skittl1321

Bar juices are included in the soda package though, so not ONLY soda. The mojito bar on the Encore was happy to muddle some mint and add lime into pineapple juice for me, so essentially a virgin pineapple mojito. They were delicious.

I do not think I could have asked for more beautiful Seattle days. I wish I had more energy to explore, but cruising is exhausting. We will have to make an actual trip to washington. I'd also really like to go out and hike (but not climb) a bit on Rainer!

I mean, valid point for you; but not sure this is helpful to someone posting specifically that entertainment is important to them. "Sure, the entertainment sucks; but have you considered just not viewing it at all?" This poster wants to know what the entertainment is, because it IS important the them, and they've been previously disappointed. I personally would be totally fine if a ship cut out every single bar on the ship. Or maybe the ship only serves one beer, let's make it Natural Light, and no other alcohol. Should be OK right? I mean, it's just the itinerary that matters. Drink packages, drink prices, none of that is any criteria for me booking a cruise. Wouldn't affect me at all. But lots of people would freak out about that cruise! For me, entertainment is extremely important on a cruise, and NCL was a bit of a letdown. There were other things about NCL that I really really loved though, so I might give them another try if the price is right. And yes, I see the irony that this post doesn't help the OP at all. I'm still posting it. Such is the internet.

Cabin stewards that I have asked have told me that clearing dishes is the room service responsibility, not the cabin steward responsibilty. (Hence, why I leave them neatly stacked against my door in the hall. Room service then picks them up when they make rounds. As for accessibility, I set it into the recessed area, not the main hallway.) There isn't really a system in place for the cabin stewards to easily deal with them, they can't just toss them in their cart like they do towels and linens. It would be nice if cruiselines just make it clear what passengers SHOULD do. It is extremely common for people to bring buffet food to their room, not just room service, and drinks as they walk around, so dishes are an issue for a lot of cabins.

But PVSA has NOTHING to do with Germany. (Germany, the EU, and the Schengen Area all likely have similar laws, many of which have been noted; but US law means nothing here, except if NCL has a blanket policy for their entire line based on the US law.)

Different countries would have different laws though, unless NCL has a standard no reboarding allowed rule.

The hotel services part of a ship are very much like a hotel. I am not sure how there is a difference between a stateroom and a hotel room. The head Chef is in charge of an entirely different part of the ship (oh, but there could be cutbacks too... MDR meals only included half the days? No included meals? I don't see that happening mainstream, but EasyCruise existed for years without providing any included food.) Many, many hotels no longer make your bed each day, nor provide daily fresh towels. For me, that's no problem- I don't need my bed made each day, and I reuse towels. I'm just saying, the more hotels manage to get away with this, it's coming for cruise ships. Once a day service used to be completely unheard of... give it a few years.

I went through every offering and couldn't find a single thing that was 55% off... I did get a cooler bag, $23.99. So I get 6 sodas this cruise...

On my last 7-day cruise, I told the room steward I didn't need the room cleaned at all, though he did it once midweek. (It was Alaska though, so I didn't need beach towels.) So, quite honestly, I'm preparing myself for the thread in a few years about "every other day" room service... a lot of hotels have already gone to every third day!!

If no one else starts one next cruise, you should! I have been collecting postcards since I was little (do you do postcrossing? I love that though I have to watch how much money I'm spending on stamps)- so this was awesome.

Our cruise's facebook group had someone who organized a postcard exchange (it was her first cruise! so she had gotten the idea from...cruise critic!). Basically, we dropped our cabin number in the event, and just before the cruise she put together a list of all the cabin numbers. We were encouraged to get a postcard or magnet from our home, and then we brought one for everyone on the list. I got an amazing variety of postcards and magnets, and the really fun part is it wasn't a meet up to exchange, so you never knew when they would appear on your door/light; all through the cruise postcards just kept showing up! It was super fun. Most people just wrote their name and the name of the ship/date on the postcards; some were blank, and some had messages. I wrote a message on mine, put a cut sticker on them, and made fake stamps. There were even a few people who made custom wooden magnets; like the kind you need a glowforge to do. They were super cool.

