kelleherdl

15 hours ago, ChattTenn said:

We had cruised from Miami several and once we got used to with Port Canaveral no look back for us because this port is easy to get to and the parking is also so much easy.

We had cruised on MSC several times from port Canaveral and our next one will be on the Seashore in a few weeks.  All our MSC cruises were not YC but good for the money we paid for.

Happy cruising

Be warned that parking at Port Canaveral Terminal 10 is markedly degraded over the last two months with construction of a new second garage. The construction may take as long as 18 months. In a few weeks it may be okay as Terminal 10 will return to only two ships. In either case bag drop has shifted and even the crosswalks on the street out front have been shifted.

MSC needs to consider building its own dedicated terminal at Port Canaveral. Hopefully after Port Miami terminal is open and Galveston is done, PC will get one. 

I checked Cruise Mapper. Disney Fantasy overnighted in Port Canaveral. Yes, all the other scheduled cruise ship departures happened last night, but MSC is not the only cruise line to think safety and comfort of passengers first. 

8 minutes ago, joseph123 said:

Is this actually a pool? Looks more like a large hot tub. Is it large enough to actually swim in?

No.  It’s a soaking pool.

40 minutes ago, uktog said:

 

The Helios pool will not be open as it’s got a long term design issue (it empties its contents over the whole deck as soon as there’s a wobble - a case of a land designer not understanding the brief I fear). However for now there’s so few children the adult experience prevails all around. 
 

The Helios Pool was my preferred sunning spot. With the pool design issues it’s very quiet up there. Besides Daryl runs the best bar on the ship IMO.

2 hours ago, uktog said:

Entertainment they’re fixing sauce we disagree on. I’m not someone who posts to sell a line. I’m honest and highlight what working - the food, service and rooms and what’s not yet working - the entertainment. With the personnel change today the entertainment may be different this cruise 

It really can’t be that quick.  It may take awhile for even a seasoned Producer to rework the venue schedules, entertainer bookings (sorry, I might use ‘host’, but not ‘artiste’) and administrative issues like promotional blurbs.  😀

12 hours ago, shrkdive1 said:

We took the opportunity to book a Black Friday discounted journey.  We had been sitting on the fence at the higher fares but with a 30% discount we could not pass up.

Tough to beat.  Maybe TA’s can score better discounted fares for themselves, but ~ $450 p/p/d for entry level suites is outstanding. I looked at comps on Seabourn for their Black Friday deals, and EJ beats them majorly. Having done two journeys so far, the OT-1’s are fine for us. Even without the ‘butler’ attention of MSC Yacht Club or EJ Residence level we found the ‘hosts’ on EJ to be great. We did book the San Juan to San Juan 14-day in February 2025 on Explora II. EJ only did similar cruises on Explora I out of Barbados. For us Florida cruisers San Juan is an ideal departure port. 

On 11/23/2023 at 9:03 AM, Falckon said:

Actually, our question is whether you can drive up to the white tent and drop off baggage, or do you have to drag your bags from the general baggage drop off area before parking?

Terminal 10 at Port Canaveral is all messed up right now for luggage drop off. The front surface parking lot is under construction for an additional parking garage. Baggage drop has been moved to the front lower level of the main terminal building. Even the crosswalk at the entry drive has been moved for the construction. You will need to park first and bring your luggage to the drop area. Make sure you look for the Yacht Club drop area. Ask the porters to be sure. This may be the time to use off-site parking even though I hate that idea. The White Tent is still at the bottom of the escalator into the terminal. 

5 hours ago, Lenbro1944 said:

From what I see most of the discounts only apply to Ocean Residences and only select rooms in that catagory. You’ll find out what is discounted when you go to the “book” page.

The EJ booking website clearly shows which cruises are included in the Exclusive Savings Event (at least the US site does). Each search listing shows the discounted fare with the discount %, where applicable. The % discounts apply to all suite categories from OT-1 and up.  

11 hours ago, Dr. Cocktail said:

I'm intrigued .... did they actually allow you to use the "Exclusive Sale Discount" AND your 25% Future Cruise Credit (because of cancellation) discount?

