Live Cruise Reports

Here we are. It is finally time. We are in the final countdown. In 6 short days I will be boarding a flight for my short awaited sailing on Oasis of the Seas. We will be doing two legs on Oasis, a western and eastern Caribbean. We will be covering a few cruising scenarios….
 
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Hello Everyone
I always love reading live reviews and am going to give one a try. 😀
 
Background and Planning
The traveling party this trip is myself, my husband and our 2 boys [7 & 13].  We are recentish West Coasters and haven’t taken a cruise in several years due to the pandemic and trying out other land vacations when we moved here. Before this upcoming trip we have sailed a number of Royal itineraries. This will be our first on Celebrity and this itinerary. Heading out Friday for LAX to stay near the port before embarking on Saturday. Right now is just the the final push to finish packing and plan ahead for work.
 
Can’t wait for Friday 😀🛳️

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Hi there everybody… Jorge and Stian from Norway and we are back in Azamara and this time for a Spain intensive cruise. 
 
Technically this is our sixth cruise (from 30 cruises) with Azamara, first time on Onward. Booked an inside cabin, happy with it. We decided more cruises less balconies for this year.

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Hi everyone! I am very excited to soon be doing my first live blog from an MSC ship, the Meraviglia. I am doing a semi-B2B and plan to post about both sailings on this thread. The first sailing is the 4/9-4/20 repositioning sailing out of Port Canaveral, going to Aruba and Curacao, and ending in Brooklyn, NY.  I will be doing that sailing with my husband in an Aurea Balcony Suite with a hot tub on the balcony! The ship is then porting in NYC for two days, presumably to take on new crew and provisions and maybe do some press tours before its new homeport inaugural sailing.

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Departure Day - It’s Déjà vu all over again.
 
Yogi Berra’s words have never rang so true.
 
Just last January we were here at LAX dodging a torrent of rain from an atmospheric river hitting California and it’s been raining ever since.  I’ve never seen anything like this in almost 50 years of living here. Several major storms have hit us and it looks like that trend will continue. The good news is the drought has been officially declared over.
 
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It's TIME!! Spring Break 2023. 
 
Grandeur of the Seas, GS 8512. 
Miami/Key West/Labadee and some day's at sea in-between. 
 
Attempting a *Live* cruise this week on Lady G but as many of y'all know, wifi can be tricky. This will be the oldest and smallest ship my kids (14 and 16) have ever sailed on and since she's a lady of the 90's, we will be jamming all week to my 80's and 90's classics to stay in theme. Luckily for me, my kids love that genre of music so no complaints *cue's up Gloria Estefan*.  My parents will also be sailing with us, they are in a JS and I will show y'all around their cabin as well. We are looking forward to a great week! Here is what we know so far. 

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This was a last minute booking. Originally I was supposed to be going to a convention but things didn't work out and the cost of the cruise was the same as the hotel alone in London so it seemed like a no brainer.

This is my first time on MSC my other cruises have been with Celebrity but 1 the pricing for them is just not always affordable for me as I travel alone and 2 I was looking for a cruise line that was available close to the UK as I didn't want to add more flights in.

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I’m boarding Spectrum today for a 4N to Phuket and Penang and since there is so little info on Spectrum I thought I’d try to keep a post going throughout our sailing to answer any questions. I’ll post some pics also as Wi-Fi allows. Let’s goooo! 😁

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I am going to try and do a “Live”. Never done one before so here it goes! Left NC yesterday for Charleston. My daughter did a college tour at C Of C . We are staying 1 night at the Courtyard On Calhoun St. easy walk everywhere downtown. We had dinner at 82 Queen. Yummy shrimp and grits and fried green tomatoes. Also had the she crab soup. We have been to Charleston many times so we didn’t do a lot of touring but my daughter did shop on King St. unique store we don’t have in Raleigh. If you have been to Charleston before it is a fun area. I’m including food pictures.

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March 26-27, 2023–on our way to Japan
 
We are off again, this time headed to Japan to board Regent Explorer.  This cruise has been put off for quite awhile as Japan just recently reopened for tourism and is my birthday present to myself.
 
As usual we had the normal pre-departure drama.  You are no longer required to have a negative Covid test to visit Japan from the US if you are fully vaccinated, but a negative test is required to board the ship and can be done no more than 72 hours prior to embarking.  Oddly enough, they will accept either a PCR test from a lab or a rapid antigen self test (I see the possibility of all sorts of fraud with that).  So I got a couple of the self tests, which we did last night and were thankfully negative.  You take a picture of the test with its packaging and your passport.  

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I love reading these reviews, so hopefully I can keep this up through my cruise.  I’m starting this now just to push off packing for a little longer 😂
 
I booked this kind of last minute (for me), I like to book at least 6 months out, this I booked in January when work changed our blackout days for inventory.  This will be my 7th cruise, 4th on NCL, and 4th solo.  I have only cruised out of New York or New Jersey, I’m not a huge fan of flying (and the luggage restrictions that come along with it).  

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Good Morning Cruisers!
 
I am now 2 days out from my next cruise adventure, and this is going to be a much different experience than any other as I'll be taking a solo cruise for the first time ever.  In addition, this will be my first time on Prima, my first time leaving from Manhattan Cruise Terminal, my first time in a solo cabin and my first time attempting a live thread.  I had tried doing one previously, but it was hit or miss.  So given that I only have myself to worry about this trip, I should have some time.to dedicate to it.

