mshaines

I've been meaning to circle back on this post as I think we're exactly the cruisers OP was asking about. I'm 43. DH is 40 and our son is 8. We sailed Apex in the Retreat (SS) the week before Easter (i.e. the kid's spring break). The ship was sold out, but never felt particularly crowded. We LOVED it. For reference, we had done one NCL balcony, two NCL Haven, and one MSC YC cruise previously. We enjoyed the high level of service (not just in the retreat but everywhere), the quality of the food, and the beautiful ship. Having the retreat sundeck was nice, but I think we could certainly enjoy an X cruise without the retreat. We ate at the Grand Bistro (good), Eden (LOVED), Blu (good), and LPC (HATED for both the duration of the meal and the really not great food). We ate most of our meals in the Retreat Restaurant (excellent) but ate buffet pizza nearly everyday. Our son very much enjoyed the kids club. We will definitely be back on X, probably next year. For us, our son doesn't really care about the "stuff" on NCL or RCCL. We didn't miss the go karts, slides, etc. So for us, NCL Haven't really isn't as good of a value proposition as Celebrity is. We would certainly cruise NCL again, but only in the Haven and only for a compelling reason (with friends, great deal, bucket list itinerary, etc.) I actually would do the MSC YC again (ONLY YC), but my husband hated it even if it was half the price. I'm curious about the suite classes on RCCL, but the prices are higher than celebrity (which I understand) and generally have less perks than the Haven (despite also being more expensive than that as well), so it just doesn't make sense for us. The only other thing I was a wee bit disappointed by on X (by way of comparison) were the drinks. The Retreat really didn't have a fancy bar (which I knew), but we sorta missed the smoked old fashions and proper mixology from the Haven. I was also not impressed by the wine selection, considering X marketing. Thankfully this forum had adjusted my expectations. (Not that I couldn't always find a good drink or that my pickiness diminished the cruise in any way.)

I guess we're in the minority (and maybe this was being on an edge class ship?), but we HATED le petit chef on Apex in March. Took 45 minutes to get a drink. I skipped the drink pairings because it was clear there was no way they could keep up. Everyone was served at the same time and they just couldn't handld it. Food ranged from pretty good to really not good. Show was very cute, but all in 2.5+ hours (we abandoned ship at 2+ hours but before the last course). Loved everything else we did on Apex, including the grand bistro for lunch. But hard pass on LPC.

Hi all. We're sailing Apex in the Retreat on the 23rd. Three questions I was hoping to get feedback on. First, is a romper acceptable evening dining room attire for a woman (if anyone knows)? I have a couple dressyish ones I wear with heels, but I see an argument that they are shorts and therefore not approved. I don't want to put the host in an awkward position. Obviously, can wear pants or dresses instead, but I find these outfits to be fun and comfortable so I thought I'd ask if anyone had experience/knowledge. Second, I know there's discussion on this elsewhere, but I was wondering if anyone has recent feedback on edge class Luminae having the MDR classics available. My husband loves Caesar salad and steak and I am a big fan of french onion soup. I know you can't order off the MDR menu in the Edge class Luminaes, but I've seen conflicting reports here about thinks like caesar salad and steaks just being generally available. Finally, maybe I missed it, but I haven't seen confirmation of whether butlers are back on Apex for the SS. (Sorry, not trying to further the traffic on butler gate! Just curious!) This will be our first X cruise and I'm very excited!

@CruisingTheWaves. Would appreciate if you would report back! We sail on the 23rd of March. Expect it to be a very full ship, so would be nice to have the more specialized attention.

Glad to hear this. Hoping they will be back on Apex for our cruise next month!

Charla - Fellow lawyer and early 40s cruiser here (though I consider myself elder millennial/oregon trail generation lol). Thank you so much for doing this live posting. It has been delightful to read. We're doing our first X cruise in March on the Apex and your thread here has made me even more excited about it! Hope you have a fabulous final evening and a safe trip home!

We were onboard in December. We only took our son in the evening and they were broken up by age group. He loved it.

Thanks!

Seriously considering rebooking an NCL Alaska cruise on the Koningsdam. We're booked in the Have on the Encore just having trouble justifying the price since we don't care about a lot of the large ship amenities. Would definitely want CO, but not necessarily attached to having a Neptune Suite and availability this summer is seeming limited. Forgive the dumb question (and hijacking the thread), but what is the best way to figure out whether CO is still available? Just call HAL? (I typically book online using one of the TAs that does good OBC or refund after the cruise; service when you call them can be somewhat mixed.) TIA!

As promised, I posted a review of our 3 night Seashore experience (Dec. 7 to 10): https://www.cruisecritic.com/memberreviews/memberreview.cfm?EntryID=709638. Happy to answer any questions.

Same and same! Crossing my fingers!

I hadn't seen this before. Thanks!

Trying MSC on the Seashore for the first time next week. Will be in the YC. Any tips for making life a bit better? My husband and I have both read and seen some pretty terrible reviews, so we're a bit worried about our choice.

I don't know that my American customer service expectations can go that far lol. But it was MUCH less painful that I had been expecting based upon this chain, so I'll take it Very excited and will let people know how the cruise goes!

Well, thank you all for the feedback. Jamie, you can throw a party - the VC people fixed the DOB issue for both (confirmed in the app)! So, I guess this is just a system I need to get used to.

