UKstages

current cruise director on the joy is jake, not jack.

interesting. i'm currently on the joy and in the vibe. we've received chilled fruit skewers, canapés and finger sandwiches. the servers could not possibly be more attentive, checking on each guest relentlessly and bringing drinks to the hot tubs, as well as your lounge chair. those chairs are a cut above the average chair, with super plush cushions and a fabric cover that gets changed daily. i haven't seen any misters, but we've been given refrigerated wet washcloths at least once a day, there are four well maintained clean bathrooms. and, while not an official documented benefit, guests are often given whole cans of soda or beer "to go" as they leave. well, yes indeed... having a drink package, while not required, is strongly recommended to maximize your vibe experience! i don't believe you mentioned that you would not have a drink package in your initial post. had you, i'm pretty sure you would have received some different recommendations.

i'm currently on the joy. there are two comics this week who perform in both "the social" and the theatre. there's also NCL's production show "elements, as well as the magician po cheng lai (who is also in "elements" and who has been on board for more than a year and whose act has grown rather tired). in addition there was some sort of novelty act, mr. and mrs,. fefolov, which was apparently an acrobatic ballroom dancing duo. (i didn't attend.) "elements" played for two nights. last week (i'm doing a back to back), there were three comedians, in addition to "footloose" and "elements," as well as a singer.

you actually didn't have to have your photo taken again. the contract employee who checked you in was on autopilot and did it... just because... out of habit or because he or she thinks its required. but it's not if you supplied an approved photo at online checkin.

i see lots of recent success stories about passes being purchased onboard on the day of embarkation. i have previously told one myself. i'm currently onboard the joy on a B2B. boarded 10/16 in new york at 11:20 am or so, went straightaway to purchase vibe passes, was first in line. $309 for a 12-day cruise. there were about thirty to forty envelopes with welcome packets there, but five or six of them held solo passes. the rest were packets for two. so i guesstimate that there were as many as 60 or 65 passes available on the day. your mileage may vary and undoubtedly the numbers will be different for every ship, every sailing. but i asked the person selling them and she said that they always hoild back passes and make them available on the day. again, YMMV. 0n 10/28 out of miami, i was back on board around 11 am after clearing immigration. once again, i was first in line and was able to purchase a vibe pass... $249 for seven days. once again, there was a collection of thirty to forty envelopes with welcome packets on the table. once again, the person selling them said that they hold back passes to make them available on the day. once again, YMMV. exactly right. a table set up outside teppanyaki, not at guest services. i wish the passes were being "given out," but i actually had to purchase them! sure, i guess. but if one is trying to purchase using OBC, one has to purchase passes while onboard. NCL does not allow OBC to be used for advance purchases.

absolutely not true. possibly true, although i doubt that there are “thousands.” more likely, dozens, or perhaps even fewer. top executives do indeed sort through their own customer email or receive a summary of the top complaints. i used to get emails forwarded to me from my CEO on a regular basis asking for follow up on customer complaints submitted through the exec’s public-facing email. i can’t say with any certainty whether david herrera reads all his email or responds, but i can say with certainty that he reads some of it and receives summaries of important issues that are currently making their way through the guest satisfaction resolution process. no, that’s not the case for executive complaints. somebody, most likely in the miami corporate office, will reply. and that reply will be specifically in response to the unique nature of the customer concern. when you initiate an online chat for common queries, that is indeed handled by a contact center, as are routine email inquiries. i have spent most of my adult life working in support of contact centers on both the provider and client side of the business (for fortune 100 companies) and what the bird posits is not now nor has it ever been true. even less so for today’s progressive customer-focused companies, many of which care passionately about customer feedback. what is true is that you will most likely not get a response from an exec (although that is not unheard of). but the idea that worker bees far removed from the executive office will respond to executive escalations and provide problem resolution is a fantastic notion… as in the realm of fantasy. absolutely true. the bird also likes to remind us (although not necessarily in this thread) that these are “minimum wage” call center workers. and this, also, is not true. the US contact center workers are NCL employees and receive pay far in excess of minimum wage, along with full benefits. offshore contact center workers receive far less than the US prevailing minimum wage. that’s the primary reason the jobs are outsourced!

