Cruise to Nowhere

[mikaula]

Considering a cruise on the Star to nowhere. It's a 2 night out of San Pedro. I've been on lots of cruises but never to nowhere My sister and her husband are going to join us if we go, they have cruised before but never on NCL. I keep teilling them how much fun we have soooo - I hope some of you can help me out with a few questions:

1. Is there a dress up or not night?
2. Will there be a martini clinic?
3. Will there be a murder mystery dinner?
4. Are there more or less activities on a 2 night cruise?
5. Are the suite perks the same?

Thanks in advance for any help you can give me.

[mikaula]

Oops! One more question:

Do you get Lattitude credit for a 2 night cruise?

[dobiemom]

Mikaula, this is my first cruise on NCL (and first CTN!) so I don't know the answers to your questions. I just wanted to invite you to join our roll call: http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1036108. Hope you can come!

[cliffd64]

Originally Posted by mikaula

Considering a cruise on the Star to nowhere. It's a 2 night out of San Pedro. I've been on lots of cruises but never to nowhere My sister and her husband are going to join us if we go, they have cruised before but never on NCL. I keep teilling them how much fun we have soooo - I hope some of you can help me out with a few questions:

1. Is there a dress up or not night?

Not officially... some people will choose to dress to the 9's and others will dress casually, but there is no official designation.

Originally Posted by mikaula

2. Will there be a martini clinic?
3. Will there be a murder mystery dinner?

This depends upon the cruise director and what he and his staff plan for the two nights...

Originally Posted by mikaula

4. Are there more or less activities on a 2 night cruise?

Well, generally speaking, there tend to be more, or at least the perception of more since everyone is attempting to cram in as much fun as possible. Things tend to run a lot longer into the night on a cruise to nowhere.

Originally Posted by mikaula

5. Are the suite perks the same?

Not really sure if EVERYTHING is available, but maybe someone who sails in suites on one-nighters can answer that.

Originally Posted by mikaula

Do you get Latitude credit...

YES.

[DMH15]

I have loved every cruise I have ever gone on... what's not to like?

But the short ones are different. Most people want to cram as much into it as possible. Therefore the casino, spa, specialty restaurants are all much more crowded and it is more difficult to get an appointment/reservation. In the casino the table minimums are quite high too. That being said, the room, balcony, water, views, etc. are the same and there is no feeling on this earth than the sail-away! I just love it. I prefer longer cruises (10 days and more), but I would not hesitate to go on a short CTN tomorrow.

I did not find people dressed up much. I did not recall a martini clinic on our cruise. Yes, I got latitudes credit.

Oh, we had to cart our own luggage on and off. For us, the trip was combined with a few nights in NYC so we did have more luggage than some and it was difficult on my mom, who was 73 at the time.

[zimmerjulie]

Originally Posted by mikaula

Considering a cruise on the Star to nowhere. It's a 2 night out of San Pedro. I've been on lots of cruises but never to nowhere My sister and her husband are going to join us if we go, they have cruised before but never on NCL. I keep teilling them how much fun we have soooo - I hope some of you can help me out with a few questions:

1. Is there a dress up or not night?
2. Will there be a martini clinic?
3. Will there be a murder mystery dinner?
4. Are there more or less activities on a 2 night cruise?
5. Are the suite perks the same?

Thanks in advance for any help you can give me.

Hi mikaula,
I have been on 4 short cruises on Norwegian over the past few years. Here are my perceptions;
1. Not officially, but they do take the formal pictures and lots of people are dressed up.
2. Martini clinic: depends on the staff. My last 2 night cruise (Pearl May 2009) had one, as well as a margarita clinic and beer tasting
3. Depends on the social staff, but my bet would be no. The restaurants are quite bustling all night.
4. In my experience there are more activities, especially at night. A typical line up would be a guest entertainer show in the Stardust theater (juggler, ventriliquist, musician/comedian, etc.) followed by a production show (Band on the Run, Cirque Pacific, etc. put on by the ships company of dancers/singers) followed by a comedian and/or Newlywed/Not so Newlywed-type game in Spinnaker, followed by late night comedy by the Second City troupe. In addition to this, they have entertainers in the various venues playing music, conducting sing-alongs, Karaoke, etc throughout the night. My bet is that they will also have the WHITE HOT PARTY.
5. I would say that the biggest difference that I notice on the short cruises is that there is reluctance to come forward with certain free services, most notably room service. They do not usually have room service on the first day of the cruise and have sometimes tried to talk me out of ordering it the second day as well. Sometimes it feels like since everyone is trying to cram all the experiences into one or two nights, there is sometimes a less gracious atmosphere, on the parts of both crew and fellow passengers. I wouldn't want to have made my first impression of NCL on my first 2 night cruise, although the last one would have been great. You just don't know! So I am now getting around to question 5. I stayed in my very first suite 2 nights ago for the one night Star cruise Seattle to Vancouver. I received a plate of small hors' d'oeuvres and a fruit plate. I got there early, so the bathrobe wasn't there yet, but I asked and did get some. The concierge and butler offered their phone numbers if I needed anything, but I didn't really ask for much. Is there something in particular you were wondering about, perk wise? Perhaps I can speak to it.

