momsince96

Hello!

We are loyal NCL px and have also cruised Carnival and Royal.  Our anniversary is coming up in Sept and the Divina is sailing during the perfect time for us.  As I sit here recovering from COVID, one of my fears (contracting COVID on a cruise) is removed, LOL, so I am even more interested in possibly catching this sailing.

My concern is the "feel" of the ship and the passengers.  We like a spirited cruise.  We wouldn't necessarily enjoy the feeling of "having the ship to ourselves" or turning in early for R&R.  We like to be out late, enjoy music, people watch, etc.  I find that shorter cruises lend themselves to this sort of clientele anyway, but I am still wondering what the overall vibe is.  The research I am doing on this board make me feel like this is more of a quiet, sit-in-the-sun, retire early kind of ship.  

We are in our 50s but are immature (just kidding).  I am an overnight ER nurse so a night owl.  I know I have to go to bed eventually, but I don't want to go at 10pm.

Thoughts?  Thanks in advance!!

29 minutes ago, blcruising said:

That is the general rule. Current promo going on that allows 2 to be used within 6 months if booked by April 30, 2019.

DOUBLEUP!
Use up to 2 CruiseNext deposits when you book a Balcony or higher category at least 6 months prior to sailing. This promotion is applicable to open sailings of 6 days or longer. For a limited time only, this promotion is also applicable to all open 6 day or longer voyages within 6 months of sailing when booked by April 30, 2019.

We were told on the Sky in December that they were eliminating the 6 month rule for doubling up.  We are still a little confused about all the rules, and we rarely (okay never) book 6 months+ out so we specifically asked about that rule and were told that the CN double-up is now balcony+, no time constraints.  

55 minutes ago, allyfrizzle said:

What's a CruiseNext Lite certificate?

On the Sun and Sky, you can purchase $100 CN certs for $50 - they only work on Sun and Sky though. And you can double them on balcony+ bookings, which is what we did.

Thanks for the replies!  It can't hurt to call, I guess.  I know when we qualified for a free upgrade due to a price drop we were told that it would be our only chance to "cash in", so to speak.  So I am worried that if I call for "only" a $60 decrease and it drops again, I'll have made a mistake.  

I am a nurse and took off a few days in April just in case we found a cruise that was fairly cheap that weekend. I called to ask how our CruiseNext Lite certificates worked and the rep did a sort of mock booking and we ended up booking.  Before I coughed up the credit card number and committed, I said that we watch cruises pretty often and notice that the prices tend to drop the closer to the date we get and maybe we'd want to wait.  We were doing a sailaway balcony (and using two CN Lite certs) and he said that category might sell out.  It wasn't high pressure at all, but it was pressure, and it went from "maybe we'll use those 5 days I took off to cruise" to a booking.  Not that I am complaining, but.... 

(I do take responsibility because ultimately I initiated the call and paid for the cruise.)

But now I'm looking and if we'd only waited until today - one day later! - we'd be paying $60 (total) less!  I know that's not significant but it's still $60!  That would practically pay for dining upgrades!!  Should I call and ask for the difference?  Wait to see if it drops further and try to get an upgrade?  Or?  

I guess I am being petty, but I am also a little irritated because I feel like I should have waited and was talked into NOT waiting.  

Great review!!  We were on the Getaway last June and we LOVED the ship and the staff, but we did not enjoy the ports.  You've made me want to try the ports again to see if maybe we just did them "wrong".  So glad you had a great vacation!

I don't think you are going to have a problem at all based on my experience - waiver or no waiver.

and do you intend on removing the DSC? We actually bring $1.00 as well.Sometimes we tip the bar tenders or servers a little extra because we understand how the DSC works. Why would you not think people behind the scene deserve a little extra? What was many years ago is very different from what is today.

