Torquer

It is definitely unlimited laundry in the PS (and Neptunes). We always have a couple bags of laundry on the first day of a cruise, since we always fly in at least a couple days before the cruise starts and on several occasions, a week+ of pre-cruise land travel. Not a problem at all.

Thanks for the info on the prices in the salon. BTW, you may be curious where the crew members get their hair cut. We have seen on a couple different "Behind the Scenes Ship Tour" of a crew member cutting other crew members hair in a crew stairwell. They had set up a little station for it in the stairwell with chair and other equipment right there. In addition to the person in the chair there were a couple other crew members lined up waiting. Our tour guide told us the "barber" was just a regular off-duty crewman who learned to do it and had no formal training; they said they do it to make extra money and the charge was only a couple dollars for a haircut. Obviously, these guys have learned to do it pretty well since all the staff look very neat.

As a man, I can push it to two months between haircuts, and have done just that during the pandemic. I don't want a stranger breathing on me, although I am sure they would at least be masked on the ship as opposed to my local barber. So it is unlikely I would ever need one unless we take a world cruise. But I am curious how much a men's haircut onboard would be, if anyone happens to know.

The OP didn't say where the cruise is going, but it is hard to imagine a HAL cruise that does not require a passport...maybe a roundtrip from the mainland to Hawaii and back? All other cruises I can think of at least go to Canada, Mexico, or a Caribbean island where passports would be required. It is a hassle, but you can get one on short notice for travel by going to a US Passport center in person; I believe the closest ones to Ohio would be Detroit and Buffalo. Certainly you need to call first to make sure you have all the documentation required for your unique situation.

The OP mentioned a policy change and a $984 fee charged by Flight Ease to change flights. Was that an actual fee charged by Flight Ease to ask the airline to make the change, or was that a fee that the airline is charging Flight Ease and they are just recouping it from the cruiser. If the former, I assume it only applies after the flights are actually paid and ticketed, since presumably you can cancel the flights and select new ones before that time. Depending on the answers, this may affect if we use Flight Ease for our next cruise. In any case, I agree with what most others have said that a 45 minute connection is unacceptable; in these times I want a minimum of 90 minutes and much more if I need to go through security/customs/border control at that intermediate airport. And I agree that this is AA's problem since they changed the flights and they need to fix it.

When you cruise in the PS, things like this can happen since there are only 1 or 2 per ship. If a cruise is cancelled there are likely few options. And if you want to book a new cruise in the PS your options are also limited because they sell out quickly. Since we are fortunate to cruise almost exclusively in the PS, my son and I developed a computer program to scan the HAL databases and tell us what cruises a PS is available for booking. I looked at the list for the first half 2023. At this moment the only Caribbean cruise with a PS available is the Jan 25 sailing on Rotterdam and the February 12 sailing on Nieuw Amsterdam. If you would like me to check other areas of the world or a different timeframe, let me know.

Come on folks...don't be silly. They are talking about plastic water bottle being banned (although that is not necessarily true; see https://boards.cruisecritic.com/topic/2880826-questions-about-water/?do=findComment&comment=63949453). Any medical/dental product in a plastic bottle is absolutely allowed. Period. End of discussion.

On our recent cruise, the normal room service breakfast was available for suite guests. I believe I remember hearing that the Pinnacle Grill was also open for breakfast that day, although we used room service due to a very early transfer. Room service was available earlier than normal, I believe the published time was 5:30 AM to start, although our breakfast arrived at 5:15 AM while we were still rolling out of bed.

On our cruise last month, the HAL policy of bringing water on board was not enforced at all. It was a very hot cruise in Greece and Turkey so we needed lots of water for shore trips. We had one refillable bottle per person but we quickly found that wasn't enough for a full day. So we bought water in regular disposable bottles and when we returned to the ship, we emptied those the first time. We refilled them from the tap in our room and put them in the refrigerator for the next day. Subsequently we sometimes forgot to empty them and no one said anything. By the end of the cruise we were walking through the metal detectors as we re-boarded with a full bottle of water in a disposable container in hand. No one stopped us. So I don't know how much this policy is enforced on other ships, but that was our experience.

We used OnPoint before our cruise last month. It was easy and inexpensive, especially if you use the free US government test kits like we did.

Cartagena Spain or Cartagena Columbia?? We have been to both...I don't remember walls in Spain so I am guessing Columbia?

Please follow the steps in the following post and you will get in to the Flight Ease website. It is amazing that HAL has not fixed this bug yet. https://boards.cruisecritic.com/topic/2856034-more-flight-ease-drama/?do=findComment&comment=63359158

Sorry but I have to disagree...Verizon does have the best network for out-of-the-way places in the US. At our summer home in Pennsylvania, Verizon has good coverage, but it is poor or non-existent on T-mobile and AT&T. In a trip earlier this year in the middle of nowhere in Nevada, Utah, and Arizona, Verizon on my phone was far superior than my wife's T-mobile. If you live in a city and never go to these kinds of places, any of the three cell phone companies is fine. But I specifically have Verizon because it has coverage in remote places where the others do not.

