hospital

Thank you for all your responses.

Just got off the Dawn, they confiscated water as people were checking in. From the responses here it must depend on the ship or port.

So in all my cruising, I've learned to book return flights later in the day, this way I stay on the ship until all are given the final call to disembark. At that point our luggage is usually the only one standing and customs is a breeze. I've done this for several different cruise lines.

I never understand how people get there at 8am to get on the ship to start their vacation but want to get off the ship as soon as she docks. :rolleyes: Why after such a great vacation get all caught up in the mess. I do however understand that some that are flying have no choice as there sometimes is only one flight to their final destination, but it's great not to get caught up in the mess!!

I did the Oasis twice and the Allure and getting off both times was a breeze.

Happy sailing.

I've done the Oasis, Allure, Getaway and Escape. I would take Oasis & Allure any day. The Getaway was nice, but was not a fan of the Escape.

Pool area is so small that on sea days you don't have to worry about chairs as there is no room to get in the pool let alone find a chair. It was packed with 100's of people just standing in it.

Entertainment I found to be sub par. Brat Pack was good, comedians were okay, the cotton club show not so good. lots of people walked out. It was painful.

Game shows we all like them, however they play the most popular ones in the Atrium, there is NOT enough room in the Atrium to hold the amount of people that attend these shows. You have to get there 2 hours before to get a decent seat or stand. Can't enjoy a specialty coffee with dessert as the people attending the shows take all the chairs and sit on the tables.

Food is subjective, I liked the food on both Royal and Escape.

Rooms found the room on Escape to be okay but absolutely not enough storage for two people to store all their clothing.

Vibe- Loved it and try to book it everytime I cruise NCL

I still had a great relaxing time and I am cruising the Escape again in March with family and the Dawn this October, then back to RCL on the Harmony in April.

For me, I cruise for value first, itinerary second, cruise line that offers the first two. I started with NCL as I've gotten phenominal deals through CAS, that I couldn't pass up.

To me every cruise line has there signature, some you will like, some you will not, but just enjoy what you like and relax you're on vacation.

I've sailed Celebrity, Costa, Princess, NCL, RCL, Homeric,and Carnival. In my opinion each experience was different. Each ship had its own personality and offered different things. Had only one bad experience on Carnival, but went back to give them another chance, and had 3 more fantastic cruises with them.

I love RCL's promenade the most over the atriums. The Getaway atrium was beautiful but they held a lot of their shows there and it's just not big enough of a venue to hold the amount of people that show up. Would it deter me from NCL nope, I have 3 more NCL cruises coming up with them.

Sometimes I notice when staff are at the end of their contracts and looking forward to seeing their families they are a little less attentive, but still doesn't ruin my cruise.

Each ship offers something special to take away. Go with an open mind to have fun and I guarantee you will have an awesome time.

I travel for the cost, convenience, and itinerary so whichever cruise ship is doing it, I'm on it.

Have a great cruise!!!!

I did the AT & T cruise plan last year when I sailed the Dawn. You pay a fee that is good for one month. I was not able to use the phone on the ship while at sea but was able to use it when we docked in Bermuda or any other port with no additional charges.

Unfortunately AT & T is affiliated with RCI.

Have a great cruise.

Pauleydm, It was so refreshing to hear from someone who is on the ship and is stating facts with a level reasonable head. It is never any cruise lines intention to ruin someones vacation for various reasons, but unfortunately things happen and I think Carnival has first and foremost considered the safety of all their passengers and secondly compensated them extremely well. They can stay on the ship in PR and still enjoy what goes on, on the ship except maybe for the shops and casino, which they have in PR. You have made the best of an unfortunate situation and I commend you for that. Unfortunately you will always have the few, who will think not enough was done. Again thanks for the information, enjoy the rest of your trip. They are always and adventure and this will surely be a memorable one!!!

This comment made me laugh! I was on the same sailing as Winston Wolf, boarding number 6, we got to pier around 9:30am since that was when our train got into NYC. We sat in side area until about 10am when they let us check in, boarding began at 11:45. I read a post on CC explaining where to get the passes and to act just like it was rope drop! This was the best $79 we spent all week, I would have spent double that. Not windy at all, always plenty of open loungers and beds, plenty of room in the hot tubs, no kids, nice and quiet. I read two books over the week! I will second the comment about the stairs and sun deck above being a little awkward at times as people could look down and watch over us. Most of them were just trying to figure out how to get in there since the pool decks were PACKED (sold out sailing) and Vibe had plenty of empty seats.

