Beejay4016
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Posts posted by Beejay4016
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I am so enjoying reading your posts, so thanks for taking the time - it's really appreciated. I am weighing up the pros and cons of two different crossings next year, one on the NS and one on the Zuiderdam. We like the size of the Zuiderdam but the modern look of the NS, and particularly the joy of having an actual walk-in shower as opposed to a shower over a bathtub. We've never been on one of the larger vessels, the Oosterdam being the largest we've been on, so it may be nice to try a different class of vessel. Your posts might just be enough to sway me that way.
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I'm with the other posters - thanks for the heads-up. I've booked two cruises for next year, and may book another one. We're off on the Westerdam next week, so hopefully we'll have a fabulous time, fall in love with HAL all over again, and happily make at least one of those cruises next year. Such a great offer, and with gratuities included it's a real no-brainer.
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3 minutes ago, Hlitner said:
Regarding the price of wine in Japan, I do not think that imported wines (i.e. French, USA, Italian) is inexpensive because of Japanese taxes. There are certainly some low-moderate priced Japanese wines, but not sure they are going to satisfy most wine lovers..not to mention paying the $20 corkage. One also needs to consider the HAL wine list, and what is available onboard. We have not used the wine list since we have the HIA package and are simply settling for the offered wines by the glass (not particularly good, but drinkable). But, we know from talking to others, that many items on the wine list (and also the bar list) are not onboard. So, if having a specific wine (or type of wine) is very important than you might want to consider checking out the prices in Yokohama as an alternative to settling for whatever HAL has in stock on the ship.
Getting back to drink logistical issues, things have not really improved much in the past 3 weeks. The 3 single malt scotches covered by the Signature Drink Package are still not in stock. The only Cognac covered by the package (Courvoiser VSOP) is not in stock. Malbec, by the glass, has not been available for over 2 weeks (despite being on the wine list). A friendly bar tender just shrugged at my question about logistics, indicated that many popular items have been out of stock for months, and had no opinion when or if they would ever be in stock. In my humble opinion, if HAL fails to carry their menu items covered by the drink packages they should substitute a reasonable alternative at the drink package price. Otherwise, it just appears that HAL is trying to promote the higher priced items and negate a reason many folks buy the drink packages.
One other tidbit. Last night was a "dressy night" with a pretty decent menu. One of the major offerings was tenderloin of beef with shrimp. The tenderloin was as good as the filet offered in the Pinnacle which makes one wonder if the PG is worth the money (for those who must pay full price). DW and I have enjoyed our two PG meals (since boarding) but did not think they were a good value at $39+ 18% (our PG meals were covered by the HIA package). We have already cancelled another future PG meal (which would have been free) and replaced it with another meal in Canaletto. DW and I have never been big fans of dinner in the PG (we have long enjoyed the lunches more than the dinners) and nothing on this cruise has changed our minds. We also acknowledge that food/cuisine is subjective and we are sure many others would disagree.
Hank
Hi Hank. Many thanks for your response re wines. We also have the HIA package do may also just stick with that. Cheers, Bev
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I am so enjoying following this thread. Like others here, I'm a bit disappointed at some of the changes in entertainment offerings - my favourite thing on a HAL cruise was Phil in the piano bar on the Noordam a few years back, so it's shame that has gone by the wayside. Ditto the shows, which were usually fantastic, but I know we'll have a great time anyway in the Rolling Stones Lounge and with the new jazz group.
I do have a question for Hank, or others onboard who are also following this fantastic thread. We join the vessel on the 24th and are super excited about our trip. I notice that guests are allowed to bring a "reasonable" (whatever that means) amount of wine onboard and will be charged $20 per bottle irrespective of where it's drunk. I have read on a couple of sites that alcohol in Japan is extremely cheap. Having looked at what HAL charge for wine, I'm inclined to pick up a few bottles in Japan to take on board with us. I can't believe the mark-up on Australian and New Zealand wines, and I imagine it's the same with those from the US. Have others here who are onboard at the moment, or been on one of the recent cruises, bought wine onboard that they purchased in Japan? We're staying in Yokohama for a few days pre-cruise, so have ample opportunity to try and buy beforehand.
And thanks so much, Hank, for starting this - every morning when I check my phone I am delighted to find a whole heap of new posts to read.
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15 hours ago, ontheweb said:
I'd be excited by all the trivia, and DW would be ecstatic about the ballroom dance hour. There was nothing like that on our last HAL cruise! I wonder how she as a (retired) art teacher would feel about adult coloring.
And BTW, I do not know how much longer I can remain patient in this lotus position waiting for you to contact Hank. 😉😉
I'm with you - too much trivia is never enough. 🙂
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1 hour ago, ghstudio said:
The gallery bar was our favorite venue a couple of weeks ago on the W. Most of the time, we were the only ones there and we like peaceful and not having to look for a seat. One bartender and one waiter.
