Sailing12Away

Hubby wears jeans and either a polo, or a plain t-shirt with one of his crazy neon dragon button downs. Think of a Hawaiian shirt, but covered in dragons.

If anyone has a daily handy and can give a blind person a clue on where to find Waldo it would be appreciated. I know they always have the themes, but I must be blind as a bat as I've never seen it advertised. Only find out when I stumble nearby and see the signs outside of O'Sheehans or on the table placards in the buffet. We always say "why don't they advertise these things better in the dailies so we know ahead of time if it's something that catches our bellies?". Apparently this whole time they have and we're just blind.

Call me crazy as I haven't spent too much time looking into it as my companion traveler and I share the same house and bank account so it doesn't matter to us. But isn't the final invoice a single invoice per cabin? Meaning that if he gets $100 in extra cabin charges for booze upgrades and bottles of wine, and I have none, our final net cabin bill will still be $0 even though he only had $50 of credits (because I had the other $50 in credit)? The only time this scenario of having the stockholder credits split between the 2 guests gets wonky is when there is an uneven amount of spending and one guest feels 'owed' the extra $50 the other person had. It all depends on what exactly the rightful owner of the credits wanted to use the credits on I suppose, but beyond it being a dopey system - it honestly just works out to having to review that final folio bill together and sort out who owes who what. Or - keep it simple and say 'Hey, you're paying for the Uber ride home since you got the extra $50 credit on your account that should have been mine." I can't imagine a scenario where 2 people are friendly enough to share a cabin together for a trip at sea, but not friendly enough to sort out a measly $50. It's honestly an extra round of drinks at the pub, or next lunch is on me type of thing.

Yes, you can check your emails. Use the technique shof said above to save your minutes if you're afraid of running out. The only caveat - you will have a very hard time downloading/uploading photos or any attachments. If you just need to see what is happening back home or at work it will be fine. But if you're trying to email friends/family photos of your adventures, best to wait until you're on land. Our cell phone is through Tmobile and we have free text/data in any country. If we know we'll be in a certain place for a while sometimes we'll pay for the month long free calling as well depending on what we're doing and who we need to contact. But when we're on land I use my phone data to upload all our photos and deal with more challenging emails. So only using the ship wifi when at sea to peek and then go back to vacation mode.

Cans are typically not included for free. But, depending on who you ask, how you ask, when you ask, they may be given out. Most times when staying in the Haven at the end of the night when they're closing up, the bartenders wouldn't have a problem giving us 1-2 cans to go back to the room with. Certainly easier than carrying two open cups that will get watered down with ice by the time we want to drink them.

We sailed the exact same itinerary on Prima this past September. Cold and rainy the first few days in Iceland and Norway, and we finally got great weather and sunny skies in the best port Geiringer. When we were in Norway we got treated to a Northern Lights show around 2:30am one evening. Amazing show, and this was in September.

Have done the free tours on Joy and Prima. Sailing Epic next month and if the date/time works for us we'll probably do it again. Always interesting to see the life behind the scenes. The paid tours usually include the bridge whereas the free ones tend to skip it. If you've never done one before and you're a ways away from earning the free one and it interests you - then sure, why not sign up?

We did exactly that on Prima in September. We used a combination of our FAS credits and platinum vouchers to pay for my nephews pizza at Onda. Got him to order an app that the adults wanted to eat and it all worked out in the end. At first the servers were very confused about who had to use the voucher vs who was ordering from the credit as one is transferrable/sharable the other is not. But when they saw he was 12yrs old and only really wanted a pizza they let up on the speech about who can do what. When you check in at the podium just give them your voucher, when the server comes over explain you have both a voucher and one FAS credit to be used. They'll sort it out.

Yes. Depending on the ship the pool bar is just around the corner. They usually run and grab the drinks from over there.

Love the mini sombrero hats!

