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The bed in the studio cabin looks like a twin … I was suspicious when I saw the original plans but it definitely looks smaller than the beds in the studios on the breakaway/+ class ships. I can see that putting off people that are used to the bigger beds.

Somewhat similar… I’m too lazy to do detailed changes in photoshop, I just don’t have the patience for it. I’ve done a few classes so I know the power of it and if suitably motivated I will make the effort. I once lucked into a fab black & white version of a colour photo and I’ve no clue how I managed it. The black & white was so popular that the pro rugby team featured sent out a print of it to every member of their supporters club as part of the membership pack the next season. I actually find the apps on mobile devices far more user friendly and powerful with a lot less effort, but when posting on Instagram I rarely use their filters unless I specifically want something to look different. There’s a reason #nofilter #nofiltersneeded are popular hashtags on instagram.

Did you feel the 70-200 had sufficient range on the boats? I have a sigma ex 70-200 f2.8 but I also have a canon EF L 100-400 f4.5-f5.6 and a Sigma EX 100-300 f4.5-5.6 the canon lens is a legacy of my sports photography and the sigma 100-300 was my late father’s which was used for surf photography. Both the longer lenses are over a decade old, heck I’m pretty sure the sigma is from 2006. I’m in two minds as to whether it’s worth hauling one of the longer lenses with me when the shorter one is faster.

Perhaps true in June, but for my October sailing Bliss will be alone in each port as the other ships arrive different days on those last couple of sailings for the season.

@FoggyEthan On a regular NCL booking they offer a package called Free At Sea, the inclusions in FAS vary depending on promos/length of cruise/category of cabin/location from which you are making the booking. As I am in Ireland and generally book a studio cabin on a 7 day cruise the standard FAS package I get costs €149 which includes: Premium Beverage package (and gratuities), 1 special dining credit (with gratuity), 150mins of free internet and $50 excursion credit applicable to each NCL excursion at each port. AFAIK USA customers don’t have a FAS package fee but do have to pay the gratuities associated with the beverage plan and specialty dining. there is no limit on how many people can purchase the FAS package and there’s also now a FAS+ which you pay for to upgrade the beverage plan, get extra dining credits, more internet access and the $50 excursion credit is expanded to the 2nd person if you’re in a 2+ occupancy cabin. I have no idea if Sixthman cruises offer the FAS package but if they do it should be more economical to buy that rather than the individual components unless you just don’t drink alcohol.

The minutes start counting down from the moment you login and stop when you logout. But have to explicitly go to login.com to start them. You can use the ship’s WiFi for free for checking the NCL app , possibly also for apple iMessage and cruise critic. It’s when you want to access anything else online that you need to login. You can upgrade to an unlimited plan which will be discounted by the value of your minutes if you upgrade before you start using the minutes. You can also buy additional minutes during the cruise if you don’t upgrade to unlimited. the login is not tied to a specific device so you can use multiple devices but only 1 at a time when logged in.

It seems really weird that they’re discounting for one specific cruise, mine is that April 16th sailing on Escape as well. I usually book a studio but they’re already sold out for that sailing and an inside is coming up as €2400 with FAS and DSC included

My understanding from one of the behind the scenes tours was that new shows are worked out on-shore where they have replicas of the ship stage and when the cast moves on-board it’s only a few days rehearsal. I was two sailings where new show casts arrived and in both cases their show was scheduled for the back end of the cruise (7day). However moving all the stage stuff into place may take a little longer and it seems like Priscilla has a particularly awkward set to get off the ship which is why it remained on Epic as long as it did. Chances are it’ll be chorus of Man or Six that will replace it, or something else relatively easy to setup.

A couple of tips I see time and again are: 1. bring tape or something to preserve the integrity of the bag you stuff the laundry into as it’s a paper bag 2. Bring some colour catcher sheets and stuff them in the pockets of whatever you send for laundry I haven’t used the service so far but I’ve seen the above tips mentioned time and again.

customers have the worst timing. The amount that come into our shop 5minutes before closing is ridiculous. Not to mention the days when we haven’t had a single person in so I throw on a live stream of a sports event and within minutes a customer appears from nowhere.

