Torquer

If you plan to be out on your balcony a lot taking in the sights, I would strongly recommend the aft-wrap NS. You will have a 270 degree view from there. You didn't say where you were going, but if it is a cold weather cruise, it will be a lot warmer sitting out facing the rear of the ship versus the sides due to a lot less wind.

Last month we were in the Falklands and no sign of helicopter service to Volunteer Point. We researched all our options quite thoroughly. BTW, I would highly recommend the trip to volunteer point despite the long 4x4 ride to get there. On this cruise, we also had a tour to see Punta Tumbo from Puerto Madryn. Volunteer Point on the Falklands is so much better due to the number of penguins and in particular the King Penguins. Of course, actually being able to tender at the Falklands is a crap shoot due to weather, so it is good to have a backup plan.

Wow...this is the second time in one week I have read about a large group disrupting ship activities for non-group members on the ship. I have been reading the HAL board on CC for 10+ years and I never saw this mentioned before and now two at the same time...what is HAL doing. FYI...here is the other thread about closing the lower dining room for anytime dining after 6:30 PM to accommodate a large group: https://boards.cruisecritic.com/topic/3003701-what-to-do-received-limited-dining-email-this-morning/

I am not a doctor and know nothing about this. However, since you are asking, I presume you have needed this procedure before or have a medical condition where you think you might. The most important thing is you really need to ensure your cardiologist agrees that it is OK for you to travel and have a very high likelihood of not needing it while on board. The medical facilities aboard HAL ships are very good, but they don't have all the equipment of even a small rural hospital in the US. If you get sick on a cruise, it might be many hours or even days until you can be transported to a shore-side hospital. Then, depending where you are cruising, you could be left off in a hospital in a 3rd world country with poor quality health care.

I suggest you read the Cruise Critic forums on travel insurance...lots of great information here: https://boards.cruisecritic.com/forum/499-cruisetravel-insurance/ In our research, we are able to find much cheaper insurance with better coverage with private companies, rather than HAL. The only exception might be if you need/want cancel-for-any-reason insurance. There having it bundled with your cruise through HAL might be better. I suggest you look at the insurance consolidator websites to give you an idea of what is available privately and free quotes, such as: SquareMouth, InsureMyTrip, etc.

We recently completed a very similar cruise. First of all, the more we cruise, the more we find that the side of the ship really doesn't matter. You have no idea ahead of time the exact course of the ship when you are close to land will be. In ports, you similarly have no idea which way the ship will be facing at the pier. That said, on this cruise, since we were going counter-clockwise around S.A., we initially picked the port side since that was on the side closer to land most of the time. Later before embarkation, a cabin at the rear starboard corner of the ship opened up and we switched to that. So we had views out the right side and the back of the ship. Wow...that was the best decision we ever made. The wrap-around views in Antarctica were incredible. More importantly when cruising in Antarctica it was so much warmer sitting facing backwards on the balcony rather than on the side balcony since there was far less wind. So we stayed out on the balcony many more hours than we would have if we were on the side. Remember, even in summer it will be in the low 30s in Antarctica. So I strongly recommend a rear-facing balcony if one is available on your ship. If I couldn't have a rear facing cabin, I would have slightly preferred a port facing cabin, but this may have been more of how our shipped was docked in some of the ports.

First of all, thanks for your work. I am curious how you get the information on charters and groups. In the past I have deduced there was a charter because of no planned cruise for a ship on HAL's website, but how do you get the name of the group that chartered it. I regularly read CC and have never seen groups (not charters) being discussed and never thought they would be a problem. I had assumed they would be a couple hundred people maximum. But obviously the case being discussed in this thread is very different where it is half the ship and HAL is not allowing anytime dining for non-group people after 6:30PM.

The problem is, that even with this list of groups onboard, you would have no idea how big that group is. Certainly 50 to 200 people in the group is not going to change the atmosphere of the cruise significantly. But it sounds like in this case over 1/2 the ship is going to be part of this group. That is indeed a big problem. Now I would not expect a quilting group or a continuing education group to be that big, but who knows. Reading the name for this one, I would have never guessed this group would be so big. Perhaps in that post about groups @VMax1700 could add info on how big the group might be, based on past experiences from other cruisers. BTW, I am not trying to be negative about this particular group, which I know nothing about; actually I think it is great that a church group can go on a cruise like this. But because of the size of this group or any group, it does change the cruise experience for everyone not in the group.

3rd and 4th passengers in a room are always really cheap. We stay only in the PS and my wife and I spend a small fortune to book it. However, when our adult sons accompany us, I don't believe we have ever paid more than $1000 per person for them, including port fees. When you think of it, it kind of makes sense. The only real cost to HAL is food plus minor things like extra linens, etc. So we are happy to have our sons join us whenever they can on HAL. This contrasts with our other favorite cruise line Oceania, that charges 1/2 of the normal pp rate as a 3rd person in a room. For a top suite, this gets very expensive fast.

Interesting but I'm not sure if I understand what it is saying. What does open seating have to do with "Open seating will be offered as normal; however, due to the number of guests requesting to dine at 8:00pm." If it is 8PM, wouldn't this be affecting fixed seating not open seating? Or maybe the group is so large and they all want to eat at 8PM, that it totally fills the upper dining room so they are going to use part of the lower dining room for the group as fixed time seating?