We had people stand behind Vibe people on the Getaway and when you scanned your card to open the door they would walk right in behind you and thought they hit pay dirt until they couldn't produce their bracelets and the gentleman would explain that they had to leave. Some left willingly others put up a little argument to no avail. It happened everyday. It made for some interesting people watching!!!:rolleyes:

Another senario for the 3 missing people at muster. could have been what happened to me when we were on our cruise.

We went to muster drill in the dining room, had our cards scanned and went about our evening only to return to our room, with a memo on our bed that seeing we had chosen not to attend the muster drill, we would be required to report to one of the lounges to go through the muster drill at 8am the following morning.

We went to guest services and explained that in fact we had been there, luckily we remembered the name of the woman who had scanned us in (I love to read the name tags to see where people are from) and reiterated some of what the Captain had said at the close of the muster drill and they said okay, we were not the only ones, the scanner had not captured everyone and they were sorry for the inconvenience.

I traveled post surgery 6 months after procedure. Didn't have a problem at all. there are many choices on the menu that you can select to suit your needs. I didn't have much of an appetite, so my only problem (if you can call it that) was the waiter constantly asking me if something was wrong with the food and could he bring me something else.

Some evenings I would save some room for a bite of whatever sugar free dessert they had. :D

I still do the same thing 7 years later.

Have a great cruise!!!:)

We did the Getaway and I got Vibe passes in May of last year and had no problem with umbrella's being up. In fact I kept asking to have them put down so I could get some sun. My travel buddy loved having a nice lounge chair and the umbrella, but didn't like the fact there was no pool.

I on the other hand didn't care about the pool. There's a hot tub and if you should get too hot there's a large shower.

I loved it and will hopefully do it again on my next cruise.

Just did that cruise. We docked right near Old San Juan. Walk off and you're right there.

I too just got off this ship and the chair hogs were out in great numbers. I found a chair at the solarium later in the day and next to me were 6 chairs with towels on them. I stayed in the sun for about 3 hours and those chairs were never used by anyone, although several people were asking to use them. I did tell them that no one had been in them for hours so I would go ahead and use them. Some did and some walked away disgusted. I am one who doesn't need to have a chair by the pool so the chair hogs don't annoy me, but I do find it to be rude behavior. There were people who had saved seats in the shade and the sun.

When I was getting my towel, there was a gentleman asking if the pool attendant had his book and sunglasses. The attendant opened up a large storage area that held all the stuff that they had removed from chairs at the request of others and asked him if he saw his articles there. So if you do ask they do remove it. And yes I too saw people arguing over chairs. Such a waste of vacation time.

My travel agent sometimes sends us a bottle of wine and as my travel buddy and I do not drink wine (we did a b2b) so we had two bottles, we gave one to our cabin steward who was very appreciative and we left one in the room with a note "Hope you have a great cruise like we had, enjoy" for the next passengers in that cabin. We cleared that with the cabin steward so it wouldn't get tossed. She put it on ice in the bucket for them. What they did with it was their call. We had such a great time we thought it was a nice idea.

We did a post cruise after our Summit cruise out of Puerto Rico. We used the licensed tour guides that were at the pier when we disembarked the ship. It was $25pp and your luggage stayed with you and they dropped us at the airport at the end of the tour.

Hi! My fiancé and I are getting married and had initially planned on going on RCCL Enchantment to Bahamas on June 22 (2 days after we get married). I got an email over the weekend from NCL that has us seriously considering jumping ship to the Sky for the same time.

 

The itinerary for EOS is Cocoa Cay, Nassau, Sea Day

The itinerary for Sky is Freeport, Nassau, LSC

 

The things I am interested in: Is the ship "walkable"? I have been recovering from a pretty significant leg injury and extended walking is not an option.

 

Will they accommodate my lack of being able to do stairs during the lifeboat drill? Stairs are not really an option.

 

Are there fridges in the room? I am diabetic and need to keep my insulin cold.

 

Are there photo packages on the ship?

 

Is there a "formal" or "elegant" night at all?

 

Thanks!

 

Oh yeah, Sky is about $500 cheaper for us. $100 in fare plus the beverage package.

The ship is walkable. You can use the elevators to go just about everywhere with a little walking once you get off.

About 15-20 minutes before the muster drill take the elevator to your assigned muster drill. You will find a lot of people do this.

There are refrigerators in the room.

I'm not sure about the photo package as I did not buy any photos. Never even visited the photo gallery.

You can choose to dress up or go casual to your respective restaurants.

We had a great time on SKY. She was the first NCL ship we did. Got off of her and went on the GETAWAY. Another great ship!!!!