No, I don't. We are paying $19.99/pp per night (Sky) and I think that's fair believe it or not. The first time I cruised where I was in charge, so to speak, of how our money was distributed was 10 years ago. In the 10 years and many cruises since, we've left the service charges on. I still don't think it's a very fair system; we don't use the MDR, we tip extra in the higher-end restaurants, and we drink a lot at the bar. On the Getaway earlier in the month we realized how screwy the system is (unless the tips are distributed by card-swipe, which I doubt) so we are going to supplement with some cash.

I hate the current use of the word "fair", but to me the DSC system is NOT fair. I can see how the envelope system has its flaws, but at least the money went to the people who helped you, and that would be different for different cruisers, so I would think the money should be just naturally equally distributed? Behind-the-scenes workers should be compensated at a wage that doesn't demand tips to be a fair wage, just as kitchen staff in a restaurant is paid at a higher rate that front-of-the-house staff.

But this debate is as old as this board, probably, and I'm not going to change anything. I'm just going to augment as I see fit and how I am comfortable doing so budget-wise. The other weird but good but bad (LOL, depending on the situation) is that you are not presented a receipt on NCL to add a tip for service above and beyond, forcing you to have to sort of make arrangements to bring the money with you. I like to not have a purse, phone, etc. on the ship so that's a problem. But on the other hand, it's nice to not have 48573 pieces of paper (receipts) to deal with and better for the environment, too.

First world problem, whether to carry a purse with money in it, to be sure!!!

The first time I ever cruised was with my Mom and sister, as my Mom's guest. She brought a bunch of cash, and on the last day she put it in envelopes for our waitstaff team, the maitre' d, and our room steward. My sister and I bought our own alcohol and tipped accordingly, per drink.

When I went on a cruise with my husband and kids, I brought a bunch of cash, but we had gratuities added to our account. I went and had them removed, because I was going to tip the actual people who waited on me, not ancillary people who I had never seen. It seemed absurd to me. We brought cash to the folks who'd actually served us, in addition to adding gratuity to our checks when we bought drinks. Our children had soda packages, and we gave them a bunch of $1 bills, which they used to tip any time they got a drink or ordered room service.

I don't know - I think that's how it ought to be. We were on NCL earlier in the month and will be again next weekend. It's confusing, because you don't even have the chance to tip your servers if you have the UBP or open bar, but they are the ones serving you. We didn't eat in the MDR a single time on our earlier cruise this month, but we did get a TON of drinks in the Headliner's bar. I feel like we should have been able to adjust our tips to reflect that. Maybe by swiping the cards that gets distributed appropriately, but I worry it isn't.

Next week I am bringing a bunch of $1s I've been collecting and will hand those over with my card when I order a drink, as I saw others do on our earlier sailing.

Interesting about the foam topper!! We were in a mini-suite earlier this month: my husband, me and our 17YO daughter. (BTW, the hooks and shower curtain idea is brilliant and worked so well!) She is not a spoiled brat and knew that she was fortunate to be on the ship; however, she did complain that the sofa bed was not the comfiest thing ever. How does one go about getting a foam topper should we need one in the future?!

It was nice to meet you!!! So cool that you stopped to say "hi"! :) .

I just read the post about the a/c to my husband and daughter. In my (not so quick) review, I said that our cabin was h-o-t all week. Guess what we kept doing?! Yep, hitting the snowflake. I have a similar snowflake on my fridge which has the purpose of cooling down the 'fridge quickly. Silly me, that's what we thought we were doing.

They really need a little placard or something beside the unit explaining that. I would have never thought to call the desk to ask!!

No Norwegian ship has self-serve laundries. Every week there is a Laundry Special Offer-- Fill a Bag for $19.95.

Like I said, I didn't think to research that, and just assumed all ships did, so I am passing that tidbit along. The fill a bag was offered on Thursday for return not guaranteed until Saturday night. That did not serve my purpose - it seemed more for those wanting to go home without a bunch of dirty laundry.

Thanks for including the comment on the contests. My wife is a big game show fan and we were thinking of trying all of the offerings. Now, I will only plan for one early on and we will see if she likes it before committing to others.

