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No slides, sadly - and I even had the proper suit for it!! I mentioned it to DH and he looked at me like I was nuts, brushed his fingers gently across the scar on my neck, and quietly informed me I had lost my mind. Sigh...overprotective husbands, what can you do?

 

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Hahaha!! I'm bound and determined to someday make it down in my tankini! :)

I asked the question before I read about your surgery.....yes - it is good that this time you skipped the slide.

Ah, I've been waiting for this!!! You know I am jealous of your Haven!!!!!

The big question is..........Did you do the dropslide?? :)

Thank you for an AMAZING review!! I have booked my first NCL cruise for 2019 and I have a couple questions (as a newbie). 1) What is Vibe? 2) I am new to this freestyle type dining. I am a bit confused as to how to handle this...is it best that I make reservations for dinner at one of the restaurants PRIOR to the cruise starting? Or do you make reservations day of? I am just referring to the free restaurants. Any advice would be welcomed!!! Thanks again!!

Thanks so much!!! Vibe is a private place on the ship that you have to purchase. It costs $99 for the week and they only sell to about 80 people. As they sell to so few passengers, you have to get there bright and early to have a chance to make it in. It's a great place to get away from the crowds. They spoil you there with great waiter/bartender service, padded comfy loungers, fruit kabobs and cookies, and cold washcloths at times. I have never been in the Getaway Vibe but loved every minute of it when we were on the Escape.

As for reservations for the free restaurant, I always make them. It just works for our family and in the past, I didn't like having to wait for a table. That said, I really never saw anyone waiting (other than large groups) so I don't how necessary that is now. I think if you are a large party then you definitely want the reservation but for a smaller group, if you prefer to play it by ear and not be bogged down by a certain time, then I think you'd be fine just showing up without a reservation. For us, we liked knowing we had a table waiting for us, and I think it helped us get tables in the "good" locations that we liked.

What is free at Costa Maya Margaritaville for NCL Haven guests? You said "the first day", but that would be a LOT of free food/bevs!!! Thanks Mel!

Robin, NCL Getaway 2/3/2019

The Margaritaville onboard the Getaway gives free meals to Haven passengers for lunch on embarkation day.

 

However, in your situation, there seems to be some confusion here. You say that you are 7 points short of the required 80 points, which means you must be on 73 points. I'm pretty sure that the number of points required for platinum under the old rules was 76, so you wouldn't have been platinum on those rules and you are correctly still gold.

 

Having said that, you are the second person to post on here about being 7 points short of the new platinum requirement (unless that was you as well). Maybe I am wrong in thinking the old rules had platinum at 76. Are you sure that 73 would have been enough for platinum under the old rules, because I don't think it would have.

You are correct! For some reason I thought I remembered it used to be 72 points - but the old platinum tier started at 76 (I just looked it up). I wouldn't have hit platinum with the old tiers either.

 

As I'm sure the OP found out, NCL have been honouring the old tier levels where cruises were booked before last February (and apparently some where they were booked later). Therefore, when they completed their cruise last March I'm pretty sure they will have been upgraded to Silver.

I usually don't like to respond to old resurrected threads but this intrigued me. I booked my Getaway cruise two years ago, long before the change in tier levels. I booked it early enough that I was grandfathered in and still received the extra 7 points for booking 9 months ahead of time.

This cruise would have made me Platinum once I received the 14 points. However, with the new tiers, I now still need 7 more points. I just looked at my account after seeing this post and I did in fact get the 14 points. But, I wasn't given Platinum and I'm still Gold - 7 points shy. So, I was grandfathered for the extra 7 points for an early booking but being held to the new tiers, with needing 80 points for Platinum.

Did I read this correctly that others are having the Platinum honored with the old tiers (7 less points) when booking early? I wish that had been the case for my husband and I.

I was sent back down and had to spend 10 minutes prying it off. They were strictly enforcing the "no jewelry of any kind" rule.

Yay - awesome info! Thank you!!

You're welcome!! Glad I could help! :)

I thoroughly enjoyed your fantastic writing and felt like I was right there with you! My husband and I are anxiously awaiting our first cruise on the Getaway this June. Would you mind telling me how and when you decide your disembarkation time? Thanks so much - lots of great tips.

Thanks so much!!! Hope you have a fantastic cruise in June.

If you choose easy walk off, you can disembark at any time that last morning while carrying all your own luggage. If you want NCL to carry your bags off, you need to pick your disembarkation time in advance. They set out colored luggage tags for disembarkation in the Atrium several days prior to the end of cruise (I believe it was Thursday). Each colored luggage tag has a different disembarkation time attached to it. On that last morning, simply listen to the announcements for your color tag to be called to disembark and pick up your luggage.