On the other posts....agree that there are very few (and I'm being kind) activities during the day/evening. Liquor tastings were scheduled for 7PM...probably the worst time to choose given folks actually eat dinner. The ship essentially closes down at 10pm. I only attended one show in 14 days...a magician who was adequate. I didn't mind the shuttle prices but the shuttles often took us no where near where you wanted to be. We saw officers walking through the ship occasionally...never saw the captain. Pluses: we never felt crowded..seemed like the ship wasn't full (it was full). Food seasoning was quite good...(it's non existent on Princess).
Ah well, when we join on the 24th, I know to bring along plenty of reading material. Perhaps we can start a singing group ourselves - good for the soul, if not the ears.
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On 3/29/2023 at 9:21 AM, cruisemom42 said:
I don’t tend to post much during cruises so if Hank doesn’t mind I’ll just continue to post a few observations from time to time on this thread. The first day and dinner were kind of chaotic and I was thinking “oh no!” But second day much better, I am happy to say. So far Lincoln Center has been a highlight but I am a bit worried as this particular, talented group announced they are departing in two weeks having been onboard a number of months. No word on what or who will replace them. They play together delightfully.
I got up at 5:30 am this morning to get a decent number for our timed meetings with Japanese authorities on the day we return from Taiwan. Then back to bed for two more hours lol. As Hank alluded, lots of procedure to keep up with. Also as a note, our passports were taken at embarkation, will be handed back later today, only to be given in again later….
One other comment re: enrichment. There is one enrichment speaker onboard. He’s given two lectures so far… mostly reading from his slides. He appears to be a retired dentist (?). I’ll say no more.
Hank we may have rubbed shoulders at the Rolling Stone room on night one, the “late night” crew. 😉
Dinner last night:
On 3/29/2023 at 9:21 AM, cruisemom42 said:I don’t tend to post much during cruises so if Hank doesn’t mind I’ll just continue to post a few observations from time to time on this thread. The first day and dinner were kind of chaotic and I was thinking “oh no!” But second day much better, I am happy to say. So far Lincoln Center has been a highlight but I am a bit worried as this particular, talented group announced they are departing in two weeks having been onboard a number of months. No word on what or who will replace them. They play together delightfully.
I got up at 5:30 am this morning to get a decent number for our timed meetings with Japanese authorities on the day we return from Taiwan. Then back to bed for two more hours lol. As Hank alluded, lots of procedure to keep up with. Also as a note, our passports were taken at embarkation, will be handed back later today, only to be given in again later….
One other comment re: enrichment. There is one enrichment speaker onboard. He’s given two lectures so far… mostly reading from his slides. He appears to be a retired dentist (?). I’ll say no more.
Hank we may have rubbed shoulders at the Rolling Stone room on night one, the “late night” crew. 😉
Dinner last night:
Wow, that meal has my mouth watering. We join her on the 24th of April for the crossing, and it's been so long for us that I am putting any negative comments in the "I'll think about that tomorrow" basket and enjoying the positives. These lamb chops are a major positive.
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16 hours ago, Cruise Suzy said:
Under Cruise Activities -> Beverages -> Spirits Packages
BOMBAY ORIGINAL GIN & TONIC PACKAGE
Enjoy a bottle of Bombay Original and three cans of tonic water. Delivered to your stateroom on embarkation day for in-stateroom consumption only. Bottle size is 1 liter.
$112.10 includes the 18% gratuity.
Suzy, you're a mind reader. Mind you, perhaps those Pacific evenings may be a tad cool and a whisky or a rum might be better.
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16 hours ago, sue1898 said:
@Beejay4016, when I log into the HAL website and go to Manage Cruise/Cruise Activities/Beverages/Spirits Packages there are several choices with spirits and mixers.
Thank you so much. After reading your post I tried again and it is working perfectly. Must just have been a glitch yesterday. Phew, that's a relief; got to get the important stuff taken care of. 🙂
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I'm commenting on this (very) old thread as I can't seem to find any mention anywhere of the old Indulgence packages where you could order a bottle of spirits, with mixers, for your room. It's a few years since we sailed on HAL, and we now have a cruise booked for just four weeks' time. I thought I'd go online and order a bottle of gin and some mixers to be waiting for us in our room, as we've done on our previous cruises, but there seems to be no opportunity of doing so. Is this fleet-wide, a change in HAL policy since our last cruise, or is it just for the Westerdam? Such a shame if they have done away with this very welcome option. Any advice would be much appreciated.
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The app won't even download on my husband's LG phone. Thankfully, it's okay on my Samsung.
