minabruuke

Your screen shot just shows how cruise lines tend to notate a stop where the ship will dock in one place (in this case Phu My) and the intended/expected destination for most passengers is another place (in this case Ho Chi Minh City). Rome (Civittavecchia), Italy is a comparable example; the ship docks in Civittavecchia but the reason the ships docks there is so that passengers can access Rome. It wouldn't make much sense for the Vietnamese government to not accept the eVisa at the Phu My port but I can't find anything that confirms that the Phu My port is included with what the government is referring to as Ho Chi Minh City Seaport (which I believe is a network of ports on the river). From what I have found, the two have different port codes VNPHU (Phu My port) vs VNSGN (HCMC port).

I was actually reading this forum in hopes of finding answers as to whether that ridiculous $99 charge through NCL can be easily avoided. The Vietnam government website has me questioning whether I can actually use an e-Visa. They have a list of ports that people can enter and exit using an e-visa and I don't see Phu My seaport listed. I do see Ho Chi Minh City seaport but I didn't think these were the same ports, am I wrong? Has anyone used an e-visa at the Phu My port?

Sorry...I somehow accidentally duplicated my post.

It depends, I don't know enough about the OP's situation to be able to answer these questions with certainty for him. With my credit card I have to book at least part of the trip on the card for there to be coverage. If the OP had, for example, only paid the cruise deposit then they could still meet this requirement. If he doesn't have a credit card with this perk, it is quick and easy to apply for one. Different cards have different policies and it is very important to read the insurance documents carefully. But my comments regarding the insurance cost were not solely for the OP. When I share cost savings ideas, I do so hoping that they may help someone. In this case, someone else may read my comments and be able to look into these other insurance options for their future trip. Regarding canceling insurance, that depends on the insurance. There are many travel insurance companies that give you a 10-15 day period to look over the policy and you can cancel the insurance for a refund within that time frame. So it just depends whether or not they purchased a policy that has this perk.

You are missing the fact that if you book with certain travel credit cards that already include insurance then that entire $7200 is covered if you must cancel the trip (and as I already mentioned, I've had to make claims and they did indeed pay every last penny). I didn't suggest that the OP not insure his trip, I simply suggested a more affordable way to do so. Travel insurance through a credit card does not, however, include cancel for any reason coverage which is typically extremely expensive.

That is true, if and only if you choose to spend that on the insurance. I am very well versed in the increased cost of insurance for seniors. If you go to Insure My Trip and price this out for two people in their 70's with a trip cost of $0 (so medical and evacuation only), there are plenty of options for under $100 and many of them allow you to increase the limits. Trip costs covered via credit card ($95) + medical/evacuation ($100) = $195 In my opinion, it is absurd to pay $800 for something that you can get for $195 or less. There are absolutely trips that I would expect seniors to be paying $800 or even more for insurance but this a 5 night cruise to Bermuda. I stand by my comment that the price is insane.

I'm sorry that you find yourself in this situation. As wonderful as it is to have the experience and memories of traveling with family, it certainly can be complicated. I am in utter disbelief at the idea of spending almost $8000 on a 5 night cruise. Regardless of how nice the Haven may be, that is an incredibly large sum of money for a very short trip. I've spent less than that on a nearly two week trip to the French Polynesia on a small boutique (some might say luxury) cruise line. Frankly, I find it incredibly disrespectful that you were booked into such an expensive room without a proper discussion about budget and what you found reasonable cost wise. Not wishing to be involved in the planning of the trip does not absolve those who are involved from the responsibility of discussing the cost of the trip with all adults that are paying their own way. I understand that your wife is concerned that if you book a cheaper cabin that you will not be able to spend time in the Haven with your family. But in my opinion, any decent, respectful family members would not put you in a situation in which you have to spend an astronomical sum of money to spend time with them. There are plenty of places on the ship where you can spend quality time with your family outside of the Haven. If you are not comfortable paying $8000 for a 5 night cruise, then there is a good reason for that and you should not do it. You are not the one being selfish or inconsiderate in this situation. As for spending $800 on insurance, that is also insane. We use a credit card with a $95 annual fee that has travel insurance benefits to cover our trip expenses (and we have had to file claims and they did pay). We then add on separate medical and evacuation coverage which is much more affordable than buying comprehensive travel insurance for every trip.

Princess does an excellent job with their Alaska cruises. Honestly, with your preferences, Princess sounds like a significantly better fit than NCL for you. You will have no trouble getting a table just for your family on Princess and can dine at whatever time you wish; they have moved away from the "traditional" cruise dining style. You can dress casually for dinner with the exception being that they do not allow shorts in the MDR. They do still have formal nights but I saw very few people in formal attire on my last Princess cruise, you could barely tell it was formal night in the MDR. If you wanted to avoid formal night entirely and the ship has an Alfredo's or Gigi's pizzeria, it is an excellent included dining venue that you could try out. It is a sit down restaurant with table service and they have more than just pizza. In my opinion, the food in the MDR on Princess is very good and they do a nice job of theming the menus for Alaska. I never feel any need to pay for speciality dining on Princess which is the total opposite of how I feel on NCL. Princess it is not a party atmosphere and it is rare to see over-intoxicated individuals on Princess. The casino is completely avoidable. You're definitely making a good choice when it comes to choosing a cruise that goes to Glacier Bay! I have not travelled with HAL but I have heard from many people that they also do an excellent job with Alaska cruises. They are definitely comparable to Princess but skew slightly older so I am thinking with your teenagers Princess may be the better choice.

