The Traveling Man

Lunch at Cayman Cabana, next to Casanova’s Italian, about 100 yards North of the pier.

We are on the Sky in Cayman and today received our invitation to dine with GM Jean-Michel this Friday night. I’m really looking forward to it. He will be our fifth GM out of a total of 30 NCL officers we have gotten to know over dinner. It turns out that one of our favorite GMs, Djamel, was the best man at Jean-Michel’s wedding, so I’m sure we’ll find plenty to talk about.

Not really, but there are lots of taxi drivers at the pier who can drive you.

I’m sitting on bench in the shade at the Bayshore Mall, using their free WiFi, and waiting for my wife to get back from her snorkel tour. The mall is South of the cruise dock, near the Hard Rock Cafe. We plan to walk North a bit past the dock to a great seafood place on the water that we found on our last trip here. Join us if you like. James

@sid_9169 I woke up this morning and saw the Prima anchored just outside my window on the Sky. If we happen to bump into each other today in Cayman, I’ll be sure to say hi. James

The outlets are located at the dressing table which a couple of feet away from the foot of the bed. You'll need at least 10 feet of extension cord to reach the head of the bed for your CPAP machine.

Sorry to hear that. Those are two highlights of any trip "down under." Our first cruise from Australia to Singapore was in 2017 on the Star. Because of propulsion problems we missed almost every port scheduled for the first leg of the cruise. They finally got us going again for the second half of the journey, but by then NCL had given up all hope of the Star being fixed and gave us back all of our money for that leg of the trip. So essentially they paid us to stay on board. We used the savings to go back the following year on the Jewel and take in the ports we had missed, including Tauranga and Milford Sound. Hope things work out for you.

Not quite sure I understand your meaning.

My next cruise departs next week and my passport was set to expire at the end of February, so I applied for a new one just after Thanksgiving. I didn't pay for expedited service, but it only took about a month to get my new passport. It arrived a month before our scheduled departure. Even though we will be on a closed loop cruise to the Caribbean and Central America and NCL doesn't require a passport for this itinerary, I'm a "belt and suspenders" kind of guy. I would never want to venture outside of the US without my passport in my pocket. YMMV.

It seems like Alain always picks Le Bistro when having dinner with passengers. Also, he doesn't simply host a dinner party, he "holds court." We've been fortunate to enjoy dinners with more than two dozen NCL officers over the years. One of the best we've ever experienced was with Alain. He was in fine form and made for a very enjoyable evening.

If you plan to do a lot of international traveling, it makes sense to go for the Global Entry card. It costs a bit, but some credit cards will reimburse you for it. Global Entry also includes TSA Pre Check and you get to bypass the long lines at customs when you return to the US.

Last September on our cruise on the Prima they set up shop in one of the specialty restaurants. I forget which one. Our wine tasting was in the afternoon and they needed to reset the place for the dinner crowd, so they ran us out early. I probably only managed to drink eight or nine glasses of wine in that time. 😉

SHHHH...Don't spill the beans. I always try to log on to the CC Roll Call as soon as we book a cruise and volunteer to host the M&G. I've only managed to get there first a few times, but when I did NCL treated us royally. As you mentioned, breakfast and lunch with the Suite People in Cagneys or Moderno, plus butler and concierge service, free extra nights in specialty dining, bottles of wine delivered to our stateroom without charge, and more. The best experiences were on the Dawn with Alain Magnier as GM and on the Pride of America with Kai Runenen (sp?) as GM. The last time I got to play host for the M&G was on the Getaway on the TransAtlantic last year. Nada, zip, zilch, nothing extra.

"Still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest." - Paul Simon

Did you get a confirmation from NCL that you would be able to disembark in Kauai on Friday before you booked your cruise? Are you flying home directly from Kauai or do you have to fly to Honolulu to change planes before flying home? If your focus is saving on airfare by avoiding travel on the weekend, why not arrive a couple of days before sailing on the 19th and then return home on the Monday or Tuesday after the cruise ends on the 26th. That way you don't have to worry about whether NCL allows early disembarkation and you fly in and out of Honolulu which probably gives you more options and likely less costly flights than from one of the lesser used airports on one of the other islands.

If you’re describing Cruise Next Manager Carolina, our experience with her is the exact opposite of what you and @Sand and Seashave mentioned. We found her to be very professional. We were on the Copenhagen to Southampton cruise in September and purchased two CN certificates. No hassle, no up sell, no argument. Just a simple thank you. We also are Diamond and have sailed with her a couple of times before. She went out of her way to make us feel welcome. YMMV.