Yes, but they already have that with The Local (O'Sheehans). That's my only gripe, it doesn't seem any different from what they already have. Would have been better served to change it into a different casual venue. Either simple deli style sandwiches, made to order salads, simple mediterranean place with gyros and skewers... lots of ways they can reutilize that space without doing the same burgers & stuff that's already offered in multiple places on board.

Not to be insensitive, but with such a large group - what exactly were your expectations going in? Once you get the record locator number from NCL for your flight info, at that point you work directly with the airline carrier to pick your seats. Even with not being able to upgrade on some flights we have always been able to pick seats next to each other when going to the airline's website.

Found it... August 2021 on the Encore. Taco bowl with barbacoa beef. RIP

Just go in with the right expectations and you'll be fine. With Prima (and I assume Viva) you have to do a lot more planning and compromising than you normally would. If you really want to eat at the food trucks, you need to either get there early, get there right before they close, or make friends with anyone sitting at a table with an open seat to share. Or - go to the Local next door instead and try your luck another day. If you reallly want to get a seat for the Rumors show, get there and stand in line an hour before it starts. Or, take your chancing finding a leaning perch near the bar or against the wall and stand and dance along. I was poo-pooing all the negative folks when I was first reading them myself, until I sailed on Prima in September. It's just not the ship for us and how we like to cruise and spend time with people. So we're waiting to see what changes are made to Aqua and beyond. Now if the price was more agreeable and the itinerary was amazing, I would certainly hop on board - but never again in the room we had.

My sausage & grits are gone along with my hashbrowns.... this is not looking good. Agree that this is now just a glorified O'Sheehans 2.0. Even if there's a few items that are different, there's nothing compelling me to say 'ooh I want to go there' now whereas before there was. I'm hoping O'Sheehans/The Local gets a menu overhaul as well to have some different things pop up. They keep removing my favorite items from there too. Does anyone remember the taco bowl salad thing they used to have? It came in a giant fried tortilla shell and was quite yummy - only got to have it once before that was yanked from the menu.

I actually hate the keycard waiting taped on your cabin door that both RCC and Celebrity do. For me my trip doesn't start until I have the keycard in hand, so it's odd to have to go to the muster station and constantly pull up their app to check in for things instead of just quickly scanning a card. If you're traveling with others who are arriving separately from you, also makes it a challenge for them to get their card. My MIL was sharing a cabin with her cousin who arrived separately and there was no way for us to retape the broken envelope up on the door so she could get her card. We had to keep texting with her to see where we were at and where she was at so we could meet up when she arrived so she could get access to her room.

That doesn't help if you have pre teens sailing with you though, as they're not allowed in the thermal spa.

Same... looking forward to the chuckle when we get to learn who was who in each of the 'most likely' categories. Happy new year! Enjoy the trip, anything you're able to share with those of us tagging along vicariously is a bonus - so don't feel obligated to struggle with wifi when you can focus on just enjoying your time with friends and family.

Don't remember... that was our Canada trip we did with my folks and the one where I caught Covid for the first time. So didn't get to see a whole lot of the smaller acts, and I was in lockdown for the last 3 days of the trip.

Good golly, just stop. Stop telling other people how to cruise, what should be important to them, and what is frivolous or should be viewed as a "generous" compensation. You have extensive cruising experience and do a great job of sharing photos and facts about what the current state of cruising is like on particular ships. But the next time you feel it necessary to speak on behalf of the rest of us cruises and what we do/do not do or should/should not do - just stop. Stick to the facts and keep your judgment to yourself about how others choose to do their trips. Same. We knew we were on a cold weather cruise and was looking forward to the hot tub so we could sit in it at night looking for the northern lights. The compensation we were given was not even 10% of what we paid for the cabin. We did price out a similar cabin but without the hot tub and it would have been around 5K cheaper. So yes - if we knew we weren't going to be able to use the hot tub, there is zero percent chance I would have booked that cabin. Zero. We found out less than a week before sailing and didn't even have the option of the restricted use. Plus the debacle of being told mistruths about why we couldn't use it. So sick of this hot tub debate and folks who were not directly affected telling the rest of us that were how we should be grateful for getting anything at all to compensate.

