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Explore the world with Pete & Judy on the 2018 Holland America Grand World Voyage


The-Inside-Cabin
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Thank you for your blog.

 

A few cell phone questions.

 

Have you changed your carrier or plan?

 

When you use Uber in other countries does it up your data use?

 

Safe travels

 

If you use T-Mobile, your data and texting is free in almost all foreign countries, you pay $.20 a minute for calls but we just use it for data and texting. The cost for 2 lines is $70/month.

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January 5 Day 1 – At Sea – Enroute to Grand Cayman Island

 

Tai Chi

 

We have been interested in Tai Chi, but never tried it on our previous cruises when it was offered. Today when we saw it was being offered on this Grand World Voyage we decided to head down to the Queens Lounge at 9 AM to give it a try.

 

About 50 other guests were in the Queens Lounge for the first class – we were all in the lower level – and the instructor introduced us to the concept of Tai Chi and explained how the class would work. There are 24 steps in Tai Chi and eventually we would learn them all. The entire experience was very relaxing and calm and I had to fight a temptation to speed things up – as that would be really missing the point. We enjoyed it and will probably be taking part during most sea days.

 

One of the many wonderful aspects of a Grand World Voyage is the opportunity to try many new activities or see a variety of live entertainment.

 

It’s a Small World

 

As we were leaving Fort Lauderdale a friend texted me that he just learned that another couple they knew were also leaving on the Grand World Voyage. He shared their contact information with me and we spoke briefly on the phone and decided to meet for coffee this morning in the Explorations Café. We had a wonderful chat and we will be seeing more of them as the cruise continues.

 

Coffee with Hamish

.

On the schedule at 9:30 was “Coffee with Hamish and EXC Guide Barbara”. I am not sure if this was a one time event or something that will occur every sea day. The Explorers Lounge was

packed, but I didn’t have a chance to hang around as I had another commitment at the same time.

 

Knitting and Stitching

 

Based on earlier reports from previous HAL cruisers they were no longer as liberal with inserting meeting times for private groups into the “When & Where”. Other folks had mentioned that requests to include a meeting time for a sit and stitch group was specifically denied. Consequently, we posted an announcement on our roll call that we would meet at 10 am in the Crow’s Nest to ‘Sit & Stitch’.

 

As it turned out, the ship did include an announcement for an unhosted “Sit, Knit, Needlework and More (non hosted)” in the Explorers lounge at 10:30. The 10:30 group turned out to be a meeting of the group sponsoring the “Linus Project” that provides yarn to anyone interested in knitting or crocheting a square to be assembled into blankets that would be donated later to worthwhile charities.

 

We decided to stick with our 10 AM time in the Crows Nest to avoid conflicting with their efforts as Judy will be leading seminars on various knitting topics as well as giving basic knitting instruction as part of our World Knitting Cruise. We didn’t have time to do much knitting today as the Crows Nest started to fill for our Cruise Critic roll call at 1100.

 

Cruise Critic Meet and Greet

 

About 200 people had signed up for the roll call, and after speaking with Kathi, the roll call coordinator, about 150 were present to take their name tags. She estimated another 50 or so people attended who hadn’t RSVP’d.

 

 

Grand World Voyages (GWV) have a large number of people who have made previous GWV’s. Some people go every year, others every few years, and for many this is their first GWV. I would like to knock down misperception that veteran world cruisers are cliquish or not welcoming to new comers. While it may be intimidating to see so many people greeting each other as long lost friends, we have found that 99% of the people we have met are very open and welcoming and it makes no difference if this is your 1st or 15th World Cruise or whether you are going full circle or a segment – our experience had been very positive with a ship full of friendly people.

 

The best way to get to meet other people is to start attending as many activities as you can and chat up your neighbors – you will quickly make many friends often for years to come.

