chillyw

There was was no deck to fast walk this is bad news for us.

What about the gym do you like it? I do a lot of workout everyday

even on vacation...ISA

The gym on the Divina is beautiful, has a great glass area overlooking the sea, and it's huge. I think you'll enjoy it.

I've been on MSC three times total, with Poesia once and Divina twice, all for a specific chartered music cruise.

If the cruise wasn't chartered on MSC, I wouldn't choose to sail on them. For me, it's like this:

Pros:

- Divina is an extremely nice ship. Beautiful open areas. Probably the prettiest ship I've ever been on.

- Nice, large cabins.

Cons:

- Food is terrible. I do not enjoy the food in the main dining rooms or buffet onboard MSC. They have not had the upscale restaurants open on my cruises so I haven't had a chance to try them.

- Service very hit and miss. I've had great service from some people, and have witnessed bartenders berating customers.

- Pillows in the cabins are not good, and they only give you one per person at the start. I always have to ask for more, and I've had times where I have to keep hounding them.

I have not had a chance to see any of the entertainment (given it's chartered music cruises) so I'm not sure there.

MSC is not a good fit for me because I enjoy a large variety of dining. I would personally rather pay more for better food and more options. The Divina is a gorgeous ship, and the staircase to the theater is awesome, but I'm not a fan of the food and it's a deal breaker for me.

And your ignoring the fact that the cruise line doesn't pay for booze what we pay, they buy it in quantity at mush lower prices, which makes the

latest increases nothing more then PROFIT GOUGING!

And the excuse that you're on a cruise/vacation might work for you to be gouged like this, but it doesn't for most people!

The result will be not more income, but most cruisers cutting back on their drinking to offset the increases, and then drinking at the ports!

Not sure about the cruise lines, but here in Texas alcohol is sold to bars, hotels, restaurants, etc. in bulk at much higher prices than it is to consumers due to taxation laws.

The "buying in bulk" idea with alcohol is a myth here.

I love the Epic so much I had to sail her for my mediterranean trip this fall! My third trip total.

Wanted to update people on this.

I was on the Holy Ship sailing this January, on the MSC Poesia, which stopped at Great Stirrup Cay. There were no other boats there on that day (NCL's), and MSC's crew manned the drink stations & everything else.

They also made you purchase drink packages on board the ship; they couldn't take your cards to the bars on the island.

NCL did have their people driving the tenders to the island.

My guess is its only going to be MSC on those days.

Medium-Rare as God intended.

I can't say this is necessarily true. On my cruise in May I had been dieting for exactly a year. I limit myself to only 2000 calories a day. I started the cruise weighing 135 pounds, and when I got home, I weighed myself in that night at 155. That was 20 pounds for 8 days. If we want to assume that 25%, or 5 of those pounds are due to retained water from the high sodium content, then I gained 15 pounds, or 1.9 pounds per day. That equates to over 6500 calories above my limit of 2000, or over 8500 calories a day.

 

In other words, just because a person has limited their intake for a period of time, doesn't mean that they won't automatically revert back to their "comfortable" eating habits. It may have worked for you, but not everyone would get the same results. It will depend on how each person's body works, and more importantly how far your diet calories differ from your normal, or "comfort" eating zone. Because I vary at least 3000 calories below my comfort zone every single day, when the time comes to let go and eat what I want, the results are dramatic.

In addition to the sodium, if you carb loaded and were on a low carb diet before, you likely gained 10 pounds just from the excess glycogen and all the water required to store it.

The only way to reach the Latitudes desk (according to NCL) is via email. Problem is, I have emailed them every other day for the last couple of weeks to solve a problem and have gotten ZERO response from anyone.

 

Hey NCL, get your stuff together, will you? Your biggest proponents and frequent cruisers are having trouble getting their problems solved, and it's pissing us off!

Mike,

Try hitting ncl up on twitter. They were very helpful to me when I had an issue where the shore excursion department was extremely unresponsive. It was fixed in a couple days.

Edit: nevermind, just saw NCL social media team replied on here.

Thats strange... they normally have them on the table/at bar when you sign up and they give you one.

Odd, they didn't have any at the bar at all at O'Sheehans.

I didn't get any cups while on the Epic! Darn.