Trip Report - NCL Getaway - Jan 26 to Feb 2

[drumming cruisers]

I have never heard of a day use hotel room. How  much does that cost? How many hours can you stay in room?

[Kclovesken]

On 2/6/2020 at 5:15 PM, RockyMtnCruiser1 said:

Cruise - Day 1 -  Embarkation Day (Sunday, January 26th), continued

 

Before I continue with our day 1 activities, I just realized I missed a few “pre-cruise” planning items that we did. Based on lots of reviews, we pre-booked our dinners (minus the first night), shows in the main theater, water package, and internet. 

 

A few notes about all of this. If you’re ever having issues pre-booking anything on the app, try it on your desktop/laptop. I was having a heck of a time booking our dinner reservations on the app, but as soon as I did it on the actual website it worked out fine. Also, I had better results when I booked one night/item at a time rather than trying to book everything at once.

 

I went back and forth about booking our dinner each night in the Tropicana Room. We like to eat early, around 5:30pm, so did we really need to have a reservation? Probably not! Ultimately, I decided to make a reservation every night just to give me peace of mind. We actually prefer traditional dining where you are seated at the same table with the waitstaff every night. This is one thing we don’t like about NCL. Anyways, moving on! We also pre-booked Burn the Floor and the Million Dollar Quartet for the 7:30pm seating. 

 

Our biggest issue with NCL’s beverage package is that they don’t include bottled water (RCCL does). I know now that the Premium “Plus” package does, but the upcharge for that seemed really insane to us! Yes, every bar will give you a glass of ice water and you can get it in the buffet, but we like to have bottles of water in our room. On our last NCL cruise, we pre-ordered water bottles to our room and that worked out great. We did it again this time and purchased 12 one liter bottles. What we actually got was 24 500mL liter bottles, which was fine by us, but just something to note! 

 

We’ve lived through the changes to NCL’s beverage package since our first cruise with them in 2015. In case you're curious, we didn’t pay any gratuities for our package in 2015 and the liquor and wine selections were fantastic. In 2018, we paid the gratuities, but the $15 limit still included a lot of quality liquors and wines. For this cruise, the one thing we really noticed was how lackluster the included wine options were. The only time we ordered wine at dinner was after we went to the Wine Lover’s Musical and tried seven different options!

 

Lastly, we pre-purchased the 250 minute internet plan. One of the reasons we love cruising is the lack of internet access. It’s so great to disconnect from the world. That being said, I feel the need to be able to check in with our furry kiddos everyday. Our dog, Scout, goes to an amazing boarding facility. We can check in on him via various webcams anytime we want. We also get a report card each night that includes photos and a few descriptions on how he was during the day. For the kitties, we have a gal that comes each day to the house and spends time with them. She also sends us photos of “the nerds” (her words!). 

 

Here are some of the photos we got of our babies!

 

 

 

I noticed on the daily for day 1 it says collect your welcome aboard pack or something like that at also get your free charm with Jake. My first cruise with NCL is coming and I am wondering what that means?

[happytravellers2]

Thanks for your review RMC1 - we are sailing on Getaway on 22 March - so was interested to see your detailed review.

 

we sailed Celebrity Summit out of Puerto Rico and really enjoyed it. The food was excellent and it is very nice starting and finishing in the Lesser Antilles rather than taking half the time to get there, and half back from Florida ports. 
To my memory the drinks package was also even better than the NCL package. summit is a relatively small ship - with a really great sail away bar at the stern. 
 

Thanks again for the review.

[GettotheSun]

Great review thank you!!

 

I'm so glad you had a great time!  I really struggled between RCCL and NCL because we are bringing our kids.  I ultimately decided on NCL for several reasons, but one was I read the entertainment on NCL was the best (for our sake, not the kids!)

 

So glad you enjoyed it!  

 

Loved all of your pics!

[RockyMtnCruiser1]

On 2/28/2020 at 9:42 PM, drumming cruisers said:

I have never heard of a day use hotel room. How  much does that cost? How many hours can you stay in room?

It’s different for every hotel. We paid $69 plus tax to stay from 8am to 4pm. If you Google “day use room,” a few different websites come up. 

[RockyMtnCruiser1]

On 2/28/2020 at 11:44 PM, Kclovesken said:

I noticed on the daily for day 1 it says collect your welcome aboard pack or something like that at also get your free charm with Jake. My first cruise with NCL is coming and I am wondering what that means?

I’m actually not sure what that’s all about either! Sorry! Maybe someone else can chime in?