 

Much appreciated!

No.  We got the Extended Journey discount and the 25% FCC, which came to our final price.  Our ‘new’ cost was before the Black Friday Sale.  I doubt we would have gotten both. 

35 minutes ago, Hlitner said:

We can't get too excited about the Caribbean (although we still cruise, once a year, in those waters).  Their European itineraries are of some interest, and it looks like the OT1s are pricing about $525 per person/day.   That is a decent price for the EJ product, but unlike Seabourn, Silverseas, etc. the EJ folks do not offer the business class bargains we can get with those lines.  

 

We are still scratching our head at the lack of marketing for this product.  Consider that we are now past passengers and seldom hear anything from EJ about promotions, or upcoming itineraries.  My e-mail boxes are full of info/marketing from nearly every cruise line except EJ.  In fact, when we mention EJ to most friends, they give us a blank look because they have never heard of the line!  Go figure.

 

Hank

We snagged the 16-day Rome to Barcelona to Barcelona with the Wave 3 cancellation bonus. That came in at $430 per person per pay. But that was the extra discount due to the multiple itinerary cancellations. That itinerary and the new Caribbean itinerary were the ONLY ones that grabbed us.

i agree wholeheartedly on the marketing. I do get a lot of generic emails, but were it not for my TA I think we would be missing out on specific good deals. I am sure we would have missed out on this current set of Black Friday discounts.

20 minutes ago, Hlitner said:

No surprise and we warned, months ago, of our opinion that EJ has made a lot of unforced errors with their marketing and insistence on short (mostly 7 day) itineraries.   While DW and I truly enjoyed our 18 days on the EJ1, we had paid about half of what the line wants for future cruises.  Coming off the cruise our opinion was that we had little interest in the short 7 day itineraries at the current pricing and would rather be on Seabourn (or some other lines) for less money than EJ.  

 

Even at a substantial discount (such as with this sale) we cannot get excited about the EJ itineraries.  We will take a good look, but our excitement "meter" is not moving off the gauge.

 

Hank

I did see the nice ‘new’ longer San Juan to San Juan ABC Islands to French Antilles 14-day. I had wanted to repeat an MSC French Antilles 14-day we took several years ago, but don’t like the air fares to Barbados or Martinique. This itinerary gets us cheaper flights to San Juan and adds ABC Islands. I did get an option booked for an OT-1. With that 30% discount we’re looking at the ~$450 per person per day, which is my sweet spot.

2 hours ago, shouka4ever said:

And this offer is only for new costumer…

New ‘booking’ not new ‘customer.’

11 hours ago, uktog said:

 

The entertainment is the one thing that’s not fully firing on all cylinders for us. Partly because the show last night wasn’t our “thing” so we didn’t go only to find no one in one bar (so no entertainment as advertised). No problem we thought we’d check out the Malt Whisky bar but it’s closed for maintenance. We did finally find a venue with entertainment albeit it was finishing up. I think we need to do more homework on what each entertainer offers (we just have names on the program) and will suggest to the ship they are more proactive in sharing information about choices. 

We were introduced to Drew, the EJ Entertainment Director from Geneva on the last cruise. He was very hopeful that folks will provide feedback on the Explora entertainment offerings. Personally, I am a big fan of their current model with some tweaks. One significant improvement can be more detailed descriptions in the daily plan of the program for each venue that evening, things like the scheduled Artiste and the program/genre/style, that sort of thing. I will send a lengthy review based on my preferences.

1 hour ago, Hlitner said:

 

Given the reaction of the pizza chef (in the Emporium) when we asked if he would mind putting some pepperoni on a slice of margarita (NO!  that has not one of our menu items) how they will react to kids who have specific dietary requests.

