NCL Encore Alaska + Panama Canal B2B: Four Weeks on Board LIVE

[Greenpea2]

On 10/20/2022 at 12:45 PM, plainsstormchaser said:

Short takes on Icy Straight Point Day:

* weather: chilly rain, gale force wind:

* excursion: fun and educational

(I can't imagine why her nickname is "Rainbow!")

* Dinner, Ocean Blue - okay, but nothign to write home about

 

Here is the detailed post: https://2of8000.website/19-oct-icy-strait-point/

Totally agree about Ocean Blue. Meh 

[plainsstormchaser]

Wednesday, the day in which Pooh and a team of security officers cause widespread misconceptions and Pooh ends up red-faced....

https://2of8000.website/is-my-face-red/

Edited October 27, 2022 by plainsstormchaser

[plainsstormchaser]

Los Angeles, Thursday:

We spent the morning hanging out with a coworker in Long Beach at a little coffee shop. Great conversation about Roxan's Dad, our company's growth trajectory and several other things.

 

Saw Diamond Princess at the Princess Terminal

 

 

Got a few neat photos at sail-away...they are on the tablet so I'll post in another message.

 

Today was our first to use the Vibe passes we purchased, given the temperature and life events we've dealt with since Monday.

This is one of the Encore vibe cabanas. We didn't get into one of them unfortunately. 

 

Here's a view from my favorite couch (as long as we're mostly southbound, it's in shade all day)

 

Another passenger saw a Space-X platform this morning!

And before sail-away I got an item checked off my bucket list -- seeing the Goodyear blimp in person!

 

[plainsstormchaser]

This kind of dead-ended, didn't it? That's because we ended up getting off the ship in Puerto Vallarta and flying home due to Roxan's dad passing away. That happened the 31st. I'm just now back to a place I can write decently, and I just completed a series of blog posts wrapping up the trip. I'll copy/paste them here so the trip can have a complete end, at least as it ended from our point of view. 

[plainsstormchaser]

October 28 – At Sea

Wed, Nov 09, 2022 by Scott

This was a sailing day, and a recharge day for us (originally it was to have been the day we visited San Diego). With Roxan’s dad back home, we were able to put that stress far enough out of our mind to have 3-4 days of actual relaxation and vacation.

I’m writing this some time later, on November 9th. The ship is completing the Panama Canal passage. We are not on it, I’m sitting in front of my computer at home.

 

The reason is that Roxan’s dad passed away on 31 October as we were in the process of cutting the trip short and debarking in Puerto Vallarta. I’ll tell the story of that day in correct sequence — but as you might imagine I am losing details of the memories of those four vacation days (Thursday through Sunday). So this will be less detailed, as will the account of Cabo San Lucas and Mazatlan.

A quick diversion to departure from Los Angeles on the 27th…I took a quick video of us pushing off the dock.

We saw two shows Friday night: a comedian and a comedy magic show…in which yours truly ended up on the stage as the audience member for one of the illusions.

Being a sound guy, I was fascinated by the technology in the theater — I wanted to take time and observe the tech crew during a rehearsal but was unable to before the cruise was cut short. From the speaker stack to the lights, I was taking it all in:

We also bought NCL-branded lanyards…which I dubbed “Henry Ford Lanyards” because we could get them in any color — as long as it was black.

(I did notice the next day, around the corner from this case, a display of other colors)

 

 

[plainsstormchaser]

October 29 – Cabo San Lucas

Wed, Nov 09, 2022 by Scott

Saturday was a beautiful day in Cabo San Lucas, with a couple of first-time experiences for me. The first: tendering.

How Does Tendering Work?

On many ships, a couple of the lifeboats are used for tendering, which is done when the port is too shallow or narrow for the ship, or the dock facilities won’t handle the ship for some other reason. The boats run a shuttle service from the ship to the smaller dock. The Encore, however, does not have lifeboats for use as tenders. At Cabo San Lucas there is a port-based tender service that I think serves all ships because none of the cruise liners I’ve seen would fit into that port.

