POA1

Just off the Nieuw Statendam last week. The canned water is spring water. I think it's from Italy.

No. It was included with Club Orange.

By the way, what's with the ALL CAPS BEWARE? It seems like overkill. (Unless your people die without the juice. In that case, I support you in the struggle.)

That's a bummer. We were on the sailing after yours, embarking on December 10th from Fort Lauderdale. We had fresh orange juice pretty much all the time.

Nope. Most fares, with the exception of some casino rates, can add Have It All. Just tell your person to add HIAOFFER to your booking. There is a similar code that will add the HIA+ if you are a year or more out. (My job is to know all the things. 😎)

I'm glad to see that we aren't the only ones who refer back to the receipts for the names of our severs. I could swear that we used to be able to keep this straight in the past. Now I find myself putting notes in Google Keep and wondering if I should take photos of my server's name tags. I really expected to be a lot older before I became a doddering old fool.

Thanks. I was afraid that was the case. The tuna was always there, waiting to be called upon if we didn’t like the normal choices. We didn’t try the Beecher's Mac & Cheese until the last night. Our bad. It was stellar.

The Elite Beverage Package includes 15 alcoholic drinks per day with a menu price of up to $15. Gratituities are included. It also includes unlimited non-alcoholic beverage. Again, tips are covered. If you want something that exceeds the $15 and limit, you pay the difference. We stress tested the EBP last week. We had 4 glasses of high end Cabernet Sauvignon that were $3 over and a really good Sancerre that retailed for $24.

Obligatory fan service post: Poohby Joe photo bombs the Nieuw Statendam. In the interest of full disclosure, here's the source photo. Thu important thing is to make sure that his tag doesn't show.

I have to second Michelle's assessment. The food quality and preparation were top notch. We ordered things because they were new or featured. If an item was a Port to Table selection, odds are one of us ordered it. I've seen menu items that are classics from the past. I'd be all over those. Sadly, there were none on our menus. (Maybe I need to thump the Bubble of Awesome. It used to work with tube televisions.) Michelle consistently "won dessert." When we're ordering food, it's not whether it's good or bad. It's about whose dish is the best. There's a good chance that we'll talk smack about the other person's choices. Many people might find that to be "childish" or "immature." To those folks I say, "Yes. Yes it is." Let's have a fruit cobbler, ice cream throw-down.

Actually, under the law in question, the only "distant foreign ports" are the ABC islands. (The law dates from the late 1800s, if I recall correctly.) You couldn't do FLL to Montreal to Boston because that's a PVSA violation. Your San Diego to FLL leg hits Curaçao, I think. (Aruba or Bonaire would work as well.) Call and ask what the specific violation is. It's possible that your booking is in segments that could look like you are sailing from FLL to BOS. Viewed as a whole, you should be fine if the cruise is like you described. If you are getting off in Fort Lauderdale and boarding another ship, you'd be in violation.

Bon voyage, Rich! You've got a great itinerary. We went from our last cruise of 7 days to our upcoming cruise of 9 days in the Spring. At this rate, we'll catch up to you in... (Pulls out pen and calculator...) 2168!

Understand that the Grand Voyage is a whole different animal. All the packages reflect that. Drinks cost less per day because passengers on a three month sailing aren't going to drink like people on a 7 day Caribbean. The Wi-Fi is going to be much less per day.

For domestic airlines, try to book economy with HAL. Then, call the airline and see what it costs to move to premium. You'll have to use the air line's record locator and not the flight ease one. You won't have to pay for the HAL portion of the flights, but you will have to pay for the upgrades. But, once you pay the airline, you'll have seats - guaranteed.

I'm hoping Michelle weighs in on this topic, but I think that the food quality on this cruise was superlative. The Pinnacle Grill and Sel de Mer were excellent. The little appetizer thing we did on the first night at the Tamarind bar was a real treat. We were just using it to kill time and miss the first night crush that we expected in the CO dining room. Apparently we need not to have worried.@LAFFNVEGAS reported little wait for night one's dinner in CO. While Tamarind was just a filler, we were so impressed with the food and service that we are planning a repeat in March on the Rotterdam.

My thoughts on the Club Orange thing, part three-ish: On nights that are not dressy nor Culinary Council nights, Club Orange gets an extra entrée. The standard Club Orange dinner menu has, in addition to the extra entrée, a seared tuna & shaved asparagus salad and Beecher's Mac & Cheese. The tuna looked good, but we did not have the opportunity to try it. We did, however, add the mac & cheese as a shared course on the last night of our cruise. It has an excellent reputation. This reputation is well-deserved. The dish has a creamy sharpness that sets it apart from your run of the mill cheesy pasta. You can find Beecher's Mac and Cheese in the Lido as well. You might want to give it a try if you come across it. (Hint, hint.)

What??? All I want for Christmas....

And I disagree with your dissent. 😉 You could swap Ketel One or even the super neutral Smirnoff in for the Goose in a lemon drop pretty readily. Of course, if you want Grey Goose, you can have it. (Ironically, Grey Goose in a standard mixed drink is covered by the SBP.) Off the top of my head, I'd suspect that the fresh lemon juice, raspberry, and the Grey Goose are what make the Roadhouse Drop hit the $12 mark.

Having arranged for "the fixed dining experience" in the Club Orange dining room, I will say that service was excellent most of the time. Given that Club Orange is all open seating, you are at the mercy of the ebb and flow of the crowd. If everyone shows up to eat at the same time, there is a natural slowdown. Fortunately, we got into a good rhythm with Tri, our waiter, and Nana, our wine steward.

I hope you enjoy the Nieuw Statendam as much as we did. Have a great trip!

Thank you for kind words. The bear appreciates the mention.

Got side tracked there. I haven't had my coffee yet. My point is: If enough people ask for the prices of enough spirits - often enough - printed price lists solve their problem. They just haven't discovered their problem yet.

Also, I am perfectly willing to take my old liquor list and ask the prices of a dozen types of booze every time I go to the bar. All the prices are in the POS system, including the $3 Myers Dark Rum floater for the Trader Vic's Mai Tai and the Pina Colada. In fact, you can get a floater on any of the frozen drinks I saw on the menu in the Retreat Cabanas. I'm pretty sure that it's the Crow's Nest bar menu because it's closest to Cabanaland. I doubt that the POS system will allow it, but decades of IT experience make want to see if I can order a can of Coke and a quadruple floater. It would be $2.75 for the soda pop and 4x $3 = $12 for the rum. That's twenty five cents less than the EBP limit. (Hi. I'm a white hat hacker specializing in drink menus. I'm here to help root out system vulnerabilities. I won't rest until we make sure everything is locked down tight. Or, if there are systems bugs, until I pass out. 😁)

You are correct, Nancy. Veuve was $28 everywhere we went on the NS. However, if it does indeed still read $18 at the end of March, I'm afraid my "Live From" will be from a stool at that bar. It's right outside the Club Orange dining room after all. I did not read the Half Moon menu before I posted it. That's on me. In my defense, it's a little long and kind of hard to read on my phone screen. It's also the only menu I didn't see in person, since Half Moon is not on the Nieuw Statendam, while BB King and Rolling Stone are. The two music venues' drink prices track with what we saw in person.

The second part of the ridiculously complicated Half Moon Bar menu. (We all know that the Institute of Cheer is headed there on day one, right?)