Sailing12Away

Ahh, ok. I think with enough notice and willingness to pay, DaS is able to work with other cruise lines if they have conference room space to set up their equipment. Hubby's uncle isn't in a position to be able to do anything on their own, so we'll have to just do a bit more research between both DaS and the requirements for each cruise line that we're considering. It's just nice to know there's options out there and the whole family can still travel together even with different health issues and such.

These are not my gripes... these were from the OP 9 pages back who farted and left the building for the rest of us locked inside to smell. Maybe because I show up a bit later in the day, but the last few times I've arrived for a cruise there were a half dozen Haven employees standing around waiting for us to decide we wanted to go on the ship. So again, depending on the time of day, they're either super busy or doing nothing at all.

Chickie nuggs all the way..... The safe in the closet will look similar to this (might not be exactly this one). You create your own 4 digit code to use and that will lock/unlock it. We tend to keep our passports and main wallets in there and not even bother to lock it, just keeps it in a well known spot for us in case of emergency.

What time was the flight you were looking at? As mentioned above, if you can book something no earlier than 12pm you should be ok. If the cruise ends in "Rome" it's about an hour away from Rome. So you have to take that into account when estimating how much time you need to get to the airport. The airport is also a bit confusing (to me at least), so for our fight home from there it took us a good 2 hours to get through all the different lines and security check points and make it to our gate for take off. It's a short flight from Rome to Munich, so even if the concert was that same night you still have plenty of time to drop bags off at your hotel, freshen up a bit, and get to the concert if you took a 12pm or 1pm flight over there. There's a nice 12:55 trip on Lufthansa nonstop for <$100 available which would be perfect... Another slightly crazy idea would be to look at Ryanair. They only fly on certain days from FCO, but if you can fly into Memmingen the price is only $18. Yes, 18. You would then need to figure out how to get from there over to Munich (about 60-90 mins away) which might negate the crazy cost savings, but there's a train and I doubt it costs $100+. So yeah, depends on what day the Swifty show is, but yes, it's doable and fairly cheap to get there once you're in Italy.

NYC public school break info: https://www.schools.nyc.gov/calendar/2024-2025-school-year-calendar (Mid-winter recess Feb 17-21, 2015; Spring recess April 14-18, 2025) NJ school break in one township: info: https://www.paramus.k12.nj.us/accnt_308692/site_308693/Documents/2024-2025-Calendar.pdf (no mid-winter break, same spring break as NY) Different NJ township: https://www.monroetwp.k12.nj.us/pdf/District_Calendars/School_Calendar_Next.pdf (Spring break April 18-25, 2025) With regards specifically to "spring break", for comparison NYU college will have it from March 24-28, 2025. So it's all over the place and depends on specifically which crowds you're trying to avoid.

In Seattle we stayed across the street from the port, so dropped luggage off as early as we could, got our key cards and all squared away, but never stepped foot on the ship. Left the terminal building to wander Seattle a bit before returning and then getting to skip some (not all) of the lines to actually get on the ship. Unless you're in the Haven, your current plan has a lot of flaws and won't leave you a lot of time to wander NYC. Better to either leave the bags at the hotel, or do something similar to what I did in Seattle where you get all squared away but don't go on the ship. So drop the bags off at the cruise and then explore the city some more before starting the cruise. Realistically you won't be boarding the ship until after 11-12. So if your plan was to run and do things on the ship, then get off to do city things, only to return just 3 hours later - seems like a lot of wasted time. But it all depends on what specifically you wanted to do in the city. So long as you sign up for the latitudes stuff that first day, I've never seen a need to be the first on board to sign up. They run more than one behind the scenes tour.

Go straight to the NCL website for more up to date info on what is or isn't on board. https://www.ncl.com/cruise-ship/Gem

All that saves you is maybe 15-20 mins. You still have to wait for the ship to be cleared, wait to disembark, walk through the maze to get from the ship, through the terminal, through customs, and outside to hail an Uber/Lyft/taxi/car service. Then the drive to the airport, the check-in for the flight, possibly checking bags there, security, walk to the gate.... You also didn't mention where the cruise is traveling to/through. A short trip with just a handful of 'normal' stops will have a faster customs line to get through than a 15+ day Panama Canal transit.

