barbarossa_hoosier

I can somewhat see where the OP is coming from, but I think the experience is more a function of ship size (passenger capacity), cruise date, and (to a lesser extent) itinerary - and not necessarily indicative of NCL engaging in class-separation of passengers. Travel on the larger ships when college-age and 20-something passengers are more likely to book, and the cruise will have more of a party atmosphere - especially 3- or 4-night cruises (the dreaded "booze" cruises).

We homeschool our girls, so we have the flexibility to travel/vacation outside of the peak times. My preference is smaller ships in off-peak, on longer sailings. The passengers on those cruises tend to be more our speed. I've not been in the Haven, but we have been bid-upgraded to a suite (on the Dawn). I loved the suite experience enough that we booked it again on a future cruise - on the Jade (Jewel class). I don't think, for us right now, the Haven offers the same value for cost.

In either case, I don't say that to speak poorly of those who are looking for different cruise experiences, be that a party experience or an exclusive experience. More power to everyone, to have the experience they want. It's their time and their money.

On 6/18/2019 at 9:57 AM, Beardface said:

It looks like someone blended up all the FC Barcelona uniforms over the years and then vomited them over the bow of a cruise ship at full steam

I'm guessing it's an homage - of sorts - to Joan Miro, and Catalan modernisme in general? That hull art would be right at home at Parc Guell. I like it, but then, I'm biased. Barcelona is one of my favorite cities.

I'm sure it's partly a function of being a smaller ship, but we found the crew, activities, and entertainers to be much more welcoming and intimate. Other than the tableside guac, we thought Los Lobos was just okay. I loved Moderno. We were in a suite on the Dawn, so I'm sure that biases my experience overall; that said, I loved it. The fresh-pressed coffee with the suite breakfast is something that I'll miss on every other non-suite cruise.

We loved the trivia; as another poster said, we had quite the group that engaged in all of the trivia, and everyone had a lot of fun with it. Same thing with the karaoke. Again, I think these are partly a function of ship size, but they contributed to a wonderful cruise experience.

Neither of my girls made use of the children's activities; our vacations tend to be family time, and I'll take advantage of that for as long as they still want to spend time with me! That said, neither was ever at a loss for activities or things to do. Only one soft-serve ice cream station in the buffet was a minor inconvenience for them at times.

I would sail the Dawn again in a heartbeat. We first sailed NCL on the Getaway, and I much, much prefer the Dawn. We have upcoming cruises on the Pearl and the Jade (and later, on the Encore), so I'll be interested to compare experiences.

I ate breakfast at Savor on disembarkation day (07 - 14 January sailing). It was a limited menu (by necessity, I'm sure), and was much better than dealing with the buffet.

Thanks for the review!

Our girls are 10 and 9, and going on their first cruise in about a week and a half. Any suggestions for them, for getting the most out of the youth programs, etc.?

I can't wait to hear the first reviews in only a few, short weeks.

I don't know if we'll be in the market for another cruise while she's still there, but I would love to sail on the Enchantment again, and I think it would be great to do so out of her "original" home of Port Canaveral.

I'll be interested to see how well RCCL handles compensation for such massive changes to existing bookings, though.

Opera, classical music, violins, Gala/Formal nights, 2 hour dinners....have I booked the wrong cruise for an 11 year old?? I'm worried. My kid loves Taylor Swift, YouTube prank videos, swimming and eating plain noodles with butter.

My daughters will be 11 and almost 10 when we cruise Seaside in November 2018. This will be our first cruise with MSC.

Personally, I look at such things as opportunities to expose them to new ideas and experiences, rather than a missed opportunity for them to spend more time doing things they could already do at home. And, if all else fails, it does appear that MSC has a pretty good family/children's program. So, I don't worry one bit that my girls will enjoy themselves immensely.

That is the information I was given and if these shows are similar to the Divina shows I'll be very happy. However I heard that there will not be a Michael Jackson show which was one of my favorites. If you check my website in my signature I have a link to full descriptions of all the shows that are planned. Follow the link to my Seaside cruise and click on Entertainment. Bob

Thanks for the information. I think these shows look fantastic! I'll be looking forward to your review (I hope?).

Same experience as OP for me. Getaway cruise in January 2018. This is our first NCL cruise. I checked in online, and was never presented an opportunity to select a check-in time. The eDocs only indicate boarding begins at noon.

