Auroraborealis8

We just sailed on the Bliss and they had Chimay.

We have Global Entry and I did not see any obvious signs (nor any Global Entry kiosks) when we disembarked in Miami last week. That said, I also did not ask so they may have some hidden away in a separate section.

Thanks! I did a quick search but did not connect Fuerte Amador as being the same thing! Apologies for starting yet another thread on the subject. The port authority does do shuttles for Isla Flamenco and was supposed do for us (in addition to Perico), but did not end up doing so (I think the official reason was that it was because it was a Sunday). In the end, we only had shuttles to Isla Perico.

We just got off of a 15 day cruise on the Norwegian Bliss that did a full transit of the new locks. We also did a ferry tour of the old locks, which I very much recommend. All in all, really fabulous. However, the point of my post is to alert people to the fact that there is a new cruise port terminal being built at the Terminal de Cruceros de Amador in Panama City. Because of the construction, the port authority will not allow passengers to simply walk off the ship and go into Panama City, they must take a shuttle bus. Our shuttles only went to a stop on Perico Island (which is just down from the terminal, 10 mins max), where people were then free to take a bus or a cab into town. However, and I can't stress this enough, there is no proper road from the main road to the terminal right now, just a lot of very bumpy "roadway." This means two things: 1) a bumpy ride (obviously); and 2) a very slow process of getting back to the ship. The buses have to go extremely slowly, and there is only room to unload three busses at a time. If you are trying to come back at a time where a lot of shore excursions are also returning, you could be in a long line of busses waiting to get to the ship to let off passengers. We were sat in such a line for about 50 mins until we could get off the bus and onto the ship. I don't say this to discourage anyone, but only to manage expectations. Make sure you plan your day accordingly, and go to the bathroom before getting on a bus back to the ship!

They had performances of both Six (three performances) and the Jersey Boys (for which they added an extra performance, four total). Both have been on Broadway and the West End. I thought overall the shows were pretty well done, myself. The rest of the evenings in the Bliss Theatre were various comedy, magician, and mentalist type acts.

Volume. Plain and simple. Don't mean to resurrect an old thread, but I was also on this sailing. There were at least three other cruise ships that I could see that were in port that morning, which meant that Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) was tasked with processing all of those passengers. The NCL terminal had four CBP officers (at the time I was going through) to process approx. 3,200 (?) passengers. Any time there was an issue, or someone had to be taken to secondary inspection (which I saw happen twice just in the time I could see what was happening from the line), that's one CBP officer down. So, even though the average traveler takes about 2-3 minutes to get through screening, the time adds up. Also, they were being very strict with not crowding the gangway/arrivals hall, so a new wave of passengers couldn't be released until the first had sufficiently cleared the line. Getting people up, out, luggage picked up, and then onto customs, also takes time. I expect that this will continue to be a disembarkation issue out of Miami for a while until CBP sorts out its staffing levels and NCL figures out its procedures a bit better.

We just returned from 15 days on the Bliss where we were in Haven and had the Premium Plus package. I agree with the assessment of @sthrngary and others that the P+ package really shows its true colours in Haven. Our experience was that the Haven bartenders were extremely knowledgeable, and made some fantastic cocktails if given a bit of direction as to preference, and then allowed to experiment. I was introduced to a number of cocktails and high-end spirits that I would never have thought to try otherwise. For us, it was well worth the money. Having said that, I also found that the staff at the A-List bar especially had access to a very good selection of spirits, and would ensure that our cocktails were made with high quality ones when they saw that we had the Premium Plus package. At places like the Atrium bar, where we generally ordered simple drinks because of how busy it was, I would often ask for them to include the highest quality spirit they had (e.g: if a gin and tonic, then the highest quality gin). I also found that at many bars around the ship, even if they didn't have a certain wine or spirit listed on their menu, they might have it if asked (e.g: Atrium bar only has prosecco on its menu, but had a bottle of Veuve available when I ordered bubbles, ymmv). Part of it, for me, was realizing what bars catered to what an ordering accordingly (I certainly don't expect the bar at H2O to have a bottle of Chateau Neuf du Pape on hand, for example).

Thanks @redlock and @Maleficent's Dad. Your past experiences give me hope!

That is what I said! But he suggested that because it's so popular NCL may not have the (more expensive) channels that would show the matches. Sounds like from others that it has been shown in the past, so hopefully there is nothing to fear.

Does anyone have any past experience of NCL showing World Cup games on board? DH has sowed some seeds of doubt that it will be shown on the Bliss when we sail at the beginning of December.