Encore was anchored in the middle of the bay since we were the only ship in port that day.

Tendering operations on Encore involve a platform that folds out of the side of the ship at the deck 3 level. The deck is equipped with places to tie off the tender boat and stairs down from Deck 4, which is where security is and is the lowest a passenger can go on this ship. Here’s a quick shot of the platform as we left for shore:

Several images taken on the way into port:

 

 

 

Senor Frog’s is an inside joke with our family, based on the name our youngest called a local Tex-Mex restaurant when she was little.

I had self-scheduled massages at The Sand Bar (https://thesandbar.mx). This venue is located above the bar/restaurant of the same name. We took a taxi and were early for our appointment, so we had lunch. They had many displays for the upcoming Dia de Muertos observance November 1st.

This is the altar where they enshrine the family members who have passed:

 

 

 

 

And they had the skeletons and skeleton heads that are part of the celebration

 

 

The massages were Out. Of. This. World. The best we’ve had in over a decade, probably.

We did some souvenir shopping after this and went back to the ship. Here is the Sand Bar as we saw it from the ship as we sailed on:

[plainsstormchaser]

October 30 – Mazatlan

Wed, Nov 09, 2022 by Scott

Mazatlan had another stroke of irony. I originally planned a day pass at a local hotel, something I’d discovered on a page of things to do in Mazatlan. For $27 each we could take part of the pools, beach, a lunch buffet and have a couple of drinks. When we first thought we were ending the trip in LA there was nothing to cancel. But after we decided to stay on until we had to go home, I elected to do a “Resort Day” — ironically it was at the same hotel! So for $95 each we got a bus ride and the rest of the things 

 

Nonetheless it was a great day. I swam in the ocean for the first time — I’d dipped my feet in the water on all three major US coast lines, but had never swam.

The rest of the time we sat under a palm frond gazebo on the beach

Our view:

 

 

There was also a parasailing excursion and we saw several parasailers

Leaving Mazatlan that evening I was able to film something I’d wanted to capture previously but hadn’t had the right timing — the exit of the port pilot from the ship. It happens right at the end of this video:

[plainsstormchaser]

October 31 – Puerto Vallarta, sort of

Wed, Nov 09, 2022 by Scott

We woke up late Monday morning, since our Dolphin excursion didn’t leave until 11. But during breakfast, news that Roxan’s dad had taken a dramatic turn for the worse nixed those plans and set us scrambling to debark the ship and get home. I’m going to shift to timeline here (all times approximate):

10:00am

Received text that dad was in much worse condition while eating breakfast at The Local. I called the Hotel Manager’s Secretary, Kim, and informed her that we needed to get off the ship today and asked that she coordinate on our behalf while we went to the room to arrange flights home.

We had sent a load of laundry to be done. This typically takes 6 hours to a day. Of course, we now need that laundry to pack! I called the Housekeeping Manager, Francisco, and asked him if it could be expedited. He called the Laundry manager, walked our laundry bag down to the laundry, and said they were handling it as quickly as they could.

10:15am

Struggle with ship WiFi and poor land-based cell signal to get our flight from Miami home rebooked as a flight from Puerto Vallarta. Ended up texting my boss for flight schedules and figuring out quickly that we had no ability to get out on Monday, we’d have to go Tuesday morning.

 

This was going on in the midst of multiple calls with Guest Services, during which we found out

• The Port Agent and Customs officer would only be aboard until noon.
• We had to have all our baggage packed for inspection by noon, even though we intended to remain on board until around 5pm.

So now our timeline is less than two hours….and as far as we know the laundry MUST be back by then. I continue trying to arrange flights, Roxan starts packing. I call and cancel the schedule of appointments we had at the spa for the duration of the trip, and gathered up the excursion tickets to give to the excursion desk when we took the luggage down. Everything else in this time frame is a blur. I just know there were 8-10 calls on the room phone and many texts home and to my boss during this period, all while packing and getting the room ready for cleaning after our departure.

