Infi

Comedians usually do a show in the main theater one night as the "main show" for the evening, then another set in BB King's on a different night, usually when the BB King band has the night off.

What I was trying to say was it was a fleet-wide policy on Carnival at that time. Clearly it also existed, though in a one-off, ship-specific form, on HAL as well. Were it not for the industry shutdown, I would bet money HAL would have fully implemented this by 2020-21 and it would be done and dusted in October 2022.

I wanted to underscore this point about HAL simply following policies or changes that have already been implemented on other CCL brands. This forum likes to joke about the "Testerdam" being the guinea pig, but policies like once daily turndown service and the charges for select room service items were implemented on Carnival and Princess long before HAL adopted them. Carnival had once a day turndown service in 2019, perhaps earlier. Perhaps Carnival corp intrinsically knows these changes would not be as well-received or accepted on HAL, so that's why HAL is last in line to get them. Or perhaps they want to maintain the image that HAL is their premium brand. Who knows for sure? For those who are HAL fans, it's worth it to keep up with news about other Carnival corp lines to see what changes may be afoot. I'm dreading the day HAL tries to implement charges for the majority of room service like Carnival or tries to remove the desk chairs from cabins like Princess. Won't be pretty!

Thank you for sharing. Sailing on Zaandam in December and was wondering about the status of this policy. I'll be requesting service in both the morning and evening like we have always had before.

The Lido market pizza leaves much to be desired IMHO. Tried it on my first HAL cruise in 2008 and never repeated that mistake again. Dried out from sitting all day under a warmer and flavorless. Years later and it still looks the exact same. The dedicated pizzerias are a welcomed upgrade and actual quality pizza.

On our last B2B cruise on Eurodam, we received both the Mariner's cocktail coupons and the invite to the reception each cruise (4 star). Never used the coupons and the drinks at the reception were watered down. Not much to write home about, nor get upset over missing IMHO. One doesn't (or shouldn't) cruise HAL for the perks; they've never been anything special. I cruise for the destinations and the stellar crew and the service they provide.

Thanks for raising this, OP. I had also noticed the dearth of reviews while browsing popular excursions for my December cruise. The most recent reviews for many excursions were from 2017 or 2016 - even given the COVID pause, that's a really long time ago. One surprising workaround I found was having the other person on the booking log into their account. They were able to see a lot more reviews than I could. Some excursions jumped from no reviews on my view to 15 on theirs - very odd! The only potential explanation I could think of is that they've never cruised before while I'm 4 star; maybe they think I need the reviews less? 😂 Either way, definitely a flaw in HAL's online systems - surprise, surprise.