If booking through a travel agent, does the agent have to submit the form for the shareholder benefit or can you do it on your own?

We have also disembarked the night before. I was a bit sad to leave the ship early but it worked out very well! We did ask the ship to call a taxi for us just to be sure that we didn't run into a problem with that but it is just a short walk to a taxi pick up location if you don't want to pay the small fee to have the ship call you a taxi to meet you basically right at the ship (well...the fee was small before Ponant took over, I suppose that could've changed). All we missed on the ship was a night of sleeping and a breakfast and it was well worth leaving the ship early and missing that to have the convenience of heading straight to the airport from the ship. On our first PG cruise we disembarked on disembarkation day and then took that super late flight and we both felt like it was just a totally wasted day and not enjoyable. We'd packed up from the ship and knew our flights were that night so mentally vacation was over. I think even if we'd have planned for a more entertaining day, it still would've felt like a long day of waiting. Things would maybe be different if we were retired or had jobs with loads of paid vacation; in those situations we'd probably find a way to do a better job of relaxing and enjoying those last hours. But we own a small business that we have to fully close when we are away. Each extra day away is costly for us (and stressful for my husband) so we want the days we are away to really count and not feel like a waste.

So true, pastries are often absolutely loaded with butter! That's definitely a baked good I am careful with. I make them with a vegetable oil based margarine at home but I still use egg so they wouldn't be vegan. I think actual vegans wouldn't assume a baked good is vegan but non-vegans often just don't even think about butter and egg. The cold vegan station was behind glass and you had to ask for what you wanted. There was always someone standing there to help. I thought this was really wise of Princess. I didn't have to worry about someone picking up a dairy based smoothie from one of the other stations, deciding they didn't want it and placing it back with the dairy free ones. I have seen people put food back before, which is obviously gross, but also would be dangerous in this scenario. This should also help Princess avoid too much over consumption of these products by people who don't actually need them. I hope they keep these options behind glass! I was also very happy with the labeling in the cold vegan station, the smoothie labels listed the milk substitutes which was reassuring. I still double checked with the staff the first day, I didn't want to take any chances. A milk based smoothie would make me miserable for the rest of the day. Though obviously it would be so much more serious for you. Other items that would have too many ingredients to list, such as the pastries, contained a notation that they contained no animal products. That same no animal product notation was also used on many of the hot dishes in the vegetarian station as well but because they were also labeling those items as vegetarian rather than vegan I felt it necessary to ask about a few of them. Every time I asked and the recipe was checked it turned out that they truly had no animal products. The crew was not bothered at all that I wanted to be sure. I hope that these stations are truly on all of the ships and stay there and thus you can find some more safe to eat goodies on your next sailing. I know that I was super excited by the stations! I would be very sad if I didn't find these stations on my next sailing.

Sky Princess in December. I believe it was a fairly new thing but the crew seemed confident that the other ships also now had this section (I have wondered if there would really be room for this in the smaller buffets in the Grand class ships???). At least on that sailing, it was the most aft section of the buffet on the starboard side. The cold section was vegan (mostly smoothies and pastries for breakfast, sandwiches and salads for lunch and dinner). The hot section was labeled as vegetarian but I don't recall seeing a dish there that wasn't actually vegan (for example, the paneer dishes in that section were actually tofu but if you moved to the port section you could find the dish with actual paneer cheese).

I am also lactose intolerant but I can tolerate small amounts of lactose. I find that many people don't understand the difference between lactose intolerance and a dairy allergy. They don't realize that there are dairy products that have very little to no lactose. I have been on the receiving end of some snide remarks and looks because I was, for example, eating hard and/or aged cheeses. As a result, I usually choose not to report my lactose intolerance and just judge for myself whether or not a meal is suitable for me. On Princess, I have never had any trouble finding enough to eat without any assistance from Princess staff. But.... On our cruise last month, I decided to request the vegan menu in addition to the regular menu and between the two menus I had plenty of delicious and super flavorful dairy free options including desserts (though I often just stuck with the sorbet of the day). The menu is vegan, not just vegetarian, thus everything on it is dairy free😊 My husband tried my vegan potato soup the one night and proclaimed it to be creamier and more flavorful than his potato soup. I love vegan food though and try to avoid meat because of some other dietary issues; this may not have worked as well for someone who loves meat. I did order a seafood course many nights, as long as there was one that appeared to be low lactose. Our waiter really grasped the difference between lactose intolerance and a dairy allergy so he was not judgemental when I ordered a dish that appeared to be low lactose. He still always asked the kitchen to prepare the dish without any dairy products if it was possible, I expressed my thanks but stressed that it absolutely wasn't necessary. He would smile and tell me that he understood but if they could make a dairy free version then they wanted to do that for me. He knew it was healthier for me. There was only one night that they weren't able to make the dish totally dairy free. They truly went above and beyond! The waiter mentioned that because we ate dinner so early and because the ship was sailing so under capacity that it really wasn't a problem for them but when the ship is full it is much harder for them to make special dishes. I suspect that if you're going to want or need the kitchen to modify dishes for you then you should speak to the head waiter and ask if you need to order your meals ahead of time (i.e. the night before each meal). At breakfast time the vegan section of the buffet had dairy free smoothies and pastries. There was always at least one but most often two dairy free desserts in the dessert section of the buffet for lunch and dinner.