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On 3/24/2023 at 6:13 PM, Hlitner said:
Just got back to our hotel room after a crazy DIY day. If I were to tell folks that we traveled over 400 miles (round trip) to Hiroshima, toured all the usual bomb-related sites, had enough food/water, and just got back in our hotel room...all for about $35, you would think I have had too much sake. Sometimes, DIY travel can be very inexpensive and today might be a new record (for us). We left our hotel about 7am this morning and grabbed the subway to the Kyoto Train Station. While at the station we bought two croissants and a bottle of OJ which was to be our breakfast (normal for us). At 8am we boarded the Hikari (bullet train) for Hiroshima where we arrived at 10. We walked out of the station and caught a local bus to the Peace Park. After walking around the park, we went into the nearby museum (dedicated to the bombing) where we spent about 1 1/2 hours. From the museum we walked over to the infamous "bomb dome" which is the remains of the building shown in just about anything related to that A-Bomb. We than walked about 3/4 of a mile over to Hiroshima Castle where we explored the park, had some amazing gelato (our lunch) and went inside the rebuilt castle (a 5 story pagoda) to explore.
Finally we walked about 1 1/4 miles back to the train station where we stopped at Starbucks for some coffee before boarding our train back to Kyoto. So how did we do this for $35 (total cost for two)? The cost of our subway and bus rides cost us about $5 per person. The trains were essentially free because they were covered by our rail passes which had already paid for themselves with just the trip from Tokyo and when we go back to Yokahama. Breakfast and lunch cost us about $15 (total) and there were a few dollars for admission to the castle. Our big splurge of the day was Starbucks where coffee and a bag of potato chips cost $9. So my fellow cruisers/travelers, we are talking about a full day excursion to Hiroshima (1st Class Green Cars on bullet trains) that cost about $35 for two.
As soon as we got back to our hotel, it was time for the daily free cocktail hour (only wine and snacks) where we toasted an interesting day. Tonight, since we are exhausted, we will likely walk over to Shake Shack (yes, Danny Meyer has a presence here in Kyoto) for dinner since we re not real hungry, had a decent dinner last night (Peking Duck) and a special dinner planned for our last night (tomorrow).
So fans, this day has convinced DW and I that we would not recommend that cruisers spend their port day (usually in Osaka) going to Hiroshima. Yes, we understand that Hiroshima attracts many visitors, but we do not think it is worth the hassle (and cost for most tours). The city is nothing special, the museum is too one-sided (with a political slant that is not very accurate) and compared to places in Nara and Kyoto is just not a good option. I am not going to get deep into the political/historical aspects other than to say that the museum attributes the A-Bomb attack to the US simply wanting to blunt any post war power (over Japan) that might be gained by the USSR! Really? There was also mention that the bomb was dropped to justify the expense of building the bomb! I get that countries routinely rewrite history to suit their own purposes, but this was too much of a stretch. If you want to ever see a museum that tries to take an accurate and even-handed approach to war go to the Peace Museum in Caen, France. If you want to see a horrible event used for political purposes, then go to Hiroshima.
Hank
Thank you so much for your frank views re Hiroshima. I had wondered about visiting there, but was also concerned about the bias that may be evident. Your excellent comments have confirmed for me that it is not a place to visit.
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12 minutes ago, Gibbie42 said:
When I was completing check in there was an option to email the boarding pass and luggage tags. I chose that, and now I have a set of pdfs saved. Seems like the easiest to me.
Hi Gibbie. I tried that also, but it still wouldn't print for me. I think the internet/WWB gremlins are working overtime these days. 😉
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Coming very late to this discussion, but I just need to thank the posters who suggested switching to Edge. I have been so frustrated trying everything to print our boarding passes for our upcoming cruise, and so I am so glad to have found this discussion. As soon as I went via Edge all was fine and I've been able to get my luggage tags. I may have to just move to using Edge in future. Thanks people.
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On 3/9/2023 at 2:33 AM, Thrak said:
I'm well aware of the limitations of a cruise. It would be great to spend month or more in Australia and New Zealand but it's just not in the budget. We cruise but we also take multi-week long camping trips here in the US. There's so much to see here at home and most people see very little of what there is. We did a great 7 week camping trip up to Fairbanks, AK which, of course, included camping our way through 3 Canadian provinces - Alberta, British Columbia, an Yukon Territory. It was nice to see a bunch of Canada that wasn't something you got on a cruise.
As a point of info when I say "camping" I don't mean luxury travel in a huge motor coach. Here is a picture of our "big rig".
I love it, but it's smaller than the vehicle towing it. Do you think the car/truck/whatever is overkill?
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We are doing the 14 night crossing from Yokohama to Seattle, with a few days in Yokohama pre-cruise, so I am loving your reports and look forward to the next ones. Enjoy your time there.