As we were getting ready to get the Meet and Greet started with a few brief announcements, we were pleasantly surprised to see Captain Johnathan Mercer arrive greeting everyone as he moved to the center of the room. We didn’t have a sound system, so after we got the room’s attention, Captain Jonathan welcomed us all to the Grand World Voyage and wished us all a fantastic cruise. He stayed for another 10 minutes or so posing for some pictures and chatting with guests in small groups.

 

The Meet and Greet proceeded with some announcements from folks arranging the slot pull, Mah Jong, morning exercizes, or other activities and then everyone thanked Scrapana (Kathi) for moderating the roll call and making the Meet and Greet Arrangements. We also gave Kathy a special shout out for her creation of a wonderful photo book that was chock full of information along with photos of the roll call participants.

Many people prepare simple business cards to use on cruises with their basic contact information. These are very handy to carry as you will often meet people who you will want to meet up with later and it saves you searching for a pen and paper to write down their information. Get some before you leave, you can even have them printed with your cabin number – and they are so fast nowadays – even folks with a guarantee cabin could probably get a batch printed after they learned their cabin number.

Lunch in the Lido

 

We had a light lunch in the Lido and joined a very friendly table of ladies who were from The Villages in Florida. We had heard about The Villages before, but never had the chance to learn more from people who lived there. They are big fans and we enjoyed our conversation and learning more about all aspects of living in this wonderful community.

 

Texas Hold’em

 

There are two $30 Texas Hold’em tournaments every sea day as opposed to a single $60 tournament that I was used to seeing on other cruises. The lower entry fee should encourage more participation and with 2 tournaments daily we will have many opportunities to play.

 

I missed the morning game but played in the afternoon game. If you have any interest in learning to play Texas Hold’em – playing on a cruise ship is the best place to get some experience – the games are more friendly then the ones you will find in shore side casinos. The $30 tournaments are also a good place to start as you can get familiar with the basics and your losses are limited to $30 per session (about 1 hour). And you may even win your first tournament like I did in 2016.

 

I got knocked out about half way thru my first tournament. I raised pre-flop with pocket Kings with one other player remaining for the flop – which included a pair of deuces – (which gave my opponent a set (three of a kind) unbeknownst to me at the time) – and he put me all-in. The turn and the river were no help and I was out of my first tournament.

 

Photo Package

 

The Photo Gallery is offering an amazing price for an “All Inclusive” photo package. For $319 you will get a print of every photo taken of you during the entire cruise. This includes candids, gangways and formal shots. For an extra $60 you can get digital versions of all the prints as well. Or you can forgo the hard copy prints and get only the digitals for $319. This is about ½ the price from my previous world cruise and is a real bargain. But don’t you already have thousands of pictures and don’t need any more? We keep the digital versions on our computer and use them as screen savers so we see them on rotation when we are at home. There are also inexpensive, high resolution photo frames available – nixplay for one, where you can load all your cruise photos and enjoy them year-round. It’s fun to see one of your old pictures pop up and it stimulates very fond memories of your past cruises.

 

Excursion Cancelled

 

We had signed up for a Dolphin Swim and Stingray Tour thru HAL but we were informed this afternoon that this tour was canceled due to low participation. We looked at other options, but decided to make tomorrow a day to sleep in and go ashore later in the day for some exploration on foot.

 

Bingo

 

I stopped by the Queens Lounge to see if they had a quorum for a Bingo Game – on other cruises, getting to the minimum number was a challenge, but not today. There were at least 40 people looking to win the big jackpot. We will probably play a few times during the cruise, but not today.

 

We heard from others that the first day of Crafts had a huge turnout – over 50 people – and that the Watercolor Class was almost Standing Room Only.

 

I won’t list every activity here, but check out the daily When and Where on my blog. You will see the amazing number of choices, with many now being offered only on Grand Voyages.