I love 2 night cruises, especially if there isn't the burden of one-way travel involved (ie. ship sails out of Seattle, docks in Vancouver BC). I hope your cruise is that way and that you don't have a lot of travel time!

One night cruises are not my favorite...especially right this minute, as I am still trying to recover from a very late night followed by a 6 hour bus ride (2 hour stop at the border) and a 3 hour car ride after that. Every time I do them, I say, never again. It is so tempting, though to get onto a cruise ship with such a small investment of money and time.

This may seem intuitive, but there is a decided "party" atmosphere on the shorter cruises. No need to make sure you get enough sleep and don't overindulge, 'cause there are no shore excursions the next day!

If you decide to go, I hope you have a lot of fun!

[mikaula]

Thank you all for your replies. I wanted to get a general feel of a two day and you all have given me lots to think about. I know shorter cruises are a bit different than 7 day ones. I wish I could manage a longer one but right now that's all we can fit in.

zimmerjulie- thank you for your detailed answer. Sounds like you have had lots of fun on your cruises. The suite perks I'm interested in are priority check in - room service - breakfast/lunch in Cagneys - and treats delivered in the evening.

dobiemom - I'll check out the roll call if we decide to go

DMH15 - I know what you mean - what's not to like about a cruise. Even the worst one is still GREAT in my book.

clifd64 - thanks for the info

[SeattleMother]

As far as suite perks:
On the one day Star cruise this weekend, Cagney's was open for lunch on embarkation day, but not breakfast on debarkation day. I was told that it was a staffing issue since the buffet was open until two a.m.

[beachbride09]

Do one night cruises to no where count for lattitudes too?

[vreihen]

Originally Posted by zimmerjulie

5. I would say that the biggest difference that I notice on the short cruises is that there is reluctance to come forward with certain free services, most notably room service. They do not usually have room service on the first day of the cruise and have sometimes tried to talk me out of ordering it the second day as well. Sometimes it feels like since everyone is trying to cram all the experiences into one or two nights, there is sometimes a less gracious atmosphere, on the parts of both crew and fellow passengers. I wouldn't want to have made my first impression of NCL on my first 2 night cruise, although the last one would have been great. You just don't know! So I am now getting around to question 5. I stayed in my very first suite 2 nights ago for the one night Star cruise Seattle to Vancouver. I received a plate of small hors' d'oeuvres and a fruit plate. I got there early, so the bathrobe wasn't there yet, but I asked and did get some. The concierge and butler offered their phone numbers if I needed anything, but I didn't really ask for much.

I did a 2-day CTN out of NYC on the Dawn back in May, booked in a stern-facing AE suite. We were whisked onto the ship so quickly that my head was spinning, with a butler escort (who it should be noted wasn't our assigned butler). Breakfast and lunch at Cagney's was available for all meal slots, including disembarkation morning. Anshuman (concierge extraordinaire) was one step ahead of us the entire time, and deserves special recognition for going above and beyond the entire cruise. We did receive caviar h'orderves, champagne, and fruit in our suite as expected, and there were bath robes hanging in the closet. This is the good part.

Now for the bad part. Aside from the letters that came with the delivered goodies, there was not a single piece of paper anywhere in our suite. I'm talking no room service menu, no information book, no writing paper, and not even a stinking pen in the desk drawer! We were told our butler's name by the concierge on the pier, and told that he would be visiting our cabin to introduce himself and see if we needed anything. I couldn't pick him out of a police lineup, since we never saw him during the cruise. His number was on speed dial on the suite's phone, but I got the impression that he wasn't going out of his way for us and didn't call him. (It may have been because we were in a stern-facing suite, far away from the others that he was assigned to?) I asked the cabin steward about the lack of paper/information in our cabin, and he never gave me a direct answer about whether they had run out ship-wide or if they were instructed to pull all of the writing paper, menus, and books from all of the cabins for the CTN. He did offer to call our butler for me, though! I don't know if category AE on the Dawn qualifies for the pillow menu, but we didn't see any signs of that, either.