I also appreciate your comments on Cagney's, Moderno and Teppenyaki. We have already reserved all three and are doing Moderno on night two for our 30th anniversary celebration! My wife loves the grilled pineapple at Fogo, so she is really looking forward to saying "oh, pineapple boy!" again. :')

Congrats on your RN! My mom was trained and licensed as an RN years ago at Brooklyn Hospital, before it was normal to get a BSRN. She decided at the age of 58 to finally complete her BSRN. We were so proud of her for achieving that in the latter part of her career!

Thank you so much! I am so excited to be a nurse, and I start my RN-BSN program in the fall. Stories like your mother's inspire me!

I don't like grilled pineapple so I didn't try it, but I made sure my family did and they loved it! She won't be disappointed!

Do go scope out the game show - we made the mistake of plunking down $25/card thinking there would be a greater chance to maybe win something, and we jokingly said the roulette table in the casino had better odds. We thought Bingo was rather pricey, too, but when it's in the theater and Ash is the caller, it turns into a comedy show so that's a bonus!! :D

Happy Anniversary!!

I am so glad you were able to relax & enjoy!

 

On the older ships the cabin hallways carpet includes a red fish that swims opposite to the rest of the school (others are swimming forwards) - the Rebellious Fish cocktail honours that fish haha.

Well that's cool! And now I won't forget! Thank you for that insight!

Hi all,

I am usually a pretty prolific writer so this may be short for me (but long for others). We'll see once I get started, LOL. This was our second sailing on NCL, but the first was out of Tampa on the Dawn for a "cruise to nowhere" several years ago, so we only had 2 nights on board. I wasn't sure what to expect so I did a lot of research in the few weeks we had between booking and boarding. I am going to try to answer questions I had that I could not find answers to beforehand. (Doesn't mean they aren't out there; only that I couldn't find them.)

To begin, this was to be a nursing school graduation celebration cruise for me. I am 46 and just finished RN school. But we had a pretty unexpected and tragic event occur the Tuesday before we sailed. After some debate we decided that going on the cruise was better than not in the wake of what we had experienced (and we did not have trip insurance)... but that also meant that the cruise itself had a lot to overcome for us since we were not leaving on the high, happy and anticipatory note that cruisers usually do. In short, we were pretty sad on embarkation day, and a little nervous to be leaving.

I can say that NCL went above and beyond. They, of course, did not know our circumstance, but the service and entertainment and overall experience was just what we needed at a difficult time. We loved it so much we left with quite a few Cruise Next credits.

Some quick background: We typically sail Carnival on 4, 5 and 8 day trips, and we like Carnival very much. We just like people and activity and fun, and Carnival appeals to us with its lower prices and quick access to us (we live near Tampa). I don't like Royal Caribbean; we've been on 2 sailings and it's just not a good fit for us. So I wasn't really sure how NCL would pan out of us.

We booked into a balcony but "won" an upgrade to an M6 category mini-suite on floor 8 with a poor bid of $75. We were in 8120. We loved the room... mostly. The balcony was beautiful, the room was spacious enough, the bathroom better than most. It seemed to be on a water line somehow (like maybe a flush/shower main line?) and so it was sort of noisy. As a new nurse, it sounded a lot like hyperactive bowels through a stethoscope, LOL. It did not bother me but my husband and daughter said they heard it in the night. Something to consider if you are researching rooms and are a light sleeper or sensitive to noise. We also felt like we could never get it as cold as we like. But overall it was an excellent place to spend 7 days and 7 nights and the first balcony we ever really utilized due to its spaciousness and the fact that it had 2 loungers, 2 chairs and a nice sized table.

So, in bullet form, here are some of our other observations:

• We were happily surprised by the generosity of the drink package. We could get 2 drinks per card, as often as we wished, as many as we wished and for as long as we wished. The bartenders were not afraid to pour a stiff drink, LOL. The drinks were really really good, too. They had a neat drink menu. The Rebellious Fish (which is the dumbest, hardest to remember name ever) was a favorite of my husbands and I heard it ordered often. Everyone just called it the fish drink.
  
