PATRLR

OK. @Yesimapirate and @dcipjr I inferred were really referring more to things like the quality of food and entertainment which I maintain could and should be consistent across the brand. I agree with you that the actual venues and such will be different which leads to a different experience.

I'm not sure what "that" refers to in your sentence above. I think "that" refers to this idea from @Yesimapirate's post: "The entire point of a brand is that you get the same thing across the board. " That quote most definitely is a thing. You may not get the same restaurants, entertainment options, ship features, etc on all ships, but, the general quality should be the same if the brand is being properly managed. Consistency across a brand is how a place like McDonalds, serving at best marginal food, can be so successful. People know exactly what they are going to get when they order a Big Mac be it in San Diego CA or Portland ME. If a cruise line was inconsistent, I suspect loyalists wouldn't be so loyal. Why would they keep coming back to the line if they didn't know if ship X was going to be consistent with or different from ship Y?

I'm glad to hear that some lines acknowledge this fact. One of the problems (not unique to NCL or even cruise ships) is the refrigerators are enclosed in cabinets that don't allow proper air circulation across the evaporator coils. We like a chilled beverage and try to leave the cabinet door open - it helps a bit.

Assuming the freeze point of the med is 32 degrees Fahrenheit or below, ice in water will not get below 32 degrees. The med won't freeze. Fill a bucket with ice and water and you would be able to keep it chilled.

To be crystal clear here, the reason you can't share your meals with your kids is NCL wants you to buy the kids their own meals. It's really that simple. If you could give one of your "free" meals to someone else, that decreases the chances of that someone buying their own. As reasonable as we all may (or may not) think what you want to do is, NCL only cares about increasing the onboard spend. Period, end of story. Any other reason stated in this thread is BS.

Wow. That is unbelievable. The art auctioneer? Really? I'd rather they just picked random crew members to enjoy a dinner with loyal passengers. A perk for the crew member and a perk for the passengers. Seriously, I'd rather have dinner with the guy working in the laundry over the art auctioneer.

Interesting fact right there. I wanted to know the trend so went looking and stumbled upon the part you left out: The average age of the Broadway theatregoer was 40.4 years old. That was the youngest in the past twenty seasons. https://www.usitt.org/news/broadway-demographics-report-reveals-increased-audience-diversity-overall-attendance-trending A comment worth repeating:

I know it's been a few years since this question was posted, but, @pthardy, did you book and sail in this cabin? Any comments on it? We're looking at it for our 2024 fjords cruise.

We are probably more like you than others who've commented. NCL entertainment, in particular the shows, was always a big "pro" for NCL when weighing pros and cons in our decision making. NCL no longer has that "pro", just one of many contributing factors to us trying other cruise lines now (and RCCL blew away anything NCL lately). As for what we do when there isn't something good in the theatre? Wonder the ship and usually find something but I'll acknowledge there have been evenings where we went back to our cabin before we were really ready to call it a night. I don't like doing that.

Claudia told us she was going to be leaving for a while when we were talking in December, but, I had the impression it wasn't going to be permanent.

Pretty sure it's Megan. Had a great conversation with her on the way over.

I have never seen anything like that. Is the upper deck on Getaway part of Vibe like on Encore? Looking at deck plans, it's hard to tell. I could imagine a scenario where it's just too windy (or whatever) to be on the upper deck, hence crowding on the lower deck.

I have no idea how many passes were sold any of the times I've been in Vibe, I always assume it's sold out. When I talk about "full" I'm referring to butts in seats.

@wil e coyoteEncore has a similar sized (maybe bigger counting the upper sundeck) Vibe and they typically had 2 bartenders and 1 or 2 servers walking around taking care of things throughout the Vibe. I seldom had to wait more than a couple minutes. The 100% full comment is interesting, I've not seen that, not even close. I'd consider 50% full to be the extreme, typically its more like 25%. Were you on a school vacation week maybe with people more motivated to escape the kids?

What do you mean by "both sides"? Encore has 1 vibe bar, located in the middle of the deck.

It's not that much of an exageration. If they aren't careful, the cruise ship will become little more than a means for transportation. Just think about how often we read right in these forums that people choose their cruise based on the ininerary, not the ship. Back in the 80s when I first started crusing, the itinerary was an after thought, we just wanted to be on a cruise!

I think those words perfectly describe it. It used to be a nice treat after an evening "out" to come back to a room that had been picked up, bed ready, mint on the pillow, linens refreshed, etc... Will lack of evening turndown ruin my vacation? Of course not. That doesn't change the fact that it was something special.

I find those comments to be interesting because I respect both posters and based on our 1 recent RCCL cruise (Oasis, last summer), I thought Chops, Giovanni's, and Park-whatever were much better than any of the NCL offerings. Chops had good quality rib-eye like Cagney's used to have many years ago, and the other two just seemed to be much better than anything we'd had lately (before or since) on NCL. RCCL's MDR we found to be lousy. At the time we thought worse than NCL. Oh well, just shows that food is very subjective.

You may want to reserve that celebration until you learn which country she got you a visa for - you might not be going where you think you are going 😉

I agree that quality has slipped significantly. Food is the biggest area. We have been on many cruises going back to the 80s. I honestly don't think we've ever intentionally planned on eating dinner in a buffet on any ship, ever. We enjoy and prefer being served dinner. Well this past December on Viva, the MDR meals were just so bad that we actually planned one night to try the buffet. The general reduction in quality has us now trying other lines after many years of just NCL. RCCL last summer, Princess this summer. We still enjoy our NCL cruises, we bought more Crusie Next when we were on Viva. As others have said, we just don't enjoy them as much.

It's a great question that I've thought about for a while since you wrote it. I think I would be happier with the honest reason than the BS reason. Of course I understand the next thought I'd have is along the lines of "OK, what's my cut of that savings" and therein lies the problem. But at the end of the day, I'd rather be ripped off than lied to.

Not for my Northern Europe cruise this coming summer. I won't repeat what @dmwnc1959 wrote but my experience matches theirs's. I haven't sailed yet, so will withhold any further comment/judgment.

I'm not sure it's possible to ruin NCL's soft serve. How would you know it's ruined? My thought was it sounded like a way to ruin a cup of coffee... 😉

I have nothing to add regarding NCL or the Joy. I notice in your history there is no RCCL. Any reason to not try them going out of Cape Liberty across the river? Tiring of how far NCL has slipped, we tried them last summer. Better entertainment, better specialty dining, worse buffet and worse MDR. Bars/drinks about the same. (we're trying Princess this summer to the Norwegian fjords, I notice only one Princess trip in your list)

Seems like something is missing from the story here. I admit ignorance here, but I would think there might be a handful of passengers exhibiting Norovirus symptoms on every cruise. Do they actually test everyone who exhibits the symptoms? Seems like a heck of a reaction for such a relatively small number cases.