Don_In_AZ

So once I logged in with my booking number it keeps me logged in for most part.  I say for the most part because when it comes to payment for shore excursions and dining I'm still getting 'session expired'. I logged out, and logged back in and still got 'session expired'.  So I went and logged on to the website using my PC, logged out and was then able to log into the app again and finally pay for my shore excursions... so there are still a few bugs with login.  It's probably some kind of global account flag that isn't getting reset upon login to the app, but does get reset upon login to the website... Just a guess.

I think it's an improvement overall, I just hope they can prioritize getting some of these last few bugs fixed in the coming weeks.  

Can't login with username and password.  Pretty evident that pre-release testing was minimal, if any.  I assume from what others are saying that you can login with your booking number.  That's not exactly convenient however.  You would think login might be one of the things they chose to test before releasing. 

So I will be cruising with my daughter and son-in-law (both first time cruisers) and my two grandaughters ( 8 and 9 years old).  I'm not sure what the SOP is for the kids club onboard.  Does a parent need to accompany them in the kids club or is it meant to be supervised so that you can drop them off and pick them up?  Are you allowed to leave the ship?  How are you contacted if need be?  Do they get to do activities outside the actual kids club area (i.e. mini golf, or ball sports, etc...)
When we went to Hawaii on HAL, there were only about 10 kids on the whole ship and the crew dedicated to the kids program kept them all busy morning to night, allowing the adults to kind of do their own thing.   Occasionally, we'd even see them parading around the ship (mambo train style) wearing whatever self made attire (pirate hats, etc) they had crafted that day.  

Any info is appreciated.

I plan to make frequent use of the Speakeasy Cigar Lounge on our upcoming Emerald Princess cruise in April but have since learned that in no way am I allowed to bring any of my torch lighters on the flights to/from the cruise port (even in checked luggage).  Does the Speakeasy lounge provide lighters (or at least matches) for guests to use?  If not I will have to make a trip to a Fort Lauderdale cigar shop prior to boarding to purchase a lighter...and I guess I'll have to donate it to a local before flying back.

"the ribeye was just a bit too big a steak but cooked properly"

I'll count that as a plus!

The website says to use the app and the app says check back closer to your cruise date.  We are departing on Apr 30th.

So we are cruising with my daugther and son-in-law who only last night found out that their childcare completely fell through.  So they asked me (as the trip coordinator) to just upgrade them to a 4 berth cabin and add my 2 granddaughters (7 and 9) to the booking.  Didn't seem like it would be a big deal.  I was much more concerned with getting them added to our flights as those were looking full 3 weeks ago when I made the original bookings.  To my releif, there was not only space available on the flights, but we even get the low fare...so next up was to call my TA and amend the cruise booking.

My TA was out today so I was put with a supervisor to make the necessary changes.  He found everything we needed and put us on hold to contact Princess and lock everything in.  So we held...and held...and held.  Finally the supervisor comes back on the line and says he's getting pushback from Princess.  Apparently Princess was asking that we cancel and re-book.  We are fully paid so that would mean forfeiting the original non-refundable fare and rebooking the larger cabin.  However the TA assured us that whomever he was talking too was probably new and wasn't grasping the situation, so he was waiting to talk with a supervisor...back on hold.  Holding...still holding...getting a bit nervous...more holding...  Finally the TA comes back on and says they are insisting we forfiet the original fare and re-book if we want to change.  I said we would not be able to afford that.  It so happens that the travel agency we are working with is one of the larger ones in the U.S. and my TA said he could probably get in touch with a more senior manager at Princess and explain the situation because it just didn't seem right.  All we really wanted to do was upgrade to a more expensive cabin (one which was available) and then add a 3rd and 4th guest.  That should not be a cancel and re-book.

About 2hrs later, he called back and said that he was indeed able to get ahold of a senior sales manager who was able to get the changes made and it would even be $100 less than the TA had originally quoted for the upgrades.  HUGH SIGH OF RELEIF!   Thank you to whomever that manager was at Princess and thank you to my TA for fighting for us! 

