POA1

Space Weather has forecasts for most lat / long coordinates.

The 8017 # is correct. My mistake.

Yes, indeed. Your gratuity / tip / service charge / crew appreciation / other euphemism not listed is on the undiscounted amount. If $X is the cost of the Pinnacle Grill, Tamarind, or Canaletto, then we pay $X/2 + (0.18 x $X) $YY is the Irish spelling of $X.

Yes. The Canadian Maritimes - New Brunswick, Nova Scotia & Prince Edward Island, produce more Maine Lobster than Maine does. In all the years we lived in Maine, you would find mostly Canadian lobster in the supermarket during certain times of the year. It tastes exactly the same and indeed it is the sane species. It's not until you ask it the weather forecast that you'll notice the difference. Ours will tell you the high & low temperatures in Fahrenheit. Theirs will quote you in degrees Celsius.

CORRECT-A-MUNDO! One of our first stops after boarding is to make our PG lunch reservations. It comes before our first bar stop. (If you knew us, you would understand how seriously we take our Pinnacle lunch.)

VQ is higher. If you decline it, you do not get the OBC. If the VQs were sold out, you would get the OBC because there's no where to go. We had a similar situation. We have a midship A (Vista Suite +super excited about the extra 2 feet of cabin depth!) We did not want an AS (Aft Vista Suite) because we are a midship kind of folks. I declined the upgrade, so no OBC. Ironically, or moronically, if we had waited a week, all the AS rooms would have been gone. Then we would have received the OBC. We're okay with the final outcome as long as we get that sweet, sweet Club Orange tote bag and those Orange key cards that cause envy amongst all who gaze upon them.

Once a category is closed out, you won't see the rooms. They'd be in waitlist status or completely closed to bookings. Exactly! If someone takes an upsell to an open verandah from an ocean view, that opens up the ocean view for either new bookings or upsells for an inside cabin. Since the least & most expensive rooms sell the fastest, there's probably a lot of juggling going on up until sailing day.

I think the upsell offers come from the PLUS department. I think PLUS stands for preferred limited up sell or something like that. I deleted the email unfortunately. The number was different than Ships Inventory. If I get another email, I will post the number.

I wouldn't use an FCD to use as anything but a deposit on a cruise. A FCD reduces your deposit requirement and gives you OBC. If, the OP is is truly talking about Future Cruise Credit, like from an incident or Covid, then forget that I said anything and continue with your day. FCC monies can only be used to pay for the cruise fare.

Book it the first day of your cruise. It sells out quickly.

Wow! A guy goes away for a few hours to mow some lawns to cover the cost of the caviar increase and he sure misses a lot. I was only joking about the caviar. It hasn't gone up since 2012 or so. The new $80 price is still less than the retail price at Browne Trading in Portland, Maine. And I'm referring to the price when you pick it up at the store. Bear in mind that the $80 includes all the accoutrements. (Please make sure you pronounce it a-cou-tre-mohn in your haughtiest French accent.) It's still a deal and we're definitely getting an ounce each. I picked up a little extra scratch weeding Mrs. Finsterbacher's azaleas. Food inflation and shrinkflation have been ridiculous the past few years. I'm the proud grocery shopper here at Casa del POA and I see how little your food dollar buys today. I view the specialty dining as a splurge or a treat. We're booked for both the PG & Rudi's this December and we're definitely doing a PG lunch. Putting the positive spin on it: We used to save $7.50 on a Pinnacle lunch as 4* Mariners, Now we save $9.50, That's an increase in our savings of almost 27%! And to step to Kazu's aid on the lobster. I've only ever seen cold water (a.k.a. Maine Lobster, which mostly comes from the Maritimes anyway) on HAL cruises. We have that nasty spiny lobster in Florida. In fact, the spiny lobster mini season ends tonight at midnight. It looks and tastes nothing like cold water lobster. I say this as a former Mainer.

Dang it! 60% increase in the caviar pricing. It's our one splurge. And, no... We are not going to share an ounce. Guess I'll have to to mow a few more lawns this summer. (Gonna be kind of hard living in a high rise condo.) This is gonna hurt the casino, because it's coming straight out of their budget...

Have it all covers the first two passengers, like @crystalspin said. If you had a single plan, which is what we do, you can either trade off using one device at a time, but the multi device add on, or use a travel router. We go the last route. If you are comfortable with the technology, it's very cost effective.

Darn tootin'!

Yes, as long as an aft verandah is available. All the verandah staterooms are in the same meta category, so you trade up to the highest available.

The only people who will have the list of open rooms on offer for a sold out ship are the people in Ship's Inventory. You'd have to get a job at HAL, go through training, and probably wait until a position opened. That's probably going to take a little longer than the phone calls. In the meantime, here's the deck plan PDFs in a single file. https://www.evernote.com/shard/s88/sh/2b6fccac-7be1-9eec-87f0-e578adca16b0/1qzFYUVjBgunv9tKGzRm0WOqwPeBO1IsI8FFqLxEL4oj7EtiA3zcJSfeaQ

Don't know if this applies in every case, but prepaying for Premium wifi cost the same or a teeny bit less than buying the lower tier surf package on board for our upcoming 7 day cruise.

If you cancel a reservation that you paid for with a credit (like Have It All) you will see the credit pop* back into your account. You can then rebook using the credit. *You won't hear the credit pop unless you turn the volume waaaay up. 😃

They definitely do not make it easy to find. The Join! links, on the other hand, are hard to miss. 😉

On a cruise with two other couples, our MDR waiter just walked around the table and said, "Snicker Pie?, Snicker Pie?, Snicker Pie?" We took the hint and were very glad we did.

It's better than *I* make at home. We have some chef friends who brine their turkey for 24 hours, cook it upside down for the first half of a low & slow bake. Then they flip it over for the 2nd.finishing half. Apparently this distributes the juice better. We've found that the best way to ensure a good Thanksgiving bird is to buy some nice wine and score an invitation to their house.

Terry - That's exactly what I've heard from several people: $50/pp if you can't be upgraded. I don't know if the amount varies if the voyage is a longer one We booked a midship A (Vista) on the Nieuw Statendam in April for a December sailing. When I added CO, there was an AS (aft Vista) available. I declined because we wanted the midship location. Because I declined the upgrade, I got nuttin'. While the aft cabins are great, we have a Retreat Cabana for this cruise. Knowing how often we have to trek back to the room to grab something we've forgotten, we figured midship was best.

Like most people, I too wonder what people do. For example, there's that guy who always smiles at us from the end of the hall. What's his role?

In fairness to the OP, I was thinking it was a pasta dish. Have I mentioned that this thread is making me hungry? December can't come soon enough!

From what I've heard from our SB friends, it's more Montecito if that makes sense.