We were on Oceania. We had an option of carrying our luggage or have them do it. In either case, you have to take a bus from the ship to the terminal building. When we left the ship, around 9AM, it really wouldn't have mattered if we had carried our bags or picked them up in the terminal. There was really just a couple minutes to find our bags. The big delay was the bus, and then waiting in line to exit the building. Now there were 3 ships in port for our disembarkation; it probably goes faster if you are the only ship. I see you asked someone else if you can disembark at 7AM and make an 8:50AM flight. I would say you should absolutely not plan on that. As I said, in our case it took about 1 hour from leaving the ship to leaving the termina. Then it is a long drive to the airport. We took a tour of BA, and then they drove us to the airport in the afternoon. In our case it took about 50 minutes from downtown until we got to the airport and there was significant traffic delays at times. Then you have the check-in and security lines at the airport. If I was doing this, I would want at minimum 4 hours from disembarkation to my flight.

We were on the larger Marina ship which had a total of 9 singers/dancers in its production company. They did 4 shows on a 20 day cruise. BTW, the point of my earlier post was not to compare HAL and Oceania. It was to say that HAL's entertainment has significantly declined over the last 5-10 years, whereas Oceania's has maintained the same level of entertainment they always had.

We have had 3 HAL cruises post-covid, and just got back from our 1st post-covid cruise on Oceania. It was very depressing to see how HAL has regressed in their entertainment compared to Oceania. We enjoyed many nights with the string quartets on O. We liked LCS on HAL, and hope the classical music returns consistently on all ships; our last two cruises had zero classical music since LCS ended. In addition, O has a singing and dancing production company for its shows. Step One is good, but how many times can you watch the same four shows; we really missed the ship's singers HAL used to have. And finally, O has a live 7 piece band that plays for all shows, whether it is accompanying the ship's production company or guest entertainers. HAL really needs to improve its entertainment, like it was years ago.

Probably not. But we have seen it not very strictly enforced. They will definitely not be able to use the priority check-in line with you, and depending on the port, this may mean you are sitting at a different location in the terminal waiting to board.

Twice on another cruise line where we overnighted before disembarkation day, the ship moved to a different berth in the middle of the night. In one case it moved a couple miles to a different port. They made it clear there was going to be a several hour period in the middle of the night when no one can get on or off the ship. I would definitely get it in writing from O that this middle-of-the-night departure will be permitted at this port. As others have said, I don't think 4AM is early enough and you also need confirmation that customs will be available at that hour.

I was going to say a definitive no. On our recent cruise to South America it was clearly stated in Currents that they do not do this. However, I decided to google it and came across this FAQ from a few years ago, so now I am not sure: https://oceaniacruises.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360005405954-Can-I-exchange-my-money-for-local-currency

Not true. On every recent HAL cruise we have been able to connect our laptop to an HDMI port on the TV and watch our own movies. Now it does take some work. It will likely be very difficult to reach behind the TV to connect the cable, but it can be done. Then I believe we have needed to use our own personal small universal remote that we carry when we travel to switch the source to the HDMI port, since it was not possible with the in-room remote. I have no idea if any of this is applicable to an iPad, but it is possible with devices that have HDMI ports.

You say you want three real beds. I am not sure if the king bed in the Neptune suites can be split into two smaller beds. I know it cannot be split in the Pinnacle Suites, but I'm sure someone knows for sure. So although two people can sleep very comfortably in a king bed, it depends on your relationships if you really want to share a bed.

This is dependent on your ship and cruise line so you should ask on your line's specific forum. On our recent cruise that disembarked in BA, we could have done that, but decided to have the ship handle most of our luggage. Note that everyone was required to take a bus from the ship to the terminal since it is an industrial port. It was a mess in the terminal building with a very long line to get out of the terminal building; I believe it took about 1 hour from the moment we left the ship until we were out of the terminal. It was the most disorganized disembarkation of any cruise we have been on.

Over numerous HAL cruises over the years, I have never noticed anyone give a tip in the CO dining room on Pinnacle Class ships nor in the lower MDR (anytime dining) for other ships. It might be different upstairs in the MDR where you have the same servers every night, but we have never done fixed dining.

We just got back from a tour we took on disembarkation day with a private guide, so we didn't stay overnight by ourselves. The city seemed very safe to us, and we would not hesitate to stay there by ourselves in the future. It seemed and felt just like a major European city. So if you have done that in the past where you don't speak the language, you should be fine in BA.

@Mike B LandlubberThanks for the excellent report on the Nazca lines, including the photographic equipment you used. A couple follow-up questions (I'm trying to talk my wife into doing it with me since she is hesitant to fly in small planes). From the photos, it looks like you had two pilots...is that correct? Did you feel the plane was relatively new and in good condition?

Then what exactly is free? I though air deviations was the thing that allowed you to chose your own flights? Of course, I don't know much about O's air program since we have never used it; we found we could book flights just as cheaply ourselves.

What fantastic news! Step One was very good, but we have really missed live singers over the last few years.

@Mike B LandlubberWe are carefully following your blog, since we will be on the exact same cruise in March 2025. Thank you for doing it. So my first question...are you taking a flight-seeing tour of the Nazca Lines when you are in Pisco? If so, are you doing the HAL Shore Excursion or a private flight tour company and when did you make reservations? This is on our bucket list so we will definitely be doing it on our cruise.