Yes, my first and only time traveling out of LA was a nightmare. @oteixeira had it worse though, he and his wife were standing outside in the rain for 1-2 hours. I was at least still on our transfer bus staring at them warm and dry. And despite what the idiots in the FB groups say, no, you cannot 'just show up' whenever you want because you're Haven. We were all Haven and still waiting for several hours in the rain before being allowed inside to the special Haven check-in line. Hopefully you'll be onboard with a cocktail in hand shortly. Pour one out for our friend, and enjoy something slushy for me!

There's a bit of an art to bidding. Each category of cabin is broken out separately when you get to the higher level rooms. So if you're bidding on say a Haven owners suite - there's only a handful of possible cabins you may get. Whereas bidding on a generic balcony from an inside is a bigger crapshoot. For our next upcoming trip we have the option to bid on an owners suite, but are choosing not to. For the Epic, there's 3 different configurations of the owners suites. We don't care for one of them (small privasea balcony) so we're not taking a chance of possibly ending up in that and skipping the bidding. But yes, there's a chance you'll get a less than great "upgrade". If you like your odds, go for it. If you're rather have a better but "inferior" room, keep what you have.

It all depends on the specific ship you would be on. But as others have said, generally suites and Haven cabins will have butler service. As for what they do... depends on what you need. Anything within your cabin they will attend to. Special pillow requests, extra blankets, swapping a balcony chair for a lounger, all room service, mid-day snacks, stocking the mini fridge with free pitchers of juice/water... Nice to have, yes. Need to have - for most folks, no.

In our case, all of our excursions were prebooked before we were informed we would be getting non-refundable OBC. So that wasn't an option for us. It's not as easy to use as one may think. On our last NCL trip we were coming onboard with 1K in OBC from our TA. A week before sailing NCL gave us an additional 1K in non-refundable OBC for not being able to use the hot tub in our cabin. So now we had 2K in credits to use up on a 9 day sailing, when all our excursions were already booked, we had more specialty dining than we wanted with our platinum dinners, already had the FAS.... Midway through the trip my sister & niece caught Covid, so they were out of commission and confined to their room which limited other ways we were thinking of using the credits (spa, go karts, etc). As for just buying 'stuff' for the sake of buying it - all depends on how much room you've got in your suitcase when you have an international flight home to also deal with. We bought a bottle of Dom, bottle of fancy wine with dinner one night, and I don't recall what else. But ended up leaving about $100 on the table for NCL and had to spend an hour back and forth between the concierge and guest services to stand in line and get back the 1K in refundable credit back in cash on the last night. Honestly it all depends on how much you're given and the other circumstances around it. But not all of us like jewelry or NCL branded 'stuff'. And despite being heavy drinkers, I don't want to buy multiple bottles of fancy bubbles just because I can. Fancy bubbles to drink didn't make up for the fact we were missing bubbles to soak in.

The biggest problem is that NCL is not telling people who book these rooms about the 'rules' for the hot tub until it is too late to change your mind and book a different cabin. We were on Prima in September and booked that cabin specifically so we could as a family use the private hot tub sailing around Iceland at night. Were told less than a week before sailing that we couldn't use it at all. Folks are paying premium prices (double 'normal' Haven pricing in our case) expecting to get a feature that they're not getting, and the compensation is laughable. NCL gave us a total of 1K in non-refundable OBC to use on that sailing. I asked them to change it to a FCC instead and they refused. All they need to do is at the time of booking one of those rooms - put in a pop up message stating the same facts as in the letter saying there is a potential this rule will still be in effect for their sailing. If folks still want to proceed - at least they knew. Other folks like myself won't take that chance at that pricing and will book a different cabin. Just curious - anyone sail in the 3br garden villa recently? Those have private hot tubs and we never had any special rules to adhere to when we've stayed in those previously. So curious if it's only the ones on Prima/Viva that have this new "issue".