I think they actually aren't 'entitled' to anything back. Many cruiselines do give back credits for port fees and taxes, but since they are not seperately itemized, they aren't required to.

Not necessarily, discounting as a marketing strategy can degrade the amount of money they can make on future products. If people expect discounts, and wait for them, then they may not be able to fill cabins at high prices later. People who book at the discounted rates may start viewing that as what the product is worth, and the market position changes to a "bargain" line. There are tons of models financial and operations run to help them better understand if it is worth the short term gain of onboard spending vs the long term brand positioniong. My understanding is RCCL has said they don't want cruise to be a bargain compared to land vacations (which has been CCL's stance based on mailings I get); they want to raise prices on the base fare; not just on the onboard spend/total revenue per customer. Discounting doesn't accomplish that.

My October cruise on the encore the Elotes was not on the menu. After having an amazing street corn in Los Lobos, I was really looking forward to it in FR. Pretty bummed.

Every cruise I've ever been on, pre- and post- covid has been like this. You see another ship, you wave. Everyone is cruising, everyone is excited!

I've always thought you were supposed to put them outside your cabin. When left in the cabin, on every cruise I've been on, the room steward does not clear them. So the only way to get rid of dishes from room service or the buffet is to leave them outside the cabin door, otherwise they sit for days.

Up next was dinner. Precrusie I waffled forever about which of the speciality restaurants to go to. Other than a Chef's table on Carnival, I had never done specialty dining as I really don't like to spend more than the base fair once onboard. However, with FAS, the gratuities are really nominal, so of course, I accepted the two meals. After booking and cancelling a million times, I ended up at Los Lobos tonight. (Also, why doesn't NCL let you cancel your own reservations? I had to go through their chat a million times.) When I got to my reservation, which was a table for 4, since that was the only option when I booked, I told them it was just me, and they kind of gave me a side eye, so I told them the others in the group weren't feeling well (which was true of half the ship), and there were no more questions about being solo. The restaurant was mostly empty though, and stayed that was the entire time I dined. But even if it was fully booked, solo's still have to eat! I had gone through the menu a million times at home, and still wasn't sure what main dish I wanted (I was leaning towards fajitas), but knew I wanted all the appetizers. So after being seated, I asked the waitress if it was possible to get multiple appetizers instead of the entree, and she told me if I wasn't getting an entree, I could have them all. Well, I wasn't hungry enough for that, but I did order the table side guacamole, the tortilla soup, the quesadilla, and a side of street corn. Up first, was the guacamole. I asked him to make a small portion, but it was still a way too much for me to possibly finish. It was absolutely delicious, though heavy on the lime. I wish I could have seen a bit better how much of stuff he put in there, as I would have liked a little more tomato. Up next, the tortilla soup came out. Tortilla soup