 

On 2/29/2020 at 6:29 AM, happytravellers2 said:

Thanks for your review RMC1 - we are sailing on Getaway on 22 March - so was interested to see your detailed review.

 

we sailed Celebrity Summit out of Puerto Rico and really enjoyed it. The food was excellent and it is very nice starting and finishing in the Lesser Antilles rather than taking half the time to get there, and half back from Florida ports. 
To my memory the drinks package was also even better than the NCL package. summit is a relatively small ship - with a really great sail away bar at the stern. 
 

Thanks again for the review.

 
You’re welcome! Thanks for the info about the Summit! We’re really excited to get back on a smaller ship. Their drink package does look really nice and does seem to include more than NCL’s.  
 

On 2/29/2020 at 2:51 PM, GettotheSun said:

Great review thank you!!

 

I'm so glad you had a great time!  I really struggled between RCCL and NCL because we are bringing our kids.  I ultimately decided on NCL for several reasons, but one was I read the entertainment on NCL was the best (for our sake, not the kids!)

 

So glad you enjoyed it!  

 

Loved all of your pics!

 

Thanks so much! It was definitely fun doing the review and reliving our trip. We really did enjoy the entertainment on NCL - hope you do too!!

[Robkat]

Hey RMC1!

Thanks for a thoroughly entertaining and informative review.  The Getaway was our first Away ship years ago,, and we loved it, so it was so fun seeing it again through someone else's eyes!

 

We're in downtown Denver (yay CO!),  and our upcoming flight home from LAX (after being on the Joy🚢👍) is also going to be a really late one.  So, we were very interested in hearing that you had booked in to a day-use room.  

 

I saw above how much you paid for it, but how did you know which hotels offered that amenity?  We've never seen a rate listed when we've been booking other, regular overnight reservations.  Did you just goggle hotels  near the airport, and then contact them individually to see whether they did day-use rooms?  

 

Thanks again for the time you took to do this review. 😃

[RockyMtnCruiser1]

21 minutes ago, Robkat said:

Hey RMC1!

Thanks for a thoroughly entertaining and informative review.  The Getaway was our first Away ship years ago,, and we loved it, so it was so fun seeing it again through someone else's eyes!

 

We're in downtown Denver (yay CO!),  and our upcoming flight home from LAX (after being on the Joy🚢👍) is also going to be a really late one.  So, we were very interested in hearing that you had booked in to a day-use room.  

 

I saw above how much you paid for it, but how did you know which hotels offered that amenity?  We've never seen a rate listed when we've been booking other, regular overnight reservations.  Did you just goggle hotels  near the airport, and then contact them individually to see whether they did day-use rooms?  

 

Thanks again for the time you took to do this review. 😃

 

You're welcome! We've used two sites for day use rooms (Day Use and Hotels by Day). I think both sites give you various options for check in/check out times.

 

I was trying to find my old reservation when we did a day use room by LAX, but I can't track it down. I'm pretty sure we stayed at the Hilton Los Angeles Airport and I know we paid more than New Orleans (over $100). It was nice and they have a complimentary shuttle to the airport.

 

We were on the Star doing a Mexican Riviera cruise this time last year and had an amazing time! We saw so many whales in Puerto Vallarta and Cabo! Hope you have a great cruise!

Edited March 4, 2020 by RockyMtnCruiser1

[Robkat]

You're  kidding!  😂😂

We were on the Bliss last year, doing this same itinerary as the Joy this year, at this same time of year too!  

 

Thanks for the great info ... I had just found Day Use and appreciate having another resource to check out.   We'll definitely take a look at that Hilton.

 

Enjoy this great weather we're having !  ☀️

We can only hope that when we fly back from the Joy in 4 weeks that we still have these mild temps to come home to!🤞

[LS6Caddy]

Thanks for your review.  We are sailing on Breakaway in a few weeks, our first NCL cruise (and we just got upgraded to a spa balcony due to the price drop in cruises recently...so it will be our first experience with the Thermal Suite.  Most of our cruises have been on RCCL (with a few Princess sprinkled in) and twice on Oasis class ships.  We are little unsure what to expect from NCL...we too like traditional dining where you have the same servers every night...and we also feel like RCCL does a good job of managing the number of people they have on their larger ships...so it was good to hear that you liked your NCL experience compared to your RCCL experience.  

 

We also are from Denver.  If you haven't tried it yet, go check out FlyteCo brewing near Sloans lake.  Great beer and great atmosphere with an aeronautical theme where the tables and such are created from re-purposed airplane parts.  And the people are amazing too.