 

Hank

The only child on our recent 3-17Nov cruise was Captain Michelozzi’s son.  He was so cute. Every day at lunch the Captain carried him through the Emporium line. He ALWAYS stopped and got several slices of focaccia. I never saw him get pizza.  The kid loved his focaccia. 😀

When the latest round of itineraries cancellations occurred we were very disappointed. We had a very nice Aegean/Adriatic on Explora 2 booked. Which had replaced a cancelled Dubai to Mumbai. We put a Rome to Barcelona to Barcelona together. That was the only cruise that would have kept us from taking the deposit back and moving.  12 months can only come soon enough. We are still happy to be on Explora and we are convinced they are a giant killer. And we are not the ‘target’ demographic. But they definitely are starting to be on board. They are moving over from Ritz Carlton and others. 

I had no problem getting our preferred reservations for both segments of the Miami to Miami the afternoon of embarkation. Our two segments are an ‘extended journey’ under the same booking code if that could impact anything.

The pizza hullabaloo has been solved. One can now get pizza with salami, artichokes, olives and other stuff. The pizza cooks are excited as well. They must have known that the limited choices from before was not accepted well. But alas pizza is not Atkins compliant, along with my beloved blueberry pancakes. I told both stations I’ll visit them at least once during the 14 days.

12 minutes ago, florisdekort said:

The loud creaking noises were there every night in our suite. We slept with earplugs in.

 

 

Our lowly OT2 is right next to a section bulkhead, so I was concerned.  Absolutely nothing. 

After gaining 12 pounds on the 16 days from Reykjavik to NYC I’m doing this 14 days back on strict Atkins.  That is actually easier than you might think. The protein and fats are good to go, but there are virtually no dessert options. I’ll just have fill my belly with MEAT!  

3 hours ago, InsGuy3 said:

The ground crew in Miami was disorganized and sorta lost control of the check-in process. After passing thru security we were asked to take a seat in a designated area. Then some people noticed that people were being called to check-in and so everyone started getting in line no matter when they arrived inside the terminal. Communication was lost and people refused to sit back down until their turn. A couple next to us, also in a Residence Suite, spoke to someone in charge and was told we were to all checkin based on when we entered the terminal. Five minutes later we being escorted to checkin. At checkin, Residence Suite guests were to be escorted to the gangplank where a butler was to take us up to our suite. Went well after that initial hiccup. 

Trust me this was better than using just the ship’s management to do checkin. Miami was far superior to Reykjavik in my opinion. EJ did not use the regular port operations company that MSC uses so their experience with the iPad app for MSC may have played a little role. But you are right the shore operations people were not trained for EJ suite class differences. 

16 hours ago, saminina said:

The ship never had more than 200 passengers.  Cruise ended in Miami with 156.  166 in Portland.

 

And thank you for leaving her is such beautiful shape. According to Sonja we only have 452 on board now. Very manageable.

47 minutes ago, florisdekort said:

Dinner at Med Yacht Club?

32 minutes ago, florisdekort said:

Let’s hope Explora learned from it. I’ll follow reports from the 3 November sailing with interest. 

 

Myself, I’m not too optimistic about that. There does seem to be quite a few ‘repeaters’ on board for the Caribbean Inaugural from the other social media. If I do see too much ‘group activity’ I will mention it. Your sentiment is correct, we should be beyond the initial marketing phase, but we’ll see.
 

We didn’t notice too much disruption on Reykjavik to New York. Regular paying customers, like ourselves, were treated very well and had lots of opportunity to interact with senior officers/staff.

1 hour ago, PrivateIdaho said:

Trying to get an idea of how this port will be handled for Explora. Am I correct, that cabanas in the YC area can only be rented by Residents Suite passengers? Will other passengers be allowed to dine at Ocean House and use Ocean House And Bimini Beaches?

 

Cabanas are available for booking at South Beach and the lagoon with same level of service (or so the Experience states) for non Residence guests. I’m really looking forward to seeing the lunch menu for non Residence. I would imagine, or should I say hope, it will be well above the hamburger/hotdogs/grilled chicken of normal Ocean Cay port calls.

26 minutes ago, maggie.1008 said:

Can you get Rum as a complementary bottle in your cabin ?

Not according to the request form from suite host. The only rum that Louis Vuitton owns is Eminente. I recall seeing it at the Lobby Bar, but I doubt they are giving that away.