Are you sure they're for rent and not a first come first served type of thing? The ones in the Haven are not reservable. If it's open, use it. When you're done, move your stuff so someone else can use it.

Was that with dialysis at sea? We've been trying to finagle a family trip for hubby's large extended family, but it's tough between his uncle's dialysis needs, cousin's autism at sea needs, our preference in where we go/when we go.... The only trips I've seen DaS offer were through RCC, so curious to hear they're able to do it on NCL ships as well.

Are you saying the Haven crew members are union employees that are prohibited from leaving the sanctuary of the Haven embarkation lounge and offering cups of water to ALL nearby guests on an exceptionally hot day with embarkation delays? The port authority union employees are not doing this - which is the problem. So why in the world can't NCL allow their own employed crew members to do it? No one is asking NCL staff to become luggage porters, security screeners, or any of the other countless jobs it takes to get folks on a cruise. But things within their scope of their role that are outside the scope of the union port crew - absolutely they can.

If NCL can have 20+ Haven staff members standing around waiting to personally escort passengers onesies twosies onto the ship, they can reallocate them elsewhere during non-peak Haven boarding times and *gasp* ask the Haven guests to take a seat and wait 15-20 mins to be escorted on in a small group - or let us walk on our own. Some of us don't need/want that escort. I'm saying they need to drill down into the why. Why were folks particularly upset at port xyz on this particular day. When they have data that suggests a true problem, look into ways to resolve it. If that means renting additional folding chairs - so be it. If it means someone sets up a cup of water station when you get into the terminal building like they have at each port of call when you return to the ship - so be it. If that means asking someone to print out a neon sign that says "Priority boarding this way" because the existing signs aren't big enough, so be it. If it means working with the port staff to better educate them on the workflow and process for their cruise line so there's no confusion about what is/isn't supposed to happen, so be it. Not for me to fix their problems when I don't know for sure what they are. But if organizations like Disney can figure out "if you're standing here you have another 2hr wait before you get to see Mickey" then I'm sure NCL or the port crew can figure something out as well.

I intentionally don't book it because I know I wouldn't like the solarium. I want a 'real' balcony, so I don't book rooms that don't have one.

Not sure why you're so fixated on specifically NY embarkation ports. I never claimed to be an expert in them nor was I trying to say that my solo trip out of one means that it's the standard/norm/whatever for every trip every time. My point was simply that if there's a problem at any embarkation port where consistently the line at guest services once folks get on board is an hour deep more often than not - NCL should be looking into the reasons why. There will be things they can control or account for or compensate for (more chairs, cups of water, clearer instructions on where to go, estimated wait times, etc), and there will be things they can't (heat, rain, capacity of the building). But they don't have to just accept it as what it is and continue to sail out of there.

Like I said, my one trip out of NY we got out of the Uber and walked onto the ship in under 30 mins. My folks who were not in Haven had a similar experience, so it's not because we skipped any lines that regular folks would have to be on. As we were walking on the ship we looked over to the terminal and I even took a photo of my folks as they were walking on. They came completely separately from us, went to the normal security lines, etc etc. As for there not being any other options - that's nonsense. You've literally named two other nearby ports with Brooklyn and Cape Liberty. Can NCL move in there overnight - of course not. But looking at cruises scheduled now, there are plenty of days where nothing is scheduled - meaning NCL can claim that spot if they wanted. Especially if they were doing one way trips where you didn't need an opening on the front and back end.

That's all well and good for NY, but I don't remember seeing a ton of complaints about that port. So even though that's where I live I wasn't suggesting they change that one if that's what you assumed. Only sailed out of here once and there were no hiccups. The point though is that they can do it. Not overnight, but with planning and research there are other options. Simply telling a city you're working on a 5 year plan to never come back will either make them cheer or potentially change some things around. Either way a win because if a location doesn't want you there you'll never get good service from the sub contacted teams who have to "help" you.

Right, but doesn't NCL get to pick and choose which ports they use? If they consistently have issues with poor customer experience at a particular port for whatever reason (not talking the one off due to mother nature or weirdo things), isn't it in their best interest to stop using that port to avoid the complaints they know will come from guests? In the lab world, we can pick which reference lab we want to use for tests we don't perform ourselves in-house. It's actually a requirement of the primary lab to annually review and evaluate the performance of the reference lab we use to ensure they're meeting our requirements for client satisfaction, accuracy, timeliness, etc. Cruise industry isn't as regulated on some things as the lab world, but I would imagine it's got to be some sort of KPI/metric somewhere in some bean counter's quarterly power point. No? Am I over thinking this?

