drowelf

We are taking our first Viking River cruise in just a few days and we booked another for April of next year. For the first we did have to plunk down our $$$ almost 1 year in advance, but for the second we only had to pay at the 6 months mark. Still way too early for my tastes, but the itineary for the other cruise is just too tempting. So we did it again.

We have T-Mobile too and I've had no problems with texts/emails while connected to the ship WiFi all over the world, from the Artic to Antarctic Circles (with a plan) of course. WiFi-Calling generally works, but video calls are more problematic. It all depends on how busy the sliver of the satellite bandwidth that the passengers get is. During the day voice calls can be tough, forget video, after midnight, you will have a better chance, but I would not count on video working seamlessly (no buffering, glitches or dropped connections) at anytime.

I have not gotten any emails on power up points since February. Maybe I need to sign up again?

We are doing a 14 day cruise embarking on March 24th on the Journey (former HAL Ryndam). Really looking forward to it, as the Ryndam was our first cruise (Alaska) back in 1998.

How does one register for this AARP promotion? Is this something that can be done online via the HAL Site. I looked on the site and can't find anything to link with my AARP Account.

I wonder what the bill Celebrity will receive for the services of 5/6 tugs for as long as it took. How long were the tugs pushing on the ship? Betcha its not a small # of $$ or whatever currency (Euro??) they get charged in.

My wife uses the princess bracelet for her medallion and I got some of the leather airtag keychain holders for mine. I attach a carbineer clip to the ring and then either keep it in my pocket or on a belt loop of my pants. I can also clip it to the strap of a tote bag when at the pool. With the carbineer its easy to detach when I need to scan it for drinks, getting on/off the ship, etc..

Ditto on the thanks. I've purchased a couple of bags for our 11 day cruise next March.

Thanks to @jelayne and @Joe33472 for the information. That provides all the information I need to determine if I want to buy a bag or 2 for our Egypt/Turkey/Israel cruise next March.

I'd love to know about that too. I might call customer service and ask, as I'd prefer to do 3 bags at different times, so I can reduce the amount of clothes we bring. Doing 3 bags at the end does not help out as much. On a totally different point. Does anyone have a picture or know how big the bag is? How much can you stuff into it. I know on Holland America, we could stuff quite a lot of shirts, underwear and socks into the bags they provide. Ok, I found a picture of the bag from back in April on another thread, but without anything by it, I can't tell how big it is.

As a party of 6 we are using Ramses Tours for several excursion during our 2 day stay in Alexandria next March on the Celebrity Infinity. Part of our party is doing the overnight to Cairo for the museums and pyramids, while another part is using them for tours of Alexandria and El Alamien.

I've never played at any craps table on a cruise ship that allowed more than double odds on any bet.

I liked the webinar type earning opportunities. It gave me new information about destinations, ships and programs. I never took advantage of the "book a cruise" type earnings, because, we don't book that way. We have generally have our cruising scheduled set for the next 18-24 months and don't have the luxury to slot another in just to earn some PUPs.

For us its always Itinerary over ship. We cruise to see new and interesting places. The ship is simply our travelling hotel and restaurant to get us those places. Secondary consideration is ship size. For us smaller is better, which is why we bemoan the lose of the Prinsendam many years ago. Both a small ship and great itineraries.

The best source for the answer to this question would be the cruise line itself. Call their customer service or check in with the front desk when you board the first segment.

We've had a laminator for ages, but in the last couple of decades they have some up with self sealing lamination sheets. Search Amazaon or eBay for self sealing lamination. Basically clear sheets with sticky stuff on the insides. Never used them myself as we have had a thermal laminator for almost 30 years. Everyone who travels internationally should have laminated copies of their passport info pages along with them. We have both full sized and miniaturized versions of ours. If you ever lose your passport, having that information will make it much easier and quicker to get a replacement as one of the item you need is proof of citizenship, which a copy of your passport provides.

I believe all the cruise lines use local companies. I know this, because when we went to Greenland last August, I could not book a tour with some of the locals, as Princess had contracted for their services. Princess gobbled up most of the available capacity in those ports. Plus it only makes sense to use locals, no way would the company set up a tour organization to just service the few times a ship makes ports every season. The only exception to this that I know of is Alaska where some of the land tour companies are subsidiaries of the various cruise lines, simply because there is enough business for the entire season as the ship go back and forth on the same itinerary for several months.

Ditto, when we did a 2 day with SPD we had to show our passports both getting off and getting back on the ship each day. SPD arranged the tourist visa, which we also had to show when getting off the ship.

Yep, unless needed the passport stays on the ship. We have small photo laminated photocopies that both my DW and I carry. I shrunk them down to CC size and put them back to back so that we have a single document with both our passport info. We also have several full size laminated copies that we stash in our luggage for overseas trips too.

I'm a print, cut and laminate guy. Then they get zip tied to the suitcases and never get removed. It reminds of the old pictures of steamer trunks with all the stickers of place names on it. My luggage shows my cruising history. At times a few get lost in transit due to airline abuse to the luggage. We still have several in the house. A couple of color laser printers and one B/W Copier/Scanner/Printer/Fax. I even have a couple of inkjet printers in storage at my offsite storage unit. Still in constant use as I run my own consulting business from our home. Still need to print stuff for cruises, as I always take hard copy of the important documents (Travel Insurance, Itinerary and Private Tour info). You never know when your device that has the soft copies may go kaput.

Totally agree. I really like that analogy, especially as sometimes you only get a brief glimpse of your port city. For example when we did Lisbon in 2019, we only got a brief 1 hour walking tour down by the Monument of Discovery (Belem) area as we went out in the country side to visit Pena Palace in Sintra and the lovely sea side town of Cascais. We liked what little we saw of Lisbon and that enticed us to go back and spend a few days there, which we just did on our recent 6 day cruise and 13 day DIY land adventure in Spain and Portugal.

We look at cruising this way. Cruising is great way to visit a lot of places for a taste and see if you want to come back for a more extended stay. For example, we did a Rome->Dover cruise back in 2019, 2 of the ports were Lisbon and Gilbraltar. We got a taste of each and decided to go back. We did Gibraltar for a long day on a cruise and then did 3 days in Lisbon on the post cruise land portion of our adventure. Sometimes 1 day in the city is enough, other times we decide that there is enough to see in a city that we put it on the list to visit again on a land adventure.

We did a day trip to the Falls in January during a pre cruise stay in BA. It was a long day as we were up and out before 6am and did not return until almost midnight, but we got in over 8 hours at the falls. So it was well worth it. So its definitely doable. Celebrity also offered a ShorEx to the falls as part of our cruise, which was RT out of BA. Of course the cost for the 2 of us to DIY the tour was less than Celebrity wanted for 1 person.

Although we missed Port Stanley due to weather. Got 3 Sea Days going to Puerto Madryn instead.

Probably not, as on our recent 14 RT out of BA, we only got as far as Ushuaia and Cape Horn, none of the Chilean Fjords or Puerto Arenas.