dejavu21

Some great advice above. My wife and I did our first Alaskan cruise last year. One thing you might encounter when your doing research is "Glacier Bay National Park". We really wanted to go there and thus, we had to book Holland America because Royal had given up their rights to go there. It was amazing. We are going back July 2024, on RC, and loved the Vancouver area. There are a lot of great things to do there if going up early, and have also heard great things about Seattle. One thing we loved was cruising the Inside Passage as @Kathleen mentioned above. The calmness of the waters and scenery is simply amazing. As for Alaska, we loved it. My favorite stop was Skagway and taking the scenic train ride into the mountains (with a hike along the way). Oh another tip. If you go out of Seattle you are going to get the bigger ship (Ovation i think) and is Vancouver (Brilliance) which is a smaller ship. So, if looking at both of those ships there are some really good YouTube videos by HARR travel and others that give complete walkthroughs. Last, the sun is up for a long time in Alaska, 5am - 10pm sometimes, so we took blackout shades. Hope some of this helps.

I've been on several different cruise lines and have come to learn that sometimes your going to get an above average meal and sometimes it's going to be a bit below par, maybe due to seasoning, etc. Your on a cruise ship serving 5,000+ passengers, fast also. It is what it is. And if you are heading to the buffet, don't complain, it's a buffet. The food is always mediocre. If your going on a cruise and looking for 5 star meals, save your cash. If your spending $500-$1,000 a hand in the casino, I can see why you think the food is bad. This sounds like a pity party simply because they would not reshuffle.

Thanks @twangster

Thanks

yeah, I see the problem. On united.com you see the United flights operated by Air Canada. I guess I was expecting to see the Air Canada flights as well. Sorry for the goose chase. Either way, Air2Sea is cheaper at the moment.

Interesting. Thanks for looking. I guess i need to check my filters and see why I would need to do an advanced search. You would think they would show all flights. Did you see the price difference on Air2Sea? $407 for this flight.

@Zacharius IAH to YVR - July 4th 2024 to July 14th, 2024. Cruise is Brilliance, July 7-14. Let me know what you see. Air2Sea has flight UA 6621 and United.com does not. I was curious as well, so, I called one of my friends who happens to be a United Pilot, and he can only see through June 18th at the moment.

I searched Air2Sea just now and found flights for United (my preferred carrier) that do not exist on the United website. The prices are almost $200 cheaper per person that the flights currently on United.com. My questions: 1) Should I book this now, since final payment for my cruise isn't until April and would be refundable if needed? 2) I have a United credit card, thus, my baggage is usually free. Will I need to pay for my baggage using Air2Sea? There are 4 of us (Houston to Vancouver) so it could be a hefty pricetag. Any other comments would be greatly appreciated.

@KatiR, @Woody14 you can also check your bag at the Pan Pacific Hotel after leaving the ship and grab them before heading back to the Train.

We did Vancouver last year in May. We arrived in Vancouver 2 days early in order to site see there. We went to the Capilano Suspension Bridge and loved it. In front of the Pan Pacific hotel and Ship dock there are two booths on the street where you can purchase excursions/tickets. I'm 99% positive we bought our Capilano Bridge tickets there and a bus comes every 15-20 minutes to pick up and take you. When we were ready, we decided to Uber/Lyft back instead of waiting on the next bus. It's not a long drive and cheaper than renting a car. I believe the busses pick up at multiple spots in the city. Hope this helps.

First time on this itinerary. I'm excited even though it's so far away!

Yeah, I told my wife the same thing after realizing it came in and left this morning. Hope they are ok if so.

I just noticed her sailing away just now and was curious why (at 8am). Looks like she was set to sail yesterday (the 9th) but must have been delayed?

If you use the link in the e-mail from C&A (this morning), it is 60% off vs 50%. Early C&A dibbs, for today only.

Based on Matt's recommendations, we've done www.mayachanbeach.com and had a great time. I just booked it again yesterday for our December cruise.

I'm thinking about booking this excursion for December and would love to hear any feedback you might have about it.

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Good question, I would like to hear a response on this (in case I forget cash). We usually take cash so we can tip the guys taking the luggage, bartenders, and of course the room steward.

Yeah, not sure either. I assume they would use the Passport # and look you up in the system and compare facial recognition? Not sure but getting off the boat today and not having to pull it out allowed us to pass through customs in 15 seconds. Hopefully all ports will add this feature soon.

Just finished a 7 day on Liberty OTS this morning. I don't feel the new protocols could have been any better last month. Maybe you didn't need to wear a mask in a few areas, but it really wasn't bad at all. Once your in the dining room, mask off. Once you have a drink at the bar, mask off. We had a great time!

Agree, we just returned today off of Liberty OTS and all of us, even the kids 10, 12 are vaccinated, and we were told not to leave the RC sponsored excursion to head back to the ship or we could have problems. This was in Cozumel and the tour guides said we should stick with them all the way back to port. They are taking things pretty serious.

We always leave our passports on the ship, but we instead bring a copy of our passports and/or our passport cards. We've never needed them or been asked to show them but have always been told to take a copy (at the very least) off the ship.

What did the fish say when he swam into the wall? DAMN!!!!

I tried to do it this morning from the Mobile Browser and it was a continuous loop for me. When I would click "Plan My Cruise" it wanted me to sign in again (a continuous loop). I logged onto my PC and was able to cancel and rebook in seconds.

So, I wanted to fill everyone in on something that happened to me recently so that you can at least check and make sure the same thing doesn't happen to you. My family of 5 are set to cruise on Dec 19th out of Galveston on Liberty. We made final payment 3 or 4 days before the final date back in early September (and as luck would have it, final payment was pushed out the very next day). No worries though, I was happy to have everything finalized and ready to go. A couple of a weeks ago we found out that one of our kids would not be able to make the trip and thus I called into RC to cancel him. Everything went smooth until about three days later when I noticed on the RC website that the "Pay Remaining Balance" was blue, and no longer greyed out. I clicked the link and sure enough, I now had a $408 balance due after being told I would get an FCC for $1,000+. It's taken about 10 days now for RC to fix it, but had I not called I am worried that my cruise would have been canceled for not paying in full before the final payment date that had been extended. I'm not sure what the policies or procedures are there, but I wanted to bring it light in case you want to periodically check your reservations and make sure you're not also showing a balance. I wasn't going to post about it until I saw the youtube video last week from La Lido Loca (link below). He had the same issue ($52 balance) but he didn't find out until going through embarkation. I wouldn't think things like this would happen with today's technology, but with Covid and some of the new policies, procedures, and technological system changes, problems are likely to occur. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJbwTclM_LM Good luck and happy sailing!