A couples rate was not available on the Sky in December.

There were hundreds of empty cabins on the Sky Princess Dec. 17-27 sailing. There were many people moving to upgraded cabins onboard. I have no idea if and/or how much they were charging. The cabin stewards said that this way a very frequent occurrence on that ship and it was a lot of extra work for some of them (they were given very little notice that a cabin needed to be prepared for new guests and this sometimes happened right after other guests were moved out of that same room). It seems like it may be ship dependent (a decision made by onboard officers/management) as to whether they offer these upsells/upgrades onboard.

I don't know the official answer but it would be risky to travel without a passport. What if you need to leave the ship early for some sort of emergency and thus need to fly home from a foreign port? You need a passport to do that! You just never know what might happen...

You would potentially be fine with basic emails but you will burn through that extremely quickly if you even get on FB or any social media that is loaded with pictures and/or videos. You may not even get through a day if you start trying to post pictures on FB.

I ordered some sushi on the Sky Princess last week. It was barely grocery store quality. The fish was not fresh and the rice was not cooked properly. I imagine the quality can vary tremendously based on the quality of the seafood they receive and whether the staff making the rice actually know how to make proper sushi rice but Ocean Terrace was a miss for me. The sashimi in the pictures that LACruiser88 posted definitely looks like much better fish than what was just on the Sky. The seafood case is also much more full than what was on the Sky.

We choose to avoid doing this as it can stir stuff up onboard. New cruisers will not know normal vs. not normal; we don't want to get them thinking they have an issue when they don't and then make them unhappy when they were perfectly happy until we pointed something out. We don't want to be the reason a bunch of people flood down to guest services with trivial or minor noise complaints.

Mid-aft, port side We're on Riviera now and it is nice and quiet!

We have been moved to a forward cabin on Riviera. The difference is night and day. We had a completely quiet and peaceful night last night. The staff on board were absolutely wonderful in handling the situation! We are very grateful for the assistance!

We were not hearing kids; it was adults speaking at normal tones and TV's at normal volume. At this point, we have confirmed that this was a cabin issue and not typical of all of the cabins onboard (though of course there could be others with the problem).

It is weird! If this was our first cruise then I might've though this normal but we know it is not at all normal, at least not on the other Princess ships we've sailed. If we do end up changing cabins, I will update here as to whether it is better or not. On a positive note, the cruise has been great so far aside from this one problem. The crew is very friendly! The ship is very clean. Food has been good. Internet has worked much better than I expected (wish we could disconnect but we just can't this cruise). I love the internal color scheme on this ship: lighter wood grain, greys and blues. This ship is not crowded and you can find nice quiet places to relax outside of the cabin.

We're in a standard balcony on Baja. It is not an adjoining cabin. We can hear the neighbors on both sides but the cabin forward of us is more muffled and less bothersome. I actually asked if it was possible there was missing sound proofing between these two cabins and I just got a "if you're unhappy with your cabin, we're happy to move you" rather than an answer. I really lean towards an actual construction/material issue in this section because I would think that if what we are hearing is the norm, then Cruise Critic would be full of complaints about this but I thought it possible I had missed comments and worth asking. Tonight is our second night. They moved loads of people around today. I think mostly families (possibly new cruisers that didn't realize how small the standard cabins are) that have 3-4 people in one cabin and asked to move to a larger space. The staff onboard is wonderful so I think they're being very accommodating because with so many empty cabins they can be. Our steward had two families move into empty mini-suites today, in addition to the swap that happened next to us. There may be cabins without neighbors but given that they re-filled the vacated cabin next to us even though they had already heard from us that there was a noise problem, I am not sure we could count on an empty cabin staying empty.

They offered to move us but if this is a ship wide issue then that wouldn't do any good. I do not believe that this is just a noisy neighbors situation which could easily be resolved with a move. My husband would find the hassle of moving more disturbing than the noise and if we move and have the same problem in the new cabin he will be annoyed with me for choosing to move. That's why I am trying to figure out here if other people have noticed excess noise in the cabins on this ship. I will suck it up and deal with it if it is just how this ship is (my husband's theory is that they used lighter and/or cheaper materials to build this ship and they're just not as effective in blocking the sound).