 

Grand Activities

 

The Grand Dollars that were used on earlier cruises, have been replaced by something called Grand Activities. I posted the announcement we received on the blog. The bottom line: Grand Dollars have been replaced by Vouchers that can be exchanged for Amazon Gift Cards. More to come as I learn about the value of each voucher. Sounds like the ship wanted to get out of the business of distributing and tracking the Grand Dollars used on previous cruises.

 

Door Decorations – RIP

 

There was a note in our room this afternoon informing us that any door decoration was going to be removed and placed in our cabin. This is being enforced as you don’t see any doors with any decorations. There may be a few here and there, but I suspect they will be corrected soon as we progress.

 

Dinner

 

Tonight, we enjoyed the Veal Parmigiana and Five Onion Soup. All quite delicious. Menus are always available on the blog and I won’t repeat all the choices here.

 

We are at table 303, late seating, on the upper level and the dining room is probably 75% full. Not sure how things look on the first level or at first seating.

 

The Queens Lounge

 

We didn’t have a show the first night due to the late departure, so tonight was opening night in the Queens Room. Cruise Director, Hamish, opened the show by introducing some of the special instructors; Crafts, Watercolors, Bridge, Rabbi and Minister, Drawing (haven’t seen this class yet). Next up he introduced the rest of his full time team – the assistant cruise director

 

ABBA FAB – Abba Fabulous!

 

Our favorite show was the first show – Abba Fab – with Terry, Anne, Kat and Nick – Terry and Anne’s son. If you like Abba – you will love Abba Fab – easily the best tribute band performance on the high seas. We have seen them many times before and they never disappoint. They put on a high energy show, that plays all the great Abba hits and you will be dancing in the aisles before the show is over. In addition to being great performers they are all really nice people and they love to chat with guests afterwards and pose for pictures.

 

Nick-and-Terry.jpg

 

Our First Pillow Gifts

 

Another feature of Grand World Voyages are the “pillow gifts”. Every couple of weeks or so, we will return to our cabin and find a nice surprise – Tonight were two lovely Messenger Bags. Photos of the pillow gifts will be listed on the blog under 2018 Grand World Voyage Reference.

 

As a final note we heard that as many as 100 people may have missed the ship due to the bad weather across the northeast. This number seems high, and I will try and confirm from other sources.

 

Lots more on the blog

Edited by The-Inside-Cabin
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I assume the passengers who missed the sailing will be able to join at the first port, at their own cost. Good thing the ship is not already in the middle of the Pacific. Talk about anxiety! Has there been any talk about missing luggage?

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Interesting...... no door decorations[emoji53]

 

 

 

Any mention as to why?

 

 

 

The reason given was that they fire hazards. But they are not allowing even metal magnets. I can't blame them as I sure they don't want to try and adjudicate every doors flammability. Simpler this way.

 

 

http://www.theinsidecabin.com

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6 January - Day 2 - Grand Cayman Island

 

Late Sleepers

 

Since our tour was cancelled we could sleep in for a bit since we now didn’t have any reason to get ashore at any particular time.

 

One of the down sides of a Grand World Voyage is that 80% of the ship is 4 star mariner or higher which means that priority tendering is basically meaningless. Tender tickets would be available at the wine bar starting around 10 AM.

 

The weather was lousy which made it even easier to not try and get ashore early. We were hoping that it would clear a little later in the day, but it would stay cloudy with sporadic rain showers during our entire visit.

 

When everyone has priority – No one has priority

 

Tendering started at 10:00 but around 10:15 or so we were notified that one of the tenders broke down requiring people to get off that tender and reboard another tender. Since we weren’t in any hurry to get ashore, this didn’t bother us at all, but we were glad we didn’t have a private shore excursion arranged that had a hard meeting time ashore. They didn’t call for open tendering until about 12:30.

 

We headed down to the tender platform around 2:50 and caught a tender in about 5 minutes. We were ashore by 3:10.

 

My alternate plan was to visit the National Museum, but forgot to check that the museum closed at 2PM on Saturdays. Oh Well.