Don't take this as a criticism of NCL. I'm just listing suite life perks that I was expecting but didn't receive on this 2-day CTN. It didn't ruin my experience in any way that these things were not offered, except for being frustrated that I couldn't write a thank-you note for Anshuman on disembarkation morning.

In terms of the entertainment, I'm guessing that a lot of it depends on the cruise director. The first night of our cruise had one show (9:30 PM) in the Stardust, that was supposed to be a sampler of the entertainment from a typical week's cruise. Jean Ann Ryan's troupe performed the the scene from "Bollywood" with the bungee dude swinging over the audience, followed by a magician who did three tricks from his act. The final piece was Dave Heenan (?) the comedian, who apparently did not get the memo about just doing a sample of his act and held the audience hostage for over an hour. Any time someone got up to leave, he singled them out and mocked them from the stage! He was bombing so bad that I considered jumping from the balcony to escape, and in all seriousness the magician was ten times funnier than the comedian was.

On the second night, Second City did a show in Spinnaker, and I believe that the main theater was empty. Over the two days, we got a good sample of the entertainment on a week-long cruise, but many of our favorite staples were not offered on the two-nighter. Of course, YMMV, since I suspect that this is all decided on a ship-by-ship basis by the cruise director, so maybe you'll have a completely different experience.....

[cruiseat50]

Originally Posted by mikaula

Oops! One more question:

Do you get Lattitude credit for a 2 night cruise?

Yes, even 1 nighters get credit.

Originally Posted by DMH15

In the casino the table minimums are quite high too.

We were just on a 1-nigter on the Star in Sept. I didn't look at all the tables but they had at least one $5 & $10 black jack table and a roulette table that I got on for quite a while with no one around. Tip: the casino was advertised to open at 10:00 but DH and I wanted to make sure that we were able to get onto a $5.00 bj table so we went down a little early. They were giving gaming instructions/demonstrations so we sat down about 15 min. till and kept asking the dealer questions so we could stay until it opened even though we have played for years... lol. after a while she and the pit boss caught on but they didn't seem to care as no one was around yet so we just talked about her home life as she was a new employee and was very homesick.

Originally Posted by zimmerjulie

5. I stayed in my very first suite 2 nights ago for the one night Star cruise Seattle to Vancouver. I received a plate of small hors' d'oeuvres and a fruit plate. I got there early, so the bathrobe wasn't there yet, but I asked and did get some. The concierge and butler offered their phone numbers if I needed anything, but I didn't really ask for much. We were on the same cruise and didn't get any of this but did get a bottle of champagne. I am a little annoyed now as we were told after we had upgraded and moved our stuff into the suite that the butler, concierge would not be available to us as they do not have those services on one night cruises. Quite truthfully we really wouldn't have used their services much at all if any but just wanted to meet Simone as have heard so much good about her. The one thing we could have used her for was that we needed an extension cord but one of the stewards found someone from housekeeping who brought one for us.

I love 2 night cruises, especially if there isn't the burden of one-way travel involved (ie. ship sails out of Seattle, docks in Vancouver BC). I hope your cruise is that way and that you don't have a lot of travel time!

One night cruises are not my favorite...especially right this minute, as I am still trying to recover from a very late night followed by a 6 hour bus ride (2 hour stop at the border) and a 3 hour car ride after that. Every time I do them, I say, never again. It is so tempting, though to get onto a cruise ship with such a small investment of money and time. Although we did have fun and was an overall good experience I would never do a 1 night again but might consider a 2 night.

Tip #2: When you get on the ship if you know you will want to eat at a specialty restaurant go directly to the reception desk and make your reservation(s). You can also ask at the reception desk if you can get upgraded which is what we did. But if you do that be sure to find out if all the perks are available or not. Quite truthfully I was pretty miffed that they didn't tell me that the perks would not be available to me before we moved our stuff. What I was most upset about was not getting my crab cake benedict!

[NoPiratesPlease]

CTNs are a blast--but 2 nights are FAR better than one nights--more like really being on a cruise. We did the best: A one night followed immediately by a two night on the Dawn. We did have to change cabins but that was the only draw-back. For Latitudes, that counts as two cruises, but we went Platinum 2 years ago.

We've done one-nights on the Spirit, Dawn and Gem, and two nights on the Dawn and Dream.

We've also done many, many longer cruises. People get more dressed up for CTNs, and more dressed up for One Nighters than for Two Nighters. They cram in dancing, gambling, drinking, eating, etc.

They are a great mini-break, especially if you are local to the ship.