KeithJenner

The brunch at Moderno/Cagneys is open to everyone. Last time we were on the Breakaway (2019) they had breakfast in Moderno every day but they seem to have stopped that. The food is fairly standard buffet food. It is just a nicer experience there.

You asked one of the least reliable sources of NCL information and they lived up to their reputation. My current bar bill (zero) is a more reliable source than whoever told you that.

No, we just did the Oia one. I think the vineyard one is basically the same tour with that visit added. Sorry, I don’t know which vineyard they go to.

Todays freestyle daily confirms that we are tendering tomorrow. We aren’t going to be in a rush to get off as we arrive at 7am, but I just reserved tickets and are in group 26. In theory we shouldn’t need a group anyway due to latitudes but I’d imagine they will probably be near enough at our group by the time we want to go ashore anyway.

One thing I forgot to mention from Santorini. They had a brunch buffet at Cagneys/Moderno. We were a bit late getting up on Tuesday after a late night at Howl and losing an hour as we got to Greece, so brunch was ideal. It was fairly quiet and a much nicer place to eat than the buffet. I’d recommend it if they offer it.

Day 4 dailies. We are in Athens today and the weather is terrible. There are severe thunderstorm and rain warnings today. We are staying on the ship, as we have been to Athens a few times and had a weekend there last year. We were planning on getting off the ship and wandering around Piraeus, but the weather has put us off. The forecast is better for the remainder of the cruise.

There were no exclusions on bar service yesterday as far as I could tell. No signs on any bars that we saw and there were sales made (upcharges on drinks over $15 and people without the beverage package.

Another cable car report. Apparently it was about a 90 minute wait this morning for the cable car. I’ve had that time quoted to me by two separate people. I haven’t yet met anyone who took the cable car back. Best estimate of the wait time in the evening is 2 hours. Apparently the queue got up to about half a mile. Everyone I have spoken to walked down the path. My advice. Check what ships are in port. It was nothing like this bad last year when we were here on the Jade. There was one other ship in port and I didn’t hear of any problems. Next advice. Take a Tour if there are ships in port, especially if you had free at sea and even more so if you have free at sea plus. Our tours cost about $25 each (free at sea plus). Take into account the cable car cost and they were only a few dollars, a tour gets you ashore quick. The next advice is more of a compromise. Get back onboard early. I know the sunset is a real attraction, but honestly the ship is a great place to be when everyone else is queueing or dodging donkeys. I love the views of Santorini from the ship. I have just sat at Shakers on the waterfront for a few hours watching people walk through the door and see that view. I’ve enjoyed the view all evening. if the sunset from Santorini is important to you then view it from near the cable car and be prepared to queue or dodge the donkeys. I don’t know if anyone missed the ship. We sailed away on time and if anyone did get left behind then I’m quite sure they weren’t near the cable car (ie they messed up).

There are thunderstorms all around us as we sail away. Lightning all over the place.

The last tender arrived at the ship at about 9.20. They have just put a call out for about a dozen people who I assume are not onboard yet.

Just spoke to some people who came back onboard later than us. Sounds like the queue was very long. The two separate groups that I spoke to both walked down rather than queue.

View from the bar is very nice tonight.

Weather has been mixed. Quite cloudy today and not too hot. We are forecast rain tomorrow in Athens.

32 minutes from joining the queue to reaching the bottom. Not too bad at all.

Taking an NCL excursion avoids the cable car at the start as they tender you to the other port where the buses are. That is the reason why we took the excursion to be honest. Coming back they leave you in Thira with a cable car ticket. Because of the cable car situation we aren’t hanging around and have gone straight to the queue. I was expecting the worst, after hearing stories of 2 hour queues but it doesn’t look too bad. 10 minutes now and we are at the entrance to the building. I’ll report back on how long it takes later.

We took the Oia excursion in Santorini (on the bus back to Thira now). With so many ships in port there was always going to be a long queue for the cable cars, and it looked like the queue was indeed very long as we went past the old port. It is the cable car that is the issue here rather than the tenders. They use local boats for tendering rather than lifeboats so they are more comfortable. They seemed to be getting through the tender groups fairly quickly. As for the bar service etc, there were no restrictions that I saw in Rome, including for people without the packages. I will check for restrictions here later. We don’t sail away until 10pm so it’s the one that would potentially be a problem if anyone can’t get a drink onboard.

Mykonos is one of those ports where it can be either. We have been on cruises where they didn’t know the previous evening whether we would dock or tender. It actually doesn’t matter much. If you tender then you are dropped off in town. If you dock then you are a short distance away but it isn’t an easy walk so you have to take a shuttle (bus or water taxi) into town. We walked it once and it isn’t fun as you have to walk in the road.

We tend not to hang around in the busier places. We have still only gone higher than deck 9 once so far and it was very busy around the pool and in the buffet. On decks 6,7 and 8 it hasn’t appeared too busy to me, Bar service has been quick (we tend to sit at the bar rather than wait for a server to come round). The atrium and o’Sheehans are fairly busy but not noticeably different to previous cruises. There was a bit of a queue to get into Manhattan yesterday (maybe 5 minutes) and I think they were giving our pagers when we left. Service was fairly good for a MDR.

Joy is showing doing Bermuda cruises during those months for me on the NCL website.

Day 3 dailies. It’s going to be busy in Santorini today as we are one of 5 ships there.

Just another quick observation. I love Howl.

Some quick observations. Whilst there are some obvious cutbacks, they are not having much impact on our experience. We upgraded to free at sea plus and obviously the champagne selection is more limited than last year, but the rose champagne was good. Moderno was very good as usual. We had lunch in o’Sheehans yesterday and my wife’s burger could have been hotter, but overall not bad. We did the latitudes behind the scenes tour this morning and it was very good. This is my first larger ship since 2019 and I’m enjoying it. The bar on the Waterfront outside Shakers is a great place. We spent a lot of the day there yesterday. Staff all appear happy and friendly.

Day 2 dailies. Howl tonight. 🙂

I just checked the notification for my taxi payment and it was 11.22 We were in o’Sheehans by 11.50 after checking in at our Muster Station.

That is usually our experience. This time we took a transfer straight from the airport (we stayed at the Hilton there), so got dropped off at the ship. Walked into the terminal, dropped off luggage, checked in and walked straight on to the ship. Took less than 30 minutes.