• The entertainment staff was so fun and funny and enthusiastic. Zack was amazing, Ash is hilarious, the comedy was so very good. We did not like the adult comedy shows (and we are not prudes) and found the "family friendly" comedy shows to be REALLY good. They were family friendly but the kids were the butt of the jokes which was fun for everyone (maybe not the kids but like the comedian pointed out: It's not like they are paying for the trip, LOL!!!!). Seriously though, it was kind of great how it didn't turn into some sort of kid-level silly humor but really was amusing for all no matter the age or even if you aren't a parent!
  
• We did not at all like Burn The Floor, sorry. Such talent, but the show was just so repetitive and no obvious storyline and just ... not good to us. It turned us off to seeing Million Dollar Quartet, because we weren't going to be rude and leave BTF, so we just thought it best we skip MDQ and do something else instead of getting "stuck" in another show we didn't enjoy.
  
• The "contests" were awful. We put our guess in for what we thought was the value of a prize (a pendant of some sort), sat through a sales presentation about the supposed prize, then the drawing winner was handed a Bella Perlina set. What? I wasn't the winner but if I had been I'd be pissed. We bought cards for Deal or No Deal but basically unless you are one of the 2 people picked to go on stage, you threw away $25. I will say that the game show is SO much fun to watch so be sure to go ... just save the $25 unless you feel lucky enough to be one of 2 winners.
  
• The food.... OMG. We loved just about everything we ate. If we didn't like something it was because we were stupid and chose something we wouldn't typically eat anyway. We had the upgraded dinner package thing x3 nights and ate at Cagney's, Moderno and Teppenyaki. SO good. SO SO good. Also, we noted that whereas most time dinner can take fooooorever on a ship (especially the fine dining places), on this cruise the timing of food presentation was spot on. It was slow enough to be enjoyable but not so slow that you got restless or felt like you spent the whole evening at the dinner table.
  
• Laundry - this one the joke was on me. On our longer Carnival cruises I usually go half way through to the coin laundry and wash all of our stuff, so we can pack about half of what we'd usually pack for 7, 8 days. So half way through, I asked the steward where guest laundry was. "Oh no ma'am" he said. "You have to send out." Okay! We pull out the laundry itemized price list and holy crap. It would have cost us about $100-200 to do our laundry. So industrious me handwashed some of our stuff with the Tide pods I'd brought for the washing machine and hung it to dry. It never even occurred to me to research laundry facilities so here's that little tidbit for ya!!
  
• I don't know if we were just lucky or if this was typical, but our fellow passengers were just top-notch people. Kind, friendly, accommodating, polite, fun, engaging - just really GOOD people. When we'd get off the ship and encounter a jerk... yep, they were from another ship. It was that distinctive.
  
• A tip: Reserve seating for what you can ahead of time on NCL.com. When you get on board, watch your dailies for reservation sign ups on board for things you really want to do. We made the mistake of thinking that if you wanted to sign up for (for example) the escape room, you went that day and signed up for the one that day. What we did not realize is that we should have gone and reserved for any time on the cruise at the earlier time. We could have waited on stand-by but we didn't feel like it. We waited stand-by for comedy shows we would have rather have reserved seats for (we like to sit at the bar at Headliners so this mattered to us). We got into any SHOWS we wanted to, so it wasn't that we got shut out, but we wish we'd known to go reserve the shows we wanted so we could get a pick of our seating by being one of the first let in. And that's not to say that in future sailings stand-by people would not be allowed in .... so the moral of the story is go early to the reservations counter to chose your shows and activities if you can't reserve them online ahead of time.
  

I think that's all ... I will add if there is any more I think of. I know I have some complaints up there in my bullet points but our overall experience was just excellent. It was truly relaxing, it allowed us some recovery and distraction (that is specific to us, of course, but I am mentioning it because the overall vibe was just so relaxing and fun that no matter your mindset, you really are going to relax and enjoy). The staff was great. We didn't wait long for anything, including drinks (I've seen that complaint - I did not have it myself). Embarkation and debarkation went smooth as silk.

