Ixtoras

@izzy19 As others have noted, your title mentions Free at Sea Plus. The information above (3 specialty dining on your 16 day cruise.) is for the standard free at sea package. If you do have the Free at Sea Plus (which is an add on package) you get two additional specialty dining meals per person for a total of 5 on your 16 day voyage. (Plus the other perks like internet, the premium plus drink package and additional shore excursion credits.) https://www.ncl.com/sites/default/files/Free_at_Sea_Plus_ver011823.pdf

You should be good at 11am. We got to the terminal around 12:30, got our bags checked in with the porters and headed over to the priority line. We were onboard and checked into our muster station in less than 25 min.

We're also on the Valiant Feb 10-17. From what I've seen in other CC threads, it looks like they will likely have it on in the Social Club. Someone else said that last year they had it on in the Red Room with tailgating type snacks, but the schedule currently shows "Around the world with the Diva" in the Red Room at 8pm, and I think that the SB starts at around 7:30 ships time. IDK, the NFL really went along with the whole "Scarlet" theme this year though so showing the two red teams in the red room seems logical.... Its shaping up to be a busy week. Super Bowl Sunday, Fat Tuesday/Mardi Gras/Carnival, Wed Valentines Day, Presidents Day weekend when we get back to San Juan...

Thanks for sharing your experience. We're going to be on the Feb 10 sailing and was curious how the embarkation was set up. @Swells1 What time did you have listed in the app for your Terminal Arrival Time? Our app says to arrive at 3:00 pm, but we have DBE as well.... Wondering if we should plan to get there earlier.

Clever

Thanks, the app didnt let us book yesterday but we were able to get in today and book a few.

We're on the 2/10 Sailing and have been trying to book dining all day. But the tentative schedule is as follows: Sat 2/10 7:30 Festival Stage 8:00 Miss Behave Show 9:00 The Hostess Sings Her Secrets 10:00 Miss Behave Show 11:00 PJ Party Sun 5:30 Ship Show 8:30 Ship Show 11:30 We Fancy Mon 6:00 Festival Stage 8:00 Festival Stage 10:00 Duel Reality 10:00 The Hostess Sings Her Secrets 11:30 Heartbeat Dance Party Tue 5:30 Ship Show 8:30 Ship Show 10:00 Bingo with the Happenings Cast Wed 6:30 Miss Behave 8:30 Ship Show 9:00 Scarlet Night 9:45 The Story of Scarlet Night 10:15 The Story of Scarlet Night 10:45 Scarlet Night Pool Party 11:45 Scarlet Night the Afterparty Thu 8:00 Festival Stage 10:00 Untitled DanceShowPartyThing 11:00 Circus Disco 11:30 Studio 72 Fri (Sea Day) 10:00 VHS Workout 12:45 Bingo with the Happenings Cast 1:00 Festival Stage 5:30 Ship Show 7:30 Duel Reality 8:30 Ship Show 10:00 Duel Reality 11:15 BoomVang

Chiming in to echo what several others have said. It really depends on the ship and itinerary. We really like the thermal suite on the Escape class ships, and find that we really take advantage of them on cooler weather cruises. So if we were on the Bliss or Encore going to Alaska, I'd go for it. Nothing like sitting in a heated lounger, the spa or even the sauna and looking out at the snowy mountains passing by. Seating "usually" isn't a problem, though they can get busy at times. IIRC, the Seattle round trip itineraries have a full sea day, a cruising day for Glacier Bay or Endicot Arm, and the Victoria BC stop is late in the day, almost like a sea day. Its nice having the thermal suite to get away from the sea day crowds.

Hello sailors, We're new to VV, and have a cruise on the Valiant Lady booked in February to the SE Caribbean. We're 70 days out, but just realized that many (if not most) of the Shore Things on our sailing are sold out. The app suggests checking back with the shore things team when on board. I'm curious to know what everyone's experience has been with booking once on board? I would assume that they probably don't hold back any spots for on board bookings, so we'd be hoping for cancellations. I've been looking at 3rd party / local tour providers and will probably just book directly with some of them, but thought I'd ask what folks' experiences have been. I'm usually ok planning a day of just getting off the ship and exploring and possibly using the tour providers in the port area, but its our first time on all of these islands and I'd feel more comfortable not rolling the dice and checking things out first. Thanks!

Anyone know if they do anything for the superbowl? Just realized that it falls on the second day of our cruise in February, and we will be back on the ship by the time it starts.

I swear that the Juneau Marina pays those eagles (in fish) to hang out there by the docks. This is one I caught of them in May 2022.

Check the Latitudes rewards link on your profile when you log into the NCL site. Or you can check this link for the current latitudes bonus offers. Insider-Offer As others have mentioned there is no set time of year or itineraries. It is primarily about giving a little incentive on itineraries that they Up untl recently it seemed like there were NO 2024 cruises listed. Earlier this year, it seemed that their focus was solely on the Alaska itineraries, a couple of weeks ago it seemed like it was all south pacific / Asia itineraries. Now there seems to be a decent assortment again, including a few transatlantics that are also very inexpensive....

I personally don't have any concerns, and it sounds as though your son and his girlfriend may be overreacting to current events. I would probably suggest to your son that June is more than half a year away and a LOT of things will change between now and then, with the likely result being a reduction in tensions in the middle east region. Its a bit premature / hasty to be panicking about it now. You mentioned the Joy, which is only doing Bermuda itineraries that month. I'd also suggest that this is about as far removed from harms way as you could ask for. Its not like you were planning on visiting the middle east. Bermuda's location and demographics make it an unlikely target.

I'd like to see that too, but based on the current Latitudes "Past guest cruise offers" they'll only be offering it for cruises in December 2023. I've been checking all year and haven't seen a single 2024 cruise listed for extra latitudes points. Right now there's only the 8 south pacific cruises listed.

