Jezo

I am looking at videos and the seats look like they are only for two. Has anyone eaten outside at Ocean Blue with three people?

By eating with us I mean sitting at the table. He wont eat anything there and we would be able to bring him a sandwich or something. Or is there a kids menu that we would need to pay the $17 upcharge for?

We have three people in our room but only the first two got the Free at Sea promotion, so us two have the 6 meal dining included but his account would have nothing.

So if there is a seat we can walk up and sit down and swipe a meal from our dining plan and then eat as much sushi as we can until we explode?

The bookings have opened up for the restaurants but I don't see sushi listed anywhere. We are past the 90 day mark so the system is open but not everything is listed. Is it possible to book this?

Make your resy's online and then call from your room to the reservations desk advise that you want outdoor seating.

We'll be booking them at the 90 day mark to at least get the general days and times set.

So at least we can wait, I don't mind that. Have you, or anyone, had luck with telling them once you are on the ship that you want to go outside to eat?

Is this possible to do?

Say we want to make a reservation for one of the restaurants with a waterfront seating area, how do we get an outside seat? Is there a way to reserve them or would we need to show up for our sitting time and then hang out until one opens up?

Here is the tour video taken earlier this year:

[YOUTUBE]UVzQno4ysNY[/YOUTUBE]

The sofas are in an area just for lounging. The outside eating area for the restaurants has tables and upright chairs...not the basket chairs and low coffee tables.

Do people put towels or items down to reserve these seats throughout the day?

Go to moderno for breakfast and lunch and u can eat outside on the waterfront. U can use one dining credit to eat at the raw bar or sushi.

Is Moderno free for those meals?

For the raw bar, what do you get for your meal credit?

Nonsense

You enjoy having no chair then and standing around hoping some kind responsible staff member will remove items for you.

They wont, and you wont have a chair.

Asking the NCL employee is the correct thing to do.

I have asked, they have said no, so I now I move them myself.

I don't see any way moving someone's items who have put them there for the explicit purpose of hogging a chair they will not return to for hours is wrong. The chairs are there for people to enjoy not reserve.

return 58 minutes and 17 seconds later, the person has done nothing wrong and the person's items and chair should not be touched by anyone other than the person who put them there.

That's correct and how things should be, but if someone goes and puts their items on a chair at 7am and doesn't plan on coming back until 2pm, then yes, their belongings get moved.

And yes, I have used a watch before to monitor empty chairs to help move us closer to the front lines. It's all part of the shell game that is played on cruise ship pool decks.

There is very little room to move chairs around. On a ship that offers unlimited booze, I wouldn't take the chance!

If someone confronts you over taking a seat that they haven't used in multiple hours just start yelling and screaming for help and say you are being oppressed and make a huge scene.

They'll back down.

I might overly pump myself up for these things, but the burst of adrenaline really is exciting.

Besides the Free Fall, which I know the restrictions, can smaller kids go on any of the other slides?

Sometimes people leave things on chairs not to be a hog, but for legitimate reasons.

My wife and I usually leave one of us on the chair to indicate we are using it.

When both of us go into a pool or hot tub the chair must always be kept in view and you have to always be watching it to ensure someone doesn't come move whatever you have.

The pool decks are a constant battle ground, you can't relax, you always need to be watching to either get a better seat or defend your own. Victors are crowned with seats close to the action and the defeated are relegated to either a seat in a far off corner or no seats at all.

It's exhausting and slaughters many, but it's all part of the cruise experience.

So you stand around for an hour before you take someone elses chair?

No, and I also wont take someone's chair if I haven't seen for myself that they have been gone for an hour. We will usually take a chair that is open somewhere far back and out of the way and slowly make our way forward. I will tag the chairs I see with small items on them when I first arrive and if by an hour I see no one on them I will take it.

My favorite non confrontational technique is to put their items on the ground and simply take the chair somewhere else, nice passive way of claiming the chair and leaving the poor chair hog confused when they return. Otherwise, yes, I will take the chair and quote the written policy NCL has on the ships saying that after an hour their chairs are up for grabs.

Why would I want to confront anyone on my vacation; especially when NCL doesn't care.

I don't... what??

Of course you wont get a seat if you just stand there and hope someone offers it up to you. Chair hogs put their stuff down early because they figure no one will call them on it.

It's survival of the fittest, they are not in chair, you take chair, too bad for them when they come rolling back around hours later. Passive people get no chairs, its how things work. People aren't nice so you call them on that and just take a seat.

Simply standing around and saying "Oh well, I guess I wont get a chair because people have some towels down for hours" and then moping away in self pity will guarantee you wont get a chair.

I am not talking about kicking someone out after 5 minutes when they go grab a drink, NCL sets a timeline and posts that, it was an hour last time I was on board, if they arent around for an hour the chair is yours.

I wonder if we can start tipping the check in people for lower boarding group numbers, similar to the $20 trick at Vegas hotels.

There were 4 chairs next to us that hadn't been used for several hours. When the people came back and found others sitting there, they wanted me to tell the new people that they were there first.

"Sorry dude, there is a 60 minute time limit on holding chairs."

Confront a chair hog with facts and they will usually back down.

If chairs are taken and no one is sitting in them for hours, what about moving their stuff and taking the seats for yourself?

There is food typical of a coffee shop in a small case at the Atrium Cafe. Danish, muffins, and cakes later in the day

The secret is the coffee is for pay, the food is free.

"Rubber meets the road" ?

American expression maybe?

It means people talk and talk and complain here on message boards but then when the experience actually happens people realize it's pretty nice to be on a big old boat in the Carribean sipping fruity cocktails and being waited on and not being able to drink a Coca Cola for a few days really is not the end of the world.

Also, the people cancelling their cruises over the inability to have a Coke product for a week are the people who are never happy with anything anyway, so forget them and just go have fun.

That was RCCL Anthem of the Seas and NCl is pretty good handling storms, not that they are 100% perfect, but they use really good weather prediction systems and the Captains are pretty good making decisions avoiding the storms. the problem with the Anthem was that they tried to outrun the storm and they actually got caught by it, the storm was faster and stronger that what they anticipated.

We were in the southern end of that storm on our way back this year on the Gem. It was a pretty wild time, all of the outside decks were closed, wind was howling through eveywhere it could, and the sea looked ready to consume everything.

As we got closer to home rumors of a ship that got stuck in the storm started circulating around the ship, and that ended up being that RCL one everyone heard about.

BUT

The day we left, 10 days earlier, in the middle of the deepest part of winter, NYC was 60 degrees and as we sat at the pier the outside buffets were open and everyone sat around the pool having bbq'ed hot dogs and hamburgers. Now this is in no way normal as it was the hottest winter in a thousand ages, or something like that, but it was a bit exciting to do being that when we normally leave in the winter it is snowing and the roads have ice on them.

Is there really only the single person jacuzzi? Or did I miss seeing other ones in the video?

There is only one per locker room, so one for the guys, one for the ladies. None out in the main area, there you find the big hot tubs.

How does sushi work on the SDP? You pay the upcharge and then get what?