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@Laminator and @electro thank you for your input on the HAL smoking policy. I know there is a dedicated discussion thread on HAL smoking and it ran thousands of entries. I cannot possibly read all of them. Can you (or anybody else who is knowledgeable) boil it down for me regarding a couple of simple questions: 1. Why does HAL have different smoking policies for different ships? Is it due to a specific quirk in a ship's layout/hardware, or is it due to a geographic area and the cultural preference? What's the key difference between the ships that allow smoking in casinos (Koningsdam, NS, Rotterdam, Zaandam, Volendam) and the rest of the fleet? 2. Do you think the ships that currently allow smoking in casinos are going to gradually ban them? Thanks.

Can you tell me where to find the discussion thread? Is it on CC or somewhere else? My family just started cruising with HAL (did one in 2019 before COVID, then did one in 2023 and another one last month). We really liked the nonsmoking casinos and may end up doing most of our cruises on HAL going forward. It would certainly be nice to know a little more about the ins and outs of the HAL casino and their offers.

We were on Nieuw Amsterdam last week. Our cabin was 4079. A few doors down, there were 3 cabins named UP001, UP002... They don't show up on the deck plan, but they look like regular cabins. They even have the normal mailboxes by the door and once I saw the daily program in the mailbox. I was on Eurodam last year and I remembered they had cabins like that too. Anybody know what they are?

My family just finished our cruise on NA from Jan 6 to 13. BB King has been officially rebranded as Rolling Stone Lounge. Billboard on Board is not a room, but an area off the hallway, without any wall, right across from the casino, which doesn't have any wall either. They use the area for trivia during the day, but the noise from the casino makes it hard to hear. At night, when the pianos are going on at BOB and the slot machines are going full throttle, it's not a pleasant place to be for your ears. Also, during our week, the ship was plagued with bad odors. Something must have gone wrong with a broken pipe or something. Deck 2 and 3 midship had a strong sewage (human waste) smell. The carpet in the hallway was stained and the maintenance crew were there everyday. Outside, on the walking track around the ship on Deck 3, at a certain section, there was a strong smell of garbage (spoiled food). Same smell at a certain spot on Deck 10/11.

Just came back from the Nieuw Amsterdam trip and wanted to provide an update to my own question. Yes there was a motion activated light under the dresser/closet by the door. However, the light was not ideal for what we needed. First of all, it only stays on for 10 or maybe 15 seconds. Basically, it goes off while you are still in the bathroom. Secondly, the light is actually quite bright (when the room is dark) and is visible to the person sleeping in the bed. Not a good thing if you are trying to not wake up the other person. So for us, we brought a night light and plugged it into the bathroom Shaver outlet. It's much dimmer than the motion sensor light, but that's enough for one to see and not trip over things. Then we put towels on the floor to block out some of the motion-sensor light, but leaves just enough light to see the path back to the bed. Also, two valuable FYI: 1. The bathroom door on NA can be opened completely and be held in place by a strong magnet on the wall. We left the door open at night so that it's easier for these middle of the night pee trips. 2. The shaving outlet has a toggle switch to choose between 120 and 220 V. Make sure you select the 120V if you don't want to burn out the night light.

My family will be on Nieuw Amsterdam in 2 days. We will be in an Oceanview cabin on Deck 4. I am wondering if the bathroom has some kind of built-in night light? If not, I will have to pack one.

I liked their Pizza, especially the white pizza. The dough was very good. I have been on more than a dozen cruises and Venezia's pizza was the best.

So sorry to hear. That's winter cruising for you -- weather from week to week could be so different.

I could be mistaken. It's been a few years since my family last went on Carnival. I may be confusing Carnival with HAL. I am pretty sure HAL app provides free chat, right?

Just remembered another "pet peeve": Carnival charges $5 per person if you want to use their Hub app to text other guests. I deliberately chose not to buy WiFi package, so that I could truly disconnect and not be tempted to pick up my phone every few minutes. That worked well. Their Hub app was quite helpful -- no need to carry the paper version of the daily program, and you can see the restaurant menu and scheduled activities in advance. It's really useful to plan which entertainment option to take, if I know that the same option is offered 3 days later. However, on past Carnival cruises (before COVID), we had used their app to text each other while on board. It was a free feature. This time, they wanted $5. So if you were a group of 4 people, all 4 had to pay $5 each. The money was not a lot, but out of principle, I refused to pay it. I don't know when they started charging for this, but that's another thing (same as herbal tea) that I consider to be petty on Carnival's part.