Whatever you decide have a great time. RCL is also great. Sailed them many times!

they did the napkin waving on my January 24th Summit cruise.

I would have thought there would have been crew members at the doors to make sure all players used the hand sanitizer as was done at the windjammer. Lots of surfaces being touched in the casino. The amount of attention paid to casino users seemed much less than anywhere else.

 

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Have you ever seen how many people come up with excuses why they can't or won't use the hand sanitizer. We were quite shocked to see just how many refused to use it going into the windjammer so I can imagine should they have someone at the doors of the casino it would be the same. I'm sure some people have legitimate reasons for not using sanitizers such as allergies, but not the amount of people we saw refuse to use it. Unfortunately when you cruise or fly there is always the chance that you can contract noro, so it if up to us to make sure we do what we can to protect ourselves and hope for the best.

I had a street vendor in St. Lucia ask me if I would give her my towel for her children. I said sorry can't do that and she just kept saying it's for my child, it's for my child. Wonder if people give in and give them up or if any of the locals take them when you're in the water or walking the beach. I'm not hung up on the towel, but I do think they are not worth the $25 they charge you if you do not return them.

Just off a Celebrity cruise did not have to sign towels out. They left them in your room and exchanged dirty for clean every night. Good practice I think, also you could get towels by the pool without checking them out.

I'm always afraid of booking a vacation during the winter. Even if you plan to go a day early you never know if you will be snowed in or not. These last 2 weeks in New York have been terrible and there is more snow on the way. Also I would hate to come back to the cold after spending a week in a tropical climate. I like to stretch the season by either booking for the spring or fall.

I'm with you. I just did a cruise in January and stressed more about the weather than anything else. Thankfully we left 2 days prior and missed the big storm on embarkation day. whew!! And I hated coming back to the cold. April/May for me!!! As they say to each his own!

So excited to be on the Summit in 22 days! Woo hoo!! I was wondering what the shows were...I'm assuming there will be the standard Broadway/Hits show but are they still doing Sirens? (please say no!).

 

Also, was there a new entertainment show/option called iMagic? I heard something about this somewhere but I can't seem to find any details.

 

Thanks! Looking forward to the review!!

yes Sirens is still one of the shows and they did iMagic as a show. Sorry to say I did not like either of them. I was on the Jan. 24th sailing. But as each person tastes are different maybe you will like them.

Oh how they try to trick you! Oh how they entice you with forbidden fruit! And now, we have erred against our beloved =X=! We have bit into the apple and now are ashamed. Why, why, WHY did we do it? Whyyyyyyyyy? :(:(:(:(

We had been talking about cruising to Bermuda this year, when, lo, appearing in the inbox is a harmless looking offer, granting us a FREE weekend cruise aboard the NCL Sky if only we book passage on the NCL Breakaway bound for Bermuda. Is it fate? NO!!! Do not be tempted by the likes of them! But no, we gave in to temptation and now wonder if our beloved =X= will ever welcome us back onto their precious gangways. Will we ever taste of the hallowed waffles again?

For us, cruising is the greatest experience in the world, so if someone offers us a BOGO, that’s a bonus, right? Not so fast. Not that everything was bad on the Breakaway, it’s just that the NCL product is not for us. In full disclosure, we’re professed Celebrity snobs, so you probably know where this is going.

It was great to at least see our beloved Summit in port next to us, taunting us with her beautiful lines, ship-shapely curves, and promises of few announcements. But we just HAD to be greedy.

Let’s talk about the NCL Breakaway. She’s a BIG ship, but I think that NCL has tried too hard to do things that other ships don’t do, and in doing so took their eye off the important stuff. For one thing, the pool is WAY too small for the gazillion people on the ship. They thought that a rope-climbing course would be more entertaining. The ropes took up the space where another pool would have been much more utilized. Other issues include the extremely uncomfortable seats in the theater. For a ship that is only a year old, the seats I sat in were almost unbearable. They felt cheaply made and not very cushy for the tushy.

Much has been written about 678, the atrium area of the ship. BIG fail here as the cigarette smoke from the casino permeates the entire area, making it most unpleasant. Yuck! Too bad they can’t enclose the casino (or make it smoke-free, but that is NOT going to happen, of which I will discuss more later). We loved the multi-colored chandelier though. We have several pictures with it in the background. Nice!

Our cabin was very nicely appointed. It was a standard balcony cabin in all aspects of the word, EXCEPT for the less-than-average size of the balcony. If you picture your average sized balcony, take the chair, turn it sideways, and that is the width of the Breakaway balconies. I didn’t measure it specifically but this was a big disappointment. And even if you plan to enjoy your mini-balcony, you get smoked out by NCL’s dated smoking policy. I’ll gripe about that later.