We booked a guranteed outside and according to my booking on the Princess website, we're in category OF which is at the front of the ship directly underneath the main theatre.  I'm going to look into upgrading with my travel agent tonight, but was wondering if anyone here has experienced being underneath the theatre and could comment on the noise level as well as approximately how late the shows typically run.

Thank you to everyone for your input.  I'll probably just chance it.

...or I can just assume the risk.  Dunno...gonna have to think on it for a bit.

I'm curious if anyone else out there books more than one excursion per port?  

I just got off the phone with Princess and was a bit surprised when I found out that if you have more than one shore excursion booked for a single port (and I'm talking ship sponsored shore excursions here, not 3rd party) and let's say you leave yourself an hour in between, if the first shore excursion is 90 minutes late, and causes you  to miss your second excursion, Princess will NOT refund the price of the second excursion.  In fact, the rep said that the cruise line does not recommend booking more than 1 excursion per port for this very reason.  This seemed a bit odd to me since they make a lot of money on those excursions.

I had planned to take multiple excursions in several of our upcoming Eastern Caribbean ports.  Oh well... now some hard choices have to be made.

So I have had a little better luck with using Microsoft Edge instead of Chrome.  I haven't tried Firefox yet.

It's vey hit and miss to even be able to log in.  Sometimes it recognizes my password, sometimes not.  When I do get logged in there are additional bugs.  I spent about 20 minutes selecting my excursions and when I went to pay for them, it said my session was expired.  No amount of logging out and logging back in would allow me to view my excursion cart...it just kept presenting the session expired message.  Then on my 3rd attempt it no longer recognizes my password.
A search of the message boards revealed people having similar issues last July and as recently as October.
Not sure what the problem is but I hope they get it figured out soon.  It's quite frustrating.

I was only going by the referenced Wikipedia article.

She will obviously be the largest cruise ship ever built but according to Wikipedia:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_ships_by_gross_tonnage

she will be the 2nd largest vessel (of any kind) afloat.  Only the massive crane ship Pioneering Spirit will be larger at a whpping 403,000 tons.

Icon of the Seas will also be the 8th largest ship ever built according to this list.  But since the 2nd - 7th largest ships on the list are listed as scrapped, that leaves her holding the #2 spot among active vessels.

Well I'm sure they got a lot of angry feedback about charging for room service and I understand from what I've read on this site that they have since reversed or at least delayed implementing that policy.  That could be either a result of survey feedback or perhaps a lot of negative press from sites like this one...who knows?  But it shows they are listening...

22 minutes ago, Lee Cruiser said:

Don,

Carnival actually got rid of Formal night a long time ago.  It is called Elegant night because dressing formally is no longer required.  There is a broad range in the Elegant Dress Code provided by Carnival.

I stand corrected then... Thank you.

I'll probably get shelled for this but I'll say it anyway...

If they are going to have "formal night" as a designated theme, then "formal" ought to mean something.  Letting everyone decide what formal means on an individual level, while quite a popular practice today, kind of defeats the purpose of calling out a dress code at all.  The idea that formal means "I wear pants instead of shorts" is laughable!  Simply wearing long pants does NOT and never has constituted formal attire.  Formal has traditionally meant tuxedo or dark suit (w/jacket and tie) for men and some sort of evening dress (not slacks) for the ladies.

I want to be very clear that I am not slamming nor do I have an issue with anyone who does not want to wear formal attire on their vacation.  I respect that.  I just hate to see things constantly dumbed down to the point of irrelevancy.  If the vast majority of cruisers on your line don't want to dress up for a formal night then just get rid of it entirely.  Respect their wishes...  As for those few of us that do enjoy a more formal ambiance on occasion,  maybe make one of the alternative dining options formal and enforce it.

Just my 2 cents...okay let the shelling commence!

Don

Okay all of you experienced cruisers out there....

