Kierste

My dd loved her no-jitos… virgin mojitos… very light and refreshing!

There aren’t any seats in the two pools, plenty of area to lean against a wall however. We loved the thermal suite on the Prima!

Did the Dawn last summer for a Baltic cruise, and she was lovely. I have a review around here somewhere 🙂. We have done NCL big ships and small ships and the only thing I think hubby missed was The District. As for DD and I, we loved the ship and had a great time. Go and enjoy!

We have pushed it to 9:30 before and it gets really awkward to try and stay after that 🙂

We were on the Dawn last summer in the Baltics… had a lovely cruise! Now, our ship was nearly empty (38% capacity), and there was zero nightlife because of it, but we had such a port intensive cruise, we didn’t miss it. Early to bed and early to rise… We had great food (Los Lobos is a hidden gem), great drinks and wonderful service. go and have fun!

A quote from my review from the Prima a month ago, I hope they find a better solution for the stewards: I had a lovely chat on day one with our steward. Back when there were 2 room “servicing” times a day, he had 14 rooms, which he serviced in the morning until about noon, took a 3 hour break and came back around 3-8 pm for the evening turndowns—that is 28 room make-ups a day. Under the new schedule he has 34 rooms and works 8-6 pm with a half hour lunch. No break in the afternoon to go into port for necessities or sightseeing. This guy was working his butt off trying to keep the rooms to the same level of clean so that on the last day of the cruise when the rooms changeover he could actually get it done and done well between 9 ish when everyone gets booted from the ship and 2:30 pm when the next batch of guests get allowed in their rooms. I tipped him well, and I think he deserves even more.

Darts are $20 for the hour, not $20 per person, and you can have up to 6 people. So when you book, book just for 1 person, but bring your party to the checkin time. We felt it was fun to do for $20… enjoy!

Not always, and often not on sea days, it depends on how many week long passes have been sold.

The fill a bag special is enough for us to get 3 people’s worth of laundry done halfway through an 11 day cruise no problem. You just have to roll the clothes tight and you can fit a lot in a bag. We are platinum now, so it’s even a better deal 🙂

The big pool was pretty warm, likely 101 or so? A warm hot tub, but not so hot you can’t be in it longer than a few minutes. The smaller one was a little cooler, but still very comfortable.

On our embarkation day a couple of weeks ago, the stewards worked until all the bags were delivered and then were done—again at around 6 pm. We didn’t even meet ours that day, met him the next morning. We got into our room at 2:30 pm and he was evidently around because there was a cart in the hall, but we didn’t see him. As far as emptying the fridge goes, I did it myself and put the items back in the fridge myself on our last morning.

you will have service some time between 8 am and 6 pm, you could ask your steward to leave you for the end of their day, and they may be able to accommodate you.

We didn’t have to use the sofa as a bed, so I can’t speak to that. But our steward (Prima) for our club balcony suite a couple of weeks ago filled us in on how his duties changed. He went from 14 cabins and twice a day service working from 8-12 ish with a three hour mid-day break and evening turndown started around 3 and went to 8 pm—so 28 cabin touches a day. He now has 34 cabins and works them from 8 to 6 ish with a 30 minute lunch, and by 6 pm his cart was no longer in the halls and I am sure he was exhausted. I wonder if the stewards will just undo and redo the bed on the cabins that need it—two touches just for those rooms? But then I would expect you would have to be very flexible with when they could come to the room since they are done at 6.

Not sure I understand? You are booked in the haven, so not much to nickel and dime you about? You will have to pay to race the go-carts or play darts or if you want some really expensive whiskey or wine? But you can eat in the haven dining room the whole time if you want, or change it up and go to the Local or Indulge for free too and have some really good meals. No need for vibe passes, you have the haven sun deck area, and while much smaller than the thermal suite the haven sun deck area does have its own sauna. Go and have a great cruise!

I’m looking at a cruise where the last port is Reykjavik and we disembark the next day in Reykjavik, seems odd to overnight in the last port/disembarking port? It’s the middle of summer, which won’t be good for northern lights but it was my only thought why they would do this? Anyhow, curious how that works… we can get off and see the town come back to the ship to sleep and get off again in the morning with our luggage.

Just off the ship on on the 2/5-2/12 sailing. Noise boys was showing that week, Indulge was completely complimentary (minus drinks unless you have a drink package), mini-golf was free, and thermal suite was great—if you want bubbles in the big “pool” you need to get the attention of the folks behind the desk up in the window and they can turn it on for you, the button is up there and not by the pools. enjoy!

There is a small serve serve beverage area including coffee, in our experience it was unfortunately only operational when indulge was open, so no opportunity to grab something in between 2 and 5:30 pm, which was unfortunate.

Off the Prima a couple weeks ago… we are both platinum now and I preordered 12 liters for the week (my stomach is sensitive to water outside of my home state for some reason, unless bottled) and we received 24 bottles and I had no idea why. Just went with it. We ended up leaving a half dozen behind and hope our steward took them for himself (left him a note offering them to him.)

On the touch screens by the elevators… just pick one person when it has you select which guest and the dates and times show up.