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Here we go again!  I was having second thoughts about doing this, but perhaps it's important to have a thread about the anniversary TA, and I'm hoping that a lot of the roll call for both legs will join in and give their impressions of the ship and the cruise.  We've been told that the TA will include some special Dutch-themed activities and meals.  I have noticed quite a few Dutch names on the roll call, too, like our old friends @sailingdutchy and @dutch46, so they will be able to say if the cruise lives up to expectations.  Expect food porn!

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Great to be back on an R-Class ship.   We were last on Riviera in September/October 2022.  Our other Oceania Cruises have all
 been on Nautica-our favorite ship.   
 
We have been cruising since 2001 primarily on Oceania and Celebrity.   This is our fourth transatlantic cruise, and we have two more booked.   Yes, we love sea days.   
 
Jeff retired on Friday and we left on Saturday.  So a celebration voyage too.   🍾 
 
Embarkation:   Not the best.   For some reason no porters, guests expected to handle luggage from the cab, through a passport check, to a shuttle bus and then schlepped into the terminal.  Not sure why the luggage wasn’t taken from the port gate directly to the ship.  

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I would love to take you with me on our cruise on the
 
Azamara Pursuit March 2023 (9-night Med Highlight Voyage)
 
Our itinerary:
LISBON, PORTUGAL 
GIBRALTAR, UNITED KINGDOM 
MALAGA, SPAIN 
BARCELONA, SPAIN 
BARCELONA, SPAIN 
NICE, FRANCE 
FLORENCE/PISA(LIVORNO),ITALY 
FLORENCE/PISA(LIVORNO),ITALY 
ROME (CIVITAVECCHIA), ITALY
 
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So back to cruising⚓️ 
We haven’t sailed on Silhouette before. 
But we have sailed on Solstice class ships multiple times. So we know what we will get and it will be our last ship in Solstice class to sail. Then we have tried them all on multiple times. 
So it will be fun to see if our list of love-the-ship will change🙃 ( Millennium class is our perfect match still🥇 Connie is still the leader) 

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Greetings and salutations fellow cruisers!
 
Well, that was quick. It feels like just yesterday that my husband Jeremy and I were stepping off the Apex and now it’s almost time to head out to the west coast to board the Solstice!
 
If it wasn’t for the very different weather forecast between the Pacific coast and the Caribbean, I probably wouldn’t have even bothered fully unpacking.

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Having only joined Azura yesterday, last time we were on her was back In October 2022. 
 
We stayed at Premier Inn Manchester North. On the night the fire alarm went off twice which turned out to be false alarm and the next morning the hotel had no hot water which meant they were not able to do a buffet breakfast so directed us to Premier Inn South just across the road.

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Greetings from the MSC World Europa!
 
This is our 62nd cruise, and 2nd time on MSC in the Yacht Club.  First was on the Grandiosa last year.   We’ve cruise on many different lines with some recent river cruises as well.  Most of our business goes to NCL.   We are grateful for MSC’s status match program as NCL Platinum has earned us MSC Diamond.  I frequently read reviews here and Im grateful for those that take the time to pose, so its time to pay it forward.

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Well I'm starting out with good intentions, but will admit I won't be making this my main focus on the trip although I'll try to share enough to keep everyone interested and help out with some info along the way.
 
DW and I are in late 50's early 60's and are sailing for the first time in an Edge class ship and traveling to Key West, Belize, Cozumel and Grand Cayman.  We've been to most of these before (Belize is new for us) so we plan to have a good mix of port visits, but also intend to stay onboard to enjoy the "Apex Floating Resort". 

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I really wanted to LIVE blog my first ever cruise ever and I thought that this forum would be kinder than the place that cannot be named.  Last November, I knew nothing beyond cruising besides watching a few YouTube videos when I booked my cruise on the Norwegian Epic and paid in full.  Imagine my newbie horror to discover that due to the bathroom layout, it appears to be the most hated ship in the NCL fleet

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Hello CC friends! All hail the great recent Prima threads from @sid_9169 and Sistah @Greenpea2 (and others)! I've read them with delight. And since we're lucky enough to try out the Haven this trip, of course I've read the definitive Haven Secrets thread from @Sthrngary and feel like we are ready to give this a go! 
 
A little background: DW and I are heading to the Caribbean with the parentals, let's call them DDyo and DMa. Celebrating an 85th birthday of he-who-must-be-named and so we are doing it Haven-style.

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Greetings to all cruise lovers!
After all the recent live or semi-live reports I wanted to continue on with the recent tradition to try and give a little back to all the others over the years that have provided us so many interesting tips and news to provide everyone with a wonderful cruise experience!
This will be my 15 NCL cruise if you include the one from when I was 14 in the 80’s as a teenager going to the Western Caribbean.  This will be my DH’s 14 NCL cruise.

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I have received so much information here and read such great, interesting travel reports that I would like to contribute something myself.
With 20+ MSC voyages and 26000 (real, non-matched) Voyagers Club points so far, I have some experience and know what to expect. I'm sure there are several interesting things for you.
 
I'm starting the European metropolis tour in 19 days. From Hamburg, I'm going to Bruges, Amsterdam, Paris and London. I think these destinations could also be interesting for Americans visiting Europe.

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Our last four MSC cruises have all been in Yacht Club and we are sold on the product. Last week challenged that, when I noticed a super, last minute deal, offered by a Travel Agent. It was priced much less than MSC were listing, so I acted fast! The deal was for balcony at the same cost of inside so we went for that.
It was priced so well -We couldn’t believe our luck!

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