What a fantastic review; thank you! We will be on the Getaway for this same itinerary in about a month and a half; can't wait!

I would consider a cabana at $175. But at $400? No way.

This has been a great read! Thanks, all of you.

I'm happy to hear that desserts are the overwhelming choice so far. I have no sweet tooth, so I rarely eat them, anyway. :)

I think Harvest Caye is going to work perfectly for our needs - but that is only because our needs are likely different from most. We just want a morning beach/pool experience, and plan to be back on the ship before the afternoon heat. We can do without drinks until lunch, and will simply return to the ship at lunch time.

Otherwise, Harvest Caye seems like a combination of all of the sanitization of a private island, with all of the disadvantages of a port of call. Our drinks package doesn't work, even though it is a private island. NCL provides no food (or even water, apparently?), even though it is a private island. Instead, there is overpriced food and drinks, for a cost. There is (presumably?) no bombardment for shopping, excursions, and transportation - but that seems to come at the expense of higher prices for the available shopping and excursions. And regarding excursions: it's a captive audience, being a private island, so there isn't even the option of exploring third-party/independent excursion operators.

So, again: we're going to enjoy our morning at the beach/pool, and then go back to the ship for included food, drinks, and activities. But I don't at all consider it to be a "private island" experience.

I'll be more than happy to be proven wrong, though.

WRONG! their base salary agreement includes tips.

 

Many years ago I worked as a waitress. My salary was below the minimum wage. The law allowed it to be that way because it would be augmented by tips. It is customary in the US to tip.

 

You cruise on a line ran by an American Company and that is the way it is.

There are reasons that cruise ships fly Bahamian flags instead of Old Glory - one of which is that being registered outside of the US allows the cruise ship to avoid the implications of US labor laws. So, the labor laws that protected you as a waitress do not protect the service workers on cruise ships.

If gratuities are called gratuities, then they are not and cannot be mandatory.

gratuity

 

[gruh-too-i-tee, -tyoo-]

 

• noun, plural gratuities.
  

1.a gift of money, over and above payment due for service, as to awaiter or bellhop; tip.

 

2.something given without claim or demand.

It is wrong to force someone to pay a gratuity, or to attempt to guilt-trip or shame someone for not paying gratuities.

That said, the practice is terrible, and as others have said, merely allows cruise lines to manipulate cruise fares at the expense of their crew, by putting the burden on passengers. Personally, I would prefer the standard gratuities simply be rolled into the cruise fare. Don't call it a "service charge"; just include it in the base fare, and indicate that the base fare includes standard gratuities.

In our limited experience, we simply pre-pay them anyway, so we don't have an added expense at the end of the cruise. We've more or less already rolled it into our fare. That then frees us up to focus ACTUAL gratuities on above-and-beyond service, which we are happy to do.

But as long as cruise lines continue to call them "gratuities", I refuse to castigate someone for treating them as gratuities.

Based on a sample size of exactly one, I have to say that the Enchantment is a fantastic ship, with a wonderful crew.

This Anker 4-port USB travel charger worked perfectly for our needs:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01N2HIR9R/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

2 smart phones, GoPro, 2 tablets, and various other things.

Did u realize u could stay on the ship?

 

Sent from my iPhone using Forums

Do you mean, stay on the ship for Thursday night (for a "normal" Friday morning disembarkation), or do you mean stay on the ship to ride out the hurricane? For the former, I didn't know about that option until after I had modified my hotel reservation. I never knew about the latter option, until dagunny posted this thread.

From the time on Tuesday afternoon that the first announcement was made that we were staying in Nassau until 4 PM on Wednesday, missing CocoCay and Key West and returning to Miami at 3 PM on Thursday the line at guest services went all the way back to the elevator lobby. It was like that for most of the rest of the cruise.

Truth. I decided that purchasing internet for a day and making a couple ship-to-shore calls (that thankfully didn't get charged) was much preferable to standing in that line for precious hours of whatever was left of our cruise.

We managed to get our travel arrangements changed (thanks, RCL, for not charging for the ship-to-shore calls), including hotel stay on Thursday night instead of Friday, and flight out Friday night instead of Saturday morning. So, we braved the *ahem* "Express" line, and made it to our hotel.

Enjoy another night on the ship, though I'm not sure if the accommodation is gracious, or the least they could do.

Boarding Enchantment of the Seas in a couple hours. It looks like we will be in the clear (Irma should still be east of Cuba by the time we disembark Friday morning), other than our planned overnight in Miami. Saturday morning flight out is starting to look a bit iffy...

