jacketwatch

Andi the ship is a marvel. You should try its class someday. Jason I wonder if other ships will do the iPad check in too. Its such a time and paper saver.,

"Very nice ship and destination" View full cruise review

Great! I was thinking March or April. Thank you

Many years ago NCL got dismal reviews but as we know that’s changed dramatically so perhaps so for MSC too. You have to be competitive or you won’t get the business

Is there a time of year weather wise that’s best?

Can’t speak for their style on US routes but it does seems they are upping their game so to speak as reviews I’ve seem lately are better. A culture of CS takes time to develope and in the past they seemed woeful in this regard.

I was thinking of going there as we’ve never been to Africa. I found SAA very high ORD-CPT but prices for biz less on Expedia for instance. I wonder if the internal flights would be more if you didn’t bundle them with the DC leg.

OTOH we booked Cathay Dragon for multiple route flights (Xian to LK and KL to Beijing) and even afterwards I checked prices and same to the penny. I do wonder why domestic air seems to vary so much.

You can spin this any way you want even if that means comparing the cruise employee to a bank robber whose intent is to commit a crime. I stand by my opinion as you stand by yours. I hope we can agree to disagree and move on. That way we can all make this a positive place. Thank you.

Thank you. I was astounded by the price fluctuations and the lesson here is when you see a good price jump on it. BTW Hainan airlines which per 2018 Skytrax ratings is in the top 10 world wide has very good prices too but this price drop was too good to turn down.

For the first time in 14 years is on land! Blasphemy you say! ?. Well I’ve always wanted to see China so it’s a week in Beijing then a bullet train to Xian for 4 days after which we fly to Kuala Lumpur for about a week. We fly back to Beijing a day before we leave. One thing I learned about is the crazy price flucuations for biz airfare for UAL and AA. From one day to the next there was a near 50% price drop! UAL was about $8800.00 for two in late March for our Sept. flight. Then a day later it was about $5100.00. AA had a similar drop. I eventually booked UA, our mileage plan for about $5260.00 and a few weeks later it was down to about $4900.00,then skyrocketed again. Anyway I’m happy with what we got. Both flights are NS and leave their respective airports around noon and it’s their Polaris upgrade too.

It’s tragic and I don’t blame the cruise line employee for shooting the bear. It was in self defense. One incident doesn’t necessarily mean big changes need to be made. I have to agree with Jan here.

Actually yes. Picton was very nice. First of all is green, hilly and lush. Its also quite small and it seems our bus driver knew just about everybody on the road he passed. And it has a fabulous WW I aviation museum sponsored by Peter Jackson with perhaps 2 dozen planes, many of which were so poorly designed they were flying death traps. Was amazed to see so many different types. Napier was very cool too. It was destroyed by a 1931 earthquake and rebuilt in art deco style which persists to this day. It also has many vineyards. NZ is known for quality wines, especially the whites like Sauvignon Blanc. I am more of a red fan and I did bring back a Cabernet Sauvignon from a winery we visited. It was ok but I prefer the Cali CS I get here. It was explained to me that its just not warm enough there to grow the CS grape to make world class wines but the whites are world class.

"Great ship, great service" View full cruise review

Maybe I'll never know as we didn't get to one. . I was a bit taken aback by the look father food on the steam table and the sever kept saying "more cheese" as if that would compensate.

I actually put person and place in th tag line. He was amazing and had us sign his client book. I asked him to take us to a local place for lunch and Imwqs anticipating a nice place with a sidewalk table, big umbrella and well it was a classic lost in translation moment. He took us to a truck stop.??

Oops? I forgot to mention that this was in Naples Italy and his name was Ernesto

I did too think the design looked futuristic. Well lets see how they do. Lots of catching up and catching on to do but it seems Virgin has high standards. Their air service gets high marks and I would bet they would bring in people with a lot of experience in cruising from a business and marketing angle so I am optimistic they will succeed.

http://cruisefever.net/construction-set-begin-virgins-first-cruise-ship/

Well not for me but I would mind watching them if they have an audience. ?☺️.

Wow! I would go on it. We wee on the Oasis and did not find its size to be problematic. We loved the ship actually. As they are building a new terminal I do hope the employees there are better trained than the ones we encountered two yrs. ago when we embarked on the Oasis. They acted more like jailers. Not impressed. ?.

We have met quite a few characters but this guy has to be #1 on the list. He was super friendly and outgoing and he told us this story in his broken English about his wife so I'll try to retell it as best I can. You'll have to imagine his accent. :). She say I wanna makka some food so go getta da cheese so I go. I came back and she say where you getta da cheese so I say Romanos. She say aaah! thatsa no good. Next time go to Tonys. So a few days later she say go getta da cheese but go to Tonys. So I go to Romanos and say I getta da cheese at Tonys. So she makka da food. Then I say how you know the difference. She say mama mia "the taste, the taste." He said still i donta believe. :).

Tell me about it. We used it twice. Sue got sick in India and by the time of our next leg, Bangkok she had to be hospitalized for 5 days. Our Allianz policy covered it all. We had to book a return separate from our planned one to the US from Madrid due to superstorm Sandy. UAL gave us a return 5 days late so no way we could do that. Our AMEX policy covered that extra cost.