Torquer

We always stay in one of the top suites; on our next cruise, we will be in an Oceania Suite that includes the 6 bottles of wine/liquor plus beer in the fridge. Is it OK to take glasses of wine from our suite to dinner with us? If so, how would someone know this is wine that came with the suite versus our personal wine we brought aboard with us? In the past, we have always consumed it in the suite, but maybe that is not necessary. And it is certainly wonderful to have it supplied as part of the suite instead of having to carry it aboard...but of course we are paying a lot of money for this convenience since these suites are not cheap.

The only problem is that, unlike Panama Canal cruises, most people are not on the cruise to see just the Suez canal. They are on the cruise because the cruise travels from Europe to Asia, and going through the canal is essential to maintain the cruise schedule. It is likely that cruise lines would have to make major changes to adjacent cruise schedules due to having to take the many days to circum-navigate Africa.

Correct. Owners, Vista, and Oceania suites get free beer in the fridge. And of course these also get 6 free bottles of liquor and/or wine in their suite.

In the top 3 level suites, the fridge can also be stocked with regular beer or non-alcoholic beer, at no charge. Your butler will ask you what kind of beer and/or soda you would like it stocked with on the first day of the cruise.

@chengkp75Thanks for all the information here, but now I am confused. What do you mean by "passenger laundry facilities" versus "ship's main laundry"? Everyone knows there are no longer do-it-yourself laundry rooms on HAL ships. And I have been in the, what I thought was, the only laundry facilities on HAL ships many times on behind-the-scenes ship tours (pre-covid). The laundry facility does passenger laundry, sheets, table cloths, bathrobes, etc. I don't explicitly remember crew uniforms being washed here but it is likely I never noticed. Are you saying some of these washing machines in this room use different water supplies than others? Or are you referring to something else? Perhaps they all do use the same water supply, but HAL needs to conserve water while in the Amazon so it prohibits washing passenger laundry?

First, since this has nothing to do with HAL, you will probably get more and better info in the appropriate board for that port here: https://boards.cruisecritic.com/forum/472-mediterranean-eastern-western/ With the exception of the port in Albania, which we have not been to, all are perfectly safe. Obviously, you do need to be careful nearly anywhere in the world, but I felt much safer in any of those ports than say, walking around New York City. Although you can do any of those ports by just walking around yourself, you may find something more interesting on a tour, either from the cruise line or a private tour company (we nearly always do the latter). Here are some world-class sites not directly in the port city itself: Malaga - Alhambra palace, Caminita Del Rey hike (google it if you never heard of it) Cadiz - Seville is pretty far from the port and the Alcazar Palace and other sites are not close to each other

On a cruise years ago, our waiter told us a different fruit crisp is available every night in the MDR. If it isn't on the menu, just ask your waiter what it is that night. Since then, I have had fruit crisps many nights, even though it is often not on the menu, since I'm not a big fan of chocolate.

That is correct that the Pinnacle Grill breakfast is only for NS and PS suites; you cannot go there if you have just purchased Club Orange. However, I'm not sure what several people have said about capacity is true. Without actually counting tables, it does seem that the Pinnacle Grill on non-Pinnacle-Class ships has at least as many tables as the Club Orange dining room on Pinnacle-Class ships. So I'm not sure why HAL doesn't allow purchasers of Club Orange to use the PG for breakfast. I'm not complaining since we always have a suite, but it is only ever a few tables being used and very quiet in there for breakfast. I suspect a lot of suite guests don't know about this perk.

We have never been invited to or heard of any of these special events either. We always stay in a suite, so we get the CO benefits, rather than paying an add-on fee for them. Has anyone heard of these events? Do you perhaps have to pay for CO, rather than being in a suite to get invited?

What is wrong with that? Seems like a good thing to block the sun and gives a bit more privacy from people above looking down on part of your balcony. We will be, for the first time, on deck 11 on Marina in an Oceania Suite for our next cruse; we noticed the large overhang in a video review and viewed that as a good thing. Let me know if I am missing something.

I have never heard of one after you board ship. HAL offers them in some ports as part of a transfer. Of course, you can always use a private tour company, before you board, or perhaps even after in the early afternoon.

That is simply not true, and if you saw it posted before, it was also wrong there. A very few cruise lines, in particular all or most MSC cruises, have made arrangements to use ports within the Venice lagoon, namely Marghera or Fusina. Most other cruise lines do not stop within the Venice lagoon, and use other ports, in particular Trieste and Ravena is common, even if the cruise is embarking or disembarking from "Venice". Some very small ships, smaller than R-class, can also use ports within the lagoon. This is true for all O cruises that I am aware of starting in 2022, and our other favorite cruise line Holland America.

Trieste itself is well worth spending a day to explore. Of course, it is not Venice. If you have never been to Venice you really want to spend a couple nights on the island and experience the real Venice when the tourist mobs leave in the late afternoon. It is an entirely different experience. Fortunately, you can do this pre- or post-cruse from Trieste also since you will almost certainly be flying from the Marco Polo airport in Venice.

Agreed. Rudi's dessert souffle for two is really excellent. On our last cruise, Rudi was onboard, and he gave a cooking demonstration in the theater of how to make the souffle. Unfortunately, his demo one didn't turn out very well...it was under-cooked. But the one we had in his restaurant later in the cruise was amazing.

