BirdTravels

Kinda silly. 10's of thousands of people go on RCCL shoreex every week. And you want to make a decision on isolated cases.

ALL edocs say boarding at noon. Nothing wrong with that. You are selecting a time to arrive at the port. NOT a boarding time. You have a specific time to check in at the pier. That time should appear on your edocs. You still have to checkin at the pier. Once you arrive at the pier, you have to go through security check. You have to check in with the port personnel, get your documents checked, get your passport scanned, and get your room keys. You have to pass one last health screen. That whole process can take up to an hour. Suites boarding usually starts around 11:00. Priority boarding around 11:15. And general boarding around 11:30. Show up at your selected time.

On the Bliss, Food Republic is open from 12:00 and 1:30 on sea days. American Diner is open daily n

Cancel and rebook.

You’ll be fine. Millions of people travel issue-free. Royal boasts that over 2 million have cruises since restart and have had a wonderful time. We have been on 6 cruises since June 2021 and have 3 more this year. Yup, gotta jump through a few more hoops, but it is all worth while.

(Swiss Miss not included 🙂 )

We have done eMed home test for all of our cruises. Fast. Easy. Efficient. We take a test while sipping coffee at the kitchen table and have test results within a minute of showing the proctor our negative results. Best yet, when we file a claim, our insurance company covers 100% of the cost of the home test = Free.

Having hardcopy will speed up your screening and check-in. The silliest people who hold up the line are those folks that have things only on their phones. They are frantically flipping between multiple test results (entering passwords), vax cards, set sail passes, arriveCAN (for Canadian cruises). While they fumble, the rest of us with old fashion paper flash that and walk on by.

Stopping testing is a horrible idea. Based on the number of people who gripe about testing positive on our roll calls and having to cancel their cruise, pre-cruise testing is doing exactly what it is supposed to. Stopping COVID positive people from boarding ships. Yup, folks can test positive mid-cruise, but at least you are not knowingly allowing infected people onboard. Pre-cruise testing should never end.

You could have chosen a guaranteed room for less. Always been that way. Basically get assigned rooms that no one else "selected"/wanted. You may get lucky and get a room from a cancellation or upgrade. Or get a room over/under a bar/entertainment facility to provide "entertainment" in your stateroom until the wee hours of the morning.

If you don't get a credit in 2-3 days, you should resend. Ours have been processed next-day for our past few cruises.

Nope. NCL discontinued the Chef's Table because there was a lack of interest and an inability to generate enough revenue for the space it took.

The separate steam and sauna has not changed since the ship was built. Lots of clothes-optional folks with jiggly bits.

Use your itinerary and stop surfing the web.

Evaporation is one method (produce fresh water from seawater utilizing heat sources). Reverse Osmosis is another method (produces fresh water from seawater using filters and treatment components). And bunkering of water at ports of call is another (where you hook the ship up to the port's water supply and get the water from your ports of call - yummy). There are some small ships that do short cruises that bunker 100% of their water. NCL's latest report is pre-pandemic (not much happened in 2020 and 2021).

I have shared my Norwegian Cruise Line water experiences before. Almost the color of the backsplash. Yummy.

The Epic has both separate and CoEd steam rooms and saunas.

The Escape is CoEd

Lesson Learned - don't book a cruise you don't intend to take.

To be Prime, you would have had to earn 2500 points ($5 play = 1 point on slots; $10 play = 1 point on video poker). $12,500 - $25,000 in play (there were some reduced thresholds if you cruised 6/2021-3/2022)

Really awful idea. Based on all of the griping and grumbling on roll calls on the number of people who test positive and don't bring their germs onto the ship, the pre-cruise testing is doing exactly what it is supposed to. Minimize the COVID on ships. Based on the fact that most people "choose" to fly to their cruise without a mask (not us), there is always the chance of them tracking germs onto the ship. I can attest to the fact that on our cruise last week, I got a "contact trace alert" on my phone for both our flight/airports to the cruise and for our flights/airports after the cruise. Meaning that we were standing/sitting in close proximity to someone who subsequently tested positive and reported it. Fortunately, we tested negative after each report. We travel all the time and it is quite common to get a contact trace alert on days we fly.

While "nice" for passengers, you tie up valuable crew members to stand around waiting for people to show up for hours. While you are in the climate controlled indoors, some ships require crew to stand for hours in the boiling hot, icy cold, blazing sunshine, pouring rain all to make "nice" for passengers. Versus making everyone (passengers and crew) do it in a 30 minute window.

That's exactly what most bottles waters have. If you drank pure distilled water, you would think it tasted stale.

It was not offered on the Encore in April. There was offered another report this week that it was on another ship.

On our cruise, the room stewards were charged with collecting QR codes. With the threat of the ship not being allowed to enter port.