The Traveling Man

Wow, that seems rather rude.

There will be at least one, and perhaps two days when the Freestyle Daily will list a "fill the bag" laundry special. If you miss the notice, just ask your stateroom attendant. Even if the offer is made only once during your cruise, you may have a steward who will accept your laundry on a different day than the advertised special, or perhaps even a second time during the cruise. We occasionally have missed the announced day for the special, but asked our steward if we could slip it in a day later. No problems. YMMV. The cost has gone up a couple of times recently. I think it is now about $30 for a bag. That's still much less expensive than the per-item price that NCL charges. There are some tricks to getting the greatest amount of clothing into the one-price-fits-all bag. First, either bring a plastic bag to line the NCL paper bag or use some adhesive tape to strengthen the paper bag to keep it from tearing. Next, toss loose items such as socks and underwear into the bottom of the bag. Roll shirts and slacks tightly, stand them up like pickles in a jar and insert them in a bundle into the bag. It's OK if they stick out of the top of the bag. Since they are rolled up tightly, they shouldn't fall over or out of the bag. Voila! My wife and I usually can fit at least five or six days worth of clothing for both of us into one bag. You'll need to submit your bag when you still have two days worth of clean clothes to wear. That will get you through the day you submit the bag in the morning, plus the next day when your clothes are returned to you in the evening.

Sorry, no yearlong trips for me. If I take a vacation longer than about six or seven weeks, I need a staycay of a month or so to recover from my vacay!!!

I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed Kinky Boots. Likewise with Priscilla. Never judge a book by its cover, I suppose.

Better than Million Dollar Quartet??? We may have to agree to disagree on this one. Footloose rates a solid "meh" from me. Loved the movie, but the musical, not so much.

I have been thinking about booking a three week cruise from Cape Town to Barcelona for next spring. The current price differential between OV and Balcony is about $3200 per person. That comes to a total savings of $6400 for using points to upgrade instead of paying out of pocket for the Balcony. It would be a single meta upgrade requiring 30,000 World Points. I only use my NCL card for charges to NCL, so those 30,000 points cost me $10,000. The payback of $6400 on an expense of $10,000 comes to a 64% return. What's in your wallet?

You must be referring to Jose and Patti. They always put on a great show and attract a large and enthusiastic audience.

I actually enjoyed some of these concoctions when we did the Diamond / Ambassador "Sail and Sustain Cocktail Experience" on the Pr1ma a few days after its inaugural voyage. For some of the others, though, after one sip I couldn't force the glass back to my lips even if I used both hands and a crow bar. 😝

Thank you for posting this. My previous response was based solely on the text of the press release. Your specific knowledge of personnel actions taken within the NCL IT department is most illuminating, and sadly disturbing. I wonder, though, if the entire IT staff were fired, or if the terminations were exclusively in that section of the IT department "that handled the email servers on all the ships for internal communications." What about those who handle the NCL website, the Norwegian App, accounting records, passenger records, etc?

Thank you for posting this. It clearly states that software and hardware have been transferred out of house and to a vendor, but I failed to find any mention of jobs being outsourced. It sounds like a systems conversion to a new platform, but not a complete offloading of IT responsibility. The news release did mention a desire to develop and enhance AI technology. That likely would result in an attrition of IT personnel at some future date. If, however, I did miss a mention of outsourcing the IT labor force, could someone who read the article please point it out to me. During my years as an IT professional I went through a number of systems conversions, wrote new software for some, and managed the conversion process for others. Inevitably the result was the transfer, retirement, or departure of some employees, while others adapted to the new normal. That is the vibe that I sense from this press release.

Why not? I once brought a Seabourn tote bag on a Norwegian cruise.

Thank you. Hats off to the Admiral.

I'm a bit confused by your post. Is it possible that you meant to wonder if @TheBeardedCruiser had a negative experience during "high peak season." As I said, my wife and I have cruised with NCL three dozen times. Some were fully booked cruises during peak times. Some were half-full ships during the low season. Overall, though, we really never have experienced the long delays to be seated for dinner in an MDR as @TheBeardedCruiser reported. So, did your experience resemble their long wait times or our generally short wait times?

Sorry to hear that was your experience. We have sailed with NCL on 36 cruises, so that adds up to about 150 dinners in one of the MDRs. My best estimate is that more than half those times there really was no delay at all. Oh sure, it takes a few seconds for the hostess to scan your card, check for an available table, and give your info to someone who will escort you to your seat, so maybe a minute or two from the time you walk in the door until you're on your way to your table. Maybe a fourth of the time the wait time was minimal, three to five minutes, while the rest of the time we were given a pager and invited to go to a bar for a drink before dinner. In the good old days before the beverage package became ubiquitous, when they handed out a pager it came with a coupon for each person in the party to have a free glass of wine or champagne while they waited for their table to be ready. The longest wait we ever experienced out of some 150 dinners in an MDR might have been about 20 minutes. Our average wait time has been far less than five minutes. I can't remember ever making a reservation for an MDR. YMMV.

Yes, and in the movie Guy Fieri and Harry Hamlin each had priceless reactions when Sally Fields called it that.

In the movie "80 For Brady" Sally Fields called her bag a "strap on."

Hats off to you for the choice of your avatar / nom de plume.

Sounds like he really knew how to enjoy his life.

Glad to hear that you enjoyed your trip despite the itinerary changes. As to the Norwegian App, if you're traveling B2B, you may need to reload the app on the turnaround day to load the new info for the second half of your trip. We have taken several B2Bs with NCL and we had to do that to get the updates. Interesting that you chose to remain on the ship on turnaround day. We usually are eager to explore the city, so we are among the first off. NCL provides a name tag, wrist band, or other means of identification as a returning cruiser so we can skip the line when we return to the ship. In your case I assume that Seattle was your turnaround city. We've always found lots of interesting things to see and do there, some of them even within walking distance of the cruise terminal. Anyway, thanks for your review and glad that you enjoyed yourselves.

We may need to rethink this voyage. I was browsing the Roll Calls for these cruises and came across a notice from the health services of both South Africa and Namibia. It seems that a Yellow Fever inoculation is required to visit these countries if you recently have visited some of the other countries included on this itinerary. Also, some African countries require that you have at least two unused pages in your passport for visa stamps. At least one person who had posted on the roll call said they cancelled their cruise because of the cost of the shots and the need to get a new passport (even though theirs did not expire for almost three more years) because they did not have two completely blank pages available.

When I encounter an acronym which I do not recognize, the Urban Dictionary usually is my go to source for the low down on the slang expressions that all the cool kids are using. I drew a blank on this one. So what in tarnation is "WFBF?"

We are considering that same cruise. If we do decide to take it, maybe we can touch base on the roll call and arrange to say howdy on the ship.

Are you thinking about the 21 day cruise ending in Barcelona or the 11 day ending in Cape Town?

There have been some old threads resurrected from the dead, but this is the first one I have ever seen that came back after ten years of dormancy. Definitely a score of 100 on the necromancer scale!

Our first transit was Westbound (actually mostly south) through the new locks. Our next time was Eastbound (mostly north) through the old locks. The Eastbound experience through the old locks was far more interesting. Our third time, an in-and-out through the old locks on the Atlantic side with a shore excursion to the canal visitors center, was the best of all.