Yup, actually called today to see if we could reschedule our February VL cruise to one of the other sailings within a month window. Cost to reschedule at the same catagory and itinerary was going to double the cost of the cruise. Ouch

@Lvbhappy Thanks for doing this review! Your pictures are great, as is the narrative. Thanks also for posting the menus and dailies. We're just about to book the Viva for one of the January / February itineraries in the southeastern Caribbean, so this is getting us psyched up. 🙂

We've been considering an interesting S2S Out of San Juan in February '24 to compare Virgin and NCL's new ships. Virgin has Valiant Lady doing Saturday departures, with a southern Caribbean itinerary every other week. Either 2/3-2/10 or 2/17-2/24 Overnight stay in San Juan between cruises NCL has the Viva embarking from San Juan every Sunday, but on the same east / southeast Caribbean itinerary each week. 2/11-2/18 or 2/25-3/3 This would give us a chance to check out two new/newish ships and a different line. (Originally this would have been on the brand new Brilliant Lady, but she's been delayed. Still seems like it would be cool to try out VV and compare it to NCL.

The NCL terminal in New Orleans is at the South end of a shopping mall (Riverwalk?) with the Hilton Riverside near the North end. We didn't stay there, but spent a bit of time in the mall waiting for our boarding time. We saw probably 50 or more groups of people with luggage that walked from the Hilton through the mall to the terminal.

You might want to take a look at that again. On the NCL site, the cruise may be titled "Alaska: Glacier Bay, Skagway & Juneau" but it actually visits 4 ports plus a day cruising Glacier Bay. The itinerary includes Juneau, Skagway, Glacier Bay, Ketchikan, and Victoria BC. Encore and Bliss are very similar, both have a great observation lounge area and if the weather is good, the waterfront areas are a good area to hang out outdoors. We cruised Alaska on Encore last May and found it to be a great experience. Assuming they haven't cut them, the main stage entertainment on Encore is Choir of Man and on the Bliss is Jersey Boys. As for the others - radiance of the seas is quite old, and had some propulsion issues that caused it to cancel some cruises earlier this month. Personally, Celebrity Edge and Solstice would be my next choices.

The Starbucks on the Jewel is in the Atrium on Deck 7 and is called the Atrium Cafe on the Deck Plans. I stopped by a few times on our cruise in April. It is smaller than the Starbucks on the larger ships, and it seemed to have a more limited menu. Still had the main coffee & espresso drinks, Iced coffees and it had a list of frozen Frappuccino's. I know that Starbucks is not included in the standard FAS beverage package / Open Bar, but the Premium Plus beverage package and the Starbucks packages should cover them under "Specialty Coffee".

Yes, absolutely. Booking "somewhat last minute" requires flexibility, but can certainly result in some significant discounts. It helps if she is relatively close to one or more of the major departure ports and doesn't have to deal with airfare. (Being out of California, I envy the options that the Floridians have.) We did a "somewhat last minute" cruise earlier this year, booking an NCL Mexican Riviera cruise at just over a month out. The deal was good enough that we had two other family members join us as Solos (not having to pay a solo supplement.) Pre tax, fees and gratuities, the cruise fare was under $100 per day per person. That said, and while we love NCL, they've stated that their financial strategy is that they'd rather sail with some open rooms than discount too much just to fill the ship. Other lines are discounting more heavily. Looking at one of the sites with a 90 day ticker, I'm seeing 30+ Caribbean itineraries in the next 90 days in the under $75 per person per day range. The MSC Seaside is $36 per night per person for a Nov 12th cruise, double that if you want a balcony.

@PORT ROYAL Question for you - searching for Novana in San Juan, but only seeing a Navona studios. Is this what you were referring to? We booked our cruise pretty far in advance, planning to stay in San Juan a day before and few (4-5) days post cruise. However, when we went to book hotels, prices had gone way way up from when I was first doing my research (essentially double). Sheraton Old San Juan is running $366, Courtyard Isla Verde is $437, La Conchada and El Convento are both $477/night... At that rate for 4-5 days, including other expenses, it would be cheaper to reserve a B2B cruise, flying directly home at the end. Started to think about Airbnb or boutique / guest houses as an alternative, and those are running around $100. We've done it before in other cities, but this is our first time in San Juan and I don't know the area. I'm guessing by your recommendation that you've stayed there and enjoyed it?

I think you're absolutely right, from what others have posted, it sounds like they're able to pick any itinerary that's published. just not a lot of great options in the same timeframe and region, unless they can rearrange plans and head down to San Juan instead of Miami to pick her up there.

What a mess. Been trying to make heads or tails out of it. We were / are booked for the Feb 10 Brilliant Lady now Valliant Lady sailing out of San Juan. Got a quick note this morning saying, hey we're just gonna change up ships. So I guess we're fortunate. Nothing to see here... I get that it was clearly some sort of business decision probably favoring higher capacity sailings, but the logic seems questionable due to all the other complicating factors. It seems like the "logical" thing would have been to just nix all the Brilliant sailings, with the natural excuse that she's just not gonna be ready till maybe April or Later. Heck - with the issues with the Puerto Rico cruise port debacle, do we even know which port is going to host embarkation / disembarkation? Taking the Valliant, which was doing 6 & 8 day rotating schedules and moving it to the 7 day schedule out of San Juan for like 3 months, and then pointing her passengers to the 4 and 5 day Scarlett sailings out of Miami just seems incredibly complicated. I feel sorry for all the impacted passengers and the poor TA's that are going to have to deal with this over the next few weeks.

Alternatively - Let's go to the Winchester, have a nice cold pint, and wait for this all to blow over. - Shaun