IPB4IGO

Thanks for posting the speed and ping times. That's certainly fast enough for streaming, although the latency indicated by the ping times might make two-way communication awkward. Friends that have Starlink experience that when using Wi-Fi calling on their cell phones. Better than nothing, but not great.

Here is a pic taken from the side of the TV in our cabin on the Zuiderdam in January 2022. As you can see, an HDMI port and a couple of USB ports are visible, but they are wa-a-ay back toward the center of the TV. Even if you could reach them, the remote they provide (pic attached) gives you no way to change the input source. There were no physical buttons anywhere on the TV.

Thanks. I wasn't aware that such a device existed.

How would the OP direct TV audio to the USB port into which he/she inserts the Bluetooth dongle? That would be great if it can be done.

As others have said, the ports on HAL TVs are generally inaccessible, and the remote they provde doesn't allow you to get to any TV settings that could enable Bluetooth audio even if the TV supports it. My lovely wife uses wireless headsets to watch TV. The transmitter plugs in to either the headphone jack or (with my patch cables) RCA audio out jacks on the TV. Prior to about three years ago, I could sometimes get to the headphone jack on HAL TVs by using an L-adapter on the cable to squeeze behind the TV. Since HAL transitioned to TVs that are recessed into the walls, I can't even get a dental mirror back there to see if there is a headphone jack. Since she mostly watches MSNBC, the solution we found was to buy the Internet package and stream it on her laptop. Her headsets work fine on the laptop. Hope that helps.

I have never used the Apple products, so I don't know if this applies to them. With our Windows laptops and Android phones, if the devices are in use in same location you can connect one to the ship's Wi-Fi and use its hotspot to connect other devices. I typically connect my laptop to the ship, turn on its hotspot, then connect our other laptop, tablets, and phone to the laptop. That said, on the last several cruises I have upgraded from the default one-device plan to the optional four-device plan. It has cost us $10/day or less. That way, one of us can have multiple devices in use in the cabin and the other can still have access while in some other part of the ship.

I based my point that the CPP goes up when the fair goes up based on my experience with waiting to purchase it until just before the final payment date on one cruise. The CPP price quoted when I made the reservation was substantially less than what I had to pay at the last minute. That cruise had gone up almost 30% in price in the meantime. Regarding the cost, I just did a trial booking to look at the CPP price. Without CPP, it was $18,798. With the standard CPP it was $20,026. With the Platinum plan it was $20,806. That's 6.5% and 10.6% of the full fare respectively. The percentages are even higher if you consider only the base fare (i.e., excluding taxes and fees).

I agree with the points that others have made but here are a couple of points about HAL's Cruise Protection Plan: 1. If you book well in advance and if fares are going up between then and the final payment date, you will pay more for the CPP than if you had purchased it earlier. Of course, you cannot buy it after the final payment date. 2. HAL's CPP covers pre-existing conditions no matter when you buy it.

The Nieuw Amsterdam, cabin 6164.

As it happens, I did that on the Koningsdam a couple months ago. I also used a Wi-Fi signal strength app, whcih showed a good deal of variance in Wi-Fi signal strength in various parts of the ship. In our cabin it was about half the strength as the strongest I could find. The sad news is that signal strength had absolutely no consistent relationship with either ping time or throughput speed. Pings were in excess of 1000 ms, and speed varied from zero to a couple hundred kbps. Although I didn't run speed tests on the public computers in the Explorations Cafe, they were clearly as dead slow as my laptop, phone, and tablet. Sharing a satellite connection with 2,400 of your closest friends is just not fun.

The first was a Panama Canal full transit. The second and third were Alaska cruises, a couple weeks apart. The fourth was Hawaii, out of Vancouver. My Internet-quality speculation (i.e., wild-ass guess) is that Internet performance was a function of the number of passengers. On the first three cruises, there were 800-1,400 passengers. On the last, where Internet performance was probably 20% of that on the other cruises, there were 2,400.

Just for grins, I pulled out the sofa bed on our aft-wrap a few months ago. There is plenty of room for it, but certainly no privacy. Here are three pics of the cabin.