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On 1/17/2023 at 9:04 PM, Melly4Tea said:
I love to dance, too, and I had a blast on the Eurodam in Dec-Jan! I'm 39F, admittedly much younger than the average demographic on the ship. But that didn't bother me one bit! While I frequented Billboard on Board the most to sing along with Eli and Krista (they were fantastic), I also enjoyed grooving on the dance floor to B.B. Kings in the evenings. They had excellent performers and kept the energy high. They did have earlier sets (8 or 9pm), but a lot of times the dance hits were playing past 10pm. I am an early to bed girl normally, but I did stay up later than usual during the cruise to enjoy some dancing. And if a 90 year old woman could do it every night (she was amazing!) then so could I! 😅
Annie had some line dancing lessons which were really fun. Check your daily program for meeting times and locations. Like you, I also love Latin dancing but did not find anything onboard.
Don't forget to bring orange for the orange party!! Fun dancing and Dutch treats! I may have gone a bit "overboard" (thankfully not in the send-a-search-party kind of way), but it's so much fun to get into a theme!!
Have loads of fun!!!
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On 12/12/2022 at 2:17 AM, senorjim said:
We spent 51 days recently on her. Seattle to Sydney. Found the ship to be in good shape and the crew overall to be outstanding! We received our 5 star pins part way through the cruise.
I hope you enjoy sailing on Westerdam as much as we did!
Ji.
That is so good to read as we're on her in April. Congratulations on your 5 stars.
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13 hours ago, ldtr said:
Was on a South America cruise on Princess. The second of 2 planes carrying people on the Machu Pichu excursion had a bird strike on take off from Cusco and had to abort take off, skidded off runway and closed the Cusco airport until the next day.
On board were about 30 guests on a Princess excursion, 3 guests that booked the excursion through Amex, and a number of CC members that booked the excursion on their own.
Princess put up the people on their excursion in 4/5 star hotels, took car of all travel, and had them meet up with the ship that made a special stop in Manta Ecuador. The Captain and senior officers were on the dock to welcome them back on board.
Amex took care of the people on their tour and also got them to Manta to meet the ship.
The CC folks were totally on their own for all arrangements and finally met up with the ship at the scheduled stop in Costa Rica. All travel and expenses were what they could arrange at their own expense.
I remember the discussion when the CC folks were organizing their tour. One comment was what could go wrong they were on the same plane as the Princess excursion.
Hm, definitely a lesson to be learnt there. I'm always a tad dubious about private tours - they may be great, and they may be cheaper, but only until something goes wrong.
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15 hours ago, NavyCruiser said:
Looking at our booking Pre & Post cruise hotel stays online on HAL's website, under Pre-Cruise Travel: City Stays & Pre-Post Overlands, cost to book thru HAL for Grand Hyatt Athens is $209 per person, double rate, so total for the 2 of us is $418 per night.
But booking directly at Hyatt's website, the Hyatt member guest price (with breakfast included) is $160 USD + $4 tax.
So by saving approx $254 per night by booking direct with hotel instead of thru HAL, what are we missing?
Does booking thru HAL, we get free/included bus transfers to/from airport to hotel to cruise port?
Do we miss out on included walking tours or any other perks (like Viking)...?
Thanks,
I found the same for our cruise from Yokohama in April - HAL was more than double the rate obtainable through the hotel or on any of the online booking sites. Charging a bit more is fine for the convenience, but double is just pushing it too far.
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2 hours ago, Boatdrill said:
How unfortunate those left behind won't be aboard to transit the canal (unless they can join the ship in Panama City).
On the other hand, their unexpected layover may turn out well, and become quite a memorable adventure.
I agree, it could be a real adventure - something to talk about for months to come with friends and family, not to mention hundreds of posts here on CC. And when they do rejoin the ship, no doubt they will be treated like celebrities.
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I have my doubts about even downloading the app as it gets so many negative reviews, so it's very interesting to read posts here and find out what people's experiences are with it.
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10 hours ago, sandiego1 said:
Yes
That's good news.
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On 10/14/2022 at 5:36 PM, tjcox9 said:
Yesterday, I received a survey supposedly from HAL. However, the sender was a person's name so I immediately deleted it as a scam. This morning I get up to another that appears to be from HAL with a note of apology about some people not being able to open the previous one sent. I am still not really comfortable with this. Did anyone else experience this and if so, did you respond?
I deleted both. Like you, I was concerned after the safety of opening the survey.
Beverage Shortages and Other Cuts
in Holland America Line
Posted
Could be wine that's been opened for days, or perhaps - dare I suggest - cask wine (not sure what you call cask/box/bag wine in the US, but you know what I mean). We're on the Westerdam next week so I think I'll do what some others on Hank's thread have suggested and take a couple of glasses of wine in with us from one of the bars.