes. No drink package with that.

HAL has "HIA" or "have it all" which includes drinks and such. Doesn't always include tips, but does sometimes depending on when you book. We haven't cruised on HAL yet, but we do have three cruises booked, all with Club Orange. The think I like best about Club Orange is that it's available to everyone, no matter what cabin category they book. It is limited availability, so a person can't count on always getting it. But on the last one I booked with HAL I booked the bottom of the barrel, completely obstructed ocean view guarantee then added Club Orange for a cabin upgrade to the top level, unobstructed ocean view cabin in our favorite location all the way forward and front of the ship. That's a real win!

I'm not happy either. We have four cruises booked with Princess, not nearly as many as some here. When I booked these, to my mind I was buying a "product." Some parts of that product were Alfredo's/Gigi's at no charge, room service at no charge, and the daggone medallion functions for drink and food deliveries that they so strenuously marketed at us. Now, they've changed the product. I expect prices to go up, and I certainly haven't been surprised about that, but I don't expect that a purchase I've made will change into something else. I'm not saying I wouldn't have booked these cruises if the switcheroo happened before I booked, but I will say that I'll be looking long and hard at other options for three out of four of the cruises we have booked.

You may be right on this in the long run, but that's not what I've been expecting to happen sometime down the road. I've thought for years that eventually the buffet would be the only meal option included in the cabin price. We shall see.

I think a person has to run the math on this for their own situation. My husband hates (hates!) standing in line, so less lines with CO is of benefit. We haven't sailed with CO yet, but we have enjoyed Club Class on Princess quite a lot. The additional menu items were almost always very good. I have three cruises booked with HAL right now, our first sailings on HAL. The last one that I booked just the other day is for September 2025. I was able to book the lowest ocean view guarantee and then upgrade with CO to the cabin I was after - the highest ocean view. For us, this is all fantastic bang for the buck.

Not me! We were "upgraded" once from a lower category cabin that had no problems to a "better" cabin that did have.

Thanks! 😃

I booked us into 10001 on the Eurodam today. Usually, I look carefully at deckplans to make sure there's nothing iffy above or below, but this time for some reason or another I didn't do that. That cabin has the Crow's Nest above it and the Fitness Center below. I'm not worried about the fitness center, since we've been above or below it on other ships. But I am a bit worried about noise from the Crow's nest. This cabin ticks all the boxes for us otherwise - high up and as forward as you can get. Any info will be greatly appreciated. 🙂

When making pies, clear gel is definitely your friend. Also great for canning pie filling.

They once gave me a coupon for 10% off on a jewelry purchase over $100. Is that special? 🤣😂

My opinion is that leaving it in the packaging will result in fewer wrinkles.

I've "completed" online check in twice so far, complete with all green checkmarks. Maybe it'll stick?

We had that happen to us in a foreward facing cabin on the Ruby Princess. The gal was fixing her hair or whatever. The gal with her said something to her and she got an "oops" look on her face and moved along.

Same here for my husband's.

That's really funny! And somebody on the HAL board here was complaining about another cruise line's site. Don't remember which. Some kind of cosmic curse?

All of us here know that the Princess website has its hitches, glitches and oddities. But now, as in the title, I've gained a new appreciation for it. Holland America's website is sooooo much worse. Hard to believe, isn't it? It's a rare occasion that I visit that site and don't get multiple page errors, header error messages and flat out white screens of death. I was just trying to buy an internet package, but on each of the many attempts I made, I got a "There was an error adding the item to the cart." To be fair, their app does seem pretty stable, but it's so limited in functionality that it's just about useless. We wanted to try something different, and we've never sailed with HAL, so we're doing that in September.

We want to eat when we're ready to eat too. And 5:00 is when we're ready to eat, according to my DH. 🤣 😂That's why I waitlisted us for early fixed when I booked, before I found out about CO. We also like the same waitstaff and table every night. I do know that we could show up at anytime at 5:00 (or whenever it opens), but in our experience lots of people also show up when the dining room opens. So, to avoid the line either fixed or CO works best for us.

There's a lot of merit in the Princess system, but it's only available to Club Class minis and all suites. I was pleasantly surprised to see that I could buy CO while booked into a lesser cabin. That's very nice.

Since we're only waitlisted for early fixed, it was worth the extra cost to me just to assure that my hubby is less likely to end up standing in long lines. He simply hates that. I have no idea where they'll put us, since we're waitlisted and added CO.

I'm getting somewhat confused about CO. I booked us on the Westerdam for our first cruise on HAL. Didn't know about CO yet, so I just got us waitlisted for early fixed dining. I later added CO, thinking it works like Club Class on Princess, where you can walk in any time and they seat you at a random table in the Club Class section. We've never had a wait to be seated under that system. But I'm seeing these things above: "We had the same table and waiters each evening." and "2) a separate line for CO guests at Open dining (this does come in handy during busy times)" I imagine that this will all sort itself out, but I'm left wondering about a couple of things. If we clear early fixed dining, is there a CO line in the early fixed dining room (whatever that may be)? I requested a table for two, which I realize is a request only and doesn't guarantee anything, and I'm wondering how hard it is to actually get that, with CO in early fixed or open dining. Do those of you who ask for table for two usually get it? Any illumination will be greatly appreciated by this HAL newby. 😃

That bounciest stateroom on the ship would be fine with us. We like motion, and my DH actively dislikes aft cabins. I'm not really sure why that is, since he's not really sure why that is, but it is.

I've had a few problems with the app, but with some effort and help from this thread, I've been able to sort them all out. What gets my goat is the fact that this app doesn't seem to me to be very useful. The functionality is very limited. I hope it's more useful on the ship than it looks like it's going to be.