Oddly the guarantee class wasn’t always listed when I was looking at booking cruises, was there most of the time but occasionally not. they used to sometimes be called “just cruise” which was a guarantee without FAS, but now they offer a Just Cruise pricing on specific cabins. I was booking a studio cabin for a friend and wanted to change it from the assigned to a different one but it kept saying no other cabins available. Yet when I checked later another cabin number was listed. I wound up giving up on it and just took the suggested cabin.

How much of this is trying to reduce the number of ships and how much is it the shortages of both staff and supplies in the hospitality industry post covid? NCL have already opened up 2 new “ports” at Ward Cove and Icy Strait Point and they switched to ISP when the landslide reduced dock capacity at Skagway last year. As long as demand for Alaskan cruises remains high the cruiselines will figure out ways to keep it going even if they have to be more creative with alternative ports.

That means it’s different to the NCL cards as they just tap against the door since covid.

The cruiselines can and do adapt when security issues arise. On one cruise I had that included Cozumel they cancelled all of the excursions which used the local ferry service due to a bomb threat the week prior. I remember the days when American tourists were scared to visit Ireland due to the terrorism in Northern Ireland. It was one fairly small area of the country impacted but thanks to lack of knowledge those overseas thought the whole country was a dangerous place. I would say American news coverage of problems in other countries tends to be a bit alarmist, I’ve been to the USA a lot and spent a few months in Chicago as well as upstate Massachusetts so I’ve seen how things get reported.

If you are overnighting at a hotel the night before the cruise the hotel should be able to print and staple your labels if you haven’t been able to print them in the advance or don’t have the plastic tag holders. I got the plastic holders and use them as well as leaving my normal luggage tags attached and a card inside the bags just in case it goes wandering.

I got a wheeled pelicase eventually and much to the amusement of the other rugby photographers it’s bright pink. My view is that anyone that tried to run away with it would be spotted from a mile away. I did bring it to the states once when I was doing photography for a multi-sport event, and it was marginal in getting it into the overhead bin on the domestic connection flight so I’ll stick with a backpack for Alaska. But I’ll probably take the padded innards from the peli-case and use them in my carryon spinner, the other aspect is that peli-case predated their fly-weight range so it adds another couple of kilos to the haul of gear.

I can imagine.. I went through my lens collection yesterday, it's ages since I used the dSLR kit and I'd forgotten how heavy some of them are. I used to get a collection of pin-head sized bruises on my shoulders when I carried the full set in a backpack. I still have a backpack that will fit everything but there's no way I'm hauling the whole lot long haul. I got a couple of my late fathers lenses to add to what I had already built up, luckily we both used Canons and my brother took his camera and the lenses I wasn't taking. I'm going to have start using them again now so that I'll be up to speed for alaska in October. It's properly wet and windy here at the moment so it should be good practise.

Just put down peppers as an allergy when you're booking or say it at the first MDR you visit. They'll keep a note whenever you visit any other restaurant on the ship, the buffet is the only place you won't be able to get them to remove it. If it's a case that you'll be ordering the potatoes every morning you can talk to the maitre'd on embarkation day. Personally I can't stand the taste of cucumber and can always tell when anything else has been beside sliced cucumber (most deli's here keep it with the tomatoes). But it's not dangerous to me, thankfully. When I did the behind the scenes tour the head chef told us that any food for folks with allergies is prepped in a dedicated area of the galley. They usually have the people with allergies give them their orders for the MDR the day before . I did see one person get an entirely separate plate of food at Teppanyaki from back of house as she was allergic to shellfish, so they can cater for allergies around the various eateries.

Wow .. only thing missing that I bring is a hanging toiletries bag rather than the over the door storage thingy. Obviously I have to bring socket adapters but I have a mix of European and Irish plugs for most of my stuff so normally don’t need adapters for everything. I will also be bringing at least one hanger with me for hanging my coat on the laundry line in the bathroom (Alaska cruise), but I would bring one on a warm weather cruise too for hanging my change robe as I found it didn’t dry well when hung on a hook and my wardrobe didn’t have any proper hangers that could hang on the line. I’ve recently come across folding hangers on Amazon that I’m going to order and test before deciding if I need a normal hanger or not

Interesting…. I haven’t yet been on Bliss but I ate the pad Thai at Food republic on Escape pre-covid and my immediate reaction to it was that it was exceptionally mild. But then my local Thai place regular gets recognised in the take-away food awards here. As @BirdTravels peppers issue, I’m actually allergic to the flesh/seeds of peppers but no problem when it’s dried powder form used (like cayenne) and that gets very complicated to explain to servers in the restaurants. I wind up avoiding dishes that might have peppers in them as a result though I did manage to get it through to the folks at Shanghai on Epic and they adapted my choices accordingly. It’s excellent fun being allergic to sweet pepper (capsicums) as the red ones often blend in with tomatoes so I have to be wary of stuff that should be tomato based. I really wish teppanyaki would ease up on the soy sauce in their rice, the last time I ate there 2 of us on the table requested low sodium but the way the chef cooked the rice if you wanted it without soy it would be completely plain.