This picture is taken from the stairs, you can’t even see the door to the lockers and steam room in this pic as they are behind me, and the red arrow is pointing toward where most people come out by the ice room, beyond that red arrow also to the right is the hall to the lounge area (and the fabulous heated loungers.) The walkway is where most people leave their flip flops and hang their robes.

when you check in to the spa, you go down a curved flight of stairs, and can see the spa pools from the stairs, at the bottom of the stairs you can go right to the hallway to the locker rooms or left to the door to the steam rooms, it isn’t exactly like everyone is walking past the pools. There is a walkway next to the pools but it is within the confines of the spa area and not really the “path” people take. People go into the sauna areas typically closest to the eucalyptus steam room and come out on the other side by the ice room, which is on the opposite side of the pools. Hmmm, imagine like a capital D… the doors in and out of the sauna area are the top and bottom of the curve of the D and the walkway is the straight back of the D… that walkway bit is skipped over by most people.

Just off a week on the beautiful Prima. There have been lots and lots of reviews and live posts, so I will keep it short. Our club mini-suite #10350 on the bump of the port side aft was beautiful. Balcony may be a smidge larger than standard, and the new balcony chairs are lovely (hope they roll them out fleet wide!) We had the UBP (regular) and 2 included specialty dinners and I upgraded to get 2 more. Ate at Los Lobos, (the lovely server gave us extra chips and salsa to take back to the room after a discussion about lack of snacky stuff—I miss the bar mix!) Le Bistro, Cagneys, Onda and Teppanyaki. Paid ala carte for Los Lobos (for us it was the cheapest meal.) Food was all good, some even great. Did MDR for breakfast each day, Local and Indulge for most lunches and a couple dinners, buffet once for lunch. We did not go hungry! I put in my survey to NCL that Indulge should stay open till 4 pm, with a shorter break between lunch and dinner, it closing at 2 was too early and created chaos at Local and the buffet for hungry people just back on the ship from port excursions. I also hope they institute some sort of assisted seating at Indulge, as I disliked stalking people who were eating while waiting for someone to finish and free up a table. The drinks of the day were mostly meh, and really could only be ordered on that specific day. Found that locating what I was in the mood to drink and which bar could make it tricky. I believe the only bars with blenders that could make a BBC or Mudslide were deck 17 at the pool (loud and raucous up there) or deck 6 at the Penrose Atrium bar. I drank way more Mai Tais than normal as most (but not all) bars could make them. Hubby quite liked the whiskey bar (when it was open, which was not all day). Seating on deck 8 was beautiful and varied, never had a problem finding a place to sit in the shade (we did have to ask an attendant one late morning because everything had a towel “reserving” seats in the shade. He said no worries and cleared two chairs for us, we saw them enforcing the no hogging rule often, which is lovely. Made it to Noise Boys (lots of fun) and that is about it. Found finding a place to sit and listen to live music tricky the way the did the public areas—the atrium is so broken up you can’t very well sit at another level and listen to the band on 6. We are also not night owls so waiting in line to get into Syd’s for a 10 pm show didn’t happen. The thermal suite was amazing—first time I have done one! Loved it so much and miss it already! I went post dinner and it was quiet and not crowded, except for Ladies night was way too many people drunk on champagne and saying things upon opening the door to one sauna or another like “wow it’s so hot in here, why is it soooo hot?!” Did the race cars twice (was a hoot, but ate up nearly an hour each time), rode all the dry slides (they are not fast in the afternoon if you are chicken), and played darts (key to booking—book for one person and bring up to 6 people to your time slot, it’s $20 total for the hour no matter if it’s 1 or 6 people.) I think that pretty much covers it, wanted to touch on a kind of hot topic however. I had a lovely chat on day one with our steward. Back when there were 2 room “servicing” times a day, he had 14 rooms, which he serviced in the morning until about noon, took a 3 hour break and came back around 3-8 pm for the evening turndowns—that is 28 room make-ups a day. Under the new schedule he has 34 rooms and works 8-6 pm with a half hour lunch. No break in the afternoon to go into port for necessities or sightseeing. This guy was working his butt off trying to keep the rooms to the same level of clean so that on the last day of the cruise when the rooms changeover he could actually get it done and done well between 9 ish when everyone gets booted from the ship and 2:30 pm when the next batch of guests get allowed in their rooms. I tipped him well, and I think he deserves even more. If you have ever been to both Disneyland and Disneyworld you will get this analogy. There are a lot of similarities between the two but you can’t really compare them. That is how I feel about the Prima compared to the Pearl, Escape, Spirit and Dawn. Yes, it’s NCL, but it’s very different at the same time. They have kinks to work out, like the material they used on the pool deck and around deck 8 is terribly slippery when wet, and will be changed for the Viva. We were also told Food Republic will be open for buffet seating on the Viva. They are also making Indulge work so even if you are sitting at a specific restaurant bar table you can order from anywhere. They are reading the comments and complaints and tweaking—and joked that they should have it all sorted by ship #10 (they are building 6 ships in this class.) Would I sail her again? Yes, but have my eyes on the Sun next which is the polar opposite of the Prima. Take that as you will. Thank you for reading!

Looking at the Sun for a future cruise, just got off the Prima, Los Lobos packed up chips and salsa for us to take back to our room after a very good meal there, and we saw plenty of dishes taken from various eating establishments put outside cabin doors for clean up. It was difficult to get something to eat from 2-5 pm (the buffet was often slammed post-return from port and the Local usually had awful waits) or after 9:30 pm, and “snacky” type items seem to be scarce (hence us asking about taking chips and salsa for next day snack.)

Hope to see you on board! Hubby will be quickly whisking drinks back to our own balcony as he tends to avoid social interaction! I have work tomorrow and a red eye tomorrow night!

There is a discount on port days, but with the added auto gratuity it is still very expensive. But I also think it is worth it. I do tell my masseuse point blank I won’t be buying up sells, and that helps from ruining the vibe at the end.