this simply isn’t true. i have never seen this and i’m reading the same prima threads that you do. these people are sharing their truth. it’s no different than the prima fan boys and fan girls sharing their truth. in fact, most of the favorable reviews of the prima mention the very same flaws that the negative reviews do. there is, however, a contingent of folks who consistently like to bash others who find fault with their preferred ship, including the prima. they seem unwilling to accept that different people can have different experiences on the very same ship, even the very same cruise. so they mock and cajole and criticize those who are simply relating their actual experiences simply because those experiences differ from their own.

you talked to whom? somebody onboard in the casino? or your rep, your consultant, at casinos at sea? those are call center agents who specialize in taking CAS calls. everything i said applies to CAS agents as well as ordinary call center agents. i attended the final performance wednesday night. they made a little speech about the show closing. trust me, folks. the show ain’t coming back. it won’t be running when you’re onboard, even if you hold a reservation.

onboard the joy right now for a B2B and jealous of your third “B.” not being offered on this current 10/16 cruise, either.

i say that based on the large number of highly critical responses for the ship i see on cruise critic and on social media. you didn’t see that sort of thing for the bliss, by comparison. i wrote a fair and highly favorable review of the ship in many regards. but I also noted significant flaws which affect many passengers. say what you will about what constitutes a “large number,” but the fact remains that what ails the prima are things that are not unique to one cabin, one passenger’s journey or a one-off situation. the flaws are - generally speaking - hardwired into the ship’s design and ecosystem and they affect, yes, a large number of passengers trip after trip.

I think the nickel and diming refers to upcharges for certain items, such as lobster and such in specialty restaurants, particularly those items that used to be included. (i’m looking at you, beef rossini at le bistro.) also, things like selling an arcade package, which excludes some of the most popular games. charging for games like “deal or no deal” that have no reasonable expectation of a win. moving things like bailey’s irish cream to the premium plus beverage packing. i myself have never really felt nickeled and dimed, but i do understand why people feel so. they’re not cheapskates, they don’t want something for nothing… they are just confused, disappointed, disillusioned or bamboozled by the way the services are marketed. i’m onboard the joy right now and I do see that NCL has fully embraced the concept! “taste” and “savor” have been renamed “nickel” and “dime.” (yes, I used the same joke a few months ago in a similar thread. but, like they used to say about summer repeats on NBC’s killer thursday night summer schedule… if you haven’t seen it, it’s new to you! come back at 11. i do all my blue material at the late show.)

many people sail the prima without experiencing any difficulty whatsoever. it’s possible. but a large number of people experience a hellish nightmare from which there is no escape. here’s my review of the prima, which is equal parts praise and damnation…

yes, it shows that, and that is good, but at the same time, it still allows you to book it. my best guess is that it will disappear next week. i think it’s there because they don’t know how to remove the booking option without canceling the existing valid reservations for this week’s performances. just a hunch.

they are absolutely sure what is going on. the call center reps see it in their system, as we do in the app, and THEY do not know what is going on. so they book it, as we can in the app, and they justify it to their customers by saying… well, they’re not sure yet what is going on. that’s because they assume there must be performances if they can book it. many here assume that, too. the contact center reps can’t conceive that it’s faulty programming in the computer. i’m onboard the joy now. i toured the backstage area this morning. the last performances of footloose are on this cruise, ending october 28.

well, it’s not next week, but I thought I’d report back, since I’ve been on the ship since 11:15 or so. first stop was the social to inquire about vibe passes. they don’t actually do them there, but at a table set up outside teppanyaki. i was the first one to ask… and I got one. $309 for twelve days. (I’m using OBC, which is why I didn’t buy in advance.) i asked if I got one because of cancellations. she said no, they hold a set number back for sale on the day. and i looked down and she had about thirty welcome packets there… yes, I counted. the key card printer was having problems, so she walked me over to guest services where she printed my new card, coded for the vibe. and then I stopped at cruise next to set up behind the scenes tour and wines around the world. (they are not doing dinner with officers on this journey.) so, that definitively answers that often asked question about pass availability. not sure if that’s a new policy - holding back passes for sale on the day- or just for this cruise, but that was my experience today. i’m in the vibe now and it’s really lovely. i may come back for sailaway.