is one of my favorite foods of all time, enough so that I served it at my wedding. Unfortunately, this was not edible. It was SO salty. Enough so that if I was paying ala carte, I probably would have sent it back. I did tell the waitress, and she said she would mention it to the chef, as the cheese that tops it is also very salty. This was one of the biggest food disappointments of the cruise (the other being the steaks). Then my elotes came out. The waitress cut it off the cob for me, which caused quite a bit of corn water to spray at me. No big deal, but if they are being 'upscale', they should probably take it to a station away from the table to avoid that. This was AMAZING. The best thing I ate the entire cruise. We eat corn with butter and Tajin at home, but I need to know what the cheese they put on this was so that we can prepare it more like this. It was also somewhat chilled, rather than warm, which made it taste really refreshing. Then I got my quesadilla, which was honestly a full main course. This was just plain cheese, but I ate it with the guacamole, and it had a bit of salsa and sour cream with it. The tortilla here was a standout, really well made. I only managed to eat one wedge, as it was huge. I am getting so hungry just looking at these photos. I want that corn and quesadilla again. The waitress brought out the dessert menu, but as much as I wanted to try the churros, I left so much food uneaten, I couldn't fathom 1) taking another bite, or 2) wasting more food, so I declined dessert. I felt the service was fabulous so left an extra tip past the autograts. I highly recommend los lobos. After dinner, I grabbed another diet coke (I haven't been filling y'all in on all of these as they arent that exciting, but suffice to say, I was drinking a lot of soda and not enough water), and went to my room to paint. I went to see the Beatles in the main theatre. The Beatles have never been my favorite, but it was a lovely concert, and I knew all but 1 or 2 of the songs. Apparently they do the rarer songs in the cavern club; but even not really being a fan, it's impossible not to know the songs. I sent a photo to my mother, who grew up a massive beatles fan (she said she and her friends sat in the theater the entire day Hard Days Night came out and just watched it over and over again), and said "Spending the night at a great concert from John, Paul, Ringo, and that other guy". She replied to say "I can't believe I raised you. George was my favorite." I did like how they did costume changes for each of their eras. Since it was otherwise just a Beatles concert- no dancers or other performers, so not typically the kind of entertainment I like on a cruise ship. Also, for those of you who are ready to pounce that I didn't know all their names, I cannot name all the backstreet boys, nysnc, or new kids on the block, and I had NKOTB sheets when I was in elementary school. Afterwards, I went back to my room, painted a bit, went to set my glass out in the hallway, AND...locked the door behind me. Wearing my pajamas. and no shoes. and no bra. Thank goodness I was on the 8th floor, as I didn't have far to go as I walked, barefoot, down the stairs, passed a group of 5 officers all in uniform, into the atrium, which was completely filled due to some sort of game show, to the guest services desk; who gave me a key with no issue at all so I could get back into my room. Then I had to do the walk of shame back up again... Oops...

