HALrunner

This might not be completely accurate, but we are fresh off the 11 day Wayfarer. BB King was on three times a night in the Queen's Lounge and one time in the Vista Lounge. I only remember two other offerings in the Queen's Lounge in the evenings and those were a sock hop and game show. Curiously, not the marriage game (or whatever it was called). It was something along the lines of "call my bluff".

I might add that Adagio was absent the first three nights of our cruise. We feared the worst and thought HAL made even further cut backs with Adagio. We were very happy to hear them again when they joined the cruise at one of our ports.

Thank you so much Crew News! I have a great program that stores my recipe and automatically converts to a selected serving size! This will be on our menu this week to help combat the post cruise blues!

Does anyone have HAL's recipe for bran muffins? Also looking for their Farmer's Vegetable Puree recipe if anyone happens to have it. Thanks!

Masstimes.org is a great site that we often use and I highly recommend it, but sometimes the actual mass times are not up to date.

So, for anyone looking to attend mass at the beautiful cathedral in FDF, the mass times last sunday were 8am & 10:30am. We arrived at 8:45am for the 9am mass listed on masstimes.org:(

After mass the church ladies were having a little bake sale in the square across the street. Before the 10:30am mass there was a children's choir.

Just off the Noordam today and the show host was a young lady from Aruba named Sabine. Hope this helps!

We took our oldest on his first cruise at 10 months, too! He was the only one on the ship under 19:)

I just posted a lot (too much?!?) of advice about sailing on HAL with little ones on another thread begun by SandRaven. You will likely find some of it useful if you want to check it out. Before you sail, contact ship services and request a pack and play. We did this and brought our own PNP sheet as we were not comfortable having a giant standard sheet tucked into the PNP.

Best of luck!

p.s. I already said it in the thread mentioned above, but RuthC is right....every mom deserves the unlimited laundry package!!

Just off the Noordam today and my five year old just received his 100 day medal. We have cruised a lot with babies/toddlers/preschoolers. It seems you are seasoned mariners and planning ahead, so I am sure you will have a fantastic trip! To help you prepare, here are a few hints:

Sometimes highchairs can be hard to find. Make friends with a lido attendant and the DR manager early on and they will always be sure one is ready (and always completely sanitized). On the lido note- we only go if there is absolutely no other option. With little ones, parents turn into waitstaff and that is no way to spend a vacation! For us, we use the MDR for every meal it is offered and sometimes the PG or room service if needed. Which reminds me...breakfast in the PG is a fantastic perk of booking a suite.

We never asked, but friends have said that HAL will puree menu items and voila- homemade baby food! When ours were still on baby food, we brought a manual food mill and just mashed up steamed veggies etc from the regular menu. There is a children's menu in the MDR that is made for coloring, but it is strictly BYOC (bring your own crayons). Oh yeah, don't forget sippy cups!

Just in the last year or two we stopped bringing the IKEA toddler painting coverups (vinyl backwards shirt, more or less) for meals. On that note, every mom deserves the unlimited laundry package.

I also second the recommendations of bringing your own lifejackets, sand toys & kiddy pool. If we are on the NA or Eurodam we always get a lido cabana and can't recommend them enough. Back to the packing list....doggy doo bags (small bags sold in rolls in the pet section) for diapers. Neither you nor your cabin attendant will enjoy a soiled diaper fermenting in your (bagless) trash can! We used to bring bubbles for sail away, but sadly it seems our kids have outgrown that.

Hubby & I are both health care professionals and therefore keep a small, but well stocked, travel medicine chest. Everything from ginger chews to epi pens although we haven't needed either. I am sure the medical center on board will have anything you need, but when my 5 hear old had a croup attack a few nights ago, I was glad to have meds on standby in our cabin. I would at least bring a thermometer and children's tylenol or motrin.

Depending on the ages of your children, car seats can be tricky. We are car seat safety fanatics and despite lax local laws in many ports, our 5 & 7 year olds always use a ride safer travel vest (google it, but basically a booster alternative that is GREAT for travel). They were still in our luggage as we walked to the taxi stand at FLL, and the operator was quick to point to a sign saying something along the lines of all children 5 and under MUST have some kind of child restraint. I was glad to see someone is cracking down on this as we have never seen enforcement of this anywhere before.

As you mentioned, HAL does not attract a lot of families but everyone from staff to fellow passengers will want to love on your children! It sounds like your children are good little travelers like ours. Now that ours are a little older, we always have a little pep talk with them about making a good first impression the first day. Basically, good behavior brings good attention and bad behavior brings bad attention. Just thought it was worth mentioning. We also talk about germs and the more things (elevator buttons, hand rails etc) you touch the more germs you touch. Additionally, I always bring liquid hand soap for our cabin as that is what the kids are used to using.

I have probably given you more advice than you need or your luggage will hold! We always fly in at least a day before and pick up many of these things in port. Now that our kids are a little older and I have fine tuned our packing, we were down to one piece of checked luggage on this past 11 day cruise. For a few years though, packing lite was for the birds!

I second the vote for kayaks! We just did this last week and had an amazing time.

 

I prearranged a cab driver (I did a google search, but if you PM me I will give you his contact info)and we paid him when he returned to pick us up (his idea). Oz, the owner of Caribbean Paddling, even called the cab driver to make sure he was coming.

 

It was a simply wonderful day in paradise.

Edited to delete. I just read the entire thread and found what I was looking for:)

After seeing these few posts I checked and our amex covers us too! So glad I saw this here. My question is that if I use Paypal to pay the deposit (Paypal is the only means offered) would that negate the amex insurance? Even if I paid the balance at the port with it? Hmm, I suppose I can add this amex to Paypal and use it there. Ugh, I guess I should just call the credit card company.