We can't wait for the next one!! (And yes, this got long ;);))

Glad to hear there were no emergencies on board! I hope you had a good night despite being docked early. Safe travels home!

I assumed as much and I apologize if it came across otherwise. I figured you took the picture when you saw him doing it. But sounds like you just got lucky. It is a great shot, just beyond dangerous.

Oh yeah, I didn't think it was your kid, either!! Mary Beth seems far too sensible to allow such shenanigans.

Anyone with a pool and wonders at their homeowner's insurance rates, here is why. Looks fun, also looks like a broken neck.

 

Back on track, thank you for all the great pictures. I've really enjoyed your review as well as Natefish's. I am definitely looking forward to our cruise on the Getaway in October.

This brand-new nurse sucked in her breath at this picture, LOL.

I was watching the Getaway just for fun (sailing next week) and she is, indeed, alongside. But the other passenger ships (Sensation, MSC, Glory) are all out to sea. I am wondering why she is in early? At 11pm EDT that means no more gambling, shops, and taxes on booze, etc. There has to be a reason, right?

Thank you for the great review and enjoy your next vacation! As it was for you, my Getaway trip is a graduation gift to myself (nursing school grad) although my husband and one of my 4 kids are also coming. It's nice to have something relaxing to look forward to after all the hard work! I've always wanted to sail out of PR, and I do love Carnival as well, so I will look for your next review!

Ah, thank you for the clarification! That makes better sense (in layman's terms, I guess - although NCL does make it very confusing in their terms!!)

It's actually a joke between my better half and I: I *LOVE* room service and he does not (often because I end up falling asleep after ordering it since I sleep like a bear in winter in a cruise cabin) and he was a little delighted to find that there was an $8 service charge because that would surely discourage me!! Which it did, until lo and behold, he found the ambiguous verbiage about room service being "free" in the suites. So, he'll be glad. And frankly, I don't care. The charm of having room service delivered after a loonnng wait has lost its appeal to me as well. I don't think we'll have an easy time clarifying these things once on board, so I am trying to get to the bottom of it beforehand.

Yep, I am clear on what the upgrade to the mini-suite means - I did do my research ahead of my (low) bid and the extra bathroom square footage had value to me. My question was whether the suite part applied to use plebes NOT in Haven, or if that was reserved only for those in actual true suites as the word typically is defined (i.e. Haven rooms).

I did search, but one I couldn't find an definitive answer to, and the other I didn't know how to phrase.

1) Is there Splenda on the ship? (told ya, not earth shattering)

2) We originally booked into a balcony room, but won an upgrade to a mini-suite. My husband was messing around the NCL site today and noted that the $7.95 room service charge is waived for suites. Would that apply to us do you suppose? Or is that even a thing?

Thanks for those who read and in advance for those who will answer!!

You did good. You'll like it! And deck 8 becomes the Waterfront. So you are a short walk and no elevators to most of the ship's activities, other than the outdoor stuff up on the top decks.

The guys booking us were trying to get us away from Deck 8 so my husband was a little concerned about it when I announced where we were. But we are pretty social night owls (I say we aren't your typical cruisers in that regard - we aren't looking for peace and quiet, we're looking for fun, LOL!). I liked the idea of being able to just head down the hall to grab a drink and hang out on our balcony so easily. That's my idea of a vacation!!

PS - thank you for the great pictures!!

If you have got a deck 8 mini suite then you have probably been upgraded to one of the best non suite rooms on any NCL ship (in my opinion),.

 

I believe that all the deck 8 minis are ones with the large balconies, as in the pictures above. From memory, the other deck 8 rooms are all insides or balconies, so you should have one of the Mini Suites with Large Balcony.

 

Do you know the room number, or cabin category? If it is a M6 then you are a winner.

It is an M6 - 8120 is the cabin number. You are really making me happy about this true upgrade - thank you!!