My wife and I took HAL in April 2023 on a Panama Canal cruise. Enjoyed it. And yes I remember they had good herbal tea selection. 😀 Unfortunately for that HAL cruise, we were looking forward to Lincoln Center and other Classical music offerings and we were disappointed to find out that they didn't offer them anymore.

If they want to give me Art of Teas for free, that will be nice. I may even be converted to a regular customer when back on land. But I cannot see myself paying $3 for each cup. So if we go on Carnival again, I will just bring a couple of boxes of Celestial Seasoning.

@madamerkf Sorry to hear about your bad experience. My family just got off Venezia on Dec 10. What was the reason for not able to leave NYC until Monday morning? Was it due to weather also? Half Moon Cay is our favorite stop in the Caribbean. We almost always book a Carnival or Holland ship so that we can visit HMC. I just wish they would invested in some infrastructure to build a real pier at HMC, so that they didn't have to do the tender and didn't have to be at the mercy of the weather.

Seems like some of the posts on this thread are going on a tangent and becoming not productive. Since I started the thread, I will attempt to bring it back on topic. A few other things that I forgot to include in the original post: 1. Melting lava cake -- still my all time #1 dessert on all cruises. Venezia didn't disappoint. Its lava cake in MDR is very warm and very melty and very chocolatey. 2. In general, Venezia had good desserts. I remembered a good Pistachio cake, and several good chocolate cakes of different varieties (peanut butter, coffee, etc.) 3. Weather -- when we woke up the first morning, the ship was next to Virginia Beach, which is almost to North Carolina border. It was warm enough to wear shorts that day. We had planned to be cold for the first 2 days, but in reality, it was only cold for the first night. 4. MDR no wait -- we were on My Time Dining and each time I requested a table, we got one assigned within 2 or 3 minutes. The meal itself is pretty quick too. We always finish the whole meal (all 3 courses) within an hour. 5. Not happy about the fact there was no free herbal tea. Lido and MDR only have black, decaf black, and green. When I asked for a herbal tea after dinner in MDR, I was told that it would be $3. I don't need fancy tea. A regular Bigelow or Celestial Seasoning Mint or Chamomile tea costs 10 cents per bag at retail. How much can Carnival save by not offering herbal tea? So if you are a herbal tea drinker, bring your own!!! We are going with my other side of the family on a Holland America cruise in Jan, leaving out of FLL. It would be an interesting comparison to this one. Stay tuned...

@pe4all @kona_wahine Regarding the clientele of the ship, I don't think it's fair to simply say "New Yorkers are rude". A big factor is that people that live in big cities (NY or Miami) tend to be louder and are used to smaller personal space. It's just a different social norm. I had a friend in college who came from a different country. He was told "back off, you perv" when all he did was standing maybe a foot away from the middle aged lady in front of him at a supermarket checkout line. Obviously that lady preferred to have more personal space and felt that he was encroaching to the point of being offensive. Regarding Venezia, I noticed that a much higher percentage of the guests were black, appropriately reflecting the racial makeup of the population of major cities of NYC and Philly. Also, a lot of them were first time cruisers -- I knew this because the comedians always asked the audience, and they were always surprised to hear the answers from the crowd. And, (I don't know if it's correlated), based on what I saw, almost all the first time cruisers were black, at least on this ship. So, it's a combination of regional culture (tough Northeast vs polite Midwest), social norm (urban vs surburban), cultural difference (black vs white), and cruise experience (new vs old), that makes this cruise different from the typical cruise that people would expect with an overwhelming Caucasian AARP crowd. Just to be clear, I am not making any judgment. One is not better than the other. I am just making an observation and trying to come up with an explanation why some people would consider the guests on Venezia "rude".

@Beaverhut Yes, the weather was great, and the cruise was mostly enjoyable, except the strong cigarette smoke permeating most of the central part of the ship, and the inexplicably slow embarking and disembarking process. By the way, during the second half of the trip, I noticed there were always several Security staff standing around the pool area on Deck 10, usually in front of Guy's burger and/or Tomodoro. During any of my previous cruises (more than 10), I have never seen a single Security person onboard on any ship. I am sure every ship has Security staff. It's just that they always work in the background or maybe you can see them walking through the ship on their rounds, but I never saw groups of them stationed in one area day in and day out. Something must have happened?

