oh2crz

On 1/25/2024 at 7:08 PM, iteach3 said:

Our ship sails one year from today! We are Jon and Brenda from Michigan. We will be sailing with another couple. We are all in our 60's, and are SO excited about this trip! We look forward to meeting fellow cruisers on this forum.

FYI: A roll call has been created for this cruise in the "roll call" forums by "capt. wentworth" on March 22, 2024.

Michael and Lin here. We'll be joining you for the week!

Just got the following notice about this itinerary change on Monday the 18th:

"Please be advised that due to port congestions, Nieuw Statendam will no longer
call to Grand Turk, Turks & Caicos on Monday, January 27, 2025, and will
instead call to Amber Cove, Dominican Republic from 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM on the
same date. Additionally, we will now arrive in San Juan, Puerto Rico at 12:00
noon on Tuesday, January 28, rather than 1:00 PM as previously scheduled."

It looks like Carnival Magic and Enchanted Princess will be in the Turks port (which is actually one of our favorite beach days....) that day, and oddly 2 ships will be in port at Amber Cove with us: NCL Epic and CCL Magic. The political situation in neighboring Haiti will hopefully be calmed down by then so this port isn't cancelled too!

On 2/10/2024 at 5:43 PM, Djb4CC said:

So had a cabana in January on the Rotterdam for 9 days.  It was the best money spent on a cruise.  I have attached the food and drink “schedule” they provided.  The Nami sushi at lunch was awesome.  And we always tried to make sure we were back up there after a port visit by 2:30 to get the gelato and sparkling wine each day.

 

always tried to stake out a table in the shade for lunch as not a huge fan of eating off my lap, even if it is just a burger or pizza.

We were on R'dam January 26 and so loved our cabana! We are booked again for November 2024 and January 2025 and as soon as we booked I reserved the cabanas. Each time, even with almost a year out, we got one of the last few available. Thanks for posting the menu....now I won't have to post our copy!

I hope Holland America extends this credit to AMAC members, which is an alternative to AARP with comparable benefits. (Association of Mature American Citizens) 

Hoping Holland America will extend this onboard credit to AMAC members (Association of Mature American Citizens). 

Thanks for this balanced review of the NA. We are booked for late March and were disappointed to see so many negative reviews of NA. We just got off the Rotterdam in January and loved every minute of our quiet, relaxing experience. The last time we were on the NA was back in 2000, so we are looking forward to returning and enjoying the smaller ship experience. I think the industry in general is still working its way back from all things pandemic. Service on HAL has been one of the reasons we book with them. 

I have downloaded the "verifly" app twice, and it still doesn't display when I enter my upcoming October HAL cruise, triple checking the booking number and name spelling!  Wondering if there is a time factor involved....only works a certain number of days out from a cruise?  If so, it would be nice to know that. As we seem to need paper supporting documents for our covid vax, and we can fill out all other dox online before leaving home, I'm not sure we will bother with this. We drive to the port so we don't need it for e-tickets either. Very happy to see we don't need to bother with the covid testing now. I will avoid politics and instead say "bravo" to science!