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flarad

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About Me

  • Location
    SW Florida
  • Interests
    Cruising, travel, sports, crochet, reading
  • Favorite Cruise Line(s)
    NCL, Celebrity
  • Favorite Cruise Destination Or Port of Call
    Europe, Southern Caribbean

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  1. Thank you for all the answers and advice. We have a cruise to New England in a few weeks and than we will make a decision. You've been super helpful and I think we will book Princess.
  2. Oh my gosh, DH and I are thinking of booking an Alaskan cruise next May on Discovery Princess. I realized it's be 17 years since our last Princess cruise. I am so lost. Somehow we've gotten sidetracked and have been cruising mostly Celebrity and NCl with an occasional Royal tossed in to the mix. Now I'm completely lost on all the new Princess systems. Please help: Medallion- is this something everyone who books gets? What are the "Reserve MiniSuites" on Discovery? Is it really worth booking? We love Aqua on Celebrity, is this similar? Does dining still work the same? Assigned times and dining rooms or have they gotten more flexible? Do they still have"formal nights?" Not sure I'd want this on an Alaskan itinerary. Is there anything else about the differences in lines you think I need to be reminded of or told about? I appreciate all the help you give. I know there are a lot of dedicated Princess cruisers.
  3. We cruise a variety of lines, including NCL, Royal, and Celebrity. Royal being our number one for big family trips, NCL for relaxation and Celebrity moving to the top for service with NCL's recent cuts. We enjoy NCL and the Joy class ships will be fabulous for that itinerary. We are actually booked on the Escape from Manhattan in later September. Our favorite thing about those ships is deck 8. Our least favorite thing about Royal is the lack of view of the water and feel that you're on the ocean. NCL designs with this in mind. Deck 8 provides outdoor seating, bars and restaurants and will be great for viewing the coast. We make reservations at an outdoor specialty dining venue shortly after sailaway so we can relax and enjoy the view with our dinner. We prefer the NCL dining experience to Royal's main dining rooms. It's a more flexible, interesting experience. Your suite cabin is a bit bigger than a normal cabin with a few extra perks.
  4. We cruise Celebrity and NCL regularly. If NCL includes Barcelona and Celebrity does not, we would definitely cruise NCL. Barcelona is our favorite port, all time. That being said, the Escape is a great ship but is beginning to show her age. She has amazing spaces and would be terrific for a European cruise. Celebrity Constellation I believe, is an older ship but their ships are high quality and we believe they have better service and food. Don't fret, you will enjoy either ship.
  5. We area probably similar demographics. I just need my husband to come to terms with this... 🙂 As we begin to plan our next cruises, I'm curious, what line do you prefer? We like Celebrity but we tend to get a little bored with their entertainment in the evening.
  6. It was near the closet. And you almost had to sit on the bed to see in the closet 🙂 We've had worse... it was my one time in an interior. Can't remember if it was the Getaway or the Celebrity Equinox but oh man... no space at all.
  7. The Encore - our thoughts (disclaimer, these are the result of thoughts and discussions between my husband and I, they are our opinions and probably not yours, that’s OK, let’s agree to disagree nicely). First of all we had a fabulous time on our vacation. If you can’t enjoy an NCL cruise, a ship is not the place for you. We have cruised many times on many lines and NCL is one of our favorites. It was our first time on the Encore and our first cruise on NCL since COVID. We have cruised, just on another line. To understand us, we are semi-retired, early sixties and love to travel and cruise. My husband is a numbers and business guy so he is frequently analyzing costs, labor, etc. I’m more of a give me a good book, music, a drink, and someone to talk to on vacation, girl. If there’s something fun to watch, a party, etc. even better. We are quite easily pleased and never, ever, complain about service. This review may or may not reflect that. We thought the ship was beautiful and the staff terrific. The great - Embarkation was smooth and quick. We arrived at 10:00. We were on board by 12:00 and had no problems getting the reservations we wanted at restaurants and for entertainment. We did not reserve Vibe, my husband needs shade throughout the day and after research we knew that shade is limited. TIP - head down to level 6 immediately. Book entertainments in the Social Club and head across the way to book restaurants. The app may or may not work for you. If you were unable to book online, no worries. They can help here. Also if it appears you didn’t get the entertainment, again no worries, the standby lines usually seemed to get into the event. Aft cabin - DH and I disagree here, I loved my aft balcony on 9. He didn't think it was any better than our usual cabins. I loved the sunrises and sunsets. There was good storage space in the cabin and bathroom. But the cabin was super tight. The aft balcony was large. We loved the location of deck 9 - close to restaurants, bars, and the waterfront. Side note: the hair dryer in the room was terrific. We had seven water boxes each from some deal or other and this water was really good. Our steward brought us a coffee pot on request and supplied coffee, creamer, sweetener every day. One disclaimer here- The mattress, this is a very personal choice, but oh my gosh! That mattress is hard as a rock. My hips never hurt at home and I felt like an old woman every morning. DH loves hard mattresses and he was quite happy. TIP: I used packing cubes this time and it was super easy to use the