I love my PCC with HAL but I'm starting to think I would like to see what a TA would offer me, and not let that commission $ stay completely with HAL. Can anyone recommend their person to me? If you prefer to private message I understand. Thanks!
I see many river cruises being altered/cancelled this month due to water levels.
My final payment for a Danube/Rhine cruise May 6, 2027 is coming up. Does anyone know if things have been better water-wise in early spring, this and last few years?
Thx
I have checked the FAQ and searched the sub, but I can't find an answer and I need help.
My dad insists on wearing mineral sunscreen in my car and does not/will not wash his hands after applying it, plus it's all over his arms, etc. He lives with me and I drive him everywhere.
There are white stains everywhere on the black vinyl interior of my 2025 CRV. I have tried baby wipes (many, many of them), each time followed by clear water and then dry down. 80% came off but there are some stubborn spots. Tried Dawn, letting it sit, and again cleaning that off with plenty of clear water and dry down. No dice. Windex? (Yes, rinsed off.) Nope.
I use oil-based cleanser on my face at night, followed by a foaming cleanser, to get my own (chemical) sunscreen off. Do I need to try an oil-based product? Is there some other solution I don't know about? I hate to put oil or vinegar or whatever on a material I don't know enough about.
Haven't even attempted the leather seats yet.
Thanks
I have checked the FAQ and searched the sub, but I can't find an answer and I need help.
My dad insists on wearing mineral sunscreen in my car and does not/will not wash his hands after applying it, plus it's all over his arms, etc. He lives with me and I drive him everywhere.
There are white stains everywhere on the black vinyl interior of my 2025 CRV. I have tried baby wipes (many, many of them), each time followed by clear water and then dry down. 80% came off but there are some stubborn spots. Tried Dawn, letting it sit, and again cleaning that off with plenty of clear water and dry down. No dice. Windex? (Yes, rinsed off.) Nope.
I use oil-based cleanser on my face at night, followed by a foaming cleanser, to get my own (chemical) sunscreen off. Do I need to try an oil-based product? Is there some other solution I don't know about? I hate to put oil or vinegar or whatever on a material I don't know enough about.
Haven't even attempted the leather seats yet.
Thanks
I'll be on a HAL cruise that stops in Hawaii and at 3 ports (Kauai, Honolulu, Hilo) we plan to rent a car (I've driven there before).
I have never tendered off a ship before. I do not have any special packages that will get me tender priority, and I won't be on ship excursions. Can anyone tell me what is a reasonable time to get from ship to shore? We will be arriving in the ports at 8am. Would 9:30am be safe for me to reserve a car? 10am? Or is it likely to be even longer? We use Budget Fast Break and they have a shuttle from the ports to the respective airports.
Thanks
Been going to Clay Pit for nearly 20 years for family special events. It was always superb.
Tonight:
Chicken korma — sauce just okay, plates of spicy and mild presented but were misidentified, we discovered this after my husband complained his had no heat. Chicken itself mid.
Lamb biryani — ZERO flavor, no heat nor complexity at all, the Tarka version is 100x better. This didn’t even taste like a biryani. Huge amount of rice, tiny bit of (albeit tender) lamb.
Saag paneer — saag good (tastes just like their Tarka version, which is excellent, but blocks of paneer were hard and dense, not nice at all. Naan was not fresh; I’m not even sure it was made on site, that’s how bad it was.
Nothing was hot, though the food came very quickly.
It was my dad’s birthday and I sadly told him I’d take him to Tarka next week so we could have an actually good meal. (I know, we need to identify other Indian places to try.)
So sad.
Note: service was excellent and we didn’t hold back on the tip.
Am looking g at a room starboard midship on Deck 8, looks to be directly above the jewelry shop (Facets). Thinking the noise might not be too bad but just want to see if anyone has any experience with this zone?
It’s $1000 USD per person extra to have a mid-ship (verandah) room which is already pricey, but I wonder about getting something pretty far aft as I can get a bit sick. Meclizine (AKA Dramamine [non-drowsy], Bonine) will be in play and that has worked well for me in the past but since this is truly wide open ocean I want to get others’ thoughts. Thanks.
So I just asked a question in another post about booking out a 9/2028 cruise, that’s because the 9/2027 cruise from Seattle to Sydney is already essentially sold out (on the HAL website). (There are inside rooms Aft Deck 6 but for 34 days I want a window, and the only ones w window or veranda now are Deck 1 underneath all the entertainment venues of Deck 2.)
I know Costco has blocks of staterooms for some itineraries (not Australia unfortunately), and I assume other agencies do, too.
Does anyone know if perhaps there are a few agencies who might be holding rooms for Australia/Pacific?
Would put myself on the waitlist (there seems to me to be a fairly high likelihood of cancellations over the next 12+ months) but I need 2 cabins fairly close together. (Although one can be an Inside room, the offerings in any category seem unlikely to be close together, off the waitlist).
Sorry, didn’t know how to title this.
Is there a way to get an alert when a particular sailing for a certain month opens up? There’s a trip I want to do in Sept 2028 (which isn’t booking out, yet) and I don’t know if the sailings are just posted X months before sailing or if they pop up more randomly, in which case I need an app or an agent to be able to book as soon as this itinerary/date is open for booking.