I think the most important question is, does your son like to travel, see new things, and learn about history and other cultures. If yes, since this is likely to be a pretty port-intensive cruise with only 1 or 2 sea days, and you won't be on the ship much on those days, your son will likely to enjoy the experience on any cruise line including HAL. Our two sons had been very well traveled in the US before we started cruising (48 states each) so they enjoyed our first cruise on HAL to Alaska, along with every other cruise we have done since then throughout the world. Our sons were 13 and 15 when we started cruising and we continue to cruise together today; we just got back from a European cruise and they are now 24 and 26.

Agreed. An exception would be European cruises where Euros would also be perfectly fine since there are so many countries and ports where they would be accepted when crew members need to buy something. I suppose other cases where tips in local currency might be OK would be Australia/New Zealand cruises where the ship spends the whole season there. Almost any other cruise I can think, the ship goes to many different countries with their own unique currency and it would not be a blessing to give that currency to a crew member as a tip.

Correct...and obviously Pinnacle Suite guests also can eat in the PG for breakfast.

Thanks for posting a link to the actual menu. Just to be clear, there are several things in orange type on the menu. It is only the one under the heading "Club Orange Daily Special" that is for Club Orange guests. The ones in orange titled Pacific Northwest Starter and Pacific Northwest Main, anyone can order those. I presume, but don't know for sure, that only people who had Club Orange would get this menu, rather than everyone, and that one Club Orange Daily Special would not even be on everyone else's menu.

I would definitely take them on your trip in your carry-on bags. On a recent cruise after boarding the ship, we kept them locked in our safe along with our passports. We had paper copies of both that we took with us on port visits, along with electronic copies (i.e, scanned PDFs of these documents) on our phone. In our case no one ever asked to see the original CDC cards on the entire trip.

But it is only in the non-Pinnacle-class ships, like the Westerdam, where the Pinnacle Grill is used for suite breakfasts. On Pinnacle-class ships, the Club Orange dining room is used for suite (and Club Orange guests) breakfasts. BTW, it is always a really lovely experience eating in the Pinnacle Grill for breakfast. It is usually not crowded at all, with maybe 4-8 tables being used at a time. There are also many waiters so service is excellent and several waiters will be working your table. You will be offered to select from a large tray of breakfast rolls/muffins; on several days my son's favorite blueberry muffins were not on the tray so we asked and they had a waiter run to the bakery to get some more. Your coffee cup will never go empty; in many cases, after I took a couple sips a waiter came by and refilled it to the top. Because the service is so good, you can easily be in-and-out in 30 minutes after a very satisfying breakfast.

From a recent cruise on Oosterdam, I don't recall items in orange color on the MDR menu, but I may just not have noticed. If there were, I don't think they have anything to do with Club Orange. Club Orange guests get a different menu than other guests. It is in a white book, whereas the normal menu is in a dark gray book. The interesting thing is that it doesn't actually tell you what the Club Orange entree is; it just says ask your server for tonight's Club Orange entree. On our cruise, we got the Club Orange entree maybe twice. Most of the time there were other normal entrees that sounded more interesting, at least to us.

In Canada (and other non-US countries), aren't there any credit cards available that have no foreign transaction fees? In addition to onboard spending, I would think this would also be important for you for buying things in foreign ports. In the US, sometimes you have to search a bit to find credit cards with no foreign transaction fees, but they are available. In our case, 2 of our 4 credit cards have no foreign transaction fees, so those are what we use in foreign countries. In fact one of them, we only use in foreign countries because it has PIN priority and you don't get the funny looks outside the US when the seller finds he has to get a signature for a credit card transaction and doesn't know what to do.

Where did you see "72 hours"? As far as I remember, HAL has always used "days" and not "hours" in defining the testing requirements. Some people have mistakenly converted that to hours, but that is not correct. So assuming the real requirement is 3 days and not 72 hours it means the following: if your cruise embarks on a Saturday, then that means you can get tested anytime from 12:01AM on Wednesday to anytime before you embark on Saturday.

We did the HAL transfer from Venice "city center" to Trieste. It was complimentary for us because we booked the cruise back when the ship was supposed to dock in Venice. First, when they say "city center" they mean Tronchetto. Use Google maps to see where that is. It is really just a big circular parking area for about 10 buses. We used a water taxi to get there from our hotel on the island where we were staying for a couple days before our cruise (the water taxi was very convenient but expensive). But you should be able to take a regular car taxi from the airport to Tronchetto for cheap...I'm guessing less than 20 EUR. If it is restricted and taxis can't go to Tronchetto, you can definitely take a taxi to Piazzale Roma and then the People Mover to Tronchetto. For two people, I'm sure this would be half the cost and more convenient than a bus or train to Trieste. On the other hand, I am very surprised that HAL would provide a transfer from Tronchetto and not the VCE airport. For our cruise, and others I have read about, HAL had transfers from both places. I would suggest calling back and maybe you will get a better answer.

@bwlewer Very good review and mirrored our recent experience on the Oosterdam. We were on the cruise prior to yours that ended in Trieste on August 21. BTW, you might find it interesting that the Oosterdam overnighted in Trieste at the end of our cruise. But on August 20 it moored at the cruise terminal in downtown Trieste within walking distance to many of the sights. Then in the middle of the night it moved to the industrial port where we disembarked and you boarded the next day. Never heard of that being done before. We were curious, did you check-in at the real cruise terminal downtown and then get bused to the industrial port with the tent, or did you check-in directly at the tent in the industrial port?

Sorry I don't know. Even if it worked, I suspect they would take them out after they are dried in order to fold them for you.