For Dublin there’s a few options that would be kid friendly, the Viking splash tour with an amphibious vehicle, the Natural History Museum has recently re-opened it’s nicknamed the Dead Zoo. When I was about 11 my school brought us to Dublin for the day and we did: the book of Kells at the long room in Trinity college, the Natural history museum, the national history museum, the wax museum and Dublin Zoo. Apart from Trinity college all the others have been overhauled in the decades since I did that tour. The Viking splash tour didn’t exist back then as the major Viking archeological discoveries in the city hadn’t been made yet. There’s also Epic which is a new museum in the financial district concentrating on the Irish diaspora and more modern history than the other museums.

I would second the recommendation for more of items you wear daily. I like the heat but I also “glow” a lot, so I bring a t-shirt or tank for each day of the trip and double up on underwear numbers as I usually wind up with 2 showers a day in hot weather. I’m in the throw dirty laundry in your suitcase under the bed school of thought but I’m usually in a studio on an NCL ship and there isn’t much space for a dedicated laundry hamper. Heck I usually have 2 suitcases, one gets souvenir shopping and the other gets the laundry. On the footwear choices I travel in sneakers, have at least one pair of flip flops/sandals and something with a bit of a heel/wedge (my Achilles object strongly to flat footwear for more than 3 or 4 days in a row). prescription sunglasses are the single best investment for anyone that needs prescription eyewear. I’ve had laser correction done but before that I had 2 pairs of prescription sunglasses, one pair lived in my car and the other in my camera or sports bag. Proper sunglasses will also help ward off early cataract development. flordia and the Caribbean were perfect for me in February coming from damp and cold Ireland. My very first cruise was eastern Caribbean in May and there was a day and a half that were stiflingly hot but apart from that it was fine. The full day that was stinking hot was a sea day so I spent most of it in a shady spot where I could duck back into air conditioning at regular intervals.

Some of the Norwegian Cruise Line acronyms NCL = Norwegian Cruise Line, aka Norwegian NCLH = Norwegian cruise line holdings, corporate level which includes Regent Seven Seas (RSS) and Oceania FAS = Free At Sea, catchall term for a bunch of perks which varies depending on when you booked and what grade of cabin you picked but generally includes: PBP (Premium Beverage Package aka as many drinks as want costing $15 or less but only 2 at a time, some other exclusions apply), SDP (Specialty Dining Package, numbers vary from 1 upwards depending on itineraries), internet minutes, excursion credits. FAS+ = Free At Sea Plus, upgrades FAS package to include PBP+, and extra dining credit or more, excursion credits for the second guest in the cabin, unlimited (non-streaming) WiFi.. this may change over time. DSC = daily service charge aka gratuity/tips , there are separate service charges of 20% for the beverage packages and dining packages. OBC = on board credit, sometimes included in FAS promos or by your travel agent CN = cruise next, these are credits worth $250 each that are purchased on the ship at a discount of up to 50% to be used on future cruise bookings. The number of vouchers that can be purchased varies and the number that can be used towards a booking varies based on the grade of cabin and how far out you make the booking. I think that’s the main ones that will appear in posts in the ncl forum.

NCLH have signed a contract to roll out Starlink on all of their ships this year, they’ll also be adding it to the Regent and Oceania ships. Rumour is it will be on all the ships by the end of October.

I dunno what size Pete uses but a 5Lt is plenty big enough for most cameras unless you’re using a big lens. I bring a 5Lt and a 10Lt with me, the bigger one for wet swimming/snorkelling gear particularly if it’s sharing a space with my camera. There are all sorts of grades of those bags, some with just the roll top Clip, others with backpack straps or a single shoulder strap. I have a few as I work in watersports so I know how handy they can be for keeping stuff dry.