nb125

I have to say that on my one experience of a British night I saw none of the above and only a very small percentage bothered at all.

Very nice!

Balcony cabins are 180 square feet, superior balcony cabins 190 square feet and junior suites 200 square feet and that is the only difference really. They do not even qualify for the suite benefits which are, in any case, pretty poor compared to other lines.

 

Noordam is down under where HAL has different rules about smoking. As do most of the other cruise lines. Look at the smoking area deck plans for the Carnival Spirit. No interior smoking and the exterior areas are a lot less (no promenade, pool deck side, only on an upper deck in one area).

 

Only HAL ship with a non-smoking Casino every night of the cruise is the Eurodam. An experiment I think for HAL to decide if they'll move it fleet wide, coincidental that it was after a drydock with extensive changes in the Casino area. We'll know either way when KDAM starts sailing if they ban smoking in its Casino. All the other HAL ships will have a few non-smoking nights 1, 2 , 3 or more dependent upon the length of the cruise and the nights are usually the gala nights or elegant nights.

 

It certainly wasn't down under when we were on it.

The cruise docs aren't up to date. They're often wrong with gala night info too. The casino will be nonsmoking on very likely multiple nights. I for one celebrate this change.

 

The web site is not up to date either. It is still saying smoking is allowed on the Sports and Observations Decks. This is not the case on the Noordam where the only outdoor smoking is the Seaview Bar.

Great video, thanks for that. :)

I am naturally averse to cities but after looked at Lisbon more closely I can see it does have a lot to offer so we are now going to stay there.

Thank you to everyone for your advice.

You're right and after further research we have decided to take the train to Cascais.

Has anyone booked the ship's shore tours in Lisbon? We are undecided between Obidos or Sintra and Cascais.

Thanks for that, I never thought of posting in the ports of call forum.

Has anyone booked the ship's shore tours in Lisbon? We are undecided between Obidos or Sintra and Cascais.

There are some menus on this site, some very old but some more up to date ones.

http://cruiseclues.com/shipstips/balmoral.htm

Looked at the availability and you're right, they are now available but have actually gone up and are now more than we paid for the Junior Balcony Suite. I didn't know they adjusted prices so much which makes it difficult to know when is the best time to book.

It was a superior balcony cabin we wanted to book and a junior balcony suite we ended up booking.

The person on the phone did not actually make the booking. We did that ourselves on line the same day. Even so there can only be so many people that day who were ringing up anyone trying to book online, so I do think they could have tracked down the one we spoke to but they are not interested.

We tried to book a superior balcony for our next cruise in April but there were none left. After logging off we received a telephone call from a FO representative asking if we required any help. As a result she persuaded to book a junior suite and said this came with the suite dreams package. We found some time later on checking the website that this is not the case. In fact it turns out that for the extra money we are paying we are getting a cabin that is 10 sq feet larger that the one we wanted to book and that's it.

Not very happy about this my husband contacted Fred who basically said can you prove you were told that. Obviously we can't. We can only tell them the date. They want the date, time and name of the person we spoke to before they will even look into the matter.

Although the suite benefits are not much to write home about compared to other cruise lines we thought at least it was something justify spending the extra money.

The moral of this story is do not believe anything you are told over the phone by anyone from Fred.:mad:

We live in such an unfortunate age of political correctness, with people becoming such busybodies, preoccupied with what others are doing.

 

I applaud HAL for having the courage to stand in the face of the Pleasure Police and allow smoking on balconies.

 

There are many things I could get offended by with regard to my fellow cruisers. Maybe I find the obese cruisers disgusting. Perhaps I find their perfume revolting. Some are too loud. Others are obnoxious. Some get drunk.

 

But they all paid for their cruise, and I would never stand in the way of their having fun on their cruise.

 

It's too bad we no longer live in simpler times, where people minded their own business, and everyone had a live and let live philosophy.

 

And please, before anyone posts the predictable "second hand smoke" nonsense, that objection has already been taken apart on this thread.

 

Smoke em if ya got em, I say. The whole ship could be smoking friendly, for all I care.

 

Bravo to you HAL, for being the only mature adult in the whole damn industry.

Nice to hear to hear a reasonable voice among all the anti smoking hysteria on this thread.

The times are roughly as below and there is quite a wide scope on most of them.

Early AM - 05.00 to 10.00

Late AM - 10.00 to 12.00

Early PM - 12.00 to 15.30

Late PM - 15.30 to 19.00

Late Night - 19.00 onwards

I cannot agree about the food. We found it to be far superior to the food on RCI and HAL. It is very British, however, which is maybe why it is not to your taste.

On our last cruise we did not receive the tour brochure until ten days before departure but we had already booked online. However, this year the tours are not even available to view online until six weeks before departure which is a bit of a pain as previously we could decide which one we wanted and then book them as soon as available.

My guess is that smokers are also voting with their pocketbooks. And sailing on HAL to smoke on their balconies.

Wrong! I am a smoker and I would never sail on HAL again despite the balcony smoking. Our one and only cruise on Noordam was the worst cruise we have ever been on. Hated everything about it but especially the awful lukewarm food that took an age to arrive. The only decent meal we had was in the Pinnacle.

On Noordam last year no smoking allowed on the Promenade Deck nor the Sports and Observations Decks. In fact the only places smoking is allowed are balconies and one very small corner of the Seaview Bar.

Sorry I don't know anything about a premium package but just wanted to say I am use to Gordons Gin but found the G & T to be perfectly acceptable.

That's good to know. I was a bit unsure about using hand cream in case it cancelled out the spray.

We took the Boots one in May on the Balmoral and although the illness was on board we managed not to be affected, thank goodness. We even started taking it with us and spraying it on in front of the people trying to spray us with the antibacterial one they use.

The only problem was I ended up at the end of the voyage with skin like sandpaper on my hands. Not sure if it was the constant spraying or the handwash in the bathroom.

I think you will love it and the food is far better than I have experienced on any other cruise line. I think it is a bit of a fallacy about only elderly people cruising with Fred. On our recent cruise every decade was well represented from children to people in their eighties.