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With less than three days now until we board, the excitement here is starting to grow. Suitcases are out in a few rooms and our washer and dryer have been going non-stop since yesterday. Each of our family has a packing list and tasks that need to get done before we head to the airport on Friday. As we approach, I'm trying to lock down some final things. First we are trying to decide what to do in Costa Maya. We were going to surprise my daughter with the dolphin experience, but it was sold out through NCL and their website says the habitat is undergoing maintenance. We also thought about doing the river tubing excursion, but I might be a wee tad overweight for it. So we're looking at alternatives, but also thinking that maybe being on the ship for the day might be worth it. Also know that a few weeks ago, Joy was unable to dock at Costa Maya due to winds/waves. We have a good deal of time between getting back to Miami and our flight out. Was thinking about doing the Everglades excursion after disembarkation. Anyone done that before and if so, what did you think? My daughter is begging to leave now (she has two tests tomorrow). I have a long day tomorrow and the wife is traveling back from her trip as well. There are many things to do and not a ton of time to do them. Looking forward to Friday as we start the journey and the "live" part of this.

It's been a full weekend for our family celebrating my wife's 18th 29th birthday with family and friends all weekend, but we finally broke down and got our suitcases out and started going through the list last night. Both of us a pretty savvy business travelers and we've learned to pack well and as light as we can, except this trip, my wife wants to get some nice family photos of us to update the ones from 2020 that we had taken locally. So I guess we're packing a little more than I thought we would. The list is similar to our beach list for clothing, personal stuff, etc. but then has some added things that we normally wouldn't bring to the beach with us. Either way, my daughter started putting her outfits for dinner/pictures tonight and laying them in the guest room with her bag. Meanwhile, the wife and I are starting laundry and packing as we go. We are a hardsided suitcase family and a big fan of the American Tourister series. We each have a larger 26" and a smaller carryon that matches (we use the carryon ones most of the time for our business trips) and we also have these Patagonia bags that can be used as a duffle bag or convert to a backpack (large one) that will fit under the seat on a plane. Our original plan was to go with the 26" and then bring the Patagonia bags and a backpack of some sort, but now it looks like the smaller carry-ons will be needed for the extra picture clothes. Got upgraded on our flights to FLL already (thanks babe for all the traveling you do) this afternoon (at least when I had checked this afternoon) so that was a nice surprise. Generally, we do not get many upgrades on American and I'm kicking myself for not grabbing the 777's from CLT to MIA instead to get those nicer seats now. But it's a nice surprise and my daughter will be happy about our luck this time (January we didn't get upgraded for our ski trip). Busy week to come as my daughter has 5 tests this week before the end of the period and two soccer games, I have a test before spring break (I'm in grad school) and my wife is traveling for work Tuesday-Thursday.

Looking forward to seeing you guys in the Haven. My 11 year old daughter will be happy to know that kids her age will be in the Haven with her.

I will need to re-read it with the updates as I remember when that thread was started and there was a lot of great information. Thanks for reminding me. I'll get some pictures of that area, as well as all of the updates from dry dock and post them.

It's our second time in Haven, first time we were in a Forward Facing Haven Suite and while it was nice overall, I felt like it lacked a bit of storage if there were more than 2 people there. Also, the location on the Escape had us listening to the crew outside every night on the bow until around midnight. But overall, we liked the suite and the shower especially. My wife remarked about the closet as well on the drawing and video she saw so I think she's excited about it as well.

Nothing to see here, keep moving along.. 🙂

I've been a long-time lurker and reader here at CC now and have really enjoyed much of the content, especially many of the live cruise reports that have been provided over the years. I'm a bit of a blogger, mainly for my own enjoyment and my family, and I had tried to do one of these last cruises with my wife, but had internet issues and turned it into a basic review vs. a Live post. This time, I'm sticking to my decision and will do a Live From Thread, which I know will drive my wife and daughter crazy. The Family Introduction It feels like forever, but my wife and I have been together for over 16 years now, 13 of them as husband and wife and 11 of them as mom and dad. We are both very successful at our respective jobs/companies and look to our traveling as a gift because building memories is more important than material things to us. While we have a bunch of hobbies that we both enjoy, I can definitely say that our number one “hobby” is following our 11-year-old through her events and sports and being the most supportive parents that we can. Our last cruise was in 2017 on the NCL Escape on this same itinerary but it was only my wife and myself. We needed a break at the time from our work and to be honest, the precocious four-year-old who basically followed us around (ironic how things change). We booked that cruise to reconnect as husband and wife and it was just what we needed. Since then our vacations have been mostly local beach or skiing vacations to the Rocky Mountains over the past 7 or so years, with about 20 trips to Disney sprinkled in. When we were starting to think about what to do for Spring Break this year, we had thrown around doing a Disney trip and seeing some family, but my wife blurted out, “We should go on a cruise!” In typical fashion, I got with my trusted TA and started the process right before we left for our ski trip with her family and had her start pulling last-minute deals. What I had forgotten about is that on our last cruise, we won an upgrade to the Haven for next to nothing and it completely spoiled my wife similar to our first cruise on RCL Mariner of the Seas with a balcony, as she had been an inside cruiser most of her cruises. We were able to grab a pretty good last-minute deal on a Haven Suite (HI category) for the three of us and as usual, we got a good amount of OBC and other things from our TA (she’s awesome and I have used her for years for a lot of other travel). I’m going to try to chronicle from here on out, our process for traveling and the planning that we do. My wife is an operations/supply chain nerd at heart so everything we do is either LEAN or Six Sigma in our house for the most part. I’m a tech nerd and have worked in IT for 25 years, so everything I do is usually leveraging technology. My daughter has the best of both of us so I will do a lot of telling things from her perspective. Our countdown clocks started on Saturday and we are at the 9 days to go mark. Here’s where we are at: The cruise was booked and fully paid for and all onboard gratuities were paid for in advance. I have excursions booked for Roatan, Harvest Caye, and Cozumel but nothing for Costa Maya Airfare and hotel for the day before is all done (flying into FLL, staying at Miami Airport Embassy Suites) Looking forward to doing this and posting from the ship. I’m a really honest guy about most things and will provide as unbiased opinion as possible about the cruise and ship itself. Food is always subjective and being a foodie, I know I have to set my expectations for where I am at.

