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donaldsc

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Everything posted by donaldsc

  1. Totally agree w that statement. I just would never do it on a cruise tour or a tour consolidator group tour. My private tours varied in size from 2 people to 8 people. DON
  2. If they did change their policy they are doing their best to try to hide it. This is probably so people will not cancel their cruises on Princess. I would if I was planning a Princess cruise. DON
  3. You get a much better range of views on a balcony. If necessary you can go outside and see and/or take pictures of stuff that is in front of you or in back of you. Not possible w a window. Also you probably can't take pictures through the window if the window is closed because the window is probably dirty and the autofocus on your camera may end up focusing on the dirt on the window and not on the scene outside of the window. I would always take the balcony over the window. My thought on the different costs may be that the cruise lines may have figured that if they can convince people that the window is better even if it isn't they can get more money for them. Cruise lines are very good at figuring ways of extracting money from people. DON
  4. Did you report it. I would have, DON
  5. Interesting point. Many Japanese towns also have castles. Completely different from European castles but also different from each other and interesting. How about in Alaska - ABG. Another bloody glacier. We have all seen glacier posts on CC where the OP said that they wondered why the cruise was taking them to more than 1 glacier. DON
  6. Suckered? Did anyone put a gun to your head? There is a simple thing to do when someone tries to pressure you to buy something - "no" and walk out. I also find it fascinating that given that most towns have many jewelry shops that a person could go into but never do - people and not just the OP seem to have a need to go into jewelry shops on cruises and make large purchases. This would make an interesting topic for a research project and a PhD thesis. The only ways I would buy anything expensive on a cruise would be a) if I could stand in the shop and go onto the internet and price compare or else b) if I had nonrefundable OBC that had to be spent so regardless of the price or maybe I should say the overprice it was free to me. I have 2 watches that I bought that way and they are also watches that I wear every day. DON
  7. You may have overpaid. However the price for the bracelet was clearly marked and if you did not do proper diligence that is your problem. I would never buy a piece of expensive jewelry on a cruise ship. We have a friend who buys jewelry on cruises and on trips. His comment would be that if you do not know jewelry know about your jeweler. They do not owe you anything. Let me ask you something. Suppose you want to buy a new computer and you really do not know anything about computers. You go into a store and find a computer you like although you really do not know that much about computers. A day or so later you go into another store and see the same computer at a significantly lower price. Would you expect store 1 to refund the difference between their price and the store 2 price. I doubt it. The statement that the customer is always right is not correct. Sometimes they are wrong. DON
  8. We are doing a Mediterranean Spain, Portugal and Morocco epicurean cruise but this question applies to all the Atlas epicurean cruises. Atlas advertises that they have a whole bunch of on board epicurean activities including cooking demos, tastings, trips with the chefs to markets and other special food related activities. I want to participate in these but I also want to do private off ship tours and I worry that I will be off the ship on one of my tours while the other guests are enjoying their epicurean delights. So my question is this - are these activities more likely to be at a specific general time (morning, afternoon, early evening etc) or are they done whenever it appears to work. I asked the Atlas cruise consultants and their useless answer was essentially "whenever". So I ask those of you who have done epicurean cruises what times of the day I should keep open - morning, afternoon, early evening or "whenever". Also how frequently do they have these events. This is my 1st Atlas cruise. My TA assures me that we will have a great time once we are on board but I am beginning to wonder. DON
  9. The problem w Viator and other consolidators is that when they work they make it very easy to book tours although a tour company has to give back to Viator a large chunk of what you pay for the tour. However when there are issues or when you want to contact the company who is actually do the tour it becomes very difficult. Also try attempting to determine a tour pickup location or trying to change a tour pickup location on a consolidator site. You contact the consolidator; the consolidator contacts the company doing the tour; the tour company responds to the consolidator and finally and hopefully the consolidator contacts you. If the message gets messed up anywhere along the line or if you don't like your answer you have to go back and repeat this cycle. Sort of "when you're hot - you're hot. When you're not - you're not". I had several "you're not" experience on my last Japan trip. DON