Oh boy! But thanks for the warning! Best to set reasonable expectations, I guess. And granted the price differences, there is a degree to which I think it's unfair to expect some things.

Well, I can't say I wasn't aware of the stories. I just hoped it had improved based upon some more recent reports. TBH, everyone has been very pleasant, but the system seems to be set up to cause frustration. It's rather nuts to me that you need three steps to fix one problem caused by a simple failure to ask me what the correct date was! (If I made my life this hard for clients, I would have none... but that comparison is an especially bad one these days.) That said, I'm really appreciative to hear, Jamie, that you had the same issue and fixed it. Also, appreciate your reviews and posts for info on your experiences. It's part of what made us decide to take the plunge. (Dear NCL, the Haven prices really have gotten absurd.) Obviously, I'm not interested in losing a 5k vacation over what is admittedly my own mistake! I'm going to wait until tomorrow to see what I hear back from the VC group, if anything. If they don't fix it by then, I'll go as everyone has instructed and triple check next time!

Seems like y'all are willing to accept a pretty low standard of customer service here. I should call the res line again after they told me to do it through VC and then have VC separately fix the VC date because either VC might screw it up or I might get charged to fix a clerical error on my part? (FWIW, obviously I will take this route if necessary.) Man, does this not make me feel at all good about the decision to try MSC. The sailing is mid-December so there is some time to figure it out, thankfully. FWIW, it's a YC booking so I'm sorta expecting at least better-than average for MSC help from MSC here, though I might be being naive that paying 2x for the cruise matters to them.

So I booked our first MSC cruise a couple of weeks ago. Apparently when I did it, I mis-entered my birthdate by a couple of days. (Normally, I'm really careful about this stuff so this is a first and I'm a bit embarrassed.) After booking, I proceeded to match my Marriott status for the Voyagers Club. I couldn't figure out why, but the reservation and the club number couldn't be linked online. I called the MSC number and was told they couldn't help and to reach out to the club people. So I emailed the club email and asked if they could help. At this point, I have no idea my DOB on the reservation is wrong. Today, the club people email me back to say they have found the problem - the discrepancy in DOB. Instead of asking which was correct, they decided to change the club DOB to the wrong one. So I called what I thought was the club number (it's the one on their bounce back) but somehow got connected to the reservation line folks. Where I was again told that I needed to contact the club people. I've emailed them, but it takes a few days to get a response. The reservation/regular line guy (who was very pleasant, not knocking him) told me that the DOB on the reservation can be fixed, but that he'd have to delete my voyagers status off the reservation (which frankly I'd be fine with if it were necessary in the end). So two things for feedback here. First, has anyone had to fix their DOB on their reservation before? If so, please assure me my very stupid mistake isn't going to cost me a vacation. Second, gotta say I'm not a fan of the divided customer service and being bounced within the same company. Any know why they do it this way?

Just off the Joy in the Haven as well. Overall, we had a very nice trip. Met a couple of other families and made friends, which was very fun. Found the service to be quite good. Our only complaint was that the hot tubs were not at all hot. On the Getaway in March, I'm guessing they were about 98-99 degrees (i.e. body temp-ish). We were told about mid-way through this cruise that NCL now has a fleetwide standard of 95 degrees. While I know many think hot tubs are gross or whatever (and I'm lawyer so no one needs to explain the liability issues), my husband considers this a deal-breaker. FYI if this is also your thing. Those enjoying the sundeck hot tubs seemed to love that it was basically a warmish pool, but having at least one of the three haven hot tubs be actually hot(ish) would have been nice. One thing we used a lot this trip that we didn't use previously was ordering food to the courtyard pool area. Seemed to possibly be a limited Haven lunch menu? I'm not certain, but one of the Haven waiters brought us certain things but deferred the pizza request to our butler. Was a very nice feature after an excursion/getting back from the beach since we seemed to miss the end of lunch service by just a bit. We also enjoyed the snacks in the haven observation lounge. On the subject of the butler letter, I had prepared one, but I was out exploring the ship when Made came by and never gave it to him. FWIW, I wish I had. I never got around to asking for things like lemon and OJ to keep in the fridge and it would have been nice. Also, for anyone traveling the Haven out of Manhattan, we think 11 is the perfect arrival time. Quick check in and then only a few minutes until you're on the ship! We also hung out in the observation lounge for a little bit to let the crowd disperse a bit before going to lunch. We were able to drop our things in our room around 11:45 though the room wasn't quite ready yet.

In case anyone else is looking. Sorry, I missed this one before!

Thanks. I'll take a look!

On an upcoming cruise, we're going to have a good bit of OBC from our TA. I seem to recall being told that there were fewer restrictions on the OBC use from the TA than NCL's (e.g., we could use it for gratuities). Enlightenment appreciated!

Thanks again for doing this. So fun to read and so helpful. Also thanks so much for the tip on the cavern club! Looking forward to that.

I think this is a fair point. If you were absolutely attached/had to have the Haven, then book that. Otherwise, as people are saying, bid away and cross your fingers, but be aware the Haven is something a lot of us will simply pay for to be sure we have it. So, especially if the ship is likely to be full, the Haven is very likely to be sold out. Additionally, there seems to be some extra factors other than straight in who they award bids to. On our March Getaway sailing, there seemed to be a fair number of casino upgrades. Regardless, check out @Dorhead1230's live updates on the Joy. Looks like it will be a good time!