We just came back from a 10-day cruise on Venezia out of Manhattan. I posted my review and it’s waiting for the censor to approve, but I thought to provide a few more practical tips to folks on the boards here. 1. We had Oceanview Cabins on Deck 2 Aft. Very spacious. The best part was that the cabin had one and half bathrooms: one had a shower, a toilet, and a sink, and the second one had a bathtub and a sink. It’s great when I and my wife both needed to get ready. If you are trying to squeeze 3 or 4 people in a cabin, having 2 bathrooms would be a life saver. 2. Maybe due to the location of embarkation, the clientele of this cruise was much more multi-ethic and multi-culture. What you may take for granted of certain etiquette and standard practices on a cruise are not necessarily the modus operandi by these folks. My advice is that just be prepared as you go into this and try to be more patient. 3. A lot of the guests on our cruise chose to eat in the Lido buffet than MDR. We did MDR 5 nights out of 10. It’s never busy. Each time, I used the App to “check in”, and a table was assigned to me within a couple of minutes. And when we were in the dining room, we could see that the room was never more than half full. On the other hand, dinner in Lido often required a 10-15 minute standing in line. On other cruises, when we had to eat in Lido, I managed to make it a similar experience as in a real restaurant by getting only one food item at a time – get the salad first, wait until my wife and I both finish the salad then go back for an entrée, then go back for dessert. But with such long lines in Lido on Venezia, I had no choice but to pile up all the food on one plate. The different foods were touching, the flavors were mixing, and I felt the need to eat everything quickly before it got cold, instead of leisurely eat and talk and focus on the interaction with my eating companions. Basically, the crowdedness and the long lines in Lido totally destroyed the eating experience. So my tip here is that during peak time of 6~7 PM, you can probably finish a dinner in MDR quicker than in Lido. 4. Manhattan Cruise Terminal is not good. We have done more than a dozen cruises mostly leaving from Ft Lauderdale and Bayonne. In comparison to those 2 ports, the Manhattan Cruise Terminal looked old and ill equipped. They paused the check-in process during embarkation because too many people were backed up on the gangway. We had to stand in line for more than 30 minutes, with no water, no bathroom (because we didn’t know when the pause would be over). Finally we made onto the ship an hour and half after arriving at the port. On our 3 recent cruises, we never spent more than 20 minutes to embark, so this 90-minute process was a stark contrast. 5. Disembarkation was just as bad as embarkation. We opted to do self-assist. The announcement was made at 7:30 that people could disembark, and we left our cabin at 8, but we didn’t get off the ship until 9. The gangway was on Deck 3, and we were on Deck 2, but they blocked off the hallways on Deck 2 and Deck 3 in mid ship without anybody stationed there to direct traffic, so we had to carry all the luggage from Deck 2 to Deck 4, walk from Aft to Fwd, then go back down to Deck 3. Once on Deck 3, there was this meandering long line that literally took us more than 30 minutes to go through. As far as I could tell, the bottle neck was at the gangway where there were only 2 stations to scan people’s cards. I am wondering if it’s a limitation by the port. There was only one gangway during embarkation also. At all other ports, there were 2 gangways, but in NY, when the entire ship is trying to get on and off in the shortest time span, they only put out one gangway? If you are flying out of NYC, don’t try to book any flight before noon, since you would not be off the ship by 9 AM at the earliest. 6. My last advice, and probably the harshest, is that if you don’t like cigarette smoke, don’t go on this ship. Unlike some cruise lines, Carnival still allowed smoking in the casino. It’s located in the middle of Deck 4, with a stairwell right at the entrance of the casino, and the open Atrium of San Marco Piazza at the other entrance of the casino. The smoke from the casino often wafted up and down to other decks. On a couple of days, we could even smell it on Deck 2 Aft outside our cabin. My wife was sensitive to smoke, so after the first day, we basically stopped going to the San Marco Piazza and the surrounding areas on Deck 3, 4, and 5. We essentially missed out on all the shopping places and a lot of the entertainment options.