Took advice asked for on an earlier post and shifted interest to the southern Caribbean. Both of these are out of San Juan (where we'll be staying about 5 or 6 days either before or after the cruise), Virgin:
OR
Am leaning toward the second, as I'd like to see Barbados. Both include St. Maarten which I hear is a must. We do like jungly stuff and husband probably won't sit on the beach much with me. Won't be doing any extreme sport excursions. Anyway, any thoughts? The first cruise is early February, the other the third week of February.
EDIT: Also mean to ask, we regretted not getting a verandah on our recent Alaska cruise, am told that's not a necessary thing on a Caribbean cruise as you're looking mostly at completely open sea. Would like to save money but not if the verandah really adds to the experience.
Thanks!
Don’t need to stay friends if you don’t want (I’m in the US, Modern Vivillon, not too coveted) so unless you send me a gift back we can part ways, please just friend me and let me send you one gift! 🙏
455017927867
I'd like to do a 10-11 day cruise on HAL. I don't know whether to go to the eastern or western Caribbean, or if there are ports I should not miss.
I do know this: I do not want to waste a port day on Key West (I go to the Keys by car a lot). I don't do rigorous excursions (like waterfall climbs). I prefer opportunities for jungly shade to always being in full open sun. I'd like interesting places to walk around, rather than parking myself on a beach (don't get me wrong, I like that, too, but my husband won't do that at all). I have always been interested in San Juan, but that's not a huge deal to me. Glitzy does not really interest me. Generally, the more historic or visually interesting, the better.
Anyway, what have you enjoyed most, and why? Where would you skip, where would you go again or go next time, in the Caribbean?
Thanks!
Update: seems HAL (and maybe all cruise lines) just call this tipping but we should simply think of the $20/day per person as a part of the cruise cost. I’ll bring cash for ACTUAL tipping (which I’m happy to do because I don’t think these folks make enough at all.)
As above — if I go to guest services to cancel the automatic gratuity charge to my account will they try to guilt me or be weird about it? I mean, I’m still going to do that, just want to prepare myself.
(As I understand it, each employee makes their contracted rate no matter if all guests auto pay or no guests auto pay. The salaries do not fluctuate based on tipping unless they’re given cash. The “all tips are pooled” thing is true in the sense that it offsets a cruise line’s own investment toward crew salaries, but not in the way that a restaurant pools/distributes tips.)
Here we go.
We now will not depart Vancouver on 7/15 until 5pm.
On Friday 7/17 Tracy Arm Inlet is out, AND we will not dock in Juneau until 4:30pm and will depart at 11pm instead of 10pm. That extra hour adds nothing since the sun sets at 9:50pm.
I was booked on a Mendenhall Glacier + whale-watching trip … one of the main reasons I booked the cruise for July instead of later. Was able to book a different HAL-sponsored whale-watching trip, but it skips Mendenhall … and it supposedly leaves at 4:45pm which I have a hard time trusting (though again, it is a HAL excursion so we’ll see).
I am really sad about this. I know, the people two dates ago lost ALL their excursions, but I’m still so disappointed. Now it feels like waiting for the other shoe to drop, wondering what other changes will come.
Was already trying to be positive-minded in the knowledge it’s supposed to rain the whole time.
SIGH.
If anyone knows of any other wildlife-specific things to do in Juneau that can be done after 5pm (in case the new 4:45pm whale trips fall through), will you share? 😓
Has this happened to anyone else? At first I thought it was the vegetables themselves but things like asparagus (steamed), red pepper (stir-fried, not raw), broccoli (boiled) all taste so bitter and gross to me now and I finally put it together after the peppers last night that’s me, not them. This sucks bc I’m trying to eat healthier, not just “less.” I guess I’ll try sauces. I’ve never needed sauces for veggies before.
Took out my new-to-me LUMIX FZ300 for a quick test shoot. Well, we took out my dad's, mine arrives tomorrow.
When taking pics, am getting a VERY quick flash of an error -- red icon of the SD card. The photos DID write to the card (it's a newest gen card, if that matters), so I can't figure out what the problem may be. Do I need an older, slower card?
But ALSO, the photos are absolute garbage and I know that's not the typical. I wasn't expecting top tier IQ but this is awful. What I mean by that is that photos taken at 100 ISO are grainier than a 2008 point-and-shoot at 800 ISO. It's BAD. My dad shoots in RAW and processes in LR, I don't know anything about adding denoising but we shouldn't need it. The pictures are exposed well, the color is fine, focus is good. But the noise is WILD. Tomorrow we'll take it out and shoot in JPEG, am curious if that could possibly be the issue but I suspect the sensor is cooked, somehow. Or I don't know. I'm at a loss. This is depressing.
I know about Orange night — any other themes to plan for? Am I mistaken thinking I don’t need a dress at all?
(July 15-22)
I know nothing is guaranteed but just want to make the best informed decision.
I am planning to take a river cruise next May that goes along the Danube and the Rhine. I wanted to leave early May because I do very poorly in the heat (75F is too hot for me, in the open sun). But now after reading I'm wary of high river levels. I'd planned on a departure from Budapest May 6. I can cancel and re-book departing May 20, but then the temps may hit the mid to high 70s or even 80s.
There are at least 3 excursion options that include train rides on the Skagway day. Anyone have any preference?
Not sure if it's best to stick to the shortest trip (2h45 or something like that) to leave time to do other exploration in the area, or if the longer journeys really offer something better. I've read the details of each, would just like personal reviews. Thanks!