Somewhere around 11:30, I think, Francisco knocked on the door and handed us our clean laundry! Just one example of people going above and beyond in our time of need — my next post will be about all the people who helped us and were, as NCL calls them, our Vacation Heroes.

12:00 noon

Guest Services calls to see if we are ready to bring bags down for customs search. We ask for a hotel cart, so they call a Haven crew member down with one of those. We troop to Guest Services, step through the desk and into the shared office space behind. It’s now 12:15. We have Roxan, me, two people from Guest Services, one from ship security, a customs officer and two people from the Port Agent’s office in an office that couldn’t have been larger than 14 feet by 20 feet.

12:15 pm

“Can you open the locks please?” — it turns out Mexican customs at Puerto Vallarta does not have the keys for the TSA-approved locks. So we take out each bag and unlock it so the customs agent can search it. At this time we thought our luggage would be sequestered until we got off the ship, so we had everything with us. Hand our passports to the Port Agent staff so they can collect information. Re-explain the situation for them.

12:35 pm

Oh, did I mention, there’s a $41.50 USD fee for the customs search and other processing, payable in cash, to the Port Agent, NOW? We had been told this multiple times during the morning. Note that a ship is a cashless society. I had a torn one-dollar bill and some peso notes in my wallet. The ATM is in the casino, which is closed when the ship is in port (you’ll start to see a theme developing). Fortunately the ATM works, so now I have 5, $20 dollar bills. $100 to pay an $83 fee…and no way to break the last $20…the Port Agent doesn’t give change.

Quick mental calculation: “I have a 500 peso ($5 USD, approximately) note in my wallet, hope that will work.” I’d been told earlier that it was payable only in USD, but I didn’t have the time or energy to spare to point out that we’re in a country that uses pesos. Back down to the Guest Services office, “I have only this in US currency (showing her 5, $20 bills), but I have 500 pesos. Can you take this (4, $20 USD and 1, 500 peso note)?” “Yes, that’s fine.”

Meanwhile Roxan is taking the luggage back to the room with the help of the Haven staff. That’s right, customs cleared the bags then gave them back to us…we could have put any sort of contraband in them during the afternoon and it wouldn’t have shown up until the airport! (We didn’t.) So it was just a box that needed checked.

12:45 pm

I head back to the room. I’m drenched in sweat, and try to towel off and cool down in the room. Unfortunately the air conditioner stopped keeping up about 10:30! I got on the phone to American Airlines reservations to get the flights taken care of.

1:30 pm, maybe 2:00

We go back to the Local, because we want to get a photo of the maitre d’ who had been so friendly to us the past two weeks and a bit. We eat lunch and he comforts Roxan, telling a story about something similar that had happened either in his family or to a crew member recently (I couldn’t hear it all). We head back to the room, to grab the things we still need to finish up our account on the ship and so forth. Around 3:15pm we receive the call we didn’t want to receive — Dad had passed away.

3:45 pm

After a good cry, we both shifted into logistics mode, as we had a lot to do before getting off the ship in just over an hour. When we were out for lunch, we had taken excursion tickets back so they could be refunded. Then we found CuriseNext was closed due to being in port and would not open until after we’d left. (There’s that theme again.) We asked if someone could contact the CruiseNext manager to see if we could get some purchased before we left. He was ashore.

4-ish to 5-ish

• visit the spa, to ensure the remaining three visits each of us had scheduled had been cancelled, and to make sure the account was correctly credited/debited for the sessions used vs. the package of sessions we had purchased. (Credit back the entire package for each of us, consolidate the two visits each of us had made into one 4-visit package, bill us for the cost of the 4-visit package)
• Visit Guest Services to check on CrusieNext. They still had not gotten hold of the CN Manager. I sat in the lobby to wait for him while Roxan went back to the room to get the luggage packed up on the cart again so it could be brought down.

