cruisinsusin

Based on our experience on a transpacific as well as a land based trip to French Polynesia, most larger merchants and restaurants accept credit cards but some travel suppliers, taxis and smaller merchants want local currency. There were not local currencies on the ship and we did not want to be looking for an ATM right after disembarking so prepurchased some local currency from our bank before travel.

We visited French Polynesia on a Celebrity transpacific and enjoyed Mo’orea so much that we flew back a few years later and stayed 10 days. It was amazing and if you can make an over the water bungalow work, do it!

Both times we have disembarked at Port Everglades recently, the Uber area has been packed with people waiting and we were able to walk right up to a taxi and get on our way to the airport. Prices were very similar to Uber/Lyft

Same on recent Nieuw Amsterdam- honor bar present with form to sign for drinks taken

Solstice's wifi was overall good on the transpacific and Australia to Singapore legs Oct and Nov so @darren42's suggestion would make sense.

Same for us - purchased x2 for B2B sailings( transpacific and Australia to Singapore) 33 nights and it was ready to go for each leg and was seamless!

I dont have knowledge of Saigon but we used Grab in Singapore with our US phone number.It was very efficient.

In our experience less take Amex

The only Singapore currency we needed last month was for the hawker centers- everyone else took credit cards. Most taxis took cc as well and Grab ( the Uber equivalent) works like Uber with cc on file.

Not usually, but good to have as a back up on a cruise ship (rather than risking a skimmer on the ATMs in some locations or paying the ATM fees).

We cashed a check at guest relations on our recent Solstice cruise. Maximum is $200.

We were on board earlier this month and $100 deposit for non suite cabins was still available

We were in 1110 a few years ago- no noise issues. We started the cruise in Buenos Aires and did notice that the A/C could not keep up and it got warm in the cabin unless we kept the curtains closed. Once we got further south, this was not an issue.

It was excellent

It was available as a "chef special " in the MDR on one night on recent Solstice cruise.

Was not the case this month on Solstice

We have written “cold water please” on the laundry slip and have not had anything destroyed or shrunk ( over many loads of laundry) but have not sent any very delicate items. We have had mixed success with request to “return on hangers”-on Constellation they did so but on Solstice they said no without paying for ironing. I read a tip on CC regarding rolling the hand washed items in a towel to absorb much of the water and then hanging. They did dry overnight.

Second the recommendation for the guided tour of the Opera house- we did this on our recent turn around day and really enjoyed it. The Taronga zoo is excellent and the ferry ride over from the quay is pretty quick. We also enjoy taking the ferry to Manley and just walking around. We have snorkeled from there in the past but understand there have been shark sightings recently so not sure I would recommend that now😳

@joydivision84 we engaged a driver for the entire day to do touring from Panama City to the Colon area ( 7-8 hours) and it was about $200.

Park Hyatt was wonderful. in Singapore, we really liked the Intercontinental- the club lounge was excellent

We recently stayed at the Intercontinental with club access and loved it. On an upcoming trip we are booked at the Conrad so glad to hear that it was excellent as well

Not trying to hijack but we had excellent prime rib in the MDR twice on each of our recent B2B Solstice cruises

The August Eclipse sailings to and from Iceland have been sold out or nearly so for several months. I see only retreat available for the August 16 sailing

We were on this cruise as well as the preceding Hawaii to Sydney leg. We found the food in the MDR to be much better with more options on the Sydney to Singapore leg and also enjoyed the chef’s specials (Beef Wellington one night ). The service was excellent on MDR ( and really everywhere) both legs .

They had a few basic croissants there as well