regarding transport… coming into the terminal this morning (on foot), I thought the unlicensed drivers (hustlers looking to pick up fares) were particularly aggressive. especially since they kept asking unsuspecting rubes if they were looking for a “yellow cab.”

i think it's closer to two drinks a day at break even. if t were four to five, i wouldn't purchase it.

that’s the kicker. on port intensive itineraries, it makes sense to me to buy the package because the casino is closed so much. and yet, even with the package, i still sometimes will visit the casino bar before dinner if i want a glass of premium champagne. i then take that to whatever restaurant i’m dining in.

indeed. that is full pay DDB. but what’s missing is the denomination. I’d expect a 9/6 pay table at $5 or, possibly, $1 and up. it would be most unusual to have full pay DDB at the 25 cent denomination on a cruise ship. I play mostly ultimate X on NCL ships. the pay tables are decent and UX spreads out the variance. thanks for the photos and the updates. I’ll be on board tomorrow.

I’m in a similar situation as the OP. I drink alcohol, but I don’t drink a lot. and I get free “ultra” drinks from the casino, including bottled water. Onboard, I drink mostly sprite zero, sometimes with a dash of cranberry. I drink a few mock tails. and maybe six or seven cocktails on a week’s voyage. maybe a few glasses of wine during the entire week. and yet, every time, I consider whether to purchase the drinks package. and every time, I do. i’ve done the math. it makes sense.

all, not most, of broadway shows are copyrighted, unless you’re talking about something that has fallen into the public domain, like a shakespeare play. a show licensed for production by a school or your local community theatre group falls into a very different agreement than that same show produced by a large entity like NCL, who is often actually working with the show’s original producers and creators. an amateur group can expect to pay hundreds of dollars per performance in royalties for their three or four night run. NCL’s contractural payment structure is likely millions of dollars over a set number of years, and is different for every show. they most likely pay far less for “six,” which they snatched from a festival before it was ever produced on the west end or broadway than they do for “jersey boys” or “beetlejuice.” as for the difference between broadway and off-broadway… it has nothing to do with geography or where the theatre is located (most “broadway” theatres are not in fact located on the street called broadway.) no, the difference, with a few exceptions, is the size of the theatre. an off-broadway house is 499 seats and under, a broadway house is 500 seats or greater. so, you’re not saving any money by licensing something that played off-broadway. If you do, that’s because it’s a smaller scale, quirkier show, with less of a pedigree. the reason shows are produced off-broadway is because the economics are different… it generally costs less to produce off-broadway. and because the theatres are smaller, they lend themselves to scaled down and more intimate storytelling… which is probably not what you want in an eight hundred or thousand seat cruise ship space.

i’m coming late to this resurrected thread. just popped in to say that you really don’t want your butler to fetch food from indulge. you just don’t. indulge is a grazing concept. you order a little bit of this and a little bit of that, as the mood strikes you, while you’re actively eating. some of the portions can be diminutive, two or three pieces of chicken tikka, for instance. not only is it not a proper portion, if ordered on its own, but because of the small food mass, it doesn’t travel well. the food will quickly get cold. think of indulge as a series of never ending tapas, brought to your table within a minute or so of being cooked. think of it as dim sum, with ordering via tablet. also, your butler probably has lots more important things to do than trying to coordinate a meal from a bunch of different for stations, all the components of which have different cook times. the challenge in finding seats at indulge is real and there are good suggestions about how to combat that above. that’s the solution here, not sending your butler.

while the focus on entertainment cutbacks has been on the removal of broadway shows, such as “footloose,” the daily (above) indicates that there is also a “broadway cabaret,” a musical revue, performed by the cast of “footloose.” i saw an early version of this last year, performed on the Q restaurant stage. i think we can assume that it will no longer be available, along with similar revues on other ships, performed by members of the casts of shows that have been removed. and that brings up another issue… since some cast members in “footloose” also double in “elements” (and others on other ships do the same), how much money in cast salaries are they actually saving with the big broadway blowout of 2023? or are they reducing the size of the cast of “elements,” as well?

upon reflection, i hope you've realized that nothing has deviated from the norm. requiring a passport is the norm on an itinerary such as this. in the roll call, you mentioned that you booked this cruise on october 6th. apparently, they reminded you of the passport requirement just a week later, on the 13th. that's pretty damn good.

that's very funny... but, um, is that actually true?