Kierste

Do any of the escape haven room types have a balcony that is too small for loungers?

Thanks for the review! We are doing that exact week next year. But since Easter will be back where it belongs in April, I am hoping for a little less spring break craziness, even though it is spring break for us :D

Did your kids do any activities with entourage? I will have a just turned 13 year old on our trip. She loved splash academy, but I am concerned about less structure in entourage.

We've only done one cruise, on the Pearl, also had a mini suite. We fell in love with ncl and not having to be fancy on what I consider a beach vacation. The food was much better than I expected... Everywhere--buffet, mdr, specialties. We love eating with our own family when we want to (yes we do ressies, but it seems everywhere else I look there are two seatings, early and late. Well, that seemed weird to us, I like booking for when I know we will want food.). Anyhow we loved it all so much we are trying the escape next year. Did a medium ship, and now want to try a big ship while we still have a dd that wants to do the big ship stuff (slides and ropes course!) We got another mini-suite, this time with large balcony. That was my only jealousy on the last cruise, was being in port and seeing other ships with hammocks, or chairs that had adjustable backs, or actual lounge chairs on the balcony. All minis have balconies, so at a minimum you will have straight back chairs and can sit on your own outside space!

Just called Costco and took advantage of the new deal. We had the all night UDP before for all 3 of us. New deal is just the two adults, plus the ubp, plus Costco threw in more shipboard credit then we had before. After all was said and done, kept our large balcony minisuite and paid $245 more total, when I subtract out the difference in the shipboard credit it's only $130 more. That's two drinks a day to cover the cost, no problemo. Done deal. We only planned on 4 specialty nights anyway (we did these on sea days only on the Pearl and it worked out well.) :D

Did the math and it doesn't work out for us. We currently have UDP for all three of us (kiddo included) for every night. New promo would reduce it to four nights and just the two of us, and increases our fare by $300. The amount we would pay for dd to eat at the upcharged places plus the $300 bump won't equal what we would pay for in booze for the two of us on a 7 day cruise.

Teppanyaki is a set amount of food. Kids eating off your plate is not "cheating" because they are not going to give you more food then the person next to you. So if you have a three year old, order the free kids meal for them and give them a couple bites off your plate. We did teppanyaki with our 10 year old. Paid the regular price for her and she loved the food, it was worth it to us. Plus the kids menu gets old.

We used our sturdy boca clips to clip wet suits to the backs of our balcony chairs and kept them under the overhang to dry. That way they won't blow away or get soaked by surprise showers.

I just received the email for my cruise in 2017. I might just prepay too, since it could go up two more times between now and then. :eek::eek:

Our last full sea day was on Easter Sunday, there was a beautiful spread (ham, cross buns etc) at the buffet, but we had reservations at Le Bistro that night, nothing special for Easter that we noted, but the food was fantastic. Lots of little hints of decorations, and we did see a fairly sorry excuse for the bunny at one point (the girl's hair was poking out the back)... so the bunny was on board. We snuck Easter stuff in the suitcase and hid plastic eggs in the room etc... so it was festive enough for us :)

What website did you use to purchase the pass online? I found this one: http://www.shoreexcursioneer.com/aruba/occidental-grand-resort-day-pass-all-inclusive.html

 

Just not sure if it is "official"...

I emailed the hotel directly and corresponded with them via email. They sent me a form to fill out and I provided them with credit card info.

I don't think you will really miss it... Didn't have it on the Pearl and Splash academy was amazing. No need for characters...

I won a mug on the Pearl in March playing the battle of the sexes. Our team of ladies all got mugs :D

Nevermind, I read wrong, thought your daughter would use it and you wouldn't...

This was the info we received and what we paid for our visit in March:

The Day pass has a cost of $77.00 for adults and kids under the age of 12 pay half price $38.50. The day pass starts from 9:00a.m. up until 6:00p.m. and Includes food, all drinks and non-motorized watersports.

We did pay for it in advance, which worked out fine, but was odd for me to be sending my credit card info over email. I purposely used a card we don't use often, and then monitored it closely for weird charges. Had no issues.

From the email I received from them in January:

The Day pass has a cost of $77.00 for adults and kids under the age of 12 pay half price $38.50. The day pass starts from 9:00a.m. up until 6:00p.m. and Includes food, all drinks and non-motorized watersports.

We did the 11 day - 3/26 cruise with the big outbreak. We didn't get it but I too am a frequent hand washer and tend to not get too close to people. Don't know if that makes a difference or we were just lucky. The crew was definitely on top of it. We cruise a lot and have been on previous cruises with norovirus and I can say that the recent Pearl crew did the best job of containing it. Not only did they serve at the buffet but handed out the plates and silverware too. You would think that this would slow things down but I thought it moved things along more quickly. They really worked hard all over the ship to keep it clean. During that time frame 2 other cruiselines made the news with their virus onboard so not just the Pearl. It only takes one person to pass it along ...

 

Yes, in the past there were cruiselines that had to cancel a cruise to sanitize or whatever they do because of outbreaks - but think it needs to be really bad and not contained before that happens.

We were also on this sailing, and I second everything said above... They contained it to roughly 110 people.. Which I think is awesome :cool:

We want to do Atlantis... So missing Nassau would be a bummer for my dd. Havana would be pretty cool tho.

SeaWatcher65, that's great to hear!

 

Do the kids HAVE to be at the camp at 7pm? Or can they go around 8pm? Also, when do you sign them up for the 10:30pm> portion? During the day time?

The themed activities start shortly after 7... They can show up late, but they might be off defending the world from domination or something already, and then a counselor has to get them to the group. My daughter insisted she needed to be there by 7:15 to not miss the beginning of the activity.

We didn't use it, but I know that at the younger ages after 10:30 they usually just let them pick a movie.... on our cruise we only had about 100 kids on board, so by 10:30 they combined what was left of the 12 and unders and popped in a movie, because only 3 or so stayed. My daughter desperately wanted to stay... lol I finally told her she could stay the last night, and the counselor said no one else was signed up so she would be by herself... dd changed her mind when she heard that (they let us know at nearly 10 pm, which is when we went to watch the sliming of the counselor... which was great fun. So it wasn't like 2 pm and they were just telling everyone that so they could close early.)

Question about the activities at Kids club (10-12) - how are they supervised in doing a scavenger hunt? Are they just allowed to wander around the ship alone? Are they ever unsupervised?

According to my daughter they were divided into groups for the hunt and a counselor was always with them. Indeed every time we ran into her somewhere on ship there was a counselor with the group.

Wow

 

If this is a new policy may have to consider another cruise!

 

http://www.boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2213057

Pretty much every cruise line that has a good amount of kids onboard has the same policy... You can't expect them to have room for 400 kids. We only had 100 on our Pearl sailing and it never was even brought up.

2 loungers and 2 chairs and a table - plenty of room

Yay! My only real complaint on the Pearl was having just chairs on the lanai. We'd pull up next to other ships and I'd see they had chairs that actually had a slight recline feature, or hammocks... And I would be jealous! We would just go up to deck 13 and find a lounger there, but it would have been so nice to just stay on our own balcony! Super excited!!

Seemed like most of ours were stuck in a sturdy part of the shirt... Where tags normally go. I just pulled them off, no issues. I got most of them off while on the cruise, but every now and then I am surprised to find one in a shirt. Guess our clothes aren't as delicate as yours?

A virgin piña colada cost us $5.31 in April... You can do the math and see how many of those she would need to drink... We did the UDP for the next cruise we booked. Because I think that it makes more sense, we will pay less out of pocket for alcohol (we bring soda and vitamin water on board with us), then the specialty restaraunts for the 3 of us.