shelves for storage. Also there is so much room in the bathroom I really didn’t need my over the door shoe thingy. Our steward was super, even with all the rooms our room was cleaned early, fresh towels, we have no complaints. TIP - I heard many complaints about the elevators this week but the Aft elevators are much less busy than forward. We usually headed back to use the elevators. The Observation lounge - this is a terrific space with a nice bar and light refreshments. It gets crowded though. More on that later. The Waterfront - I don’t know what else needs to be said really - water front seating, bars, restaurants. It’s fabulous. Again, more later. TIP - We have learned to book a waterside restaurant for sailaway evening and then ask for an outside table. We ate in Los Lobos. This was the perfect spot to view Miami as we sailed away. The bars and drinks - They make really nice drinks on this ship. Bartenders are attentive and drinks are not made in bulk like they are on another larger ship line. TIP - we find our favorite bar and tip the waiter or bartender well. This shows appreciation to them and they will do almost anything for you at this point. I think far too few people tip this hard working staff. Ports - we loved all the ports on this itinerary. I was most surprised by Taino Bay. Beautiful, nice shopping, gorgeous pool and some very nice locals in the shops and bars. If you don’t want to go far, just want to relax, you can do that here with no reservations required. Specialty Restaurants and dining - We love specialty dining on NCL and the choice of restaurants was fun, food delicious. We ate in Los Lobos, Cagney, Onda, and Q. We enjoyed them all. Choir of Man - terrific, amazing… don’t miss this show! We, like many, saw it twice. Debarkation - Wow, they are organized. Since we are Latitudes we qualified to get off just after the walk offs. Our color was called at 7:45, we were at our car leaving the garage by 8:05. Facial recognition makes all the difference. The Cuts - There’s been much talk about the cuts Norwegian has made. They are definitely visible to a Latitude traveler (I don’t say that to brag but to explain we’ve done this a few times). These cuts are evident but for us not a deal breaker. I think all lines are going to have to do some cutting to manage their costs. Our room steward was terrific but he always looked so tired. I would describe the staff as having “tired eyes.” They tried so hard to be cheerful and were wonderful at greeting and serving. They just look tired. In other noticeable areas, the bars seem to have fewer bartenders and wait staff, but they are making it work. Our waiters in specialty dining were attentive and really good. In the main dining areas they were good but much more stretched thin than in the past. In Taste there was a definite lack of supervision and our waiter seemed new and very confused. In the past the Maitre D would come around to greet and check service, there was backup for that new waiter and… there were assistants. Those times are over. While we’re talking about food we felt cuts were evident in the food. The food was good, really good we thought. The choices just didn’t seem to be as vast and you’d get more pasta with the short ribs than ribs, just a bit or two of lobster in the bisque 🙂 We get it, food is super expensive and they seemed to do a decent job managing these costs. Finally, entertainment. We all know that Kinky Boots was cut. What I didn’t realize was this removed all the dancers from the ship so the dance classes - gone, the live entertainment in Manhattan - gone. We thought the quality of the additional musicians and magician seemed to reflect budget cuts. There just seemed to be an energy missing in entertainment, whether this was a reflection of the Cruise Director or actual entertainment I’m not sure. The bad - this ship was full, crowded, wow! Others have said we should expect this right now on a cruise. I disagree. We’ve been on some ships that when sold out don’t feel this way. They are designed with space in mind. The Encore feels it. My husband and I spent a lot of time trying to figure this out. We feel the ship designers have maximized revenue spaces over passenger friendly relaxing spaces. What I mean is, they placed Laser Tag, the Galaxy Pavilion, Go Carts, even fee based Vibe where other ships offer aft views, bars, or relaxing adult space for free (RCI, MSC, Celebrity). These are all fun spaces, yes, but they leave us with a ship that doesn’t have enough room for a capacity load of passengers on sea days. On sea days every nook and cranny was crammed with people. Chairs at the pool deck were full by 7:30 (I kid you not, 7:30!) by lunch time every chair on the waterfront was full and it was not a quiet zone. The Observation was also full, people on chairs, on the sofas, sitting on the floors, everywhere. But, you can’t blame people, they needed somewhere to go and this ship just doesn’t have the space. In a time where NCL is losing money like it’s tap water we understand it, but, we will make the choice to not cruise this ship again in the Caribbean. If you’re booked on her in the Caribbean, don’t worry you will have fun. Your cruise is what you make of it and she will always be a fun experience. Maybe, one day, we’ll go back to Alaska on the Encore. I think she’d be great for that itinerary, or even Europe. All that being said, we made a deposit for a future cruise and are booking on the Escape in New England this fall. We’ve loved her in the past and I’m confident we will love her again. We have always enjoyed NCL and are hopeful they will whether the financial storms
  8. Thank you so much for posting. We board her on Sunday. We are about to book a New England cruise and a New Zealand cruise but because of reservations about NCL we are holding off booking until after our trip,even triple points could not convince us to commit (and they would have put us up to platinum). Have you tried Celebrity? We have enjoyed them.