She's for Sale, to anyone with 300Mil! This was listed just recently. They won't put another penny into her until she's sold. That's a really nice vessel for a small Cruise Line. Anyone want to start a 3-4 day cruise line out of FL? Lol.

 

http://www.yachtworld.com/boats/1996/Cruise-Ship-2400-Passengers--Stock-No.-S2388-2792717/United-States#.Waizv0EpCaM

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

The listing indicates Build Year 1996, and a length of 279M, gross tonnage of 73.8KT, and capacity of 1994/2393.

Wouldn't those specs be in-line with an original Vision-class ship, rather than the stretched Enchantment OTS, which was built in 1997, and has a length of 301M, gross tonnage of 82.9KT, and capacity of 2252/2730?

I'm guessing the mystery ship is the Grandeur of the Seas:

https://www.royalcaribbeanpresscenter.com/fact-sheet/6/grandeur-of-the-seas/

http://www.uscg.mil/tvncoe/Documents/safetyalerts/SurgeProtectiveDevices.pdf

I found Page 2 to be especially helpful (and succinctly explaining what others have posted/linked here). Thank you.

It has been reported here that the Belkin sometimes manages to get by a security screen. The Anker, having only a two prong plug is not surge protected.

I actually purchased the Belkin for my normal travel (even hotel rooms can be light on accessible/convenient outlets), and the Anker for the cruise, so I'm not really worried about the Belkin; it was purely curiosity.

Surge protection has nothing to do with amperage draw, but with excessive voltage. Overcurrent is taken care of by the circuit breaker in the ship's wiring. Ship's wiring is not "ungrounded", but a "floating" ground, meaning that the third prong of the plug does in fact connect to ground wiring, that goes back to the neutral point of the wye wound generator, and does not use the hull as ground. The problem with surge protectors onboard ships is caused by this "floating" ground, where both of the normal conductors (the "hot" and the "neutral" in house wiring) are at voltages above the ground wire (house wiring has the neutral and ground at the same potential). Therefore, when a light fixture or a motor somewhere else on the ship goes to ground, the voltage between the ground pin and the "hot" and "neutral" in the surge protector can go in the reverse direction, in other words the voltage in the ground wire is higher than the normal conductors. Even if this reverse voltage is less than the clamping voltage (the voltage where the MOV semi-conductors in the surge protector switch on and shunt the voltage to ground), and is of no danger to your electronics (unless they have a ground fault as well), the MOV's are not designed to accept reverse voltage and can go into "thermal runaway", where even a small amount of current provides a large amount of heat, and the surge protector will burn.

 

Here is a post from an EE, who didn't believe my crusade against surge protectors, and who researched it himself, and is now a believer:

 

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showpost.php?p=48102515&postcount=10

 

See, I appreciate the opportunity to learn new things. I'm a ChemE, not an EE (I could talk much more eloquently about the RO system than the electrical system...). I'm not at all familiar with the components of surge protectors, and my minimal google searching didn't turn up that kind of detailed explanation.

And to me, the final question as to why surge protectors are not needed is the fact that none of the ship's electronics, whether computers, the POS registers, the navigation equipment, or the engine room automation is protected by surge protectors, and I've been on several ships that have been struck by lightning and nothing has failed. Lightning passes directly through the hull and does not enter the electrical system. And, the ship steps voltages down in 3-4 steps, unlike the utility pole transformers that when they fail can send up to 10k volts to your house. Multiple ship's transformers would have to fail simultaneously to do this.

I'm really not concerned with the *need* for a surge protector on the ship; if anything, the issue is that so many such devices now have surge protection built in, and it is more and more difficult to find them *without* surge protection.

The Anker should more than suffice for everything we'll have, and will be much more convenient.

Just wondering (primary device I intend to use is listed after this one; I'm just curious): would this pose any problems with security (yes, I know it says "surge protection" in the title; I'm asking if security would recognize/confiscate it)?

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00ATZJ5YS/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Note, I also have this (actually, two; I liked the one I have so much, I bought a second one specifically to take on the cruise):

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01N2HIR9R/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s03?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Side note: I don't understand the concern with surge protection. I would think that the overall amp draw would be the concern - that, and the ungrounded circuitry used on cruise ships (in which case, plugging in three-pronged plugs would potentially be the problem, in case of a short).