And now, a sea day! Now, historically, I would say sea days are not my favorite. I cruise to go to new places. Cruise ships feel very seperated from the ocean a lot of the time, and I'm too "go go go" to just sit and relax. I also don't drink, so there isn't that to do. My husband and I always like to do trivia, and I try to do the things like dance classes, or game shows to fill the day. But this year has really changed that. Sea days are excellent and now I want a good mix. On my family cruise, sea days were really lovely with my kids, and we spent a ton of time in the pool. But on the solo cruise- sea days were an absolute bastion of relaxation where I literally didn't need to do anything. So this day started with me sleeping until about 7:00, which is quite late for me (I wake up at 4:45 am most mornings and maybe 6 on weekends.) I started the day by going to the gym and rowing 10k. I could not figure out how to set rest intervals (or anything really) on these machines, so I just would do either 1k or 2k, then rest for a minute, then go again. I sent a photo to my coach to prove to her that I was rowing. (I row with a master's team. We are super low key, but had a regetta the sunday after I got back. At the time I hadn't seen race line ups and while I knew I was coxing the 8s, I didn't know if I'd be rowing in a quad. So I decided to erg to keep up the fitness. Luckily later today I got a text that I wasn't rowing, so the gym visits stopped. This is the only time I've ever been in a gym on a cruise.) One more digression: here is a photo from our race. This was the most exciting race I've ever been in, though it hasn't been many. This was a head race, which means each boat starts about 30 seconds behind the others. In the photo, my boat is the furthest left. The first to start was the blue boat. We are about 2k down a 3.5k course, and all about to pass each other on the bend, which was really tight to 'thread the needle' on a narrow river, because the 2nd boat went outside instead of inside to pass the first boat, which left nowhere for the first boat to yield to us (we were the third boat). Anyhow, we ended up finishing 1.5 seconds behind the second boat, but with the delayed start (like a time trial in biking), we won by about 29 seconds. MOST of the races during the day there was very little passing at all, you would usually just see a line of boats following each other, and you can close up the space between the boats to beat them, so it was pretty thrilling to pass two boats. So after the gym, I went back to the room, highlighted my freestyle dailies of events I thought I might want to go to (spoiler alert: I went to none), and headed to breakfast. I absolutely loved these egg and avacado wraps. There was no wait for a table in the MDR, and it was so quiet and serene. A great way to start the day. The whole day, the ship was not very crowded, I think a lot of people were in bed. The seas were ROUGH, all day long. No one could walk a straight line, and unfortunately, I saw a huge number of people getting sick in the stairwells and hallways. The crew, thankfully was on it about cleaning up. I started my morning with postcard delivery. We had something like 38 rooms in our facebook postcard exchange so it took me nearly 2 hours to deliver most of them (a few waited another day). I was just all smiles walking up and down the ship as it bounced around in the ocean. I LOVE the feeling of being on the waves. Then I took a look in the shops (didn't buy anything), but doesn't this send the wrong message about chair hogging? And saw them setting up for the whisky tasting, so sent a photo to my husband to make him jealous. (*note- at this point, I hadn't logged into the wifi, had my plane on airplane mode and was able to text on google fi. I wasn't billed for it. So, weird loophole?) Although I don't get sea sick, I didn't have much of an appetite all day, so I went to lunch in the buffet instead of the MDR, thinking I couldn't eat a full portion they served. Buffets are always hard for me. I can circle a buffet three or four times and just see nothing I want to eat. I think the quantity of food puts me off from wanting to eat anything. (I have the same problem with grocery stores. I'll go in, and unless I'm starving, I'm convince myself I don't really need anything on my list.) I eventually settled on some Indian food, some pineapple and watermelon, and of course ice cream. Most importantly, at this point I found the scooped ice cream, which was so delicious. I ate back in my room, because I wasn't in the mood for the noise of the buffet. The pappadum and pakora were delicious, the fruit very fresh. The naan wasn't that good and the various dishes were kind of bland. I think I'll give the points for Indian buffet to Carnival (at least, Carnival way pre-pandemic). But NCL wins on ice cream! I used this time to do some painting as well, and hung out on the balcony and watched the ocean a bit. Then I went to the thermal suite and hung on tight while in the "wave pool". I actually decided to not go into the sauna, because while I'm sure NCL has thought of this, I was just really worried of coals coming flying... But the pool was just SO fun. I wasn't able to read, because the waves were tossing us all over the place. Because I can, I got more ice cream from the buffet. I also got a tres leches cake, and it was very good. Cruise ship desserts are often not great, but there were some real stand outs. Disappointingly, on day 1 I saw some cream puffs and thought "oh, I'll get those tomorrow", and then I never saw them again. I will have to take another NCL cruise just to see if the cream puffs are as good as they were on MSC. I love cream puffs. Then I tried to take pictures to show how much the waves were making the ship fly around, but really, that's difficult. I took video too, but it just doesn't show anything. I should have videoed people trying to walk. Somewhere in there, there was also the cruise critic meet up. It was fun to meet a few more people, and I chatted with many throughout the week when I saw them on the ship. I also spent a few sessions during the day on my "art retreat". I probably packed more art supplies than clothing, and today I did some lessons I had downloaded from Tamara LaPorte's website. I'll show you one of them, because I suck at art, and am quite proud of this one. I still think it's kind of weird that I never went to any trivia, or any activity, but I just did not want to deal with having to look at my watch. Except for to make dinner. Not being very hungry, I nearly cancelled on Los Lobos for the night, but ended up going. More in the next post.

