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I'm hoping there are some folks who've been solo on Bliss lately that can answer this. Does the solos coordinator pre-book any of the shows for a solos group ? i.e. do I need to run off to the entertainment booking desk as soon as I embark to book Six and Jersey Boys ? I'm not cruising until October but from recent reviews it looks like it won't be possible to pre-book before embarkation and I haven't seen any posts about the solos hosts on Bliss. On my pre-covid cruises the hosts booked about 20 seats for the 2 main shows but I haven't heard if this is happening now.

In the few years I’ve been cruising it’s mostly been a 30day final payment, at one point briefly it was 60days but it’s always been a non refundable deposit (we do have 14day window for change of mind if booking online thanks to eu rules). I did manage to get a deposit transferred to a different booking once before covid, I’m not sure that would be possible these days.

I suspect a lot of places will already be closed. If it’s anything like Irish tourist towns they probably rely on a lot of students for in-season staffing and they’ll all be back at school by October. Or they’ll have switched focus to non-cruise tourists like we do.

Btw in terms of changing itineraries “after final payment “ what is that window for most of you? My deadline for final payment is 30 days before sailing but then my deposit is also non refundable. If they change itineraries within the 30day window then it’d better be a damn good reason. They changed the arrival time for Victoria on my Alaska cruise but they gave me that update a year before the sail date and it doesn’t make much of a difference on that itinerary anyway.

Warnemunde was the one that some passengers embarked at and was affected by high winds, and I think Stockholm city was the other but there is another pier/port outside the city that is accessible to the ship in windy conditions. I think they've switched to that pier entirely for the Breakaway/+ class ships and then run a shuttle bus into the city from there. Basically there's a narrow channel on the approach to Warnemunde and Stockholm so if the wind is from the wrong direction on the big ships you could wind up with an evergiven situation.

I'm cruising Alaska in October (I know it's late in the season but I have no choice due to work) and I'm thinking about renting a lens or 2 in Seattle rather than bringing all my kit from Ireland. Has anyone had any experience with Glazer's Rental ? They seem to be the one place in Seattle that might work. I don't want to do an online rental as I'd have to have it shipped with all the risks associated with that. I got a lens back from a friend previously that had the O-haze filter smashed on it, lucky was an add on filter rather than the lens.

I'm actually on the October 14th sailing so in Juneau on the 16th. I'm from the west coast of Ireland and grew up in watersports so heavy seas don't worry me. I helped haul fishing boats out of the water as a kid when storms came in earlier than expected. As long as I can see the waves the motion doesn't bother me. I know the exhausted feeling after a busy season, I work in a surf shop 6 days a week in the summer, thankfully we close on Mondays once it starts to get quiet and I have another day off mid week. I am so happy we don't do rentals or lessons anymore as that used to turn into 12-hr days when the tide was right/wrong. I'm hoping I might see the northern lights if the weather cooperates on such a late sailing as a possible silver lining to a later date.

I sailed on Epic early last year when a big storm caused flight delays across the northern US. They held the ship for one flight load so we departed a couple of hours late and another group were flown to our second port of call as they couldn't get flights to the first port. The passengers flown to the port of call were put up in a hotel for the couple of days they had to wait for the ship to arrive. I don't know how normal that was or if those passengers also had insurance from NCL but they have delayed departures and flown guests out to meet the ship if they couldn't hold the departure.

I haven't looked at the Baltics itineraries lately but there are 2 ports with issues when there's high winds and one of those is/was an embarkation port so they have to wait for the winds to behave instead of skipping it which can lead to the next port stop getting shortened or skipped.

Unfortunately October is the one month that works for me and only NCL sail Alaska that late in the season and only with Bliss, Encore or Sun, and Sun doesn't include Glacier Bay on it's itinerary.

I work in a resort town so can't take vacation between May and September which leaves October as the only option for Alaska. April is hit & miss at work depending on when Easter falls and this year it's quite early which eliminates that month too.

I've noticed a few things seem to be closed there on a Monday which happens to be the day we're scheduled to be in port. I can't complain as I work in a resort town and we close on Mondays out of high season.

They don't always make them available, it depends on how many guests have bought a full cruise spa pass.