What are some checklist items (beyond the obvious ones) or things you've learned to expect that would not be obvious to someone who is new to cruising?

1. I've only been on 1 cruise and it was awhile ago, but one thing that is now on my checklist that wasn't there the first time is change for the on-board self-serve laundry.

2. Our next cruise is in Mexico and someone gave me a tip to have quite a few $1 bills for tipping at the ports.

3. I've also heard that if you plan to venture off on your own in the more depressed areas to pack a "Dummy" wallet, with old credit cards, an old DL, even an expired passport and then "just enough" cash for your day.  Keep your real ID and extra cash stashed somewhere else on your person.

New Carnival cruiser here...

I just made a reservation at the steakhouse on the Splendor for my wife's birthday.   Our cruise is not until August, so we obviously have some time to wait.  My question is:  Can I pre-pay for my steak reservation?  Or is simply accomplished by pre-paying into your onboard credit account?

Our only other cruise was on HAL some time ago and they had a similar alt dining venue with a $20 surcharge, but with them you prepaid it similar to a shore excursion.

Don

Thanks for all the replies everyone. It sounds to me like some of these issues have been overblown and that there has also been some improvement. I'm sure I'll love every minute of it just as I did on the Zaandam.

Sent from my SCH-I605 using Forums mobile app

Greetings fellow CC’ers,

I have recently booked an 18 day roundtrip Hawaii cruise on MS Veendam for January 2015. I did so despite the discomfort I felt after reading many of the recent reviews of this ship describing chronic A/C and plumbing issues in many of the cabins. Several recent passengers have also stated that the food and service on this ship is not up to the typical HAL standard. There was even one entire thread dedicated to making fun of the her as the “armpit of the HAL fleet”!

The reason I booked the trip despite all the bad press was because the itinerary is perfect for me; roundtrip from my hometown of San Diego, 5 sea days each way, an overnight in Honolulu (which no other HAL ship is doing) and it doesn’t skip Kona (unlike Princess and Carnival). No other ship or cruise line even came close as far as itinerary. It was also my hope that if the general consensus was that there were quality problems associated with a certain ship, certainly HAL would do something to address them.

But I will admit the negative reviews have me concerned. Is HAL hearing these complaints? Are they making any serious efforts to fix any of these issues? It seems like something as serious as plumbing would be addressed immediately. And A/C is pretty important in the heat and humidity of the South Pacific!

Assuming nothing gets fixed, what are the cabins to avoid? I'm currently booked on A-Deck, aft on the port side but it's early enough that I'm sure I could change it if need be.

And lastly, is there any good news on the horizon for the poor old Veendam? Drydocks? Planned repairs? Crew training?

Thanks,

Don

My first (and so far only) cruise ship was the MS Zaandam for a 15 day circle Hawaii in October 2009. It was the most fun I've had since going to Tahiti 20 years prior to that in July of 1989.

Loved the Ship, the people, the itinerary...everything about it. Have been dying to go again ever since...

Does anyone know why the Berlitz guide downgraded the Statendam class ships (Statendam, Maasdam, Ryndam and Veendam) from 4 stars to 3+ stars back in 2012?

Not that it matters a whole lot, I'm just curious if this was ever a topic of discussion.

Well I can't speak for the Veendam specifically (although I hope to be able to shortly), I did take the Circle Hawaii on Zaandam back in '09 (Zaandam is only slightly larger than Veendam). Anyway, on that cruise (in mid Oct) there were only about 5 or 6 young children on the entire ship. Even so, HAL had assigned a young female crewmember the task of entertaining those kids in the Club HAL facilities for the better part of each day. To her credit, she had those kids following her around the ship like the Pied Piper for the whole cruise and seemed to keep them very well entertained. Every time I saw them they were having a wonderful time and were laughing and engaged in some sort of fun activity.

My point is that it seems the policy is that if there are children that need to be entertained, HAL will make sure that someone is tasked to do just that...even if there are only a few.