Our trip in Italy was quite a fiasco with the trains. Going to the cruise we used a private company with a tour beforehand in the morning. But when the cruise ended we thought we would use the trains to get to Venice. Took a shuttle to the Civitavecchia train station and from there it was easy to tell which train to get on to get to Rome. But had to lug suitcases up/down stairs and help MIL along. When we got to Rome for the transfer to Venice it was a nightmare. There were only 4 tracks where we were and none were labeled for Venice. Finally realized we had to walk all the way to the other main station area. Again, lots of stairs, no elevators we could find, long walk, and hard to figure out where to go. By the time we found the board with all the listed trains, it was now a run (literally) to get over to the correct track, and then again, 2 flights of stairs up with all the luggage. A kind man saw me struggling with 2 bags (mine and MILs) and took one up for me, but we missed the train by about 2 minutes. So had to hike it all the way back to the central part of the station to figure out how to switch our tickets. Turns out you couldn't, so we had to buy all new tickets to get to Venice - at an extra ~400 euro expense. Going from Venice to Florence was a bit easier as we had figured out the system by that point, but when we left Florence to go to the airport again we missed our train because the stations are not very accommodating for elderly slow walkers. That one wasn't as big a deal as that ticket was a special one for the airport and you could take any train with it, but again, annoying doing the 10+ min walk only to miss the train because MIL can only walk so fast. So yes, the trains are an option - but not for everyone. Another reason to pack light if you're not doing direct car service pickups/transfers.

We've been in 16021 and in Feb/March was in 16019 next door. Both are perfect and amazing. Steps from the concierge, restaurant, bars, lounge, pool.... anything you can need. No noise issues at all. We prefer 16 with less steps to the bars.

I too was grossly disappointed in the misleading title. Was hoping you could now get a growler to go, or order beer by the growler similar to wine by the bottle. As for the Tracy Arms excursion, I too put my vote in that it's worth the price. Super close up, and on our journey we saw so much wildlife on the way there that I have over 1K pictures of seals, whales, eagles, and everything else Alaska has to offer. When we were near the glacier, the crew pulled up a smallish iceberg on board for folks to hold and take photos with, then a separate smaller one that they put into a blender and made margaritas with. Nothing colder or fresher than that.

It's one voucher set per every 2 platinum members in the cabin. If there's 2, you get one set of vouchers to use together for the 2 guests. Last trip we had 3 in the same cabin, all 3 were platinum and above. We got 2 different sets of vouchers to use between the 3 of us.

Lovely as in the experience and service they provide was lovely and enjoyable. Gets the order correct, anticipates needs for refills or clearing of plates, nearby when we're ready to flag them down for the check... Nothing at all to do with their looks, I don't recall ever in my life using the word lovely to describe someone's appearance.

Thanks, I'll keep checking every now and then. There has to be more than 1 excursion being offered on an 8 day trip.

We came in 2 days early and stayed here: https://treviromesuite.com/ Walking distance to the fountain, coliseum, and various other things to see in Rome. Day of the cruise we booked a private tour (http://www.tiberlimo.com/). They picked us up from the hotel, took us to Hadrian's Villa and Villa D'Este, then stopped for lunch, and finally dropped us off at the cruise. Perfect day where we maxed out seeing things in Rome and made it to the cruise without any issues. We had a driver and English speaking interpreter/guide.

It's called being denied entry to the embarkation terminal and waiting outside. Happened to me in both Seattle and LA. So they can do it if/when they want to. Impossible to say which changes came about from folks complaining here on CC or in their post cruise surveys as I'm sure folks of the notion to complain are doing it in both spots. But the idea of having a fixed MDR menu on Prima only lasted a few months. The confusion over the Latitude meal vouchers and which restaurant you could or couldn't use it in changed to be anywhere at any time. Those are recent ones that come to mind. Whether folks say it on social media sources or directly back to NCL, as long as their voicing it somewhere that's better than folks who grumble grumble and expecting change to happen when you don't even ask for it.