I assume the $379 was because it was Alaska in October? I went back and looked at the invoice multiple times to make sure. I also never saw them selling day passes, and heard on embarkation day from someone hoping to book that the week was sold out for it; so I guess if they can sell it, they'll keep it at that price! I am very thankful for my Dad for giving it to me; because there is no way i would have ever paid that. Honestly, if he hadn't made me show him the reciept that I paid for it, I might have just taken the money and applied it to the cruise, which, as a solo, was a lot more than I typically spend on cruises.

Just called to prepay my gratuities at the current rate. 55:12 on hold. Why can we not do this on the website?

I don't think they are really set up to have shared tables, because of the way freestyle dining works. So either going with the solo group, or just arranging to meet to go to dinner together with people you met at the bar, on a shore excursion, in the casino etc; is the way to be able to eat with others.

So even he doesn't know, which means he isn't reporting it. Yeah, the calls get recorded; but the supervisors aren't listening to every single call to see what feedback was provided. So if the call representative isn't classifying and filing feedback, it's going nowhere. And even when they do, it's often just 'noted'. Often there is a threshold of x% of calls are complaints about a single issue that a company then starts trying to figure out how to deal with that issue. But often that is just better messaging around it, not fixing anything.

It's a CEO's job to increase value to shareholder. The only reason to consider the customer is because you have to gain them/keep them and not lose them to competitors. But as long as they can drive profits, that's the goal of a business. That's why it happens in every company/

Just remembered, one of the reasons I skipped dessert the first night is because service was taking a very long time, and in addition to not being that hungry, I also didn't want to wait- because I wanted to head to the thermal spa. So I ended the night with some time in the thermal spa. I'll use this update to comment on that. The thermal spa, was really really nice. Especially for Alaska in October where it was chilly outside. I spent at least an hour there every day. I LOVED the pool (especially that waterfall jet on my shoulders, though I think that would have been better if I was a bit taller and it could hit a little more of my back), I enjoyed the hot tub a ton. First time I've ever been in a hot tub on a cruise, as the outdoor ones always were too crowded people soup for me. I gave the sauna and steam room a try, and neither was for me. The sauna just way too hot, and the steam room I felt like I was suffocating. But after all my soaks in the pool, I'd go to the sanarium- which was fabulous, a less hot sauna! That also helped me dry out my swimsuit! Most days I spent some time on the heated loungers, but they weren't my favorite. They were really uncomfortable. The bends in them didn't fit my body at all (I'm 5'0" tall), so I had to have a towel roll under my back to not be in pain from the angle. I also just didn't find them to be that warm, so I would usually keep a robe over me like a blanket. I bet with a warm fleece blanket on top, it would be nice. But I kept thinking "I need to do this because I paid a ton for this thermal suite!" I also tried the salt room a few times, but it also wasn't a very comfortable place to sit. I think the idea of that is the salt in the room really dries your sinus cavities out, thus, helping with respiratory issues. I went into the snow room once, but always forgot shoes, so didn't really use it. Usually, my plan was instead to walk across the open deck before getting into the forward elevators, so I had time to cool my body down. The one time I forgot to do this, by the time I got back to my room I was so painfully hot that I had to lay down outside on the balcony to cool down. I thought I was going to pass out. So, overall, the thermal spa was probably one of my favorite parts of the cruise. It was just SO chill in there. So calm and quiet, never that crowded. I had brought a cover for my kindle, so I'd sit or stand in the pool or in sit in the hot tub or a lounger and just read. I read like 7 books on this cruise. It was just amazing. It wasn't until near the very end of the trip that I found the amazing showers in the back corner of the thermal suite- with body sprayers and a great rainfall shower. They were out in the open, so obviously a swimsuit on kind of shower, but there was shampoo and bodywash, so I tended to just wash my hair here and take a nice warm shower for a few minutes. BUT- the price was so high; $379 for a 7-day cruise. If it hadn't been given to me as a gift, I just cannot see myself paying that. So, unfortunately, if I cruise again, I think I won't be doing this. I'll miss it, but not $50+ a day miss it... I do understand why the price is so high. They have to capacity control it. And they obviously want to maximize revenue while they do that. And I do greatly appreciate that they don't just sell, sell, sell, and then allow the room to become a crowded mess. It was a really wonderful area of the ship. Really, the only thing I'd change is to have a swimsuit dryer in the locker room. Also, huge shout to the crew with the sysphean task of keeping the room dry. Especially on the days where water was just flying out of the pool every time the ship moved. And, in my next post, I'll talk about the rough seas of the first sea day, but here's a video to show the thermal spa pool (I tried to keep the people out of it, so kind of a weird angle). This was SO MUCH FUN. Like a wave pool and a hot tub in one. You HAD to hold on, or you'd go flying across the pool. In the bubble area, I didn't stay long as I was honestly worried I'd be injured; but in the main pool area, it was just a blast. (The deck pools were closed.) Watch or skip to the middle/ end- that's the big wave.

Isn't it only like 70 miles away? For people flying in from across the Atlantic, it is way easier to fly to London than Southampton, and they are pretty close together.