  10. The ANMC Craft Shop has wonderful stuff and all guaranteed to be genuine. https://anmc.org/patients-visitors/craft-shop/ DON
  11. Get a set of Sony WH-1000XM5 or Bose Noise Cancelling 700 headphones. They are expensive and you will look stupid but they really work. O own a pair of Sonys and they work wonders. You can also get in ear devices that attenuate the sound which are less intrusive and less expensive. https://sorenson.com/blog/captioncall/your-guide-to-finding-the-best-earplugs/ DON
  12. We have used Breakaway Adventures out of Wrangell 4 times but I do not think that they would work if you arrive by cruise ship. Another thing that you have to be careful of w Anan is that the bears will only be there if the salmon are running. On our last visit we were there a few weeks too early or else the salmon arrived later than usual and while there were some salmon and therefore some bears there were not as many bears as on previous visits. The bears must have some sort of wildlife salmon telegraph so they know where the salmon are running. DON
  13. There is a simple solution to the problem of people who don't cooperate with safe drills which unfortunately will never be implemented - make an example of them and publicly kick them off the ship before the ship sails. DON
  14. I assume that you know that Celebrity does not go to Glacier Bay. That would eliminate them from consideration for me. DON
  15. Excellent point. I should have thought of it. Put yourself in the shoes of a Japanese tourist being in Europe and taken to yet another large church with lots of meaningless features and stained glass. They might make the same "same as" comment as CruiseSnooz did. DON
  16. By doing a cruise-tour you basically ruined your trip. We did a Diamond cruise but we also did not do any ship tours. I set up all of my own tours which were private and varied in size from 2 people to 8 people max. We discussed the places we wanted to visit before the cruise. We booked directly with the guide and not with tour consolidators. Our guides varied from good to spectacularly good and we felt that we had a great experience in every port. True that a few of the guides were a bit hard to understand at times but we lived with it and we always managed to understand what they were saying. Finding good guides was difficult for some ports as many of the pre-covid Japanese guides got out of the guiding business but we did find good ones. However you took the easy way out with a cruise-tour and you got a disappointing tour. I do want to make a specific comment about your "see Buddha see landscaping" comment. True that we did see a lot of Buddhas and castles and gardens but every garden and every Buddha and every castle was different and a good guide would tell us and show what the differences between each one was. I will also bet that you did not go to the wonderful restaurants that we went to. We told our guides that we did not want to go to tourist restaurants but to one that they would go to. We often ended up in a small restaurant up a flight of stairs where we were the only non-Japanese in the restaurant. Sometimes the restaurant didn't even have an English language menu and we sometimes just told the guide to order what was good. It worked for us. The Diamond Princess was OK but I regard a mass market cruise ship which is what all the Princess ships are as just a big bus that will get me to the ports I want to see. One interesting thing about the Diamond Princess is that I would guess that 50% of the passengers were Japanese. We had 2 cruise directors and all announcements were made in English and Japanese. The shows were ones that would work for both the English and Japanese language passengers which limited the types of shows. The passenger demographic also meant that we had a lot of Japanese options for meals.
  17. The water on the ship is perfectly good. Also totally free. Finally if you don't want to bring a refillable bottle w you can buy one bottle of water on board and refill it. I find it difficult to sympathize with the people who complain about the cost of water on board the ship. DON
  18. About the only river in the US that might be worth cruising is the Columbia. Don't mention the Mississippi or any of its tributaries - those itineraries sound awful. Also I could drive to any of the towns on the river that might be interesting. DON
  19. Come up with some specific questions and we will be glad to help you. Bottom line is that you are going to have to do some of your own research or take some books out of your local library. My only response at this point is that Alaska is totally and completely different from the Caribbean and IMHO much much much better. DON
  20. Google is your friend. Type "biking to mendenhall glacier" into Google. DON
  21. Good point. I forgot about College Fjord which is a day cruise out of Whittier. The best of all possible worlds would be a cruise that arrives or departs from Whittier which gives you College Fjord and then hits Glacier and Hubbard on the cruise. All 3 glacier experiences would be both very special and completely different. DON
  22. Use Google Maps. It will tell you the distance. DON
  23. Re the distance - use Google maps. DON
  24. The trick is to put several index cards between the hooks. Then you can slide them apart instead of prying them. Just be aware that it might be difficult prying the heavy duty ones off the wall. DON
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