On a recent cruise to Iceland, my black sneakers got all muddy on a rainy day visit to the mud pots scenic area. When I got back to the ship, I asked our cabin steward if they had a brush I could use to try to clean them. He gave me a brush, and after 15 minutes of work, they looked better but far from perfect. I never thought about giving them to the shoe polishing people, and the steward never volunteered we could do that. Has anybody else given sneakers for shoe polishing and if so, how did it turn out?

@PointsNerdGreat article. There are a few things you are missing which may affect how it works for other people. First, CEC is the technical name for the interface of how HDMI devices can control the TV via their remote control, or vice-versa. Although, CEC is the real name for it, TV vendors call it different things: Samsung calls it AnyNet, LG calls it SimpLink, etc. The key point is that the protocol has to be enabled in the TV's menu for it to work and automatically connect to the HDMI device (Chromecast in this case). I guess it was in your case, or you didn't mention the details. There are a couple problems with this part. First, all HAL ships have different model TVs, depending when the cabin was last renovated. In the last year, we have seen both LG and Samsung TVs on ship. Second and most importantly, on some ships/cabins, the remote control they give you is a minimal one and does not have all the functionality as the original TV remote. For example, it may not have a source/input selection button and it might not have a button to take you into the TV setup menu where you can change things. To get around this problem, we carry a small multi-function remote control that can control any modern TV. We have used it on ships and hotels to watch movies from our laptop, which is a similar problem to Chromecast. The final problem you might encounter, is the TV is setup in "hotel mode" and even if you have a real remote control, it will not let you change settings, like its inputs. There are "secret codes" you can find on the internet if you search, that you can push on your remote control to take the TV out of hotel mode and put it back into it. So although this worked for you, it is not necessarily an easy problem for a non-technical person to solve, particularly if they don't have the TV's original full-function remote control available.

I have no specific information on how O handles this. But as a comparison point, I do know how it works on our other favorite cruise line, Holland America. Here is the text that someone posted a few years ago directly from their HAL employee handbook: Tipping not required policy All ships have the Rewards for Excellence (RfE) Plan which consists of Hotel Service Charges and Beverage Service Charges. If a guest chooses to adjust out of the RfE Plan and instead provide cash tips to an employee, the employee is required to turn in this cash to their Department Head so the money can be added to the RfE plan. Any "tips" received above and beyond the guests standard amount may be kept by the crewmember. This comes from post #50 on this thread on the HAL board: https://boards.cruisecritic.com/topic/2597164-tipping/?do=findComment&comment=56025003

On a cruise this past summer on Nieuw Statendam, we had a credit for dinner and on our booking confirmation it said Pinnacle Grill or Canaletto. I'm not quite sure how we got the credit; I am thinking it was from our travel agent since we did not have HIA. When we asked the Neptune Lounge concierge to make a reservation for us, she said we could go to any restaurant, including Rudi's. So we picked Rudi's and had a wonderful meal, with Rudi himself dining at the table next to us.

Another thing to consider is that the mid-ship elevators directly look out on the balconies of the adjacent cabins on Vista-class ships. Whenever we take those elevators we comment on how bad those cabins must be since you have no privacy on your balcony.

Interesting...we have never seen a "let us choose your room" for the Pinnacle suites and that is what we always book. Of course, there are very few times when both PS suites are available for a given cruise, so that you would have a choice. Was the price the same between the two options? If so I'm not sure why HAL would even offer it. Perhaps you might have the following scenario: both PS rooms are available, the first person to book doesn't care if port or starboard so he picks a guarantee, the second person to book gets his preference of side of the ship, and the first person gets whatever PS wasn't chosen. That is the only scenario I can see of what the purpose of a guarantee for the PS would benefit anyone.

Make sure you save your copy, and when it comes back, check to make sure all items are returned correctly. About every other HAL cruise we take with unlimited laundry, an item doesn't come back, or someone else's garment comes back instead. This has always been corrected within hours as soon as we tell our room steward. The laundry crew really does do a fantastic job, considering how much laundry they have to handle every day.

Now that Simply More has started, I was wondering at lunch/dinner how the waiters know you have it or don't have it. Do they still ask everyone for their key cards for alcoholic drinks? Or does the dining room host note it when you tell them your room number? Or is it the honor system where you just tell them you have SM or not? We have a cruise in February and have booked it as cruise-only; we did not want to "upgrade" to SM. So I'm wondering how this will work. And it will be even worse a year from now when almost everyone will have SM, and cruise-only will be a rarity when someone booked a long time ago before SM started.

I know what you are asking about now and have seen it myself a couple times and wondered about it. I'm not sure why someone would pay $20 more for what sounds like the same thing (except the sides are different), without a clearer explanation on the Menu about what is better on the $20 upcharge steak. Here is a snippet from Rogerjett that shows an example:

Although I have never flown on FlyBondi and would never consider flying on any ultra-budget airline like that, I suspect the combo is one that they show on this page: https://flybondi.com/ar/menu-a-bordo

Also remember in the Pinnacle Grill, you get a choice of 3 different cuts of steak: Filet Mignon, New York Strip, and Boneless rib eye. So when comparing steaks in the MDR to the Pinnacle Grill, you may be comparing two different types of steak.