 

Grand Cayman Walkabout

 

We ended up walking up and down the main street, stopping in a few of the many gift shops before we ended up at a restaurant called Rackams Waterfront Bar and Grill. We ordered some Pork Sliders and Conch Fritters, along with a beer and an iced tea. The food was pretty good, service was fine, but its not a place I would particularly seek out.

 

There were several other ships visiting today and on the way back we walked past the other tender landing areas. The security guards for each beckoned us to board their tender, until we queried “Amsterdam?” and then they waved us off.

 

The last tender was 5:30 and we were at the tender pier around 5:10. We only waited a few minutes for a tender to arrive and we were back on the ship in a few minutes.

 

SailAway

 

The SailAway was held in the Crows Nest – and while we normally attend the SailAways, the ones in the Crows Nest don’t have the same vibe as those on the open decks and we didn’t stop by.

 

Dinner tonight had a Caribbean Jerked Pork Chop which many folks at our table ordered and was very good.

 

David and Dawn Meyer

 

David Meyer, along with his wife Dawn, performed in the Queens Lounge this evening. He plays a Xylophone Synthesizer, which has you may suspect is a Xylophone connected to a Synthesizer which David has connected together to create some amazing sounds. His wife, Dawn, is a dancer and she danced along to his music for a couple of numbers. There was an amazing couple of songs were he played music by waving his hands thru the light of laser beams.

 

The show was quite entertaining, and we enjoyed it very much. We had a chance to chat with them for a few minutes afterwards and they are very nice.

 

Back in our cabin, we discovered another pillow gift – a Moleskin Travel Journal. (photo on the blog). The ship wisely decided to hand out these first two gifts early in the cruise so we could enjoy them on this journey.

 

Clocks go back an hour tonight!

 

David-Meyer-2.jpg

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Will enjoy reading your blog [emoji41]Please search out our friends and neighbors James and Lorraine Rice on your ship. They are super people and a wealth of information as this is either their 5th or 6th world cruise on HA. Tell them Pat and John said hello. [emoji924][emoji924]

 

 

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Will enjoy reading your blog [emoji41]Please search out our friends and neighbors James and Lorraine Rice on your ship. They are super people and a wealth of information as this is either their 5th or 6th world cruise on HA. Tell them Pat and John said hello. [emoji924][emoji924]

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Forums

 

 

 

Great. Thanks for the tip

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7 January 2018 - Day 3 - Enroute to Puerto Limon.

 

It always pays to read daily “When and Where” each evening. We assumed that Tai Chi was every day at sea. But we didn’t realize that on Sundays, Catholic Mass is held in the Queens Lounge which cancels Tai Chi on Sundays.

 

In a way it worked out fine because one of our favorite acts, Abba Fab, was the guest at the “Coffee with Hamish” show held in the Explorers Lounge which started at 9:30 am. Now we wouldn’t have to leave Tai Chi early to get down to the Explorers Lounge to see the show. This event tends to fill up and by the time we arrived at 9:10 am there were already 20 people waiting.

 

Hamish started the show by welcoming everyone and then he introduced the members of Abba Fab which includes Terry the leader and manager of the group, his wife Anne, their son Nick and Kat.

 

Abba Fab was formed as a way to drive more business into their Arizona restaurant during the 2008 recession. As it turned out their musical act became more popular than their food and as their musical careers took off, the restaurant business faded and finally closed about 4 years later. Terry now manages several touring versions of Abba Fab in addition to several other musical groups and shows. Check out their website for more information.

 

Pete learns to Knit

 

Judy is hosting the 10 am Stich and Knit in the Crows Nest. There were about 9 people participating today.

 

Today I learned how to knit! Judy cast on for me so all I needed to do was to start a simple garter stitch. After a lot of coaching and about 10 minutes, I finished my first row just in time to head down to the Casino for the Texas Hold’em game.