Hi my family (including my parents in their 80s) will be on Venezia next week. We have arranged a park-and-cruise deal at a hotel across the river from Manhattan. The instruction from the hotel said the shuttle pickup spot upon our return (on Sun Dec 10) would be at Pier 90. I understand there are 2 piers at the cruise terminal. My question is: if Venezia comes in at Pier 88, how is the walk from Pier 88 to Pier 90? Is there an inside passage or do we have to go outside in the cold air? My parents are relatively healthy (for 80 year olds) and can walk on their own with the luggage, but they won't be able to carry suitcases up and down stairs, or staying outside in the cold for too long. If anybody has done this -- getting off at Pier 88 and walking to Pier 90 to be picked up, I would appreciate it if you can share your experience.

We are going on Venezia on Nov 30. I always enjoy the serendipitous nature of browsing a ship's library and picking up some books that I would not have read otherwise. If anybody has been on Venezia recently, can you tell me the location and size (book selections) of the library on Venezia? I did a search on this forum and found one picture taken by somebody on a June cruise -- it showed two mostly empty shelves. I certainly hope Carnival have stocked the library with a few more books?

@Beaverhut I am not sure which website you were looking at, but on Carnival website, the itinerary is shown as Dec 3 - Half Moon Cay Dec 4 - Grand Turk Dec 5 - Amber Cove Dec 6 - San Juan My family don't plan on doing any excursion, so it's not a big deal for us, but we do care about the crowdedness at each port, especially for beach days like Half Moon Cay or Grand Turk, so I really wish those 3rd party cruise schedule/map sites would hurry up and make updates.

I would love to read more reviews on lesser known but possibly better value cruiselines like Nicko and Viva. So if it's not too much trouble, please add them to the Drop Down menu. Thanks.

If you go to the website, you can see the new itinerary -- basically they just reshuffle the order of the ports. I don't remember the exact order, but I know Half Moon Cay used to be the last stop, now it's the first stop. Half Moon Cay and Grand Turk are mostly "sitting on the beach" stops, so I am curious to find out how many other ships are in port. If they switch the itinerary for this ship, chance are they are switching other ships as well. The 3rd party Cruise Tracking sites that show the port schedules for all cruise ships are no updated yet.

Anybody got an email notification from Carnival about the itinerary shuffle? I am curious how that's going to impact our experience in each port, i.e. how many other ships are in port on the same day.

@Beaverhut Based on my research, there are a few options if you are driving. 1. Stay in a hotel near the city and drive to the port, then park at the port. You can find the parking information at the Manhattan Cruise Port website https://nycruise.com/manhattan-terminal/ , or do a search on Cruise Critic boards in the forum for Homeports. I think it costs $45 per day to park. 2. Stay in a hotel that offers Parking package. Again, you can find information on these hotels in the forum for Homeports. I believe there are 3 well known hotels across the river: Hampton Inn, Hilton Garden Inn (both in Ridgefield Park), and Fairfield Inn in North Bergen. I booked my family at Fairfield Inn. A room for 4 people is $480 with 10 days of free parking, and a free roundtrip shuttle from the hotel to the cruise port before and after the cruise. Considering the cruise terminal parking is $450, we are paying basically $30 for the hotel stay. I am a Marriott elite, so I chose Fairfield Inn, because I am getting points too. I think the prices at the two Hilton properties are similar. 3. Park in Albany, NY area. I see you are from Beaver Harbour. Is that in Canada? There is a company in Albany that will let you park in their lot and shuttle you to any cruise ports in Northeast (Manhattan, Brooklyn, Bayonne, Boston). https://www.yankeetrails.com/services/cruise-express-shuttle/ It's $120 per person. If it's just 2 of you, this is likely the least expensive option. You do still have to pay for a night of hotel, but it should be a lot less in Albany than near NYC. For us, with 4 people, it would have been $480 plus hotel, so it's not economical. The only downside is that it takes much longer to get to the cruise port from Albany. I think the bus leaves at 7 AM. Good luck. If you find any other options, please share.

Just booked the cruise for my wife and I (early 50s) and my parents (late 70s). Used to do cruises with our kids but they are now in college -- it's nice that we can do it in offpeak season when school is in session. We live in Buffalo area, so we will be driving down the day before and spend the night in NJ. Have been reading Venezia reviews and are a bit nervous about the negative ratings as well as all the fights (and even a killing recently) on board. Hopefully they have a chance to work out the kinks and the winter crowd will be milder and more relaxed in attitude and temperament.