CruiseNext

We’re now past 5pm. The CruiseNext manager nearly dashes in about 5:10pm and tells me he’s been on the phone with Miami to figure out how to get things credited/debited around so our bill could be closed. We were at 5:10pm Mountain Standard Time. The finance folks in Miami work a business-hours schedule (Eastern Daylight Time, so they had been home for a while). The normal way CruiseNext purchases are handled is through a batch process run by the finance folks once a day. Of course, that had already been run.

So somehow he figured out how to get the CrusieNext purchases and the shipboard credit manually posted to our bill and we were given a printout of the entire bill. All the spa, excursion, and CrusieNext charges and credits were shown correctly and we actually ended up with a small refund which would be sent to our card company.

Now down to the exit, the elevator full with our luggage, us, Kim from the Hotel Manager’s office, a Guest Service Representative, and the Haven staffer pushing the baggage cart. After clearing security and getting our luggage into the taxi (quite small, but we made it work for the 4 miles to the hotel), Kim hugged us both and asked me to email her when we got home safely the next night.

Then comes the trip home.

[plainsstormchaser]

These are our Vacation Heroes

Wed, Nov 09, 2022 by Scott

It takes many people to make this giant floating hotel known as Norwegian Encore work, and to make guest experiences special. There were many more people who I could list, but these are the ones who really went the extra mile, sometimes in a routine task for them, sometimes when it came to helping us get off the ship successfully in the midst of our crisis.

They are not listed in any particular order.

Surina Taljaard

Surina was the General Manager’s secretary during the Alaska leg of the trip. Her contract came to an end on arrival back in Seattle, but she extended to work back in the photography department for a time. We were going to have her take the photos we wanted to have as part of the Romance package I’d bought for the Repo leg, but that was not to be…

In the first week Surina was available for any need we had, and she coordinated a number of surprises we enjoyed during the week. Whenever there was a surprise experience or token of NCL’s affection, it was Surina we saw. She helped me coordinate Internet to be able to live blog the trip, too. She always did so in a calmly professional way and with genuine appreciation for us as cruise guests.

 

Julius Cantel Villavelez

Julius was our Room Steward.

Of course you become attached to your room steward, especially on a trip you expect to be 28 days! Julius was the face of NCL every time we saw him, whether it was hard at work in our room or one of the others in his block, asking if we planned to go ashore (and following up inquiring about how our time on shore was), and numerous little things like an extra towel for Roxan, a firmer pillow for me, and so much more.

I did not spend enough time to get to know Julius the way I’d hoped to — learn about his family and home country, that kind of stuff.

For everything you did, thank you kind sir!

 

Francisco Agena Jr

Francisco is Julius’ immediate supervisor, based on the interactions I saw between them. I had the impression he might have been higher up the management ladder than that, but I don’t know his full scope of responsibility. We met Francisco about the same time we met Julius, and he was also very attentive to our needs.

The biggest thing he did for us was when he helped expedite our laundry the last day so we could be packed for customs inspection at the needed time. His interactions with Julius showed Francisco to be a caring, compassionate boss who also holds high expectations.

 

Maye Yasay

Maye led the team of waiters serving in our section at Cagney’s the first night, setting the tone for our trip with excellence.

But I think she was behind a surprise we received on Los Angeles day. We ate at Cagney’s the night before, using one of the meals in our Romance package. That came with wine and the meal. We conversed more with Maye on this evening, having sought her out after the Three Divas show which ended not long before Cagney’s closes. I believe we mentioned that this trip was our delayed 30th anniversary voyage.

When it came time for dessert, out came a Happy Anniversary slice of cake! And the next morning we had a Happy Anniversary banner hanging in our room, which stayed there for the rest of our voyage. Those unexpected moments of joy are among the things we will cherish about Maye and this trip.