I was wondering the same thing. What did you find out?

Sounds fun!

http://www.hollandamerica.com/pageByName/Simple.action?requestPage=Sip_Savor_Sail&himage=no&WT.ac=footer_promo_Sip_Savor_Sail_USD

Has HAL offered this kind of experience previously?

I knew there must have been a good reason I hadn't thought of it before:) Thanks!

If I recall, the lunch menu is always the same on embarkation day? Guacamole burger, etc? It just occurred to me, maybe we should try PG for lunch on embarkation day (next week, hooray for me:)!)

Is PG open for lunch on embarkation day? If so, is it pretty busy?

I wonder what they are sipping and savoring?

The island tour sounds like A LOT of time in and out of car, was that the case? Thanks for all of your advice!

Just wondering how much a taxi would be to South Friar's bay? Is it easy to catch a taxi back to the ship?

Thanks so much for your quick reply- so helpful!!

I have been in contact with Tyrone for our Feb. visit on the Celebrity Equinox. Just curious what type of van/vehicle he uses. We are a party of 8 and he said he has another couple booked for that day for a total of 10. I have been on some really bad vehicles on tours on the islands. Any photos?

He just emailed me and quoted $40/person. He said it is not a luxury vehicle, but does have air conditioning. Hope this helps!

I just got back from a Caribbean cruise and know a little more about the Martinique docks --- yes, docks! I was confused before when some people mentioned the ferry being so close to the dock. Now I know there are 2 docks. The one we were at on our Noordam cruise was 1.4 miles from the ferry. Still within walking distance, but not the 5 or 10 minutes that many people mentioned. This time, we were on the smaller ship Maasdam and docked right next to the ferry docks. Definately an easy 5 minute walk to the ferry. So make sure you know which dock you're going to be at when determining how much time to allow getting to the ferry. Unfortunately, both times we were there were holidays and the ferry was on limited times---and most stores including McDonald's were closed. On Sundays and holidays, the ferry only went to Pointe Du Point . Last time we walked to Anse Mitan--about another mile---from there. Very nice beach. This time I wanted to go to the Pointe and snorkel, but hubby was afraid of missing the ferry back since we were only there until 1:30 and the ferry didn't run on schedule like was posted the previous time we went, so we took a private taxi tour of the north part of the island instead.

Sue, you sound like the lady I need to talk to! We will be on the Noordam 11 day Wayfarer soon. We will be in Martinique on a Sunday and are interested in taking the ferry over to the beaches. Do you recall if the Noordam docks closer to the ferries or further? Also, would you recommend taking the ferry on a Sunday? We will be there from 8-5.

Thanks and happy travels!

Can anyone tell me about how many miles/km the volcano hike is? I am guessing the elevation gain is about 4000 ft?

Thanks!

Thanks for the encouragement! My husband suggested we just find a water based excursion or charter a small boat. I will look into Stanley Coran, but any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Is it worth getting off the ship?!?

I am just starting to research ports for our cruise next month and discovered there will be a total of 6 ships (21,000 passengers + crew) in St. Thomas the day we are scheduled in port.

Do they all arrive at the same port? According to our itinerary we will be at Charlotte Amalie.

Any suggestions on a less crowded place to spend the day or way to see the island?

So far, I don't have any plans for this port. As it will be a Sunday when we arrive, most of the local shops will be closed as well, except for the market in front of the dock (and of course the stalls on the way from the ship). So I think it'll be on the spot I'll decide what to do. Might wander off and take some pictures or I might as well stay on the ship, I don't know yet.

 

I've made arrangements for quite some ports, except for Grand Turk (that will be a stop to shop for some kitchen stuff; mostly jerk rubs), HMC, Philipsburg (without a doubt a shopping-port for me), Bonaire and Samana.

 

I really don't know what to do in Samana and Bonraire either. I've done a pretty extensive tour of the Islands last time and saw pretty much all there was to see. I came across a very interesting excursion on Samana, through the ship, as well but it has a beach stop, and I really don't like beach stops in an excursion. Many times they rush from one place to another just to have far too much time at a mediocre beach.

 

Will this be your first time in these ports? Or have you been to some of them before, HALrunner?

Must be you are on the 21 day sailing? We did the sister sailing 10 day to the ABC islands on the Noordam last year. We have been to GT a couple times. The only real kitchen shopping I can think of would be at the cruise terminal which, as you can imagine, is quite touristy. In Bonaire we took a water taxi to Klein Bonaire and enjoyed a nice day on the primitive island. Just keep in mind there are no services, so bring anything (sun, shade, etc) you might need. The snorkeling was super easy and excellent. Samana is gorgeous, but you really do need some kind of an excursion set up (I think we did a catamaran?).

As for this sailing, we just booked a few days ago so most of these ports are new to me. Of these ports for the 11 day, we have only been to HMC, St. Maarten and Barbados. I am working on an excursion in St. Lucia and maybe one in St. Kitts. We may just end up poolside if I run out of time over the next ten days!

Anyone have information on where to attend Sunday mass while in port?

I will also be there on the Noordam January 11, looks like there is more activity here than on our roll call:)

I just started researching ports and so far FdF doesn't sound too appealing. Have you come across anything yet? Also, for my fellow Noordam cruise mates, have you made any plans for the other ports? See you soon!

Congratulations! Sounds wonderful!

Just curious, is this on the Jan 5 sailing?