I'm going solo to Alaska with NCL in October, I've been solo on every cruise I've done. One of my friends is keen to do Alaska too so she may come along and celebrate a roundy birthday on the ship. Her father wanted to do Alaska too but her mother just isn't into travelling and he has Parkinson's. As she describes his mobility these days, he can run no problem he just can't walk and she doesn't think he'd be able for the long haul flights from Ireland.

I've only sailed with NCL and out of school holiday windows so the age spread tends to be quite varied. You can get a look at all of their excursions regardless of specific itinerary https://www.ncl.com/fr/en/shore-excursions Not all will be offered on each itinerary but I found it was good for getting ideas of what's available at different ports and I could then search for local providers (check trip advisor and CC for reviews). Also the prices on the webpage above are the full normal price without the $50 excursion credit discount.

My last cruise was March last year, my next will be October of this year and since the end of last summer I've been doing endless research on the ports and having it in the back of my mind with any shopping I'm doing. My amazon save for later list gets longer week by week..

I've been to howl at the moon on all the cruises I've done and it's usually great but a couple of cruises it was a complete wash out either because the guest musicians were too far up their own butts showing off rather than paying attention to the audience or because the passengers weren't into it so there was only a handful of people at the show. The latter happened on a cruise shortly after the resumption and the ship was less than 50% full and was mostly european guests who wouldn't be familiar with the concept.

Oh I know all about that one, the local surfers had a lengthy argument with the local council here about a new pier for ferries that was planned. At the time there was a resident wild dolphin in the area of the pier work and they had to draw her away to another area before they did any blasting. Since then she moves up and down the coast an awful lot more rather than staying where she had originally settled. I know a couple of the planners in the council and they were astonished at the amount of highly technical submissions they got from the international surfing community for both that project and Trump’s planned seawall in front of his golf course here.

I’ve only had it on an itinerary once and we made it but the tender queuing process was such a mess a lot of people missed their early excursions, I had a ticket for the first tender after the vips and excursions but it was something like 1.30pm by the time I made it to the island. I remember hearing/reading that the reason there isn’t a pier is due to the depth of the water making it’s construction prohibitively expensive.

Ahh the joys of NCLs rubbish software department. I swear there’s a random number generator buried in every program and webpage and depending what value it generates it will decide to work or not! I was on Epic twice in the space of 6 months, first one the app behaved and everything worked as it should, the second time - nope would not cooperate no matter what I did on the same phone as the first trip. I’m a techie and tried everything possible from power cycling the phone to uninstalling and reinstalling the app. It’s a complete lottery.

Oddly there was bias against seafood in Ireland for donkey’s years as everybody considered it “poor people’s” food because you could go out and catch it yourself. Nowadays there are growing numbers of seafood restaurants and my brother’s staple for eating out is fish & chips. Personally I’m more into shellfish and used to go out picking mussels and catching shrimp at one of the local rocky beaches when I was a teen.

This may be a wasted question, but … do the retailers in Juneau adjust their hours to include times when large ships are in port? I’ll be on Norwegian Bliss in October and our port time is supposed to be 1:30pm to 11pm and given the reduced daylight most of the appealing excursions run from 2pm to 6pm. In my case I want to go whale watching which means I probably won’t get a chance to see anything (except pub/restaurants) in town if everything is closing at 5 or 6pm. Is there any chance the local craft shops and museums will be open late to cater to the cruisers? AFAIK there’s only 3 more scheduled arrivals for the season after mine, encore x2 and bliss’s final sailing for the season.

There’s a few places in Ireland with heaps of Puffins in the summer, the most popular would be the cliffs of moher (a stones throw from my home turf) and also the Skelligs down in Kerry. There were so many puffins around when Star Wars was being filmed on Skellig Michael that they created the porgs in order to hide them via cgi.

If you can find out what’s happening with the entertainment for the rest of the year that would be great. I’m in the process of trying to convince a friend to join me on an Alaskan cruise at the end of the season so I’d like to know if Six and Jersey Boys will be continuing after the news that NCL has cancelled contracts for some performers and shows on other ships.

1) I think so, I certainly brought a water bottle with me but no one was checking what was in it, so fill a yeti or the like with what you want and you should be ok, but just don’t get too rowdy 2) yes and yes 3) 8am to 10pm but may close earlier on the last night and there’s tours running through the spa on embarkation day up to 5pm.