We ate there almost every breakfast and dinner when we were on the Edge last year. We were booked in the Retreat. We tried Luminae for lunch on embarkation day and were thoroughly unimpressed, so we ate most of our other meals in Blu. The F&B Manager all but begged us to give Luminae another chance. We did have our final dinner of the cruise there, but thought it fell far short of our experience with Blu. YMMV.

Same here.

Thanks for the update. It has been a couple of years since our last Panama Canal cruise, but I remember the park ranger, or guide, or ambassador, or whatever they called themself, who provided ongoing narration during our transit explaining the way they calculated the fee at that time.

The rate charged by the Panama Canal for transit by cruise ships is based upon the number of staterooms / beds. It's currently somewhere near $1000 per bed, so about $1Million for a small ship like the Sky, close to $2Million for the larger NCL ships, and almost $3Million for the largest cruise ships such as the ones in the RCL fleet.

I had a conversation years ago with NCL General Manager Manny. Actually it was so long ago that the title was still Hotel Director. I asked him "Why did NCL eliminate 'Lobster Night' at the MDR? It was always so popular." "Because lobster became too expensive" was his reply.

When we sailed on the Pr1ma in September we attended the "Sustainability Cocktail" event with other Diamond and Ambassador Latitudes members. I doubt that we'll do that again, as some of the concoctions that Clarence "The Chocolate Cowboy" served us were just simply noxious. And yes, I do seem to recall that the ingredients of one of them included pureed leftover beef !

NCL does pay attention to passenger comments, or at least they have at times in the past. My wife and I booked a 12 day Transatlantic cruise on the Getaway for April 2019. We had failed to notice that the ship was scheduled for dry dock the day after we were to arrive in Southampton. Well, someone at NCL decided that they needed a couple of extra days to do the work they had planned, so they cut our trip short by two days, eliminating port stops at Le Havre and Zeebrugge. Our cruise was scheduled to depart NYC on Saturday, 27 April, 2019. We were notified of the change by email on Good Friday, 19 April. Many passengers, especially those who had booked through a travel agent, did not get the word until the following Monday or Tuesday. Some passengers from the UK had already flown to the US prior to the announcement and did not learn of the change until they boarded the ship. Members of the Cruise Critic Roll Call for that voyage raised such a commotion online that NCL personnel worked throughout the Easter weekend to make new arrangements. The primary complaint was the two ports NCL had chosen to skip, while keeping stops in Ponta Delgada, Portugal and Portland, England. The consensus of those posting was to drop those two and restore Le Havre and Zeebrugge. NCL heard the complaints of their passengers, loud and clear, and jumped through hoops by working through a holiday weekend to at least get us the ports the majority wanted. We still lost two days off the cruise, but NCL did increase their compensation for the missing days after reading so many complaints on Cruise Critic. I don't know how frequently NCL pays attention to this forum or if they would do the same thing today, but they certainly listened in 2019.

It is quite disheartening to read all of the negative reports on this thread. Our experience with Cruise Next staff, and particularly with Cruise Next Managers, has been completely different. They have been some of the most helpful, friendly, and informative individuals we have encountered on board. We have learned more tricks of the trade from Paloma about how and when to take advantage of price cuts, special incentives, and other advantages when booking a cruise than we will be able to use in a lifetime. Will and Holly taught us the advantages of booking our next cruise while on board, and spent lots of time helping us compare prices on several cruise itineraries that caught our eye. The first time we bought Cruise Next Certificates we did not understand that they were to be used per cabin instead of per passenger, so we planned to buy the maximum. Jen actually talked us down to buying just two, which she took the time to explain graciously would be plenty for our needs. On a subsequent cruise with her when we were two points short of the Latitudes level that would entitle us to the Latitudes party, she bent the rules and invited us anyway. On our cruise on the Prima this past September, Carolina went out of her way to make sure that there was space for us at the Latitudes wine tasting, spirits tasting, and other benefits promised to Diamond members. When we sailed on the Joy a couple of years ago, CN Manager Tauran recognized us as we approached the CN desk and greeted us by name, even though we hadn't sailed with him for more than three years. He made sure that we had a private dinner in Le Bistro with him and General Manager Djamel, with whom he had sailed several times before. We have sailed several times with CN Manager Sammie Jo. She is just a sweetheart, and has always been cheerful, attentive, and very helpful. I truly am sorry that the experiences reported here by so many have failed to measure up to the real pleasure we have had in dealing with Cruise Next personnel.

It's a matter of personal taste. Some like it. Some don't. The music often is quite entertaining, but the food typically misses the mark. Full disclosure - I grew up in Texas, so barbeque is in my blood. The meat at Q is cooked at too high a temperature for too short a time to really qualify to be called barbeque. It's simply grilled meat. The times that we have eaten there the outside was over cooked and the meat near the bone was almost raw. As some others have posted here, I certainly would never again pay to eat there.