 

Avelino Resurreccion

I don’t know who came up with the idea to put the Local Maitre D’ in an officer uniform or whether Avelino has earned higher status than the Maitres D’ in the other restaurants, but having him in the Local is a stroke of genius! His attention to each customer is amazing. We thought we were being greeted by a member of the management staff every time we were in the Local, and it actually wasn’t until just before the trip ended prematurely that I learned he was “only” a Maitre D’.

Avelino doesn’t just go through the motions. He seems to truly care about each and every customer. When a customer next to me on sail-away day for the second trip had language and hearing difficulties and was unable to get the waiter to understand they wanted a slice of bread to eat with because that was the custom in their country, I explained the situation to Avelino and they had what they needed in short order.

His above and beyond moment, though, was the genuine expressions of sorrow he had for me and Roxan as we were dealing with hear dad’s death on our last day aboard. Those will be treasured forever.

 

Wilson Hooker

Our back and forth on whether and when we were going to leave the ship meant a lot of trips to guest services! Add to that issues with our Vibe passes not being encoded on our cards for the second trip, and our room card not opening the door the night we got back on from Los Angeles, along with the numerous questions that came up related to all that, Wilson was excellent at defusing stress and getting the situation rectified as quickly as possible.

On the day we debarked, he was one of the Guest Services people assisting us, and was in the office during the customs search. I also spoke to him about the CruiseNext purchase, and he was the one who said he would pass on to his replacement the need to continue calling the CruiseNext manager, as his shift was coming to an end by that time.

Wilson, as a person on the front line of customer service, you have to deal with a lot of things both great and small, and while I hope we were easy passengers to deal with I also saw you work with an upset customer with aplomb and saw them walk away from the desk at least understanding why the issue had happened, even though it was one of those things that nothing could be done about. Great example of quality customer service work!

 

Katja Francisco Fuhrmann

As you might imagine, all this presto-change-o we were doing created a pretty complex bill. Katja was the person who sat down with us in Starbucks and explained why things were as they were on the bill, especially with the different handling of excursions and the $50 credit per excursion between when we originally booked and how we experienced it on the ship.

She also dealt with a couple of credit card issues for us and consolidated our two accounts into one to simplify things for the rest of the time we were on Encore. She was the person who called security after we filled out the paperwork on my “lost” wallet. Through it all she was calm, professional, and extremely personable. Thanks so much for your help, Katja!

 

Kimberly Esguerra

Kim was the person who stepped into Surina’s shoes in Seattle for the second leg of the trip. I feel badly that nearly her entire interaction with us was based on crisis! We didn’t get to meet until after the Cruise Critic / Facebook roll calls’ Meet and Mingle event on Monday the 24th…and she already had a message from Roxan to deliver: to check my NCL app texts because we needed to go home. So it was, “Hi, Kim, so great to meet you, and now I have an urgent situation I need help to deal with.” That was the initial thought we’d need to get off the ship, first in San Francisco then in LA.

Kim checked on us frequently as we worked through the process, learned of the PSVA fine for getting off the trip before Encore had docked in Mexico, and as we came to the determination we were getting off in LA because flights back from San Francisco were just unbearable.

I feel so bad for calling her and waking her up at 6:30 in the morning the day we determined we would not need to go home in LA! I didn’t even stop to consider that she might not be on duty yet — something in me figured I’m up, surely Kim is working! I felt like a heel, but she dealt with the situation in a friendly manner and got the wheels turning once she *was* on duty!

Once again Kim was right there when we needed her to get the ball rolling to debark in Puerto Vallarta. And she was the last person there when we turned to get in the taxi that evening. Her spontaneous hug for each of us was completely unexpected, and it put a big red bow on the box of happy experiences we had on this sailing!

 

[j603]

So sorry for your loss. 😞

[www3traveler]

WOW!!  Sorry for your loss.

 

Prayers for you and your family.

[anewmac]

So sorry for your loss. 
 

we had Maye also in Cagneys and she was a doll!