Sorry, one more question. If we choose the 10:00 check in time for embarkation, what time do you guess we'll be on the ship? It's confusing as our edocs say boarding starts at noon. Thanks

The 10:00 am time is a check in time, not an embarkation time. You will be showing them your passports, filling out a health form, taking your photo for your sail card and giving them a credit card for onboard spending. Then you get your boarding number and go wait until boarding starts. They give check in times to spread out when everybody shows up - in the hope of avoiding terribly long check in lines. Although they give check in times, I've never seen them enforce them.

The noon time you see on your edocs is for actually boarding the ship. For us, this usually happens after checking in and sitting in the waiting room for an hour or so. They often begin boarding prior to noon (at least in my experience), I think for us this time around was 11:30ish. The earlier you check in, the lower your boarding number will be and the quicker you will get on board.

I really enjoyed reading about your trip!! My husband and I will be on the Getaway 4/12/20 so like you did in the beginning, I have a LOOOOOOOONG time to wait. 23 months and 18 days to be exact. :loudcry: I booked a spa balcony room and I'm so excited!

 

I've already planned our activities and we also have the UBP which I plan to use, HEAVILY. I want to get passes to Vibe as well so I plan on being in New Orleans port at 7:00 am (after some chickory and beignets at Cafe DuMonde). See? I'm planning the heck out of this already. The time can't come fast enough but I don't want it to be here yet because I have so many things to look forward to before that.

 

Can I ask, the times you used Vibe before, did you feel with getting off at port, and coming back later in the day, it was still worth it? I'm HOPING to score a cabana on Vibe, but I'll still be happy to just get the week pass.

 

Can't wait to read about your next cruise!:)

Thanks!!! Jade, here we come!! Just need to wait until next April!!!

Enjoy the planning - it is the only thing that gets me through the wait!!

As for the Vibe, when we had it, we only had three ports and we skipped one of them to stay at the Vibe. With this 4 port itinerary and having plans each day, it definitely is much less used. That said, for us I think it could be worth it. I really enjoyed it. On the Escape, we enjoyed sailaway each night at Vibe, and had a blast with others at the bar. So, I could totally see using it after port and Sea Days and it being totally worth it.

The ropes course was great. It's a series of nodes, with different types of paths connecting them. Some are single ropes, some are double, some are fixed beams. There's also a zip line from one end of the course to the other.

 

The best part was the one open beam. It extends out over the side of the ship, and you're now 180' over the water, on a very narrow beam, with just a rope to hold on to. There's also a rope to pull, that triggers a camera to capture the moment.

 

This isn't my video, but at around 2 minutes in, you can see this. Unfortunately, they didn't look straight down to the water, or to see if there was anyone on the lower decks watching you, and shouting out...let go of the rope for your pose.

 

Easy for them to say.

 

 

 

Note that the ropes course is open while the ship is in motion, so it's potentially rising and falling with the waves as you walk out over the ocean.

 

 

 

They show movies on the aft pool deck and indoors.

I wondered about the pool deck - we must have missed it. As for the beam (plank) on the ropes course, I thought I was brave, but that was so scary when I did it on the Escape!! :) So much fun though.

So much fun reading your posts! Thank you for taking time to write all this.

 

 

We are sailing on Getaway in Nov 2018. We will be a group of 5 like yours. I'm glad to hear getting into restaurants is easy with that number. It probably will end up just being 4 as son aged 13 will want to be at the kid's club.

 

I had seen posts of Maya Chan filling up. We made our reservation already.

 

Did any of your group do the ropes course? How was it? That is something son is looking forward to the most. This is our first foray on a larger ship.

As you saw in my review, we were often just 4 for dinner. Honestly, I liked the table size and location better when there were four of us.

We actually didn't do the rope course this cruise. My son and I did it on the Escape twice and it was a lot of fun. I would definitely recommend it! I was surprised that none of my boys wanted to do it this time.

We love the larger ships for the water slides and ropes course. Funny we didn't do either one of those this time!

Wishing you a great cruise!

Really enjoyed your review, as we will be doing this itinerary in July. (NCL switched us from the "Eastern" to the "Western" due to Hurricane damage). Glad that this question was asked and replied to. I would have been quite surprised to receive a bill for drinks. At least now I can advise the people in our group, seeing as the majority of us have the "Drink Package" for this cruise.

There are a few different places to buy drinks on the island - some cheaper than others. We preferred ordering from our waiter due to laziness, LOL. My husband and I brought drinks off from the ship (2 pina coladas each - in our RTIC glasses that kept it cold) which were plenty for us. We chose to save money and drink once back on the ship. Our boys though ordered on the island - I didn't feel it was too expensive, especially the draft beer. It is good though to have a warning and come prepared if you don't want to spend the money. Also - just a note you can't pay with your ship's card - so need cash or credit card. Enjoy your cruise!

