flamingogal

Thank you for the wonderful blog!  It has been very entertaining and helpful.  We will be doing the 31 day Buenos Aires to Ft. Lauderdale in March 25, so many of your port descriptions really help get things into perspective!  Thanks again!

Jeanne

This may be an option - https://malagaactivatours.com/tours/caminito-del-rey-tour-from-malaga/

There are other groups on Trip Advisor.  This tour seems doable from the ship as long as you get to their office. Should be a 10 minute walk from the shuttle drop off point in Malaga.

Jeanne

Thanks for the update.  We won't be in Malaga til Nov '24, but its good to know the options! 

Here Ya Go!

https://www.celebritycruises.com/healthy-at-sea/us-travel-requirements

We were on Deck 4 below these stairs.  The lights are on all night and spoil the evening on the  balcony.

I would rethink booking any cabin on any deck below these stairs.

Jeanne

3 hours ago, Sherry H said:

Wow!  Can't believe this FlightEase "glitch" is still occurring !

I am one of the folks this happened to last Fall.  I had my flight booked but as I have a choice of 2 airports, I decided to compare times and flights from both airports.  At no time were there any warnings or indications that I was canceling my booked flight. I was only aware when I went to the Delta website to pick my seats and no longer saw my reservation.

I was able to rebook but at a higher price.  

I will say, when I notified HAL what happened, I received an apology and an OBC that made up the difference in the airline fare.

Still, the whole thing was very stressful and should not happen.

I had the same experience with FlightEase last year. Only I didn't get an apology! Only a nasty experience with a HAL Representative that blamed me and my incompetence. The flight & seat was still available, but at a higher fare. I fought with them for an hour an we split the difference. Not a pleasant experience. They had no sympathy and didn't care that their system has a real glitch. They denied it entirely. 

I've got a Med cruise booked for next spring, so I'll be really careful not to do that again.

Jeanne

They are excellent cabins, don't be dissuaded by those vague reviews! The stairway nearby is very quiet and you shouldn't be bothered by noise at all. Those large balconies are really nice and the NA has new balcony furniture! Enjoy :D

Jeanne

"Also we noted Jaime spoke with a thick Spanish accent which was hard to interpret whereas John spoke with a perfect English accent"

We spent approximately 6 hours with Jaime and had no problem at all understanding his English. As he comes from a Spanish speaking country I would expect him to have an accent. :rolleyes:

I can only relate to our experience and it was exceptional.

http://www.feeltenerife.com/home-eng/

This is a fabulous company to explore Tenerife with. Jaime was absolutely one of the best guides we had on our Transatlantic last year. We did the North walking tour. He picked us up at the ship and we drove to many lovely towns and scenic areas. He loves Tenerife and he is proud to show you the area and all the wonderful towns and nature. Make sure you have a wine tasting!!! When the day was over, he dropped us back at the ship and also had a little Tenerife gift for all of us. A great day with great guide!

Stop me if this has already been posted, but Men Without Hats are important. They do the Safety Dance.

Thank You!!

Our transatlantic arrived Nov. 9, we did self disembarkation. We went downstairs at approximately 6:45, waited about 15 minutes and were off the ship and through customs by 7:30. We had to wait for a taxi, it was too early for them!

We usually book 10am ish flights and always self disembark. We've never encountered any problems, though we always know a problem could happen.

Jeanne

We cashed out our $300 OBC at the Roulette table on the Equinox TA. Our OBC was from Celebrity as part of our package. The first transaction was for $100 because I wanted to see if there would be any problem deducting it from the OBC. I checked our account about an hour later and the balance was exactly as it should be so the next day we did the same thing and took out the rest, less the fee. We ended up leaving $.070 in our account! They refunded that to our credit card within a couple days.

I can't say anything about refundable or non-refundable, I don't remember how it was coded, but it definitely came Celebrity and I definitely got all of it except 5%!

Jeanne

Agree, they are small. We had 2 cabins side by side last year. When the cabin steward open the connecting balcony door, you couldn't get out of your cabin without moving the door! The balcony door was literally larger than the stable partition (see pix above). I would say its at least 2' shorter than a normal balcony.

My consensus is avoid if possible. Location is great but that's about it. We were assigned ours because we were on guarantee. No more V (any V catagory) guarantees for us! I'm stickin' to SY or better!

Jeanne

Here are the first two on locations. I made them into PDFs with readable text, so you can theoretically copy and paste from them.

 

http://www.evernote.com/l/AFgR9t332HlCuK64O6WmW849cItiRJQz7no/

Thanks a bunch. Good to see the Happy Hours!!! and the BB King times.

Ur awesome!!

Jeanne

We've just booked the Sept. 11, 2016 Viking Homelands and I wanted to thank everyone for their research and comments. This will be our first European trip so we have lots of concerns and questions.

Hopefully this inaugural season will be smooth & without too many headaches and glitches.

I look forward to reading CC about all your travels and hope to benefit from your adventures.

Jeanne

I had this room on the Eurodam and I never had any bad smells from the kitchen vent. I'm pretty sure the same would be for the Nieuw Amsterdam.

That's a geat balcony, have a wonderful cruise. :)

Jeanne

I hate rude behavior in a man.....I won't tolerate it.

I get it! Capt. Woodrow Call. Lonesome Dove. Best Book ever written.

Jeanne

:confused: Even the right hand does not know. :confused:

Well this left hand does. :rolleyes: We bring soda and water every cruise. Just tape a luggage tag to the package and it will be delivered to your stateroom. Or carry it on. Either way works.

Jeanne

We exchanged an Explore4 Pinnacle dinner for a lunch when we were unable to reschedule the ship booked 9:00 dinner. Not a problem.

Jeanne

Here's a question for those who made an honest effort to complete the survey thoroughly, and did finish it:

How long did it take you to go through it all?

About 15 minutes. It was confusing trying to compare shopping onboard to shopping at home/mall. Somehow I don't think this survey is going to really affect the "shopping" on any HAL ship. As said by others, the things that people want to buy they don't have and what they do have really isn't all that special.

Jeanne

We had the Explore 4 drink card on our recent (Feb 2) Eurodam cruise. The card will be in your stateroom when you arrive. You can use it for any beverage on the ship, wine, Exporations Cafe drinks, soda and beer buckets. The per drink amount does not apply. The card is worth $50. Use until spent. Your receipt will show a balance after each purchase.

As to the Pinnacle Grill. Not quite what I had expected. We did not have any card in our stateroom when we arrived. We went to the front desk to inquire and were told when our reservation was (last sea day @5:30). We went to the Pinnacle to try to change to a better time/day and were told "we have 800 persons to accommodate" and the only times available are 5:30 or 9 - 9:30 . What I got from this was that the Explore 4 promotion put a lot of Pinnacle Grill dinners on the reservation schedule and the "prime time" reservations (6:00 to 8:30) were for paying customers, not Explore 4 giveaways. We changed our reservation to lunch and all was good.

Another thought, on a 7 day cruise, there are only 5 available nights for Pinnacle Grill reservations; the other 2 night are reserved for La Cirque and De Librije. That doesn't leave many available slots for regular dining times.

Jeanne