  9. We stayed at Ink 48 just prior to Covid. We loved it. We walked with luggage to port, no problems. But the best parts were the restaurant and rooftop bar. The restaurant, Print, while pricey (like any NY restaurant) but was incredible. The rooftop bar was fun, drinks good. The hotel is a short walk to other restaurants and just out of the busiest, noisy areas. We are cruising out of NY again in Oct and will definitely stay here.
  10. Have you sailed to Bermuda? Summer is a great time to do this as the weather is not as warm as the Caribbean. We did NY to Bermuda on the Escape and loved that cruise. The Caribbean has less ships in summer, it's hot and hurricanes...
  11. We also chose to use a yellow cab and the Curb app. There are so many drivers that appear to be Uber fighting for your business it's overwhelming. Walk a block or two on 112th and you'll have an easier time of it. Also I highly recommend the hotel where we stayed, Ink 48. We actually walked two blocks to the port on the morning of departure. Super easy. There's a rooftop bar and the restaurant, Print, was outstanding. It's just a few blocks walk to Times Square but not as crazy and touristy.
  12. We are also booked on a late Feb cruise that is supposed to include Taino Bay. I read that NCL is dredging that channel in hopes their larger ships can navigate it. I guess it just depends on when that will be complete. There are so many Carnival Corp ships the chances of Amber Cover don't seem very good.
  13. You might want to post on tripadvisor for more information. I spent a summer in Haiti back when it was a safe little (but still very poor) country. It is beautiful and I can understand your desire to visit. I'm not sure that day tripping from a cruise ship is your best option however. There are so many incidentals that can interfere in any border crossing in a not particularly friendly area. The ship leave time is non-negotiable so if you're even five minutes late you've missed it. Plus, I'd assume the area of Haiti just over the border would be exactly like the Dominican Republic in that area. To see Haiti you need to be able to travel Haiti.
  14. You seem like our type of cruisers. Our two favorite lines are Celebrity and NCL for differing reasons. We don't care for Carnival and RCI is our choice only if we are cruising with our grown children and young grand children. We feel NCL has better entertainment options, both small and large venue, than any of the other lines. I won't answer your questions about the newer ships because we haven't sailed Prima yet. We are booked on Encore, Caribbean in Feb just for the ship really. My personal favorite ship is the Escape. The waterfront on deck 8 is a great area. Lots of shade and places to hang out. We find the drinks on NCL to be far superior to RCI and the food to be much better also. NCL is not quite as mass market feeling but, at times it does feel a little as if you're being nickel and dimed. I don't think you will need the VIBE on Escape. They have a nice adult's only feature with water which has pretty good shade. Plus, you are port intensive. You won't have much pool hangout time anyway. As far as reservations go, make what you can online and then plan to spend your first hour on board making reservations and changes to your itinerary as necessary. Do not over think this. We have always found the food good in their specialty restaurants even if we ended up in something that was not our first choice. Main dining is good. We like the ambiance of the Manhattan room but other prefer Savor and Taste. Plan to give them a try so you'll know. Relax, be ready to try new things on NCL. I think you'll like it.
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