So I have a chance to review again in about 10 days on the NCL Joy and compare it back to pre-Covid cruise I took back in 2017. There are some differences here and there with the two, mainly traveling with my daughter this time and the ship, but I can definitely give a pretty good comparison to what we had on our last cruise and what we get on this cruise.

I'm not getting up much before 8 on a cruise unless I have a good reason to do so...

Most of us don't use blinkers. It let's other people know our intentions while driving....

Same for me on our last one in 2017. Longest we waited as a twosome was about 5-10 minutes tops and that was during prime time hours as well.

I can confirm that I can go in for the 3/9 cruise and add the pass to my cart and check out with it. I was thinking about it for my wife and I, but haven't pulled the trigger yet. Assuming they get the rest of the work done on the TA they need to do, it would be nice to have for upcoming cruise in 3 weeks.

Glad to see your mom enjoying herself to the best she can with the injury. Hopefully you are able to get the medical help you need in PV and get back on the ship and enjoy the rest of the cruise. Best of luck to you and hope everything goes well for your mom.

Even with the other platform they were using (forget the name) there are multiple dishes that service the ship. Once it reaches the ship, NCL has control of it on their network and rate limit it. Getting a single dish and 500mbit for all 5000 people and services on the ship to use would be a poor way to distribute. I would assume, as a previous poster mentioned that they have multiple dishes getting internet and have their network segmented to certain dishes for NCL use vs. passenger use. That was how I would do it as a network engineer.

I disagree. Starlink provides the internet, just like they would for a home user. After it hits the router, it is connected to NCL's internal network/wifi, which they have full control over and can easily throttle connections and rate limit. We do this with our warehouses all the time for my company where we are in remote areas with no internet provider except satellite. We rate limit devices that are not essential on the network/wireless for business so as not to use up the bandwidth that is there for organizational purposes. I do it at home on my mesh wifi as well (not Starlink) and limit how much my daughter can use when both my wife and I are working from home and need the bandwidth.

My family is also on this cruise!

I believe in your first hand account of your own speeds, but since I'm basically using it for emailing and some minor file transfers, I don't think I need 100mbit speeds. I can live with 1-2mbit for what I'm doing and just mail it in on the conference call. Definitely interested to see how much they cap the streaming speeds.

Anyone hear anything about Joy getting Starlink while in dry dock? I'm curious only because I have some deliverables due and a short call while on the cruise. If not, no biggie, I'll just have to say the connection was unreliable.

Thanks for all of the pictures. I feel as though whoever designed and chose the decorating schemes for the specialty restaurants was trying to make a statement of some sort. What statement that is, I do not know.

Color blindness for the interior designers and those "grinch" chairs...

The Samsung Note 7... who actually still owns one of those?

Following along with you and @BirdTravels now. That change isn't bad unless you had some plans for Norfolk. Enjoy your cruise.

My father worked for many cruise lines in the 60s, 70s and 80s before going shoreside as an electrical engineer for the MCT. He spent 52 years on cruise ships and his wish was to be buried at sea. I called NCL after we had booked and was directed to a "special services" division (this was in 2015 so it might have changed). I emailed them copies of his death certificate and the cremation certificate. Since we had not chosen an urn for him originally, we ordered a biodegradable one from the funeral home and they helped us transfer the ashes to it, as they had to be taken out of the plastic bag they were in. We brought the certificate with us to show that the urn was biodegradable. The special services representative send us a confirmation email and had copied guest services on the BA on it with a note that they would get in touch with us on embarkation day. Embarkation day came and we met with the manager of guest services and one of the captain's staff. They had setup the time for us to go down to the mooring deck on the first sea day (NYC - Bermuda) to do the ceremony. They verified everything with us and then took us to the private room where we were having a small reception afterward to make sure it would be okay for what we needed. 1st Sea Day came and we met at Guest Services and was surprised to find the Captain there with the Guest Services Manager. We came to find out that the captain and my father had worked together back in the 80s when he was much younger and working his way up the chain. They led us down to the mooring deck, where they had carpets and a platform setup for us and a small table. We put our stuff on the table (urn, pictures, flowers that they had gotten for us) and they reviewed the safety stuff with us. We did our small ceremony, gave everyone their chance to say their last goodbye (which it really wasn't because every time we go to our beach house, we say hello to him) and then my sister and I put him in his final resting place. We then had a small social gathering where we cracked a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue (my dad's scotch of choice) and made a few toasts to him. It went really smoothly for us. I'm sorry for your loss OP. Hope this information on what we did and to expect is helpful.

What is sad is that all of those wines are pretty much standard everyday lines that are readily available at most grocery stores except for the East and West, which is the NCL house wine, as I call it. It's not terrible and if I were to price it in the store, it would be like a $9 bottle of everyday wine. Loving your review and your dad. My father worked in the cruise industry (engineer) for 52 years. When he retired and was cruising, he was one of the biggest critics of the major brand lines. He never had many nice things to say and couldn't enjoy himself except to see us kids and his wife having a great time. Your dad and his comments remind me of him so much.

Yep, I'm in the same boat as you. It's okay. Same with Pappy, It's good, but not when they want $100/oz at the bar or $1500-2000 for the bottle.