The food was another disappointment. Our first night we dined in the Manhattan Room, which is one of the three main dining rooms. The food was horrible. We’re trying to figure out if they make the dining room food of lesser quality so you are more apt to go to a specialty dining room where they can charge you. The food was either cold, flavorless or just unappetizing. Same with O’Sheehan’s pub, although the prime rib there wasn’t too bad, just needed seasoning. Worst food we’ve had on a cruise. Conversely, the specialty restaurants we went to were very good. Also, the buffet food was pretty good throughout the cruise, so if you don’t want to pay more for your food, you might be better off going to the buffet every night. Also, the Chef’s Table was fantastic but way overpriced. We’ve done a CT on Princess, Royal and Celebrity, and in every instance we were given a recipe book. I guess NCL doesn’t do that either, though they charge the same as the others. The chef said he’d send the recipes to our cabin, but never did.

The entertainment got pretty high marks from us, possibly even better than you know who. I don’t want to say it too loudly or else it might seal the deal and we’ll never be allowed back on =X=.

The service was just ok. On Celebrity, everyone who meets your gaze (and even some that don’t) greet you. Not on NCL and we really missed that. It makes us feel like everyone is appreciative of our patronage. It took two days before we even met our cabin steward, though on Celebrity they pretty much greet you when you first enter your cabin.

All in all, NCL doesn’t work for us. We don’t like the whole Freestyle experience. Though many people did dress up on one night, it was only about 30% of the total. Very sad. We like formal nights and I hate the feeling that I am the dressed up oddball when formal nights used to be one of the great traditions of cruising. I also have to complain again about the smoking policy. Most of the other lines have eliminated smoking from balcony cabins and wish that NCL was as progressive in their policy. I’m all for a person’s freedoms, but when it encroaches on my freedoms, I get upset.

We’ll take our freebie NCL Sky cruise but that might be the last time that NCL sees us on one of their ships. We can now only hope that =X= will forgive us our transgression and welcome us back with open arms. Maybe. <sigh>

I had the opposite experience that you did. I won a cruise on the Norwegian Sky through a casino in RI and figured I'd make it two weeks so I booked the second week on the Norwegian Getaway. When I first walked on the Sky I was disappointed in it's look but by the time the cruise was in full swing we had a great time and the Getaway was awesome. I commented on the fact that every person no matter what their position was on the ship acknowledged us when they walked by. Now let me tell you I'm not a Norwegian cruiser I actually was a Celebrity Queen then moved over to RCL and loved them, now doing a cruise in January on Celebrity. I'm sure they will let me back:rolleyes: I firmly believe all cruise lines are the same they just offer different things on each of them. You are definitely right about the balcony being small and I found the storage in the rooms to be lacking, but everything else on the ship was great. And I know my Celebrity cruise will be awesome. I guess the bottom line is it's all in what you like and are looking for. There are so many different opinions that my motto is try it and see if you like it. I even did Carnival and had a wonderful time. So good we did them 3 more times. Glad your coming back to what you love best but I'd do the Sky you'll enjoy it.

WOW! I wonder how many cases of NORO were on the previous cruise of the EOS. It sure sounds like the crew did not take the "small" outbreak of NORO on the previous cruise seriously enough. If they had done the "deep" cleaning and taken precautions, perhaps the Big NORO outbreak on the EOS could have been avoided.

I have done several back to back cruises and have watched them deep clean between the two cruises too the point where we kept being asked to go lounge in other areas of the ship. And as far as I knew there was no noro reported to be on any of the cruises I was on. (now I'm not saying there wasn't) I'm only telling you what I observed on all my back to back cruises.

Hi we did My Time Dining on the Allure last year. We made our reservation the first night for 6:30pm every night and we had the same wait staff every night. It was just like doing Traditional Dining I thought. We could have had a different wait staff if we wanted but we loved Hermant so much we requested him both the first week and second week.

So it all depends on what you prefer.

If I remember correctly from our back to back on the Oasis, after you have cleared customs when they walk you off you get back on and then can go off and do your own thing. When you come back they have you show your card and come through a different way than everyone else. We didn't get off but I remember them showing a couple another way for them to get on board without going through the crowd. But when you get back you will already have your set sail pass card and can just go directly through the line as someone stated above. You're going to love b2b on this ship it's awesome.

Hey has anyone stayed in 9706. Would appreciate any info. Thanks in advance.