We took four cruises, on four different HAL ships, this year. In three of the four cruises my VPN worked, but not in the fourth (the first cruise). Interestingly, the cruise on which my VPN would load, Wi-Fi Calling would not work on my phone although it did on the other cruises. That said, our most recent cruise, on the full Koningsdam, the Internet was so slow that web pages usually would not complete loading and would often time out before even starting to load. We had the Premium Internet plan in all cases. Now, I just have to sit home and save money for the next couple years to return to cruising. Sigh...

We have always done any time dining, asking for "a table for two, no sharing". On cruises that are not fully booked we have had short wait times, if any. Our last cruise, on a full Koningsdam, we found that by showing up around 6:30 the waits were only 5-15 minutes. Show up earlier, and the lines were too long for us to even bother getting on the wait list. We would just go have a drink and come back later.

We were in one on the Nieuw Amsterdam this year. It was great for viewing glaciers on the Alaska cruise, and it would be terrific for sunbathing on a warmer cruise. There were a couple of days of vibration, especially at night, and the side portion of the balcony was quite windy while underway. On negative side, the cabin itself was noticeably smaller than other Neptune Suites and it was a lon-n-n-g way from the Neptune Lounge, which we almost never use anyway.

On a recent Hawaii cruise on the Koningsdam, Internet service was abysmal. Web pages would seldom load, and the service was completely out one entire day. VOIP ("Wi-Fi Calling"), on the other hand, worked perfectly when there was any Internet service at all. We had the Premium plan.

Good point. My wife makes her delicious tamales with lard. I don't know how tamales are made in the various areas of Mexico.

In my experience, the only time we have had a chaise longue is in a Neptune Suite. Otherwise we have had chairs and a single foot stool. On one of our first cruises we asked for chase longues and the stewards swapped them out for us. On our most recent cruise, though, one of the chairs broke after a few days and when they tried to replace it they found that it would not fit through the cabin door. They had to wait until a port day, when they opened up the partitions between the verandahs and moved a replacement chair down from an empty cabin about ten cabins forward of ours.

We were fulltime RVers for 13 years, spending many of our winters in Mexico. A very high percentage of other 'winter Mexicans" were from Canada. That said, you are sort of right about the tortillas. I would drive in to town in the mornings to pick up fresh flour tortillas at local corner tortillarias. Some used lard, some used a Crisco-like shortening and they are ALL superb! I always ate one while driving back to the RV park. The aroma was irresistable.

We just spent two weeks in cabin 4191 on the Koningsdam, a sister ship. The balcony was 11' feet deep. That meant we could stretch out and still have room to walk around each other. We chose that cabin specifically for the deep balcony. There was no noise from above or below, and no engine vibration. Since it is deeper than the balconies above, folks on the higher decks could look down on approximately the outer four feet of the balcony, so don't go leaning on the rail in the nude. <g> As others mentioned cabins at the very front of Deck 4 (4002-4019, I believe) have steel rather than plexiglass under the railings, eliminating a lot of the view. We once had an aft wrap Neptune suite on Deck 6 of the Nieuw Amsterdam, and we did have some engine vibration in that cabin. And we had an Oceanview on the aft portion of Deck 1 of the Noordam and felt no vibration there, although whenever we were in mport it sounded like they were trying to jack-hammer their way through the wall.

On our 14-day cruise on the Koningsdam last month, we usually wandered down to the MDR around 6:30 and request a "table for two, no sharing". Sometimes we were seated immediately but most times we were given a buzzer and told the wait would be 10-20 minutes. In fact, the wait was never as long as 10 minutes, and there were pleasant, quiet tables for 2-4 outside the MDR for waiting.

On the other hand, the verandahs on the aft section of Deck 4 are much deeper than any others on the ship (except a few on the forward section of that deck, many of which do not have transparent railings). Our balcony in 4191 was 11 feet deep.

We used only about half of our shore excursion credit on our cruise last month. The other half was lost.

We were quarantined in Fort Lauderdale for six days in January. A credit for $1,200 from HAL appeared on our credit card a few weeks later.

Disappointment. Sharing a satellite Internet connection with 2,000 of your closest friends is not conducive for reliable streaming. On one cruise this year, my wife was able to stream her favorite news programs with buffering every few minutes. On our last cruise (Hawaii, out of Vancouver) it was so slow that web pages would seldom load completely, and it was completely down for one day. OTOH, Wi-Fi calling worked well.