 

Texas Hold’em

 

There are about 15 people turning out for each of the 2 tournaments each day. The games are friendly, and everyone is having a good time. The only problem so far is that not everyone can play as often as they would like since each game is limited to 10 people.

 

After the game I headed back to the Crows Nest where Judy was finishing up with her knitting.

 

Lunch in the Lido

 

We enjoy lunch in the Lido because the food is good and you can eat quickly or linger or chat depending on your schedule for the rest of the day. We noticed that each table now has the name of the water responsible for that particular table. This may have been going on for some time, but it is the first time we have noticed. Service is outstanding and the waiters and waitresses are very attentive and take special care to make sure you have everything you need and keep your beverage glasses full.

 

Black and Gold Dinner – Gala Night

 

 

Tonight, was the first gala night with a pre-dinner cocktail party in the Queens Lounge. There were two sessions, one at 4 pm for early seating and the second and 7 pm for main seating. The theme was Black and Gold and I was pleasantly surprised by the large number of people who participated by wearing Black and Gold. I was more surprised by the large number of men wearing Tuxedos or dark suits. I can’t speak for the early seating crowd, but I didn’t spot a single person in our dining room wearing the minimum dress of a collared shirt and dress pants. I don’t recall seeing anyone wearing only a sport jacket and tie, the room seemed to be about 25% Tuxedos with the rest dark suits with only a handful of “others”. Even out in the common areas most people were in the spirit of the Gala night.

 

NOTE: Before every world cruise you will receive a brochure which lists every night which has a special theme, so you can bring appropriate theme clothing if desired.

 

We had our picture taken on deck 5 right outside the Ocean Bar and as we were leaving for the theatre we noticed a line had formed leading to the balcony entrance of the Queens Lounge on Deck 5. People in line told us that they were waiting for the cocktail party to start and for the staff to drop the barrier at the door. I thought that was odd, and sure enough, the receiving line with Capt Mercer and the Cruise Director was on Deck 4, starboard side, and the entrance to the balcony was closed since they didn’t want anyone going up there during the cocktail party. I mentioned to one of the officers as we entered the Queens Lounge that there was line forming on Deck 5 and they may want to let people know that the entrance was on Deck 4. I guess it may have been possible that these people were waiting for the 8:15 show, but that was over 1 hour away. I guess this may remain a mystery.

 

The Queens lounge was comfortably full, with no one standing who didn’t want to stand. Wait staff was circulating with trays of drinks and snacks – which were all wonderful.

 

Around 7:30 Hamish introduced Capt Mercer who made a few remarks and concluded by announcing he would return for the 2019 World Cruise. After his remarks he introduced the rest of the officers and senior staff before leading us all in a toast.

 

Gala Night Dinner

 

The featured entrée tonight was Surf and Turf. The food was delicious, the conversations lively and the service outstanding – a wonderful evening all the way around. Check out the blog for the complete menu.

 

Our table mates from 2016, Rick and Margaret, gave several of us at the table who were on the 2016 world cruise, a bottle of wine he produced in his own micro winery which had a label featuring a watercolor he painted of his granddaughter. What a special treat!

 

Surf-and-Turf.jpg

 

Tony Daro

 

Tonight’s comedian was Tony Daro who put on a wonderful show. Invariably comedians performing for the World Cruise late show are playing to some fairly small audiences, which makes their job all that much harder. He was a good sport and everyone had a good laugh and enjoyed the show.

 

Once again, we received another “pillow gift” our third of the cruise. This time it was a Keycard Holder – picture on the blog.

 

Tomorrow, we will be in Puerto Limon, Costa Rica. We are signed up for the HAL Zip Line tour – our first zip line ever – and we are looking forward to the experience. It was originally scheduled for 7:30 am but we received a notice yesterday that it was rescheduled to 9:30 am due to operational reasons, which was a blessing, because 7:30 am doesn’t sound quite so early back in October when we were scheduling these tours as it does the night before you actually have to get up early.

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