On Harvest Key in Belize, do food and beverages have to be purchased separately? I thought it was one of NCL's private islands and usually that sort of thing is included, but based on your review it seems it's not. :(

You are right, food and drinks are not included. This is different than Great Stirrup Cay. The nice thing is that the ship isn't far (no tendering like GSC) so if you don't want to spend money, you can head back to the ship for lunch.

Due to the weather related issues in the Caribbean in recent times, Maya Chan has lost some beach. So the capacity has been diminished as a resul due to a dimished shoreline. They are patient and waiting for mother nature to bring the shoreline back.

 

Peggy is still there and she is like a rock! We love her.:hearteyes:

 

Our recent stay was just as good as any time before and the massages were just amazing. So was the food and beverage, and to boot, they make the tortilla from scratch, flour or corn...Important to share, they now have a swim up bar. :D

The tortillas were amazing. I really was sad I wasn't hungrier as I wanted to go back for seconds........and thirds.

And a swim up bar? Perfect!!! I just loved the waiter kayaking out to me with my drink - made my day!!

Thanks for the info. I'm sure there are plenty of other things to do besides watching movies anyway. :D

So true. Too many things in fact, enough that I think I need another week!! :)

Loving this review. Did I read correctly that you also have a review of the Breakaway? If so, what is the link? Thank you!!!

I haven't been on the Breakaway (unfortunately). Sorry. I have done reviews of the Escape twice and the Sun in Alaska though.

Love your review. I have one question and maybe I overlooked it somewhere but does the Getaway show movies at night on the pool deck? That is something my DH and I really enjoyed on another cruiseline. I looked at your daily schedules and didn't see any movies listed. Just wondering if you noticed any. Thanks :D

I don't remember seeing movies at night on deck. I know when we were on the Escape they showed a few football games on the big screen. I also remember movies at Sprice H2O. I didn't see either of those options on the Getaway. I did see movies advertised in the Atrium though. Maybe someone else can speak up if I just missed it though. I enjoy that type of thing too!

I have to say, your review is beyond AMAZING! I started reading it a couple of days ago and decided I needed to share it with my mom. So, for the past couple of nights when I have gone to her house I have been reading it aloud as if is a book. We are both like “oh my gosh, what happens next?”

 

If I could have a cruise spirit animal I think it would be you. LOL. No, seriously, everything you have written it’s as if I’m reading about myself, and it’s crazy!

 

My mom and I have both joked that we must cruise with you. Hahaha. We have been on the Getaway twice, this itinerary on her once and are booked for the same one in December. I have thoroughly enjoyed seeing this cruise through your eyes.

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How much is it to use this app for texting on the ship?

The price slightly varies per ship-the Getaway was $14.99 per person for the week.

i recommend maya chan to everyone.....I didn't get my reservation in on time to go this trip :(

:(

Yes, and book early!! When I reached out to them last summer, I thought it was very early. They told me to they would definitely book up quickly which they did. I'm so glad we tried it and look forward to going back.

We had a great day in Belize - actually better than what is planned for Roatan, so I was pleasantly surprised. Review is coming!

 

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Great - can't wait to read it. Make sure to include the Muesli! :)

I have loved following this as well as watching your legs go browner and browner LOL

Haha :)

Thanks for following along!!

Thanks for the great review. Will be on the June 3 sailing on Getaway. Can’t wait!

Have a fantastic cruise - and have a drink for me!!

Is that $15 per cruise per person or is that a daily charge?

 

Thanks for putting so much info in your review. I really appreciate having a better idea of the details since the Bliss will be our first cruise.

 

 

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It was $14.99 per person for the whole cruise, not daily. If you don't want to use the texting feature the app is free. I know the NCL has a new app they have introduced on a few ships (not the iConcierge that I used) and I believe the Bliss might be getting it soon? Enjoy the Bliss......I'm jealous! :)

We are at the airport waiting to fly home, and I took a picture for you this morning! I'm still in Miami, but I've already got the Post Cruuse Blues....incidentally, the hubs and I were walking through the airport at 9 this morning looking for a bar....that UPB has us spoiled.[ATTACH]419577[/ATTACH]

 

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Awwwww. thanks!! :)

I can't wait to hear about your week - hope it was great. Sorry about Roatan.......hopefully you found something fun to do in Belize.

Thank you for the great review! We are new to cruising but can’t wait to cruise your itinerary!

Hopefully you will love cruising as much as I do. Enjoy the itinerary!!