Sailing12Away

If 80% of passengers want to drink soda, and only 10% of passengers want milk (whether for cereal, coffee, or to dunk a cookie in) - it's better business for them to charge the 80% rather than go after the 10%. I thought you always had the FAS drink package though, no? The official rule on cans vs real life experience is very different. Even on the same cruise with the same crew, from night to night the experience can be different. We always have the FAS package, and even staying in the Haven with a Haven bar it's been hit or miss as to whether we can get cans to go or not. Last trip on the Epic the bartender refused and would give us 2 cups full of ice and fountain soda, which were diluted flat messes later on when hubby actually wanted to drink them. Trip before on the Prima it depended on the night, some nights yes, others no. Trip before that on Joy through the Panama Canal - bartenders there just pulled out 2 cans and handed them to us when they did last call without us even asking after the 2nd night. The bonus tips given on each of those 3 ships varied accordingly as well...

Sounds like you may be overdue for one of those relaxing chill out cruises since you're all hot and bothered by what someone else needs to do... Nah.... alcoholics go to meetings. The rest of us excessively social drinkers just know how to maximize our drink packages. An option to consider for your next trip though is to look at prices for the Haven. Between what you're paying extra for Vibe and the cabanas and all the imposed stress (and judgement from others) - the extra price for Haven may make it 'worth it' so you can just stroll on board whenever you want.

Yeah, they don't really do any discounts for solo travelers because the ships are so small. You can certainly look into the smaller ships, since they're a bit older they tend to be cheaper. I have no idea what week you need in February, but a quick check would get you on board Exploration (8 cabins total on the entire ship) for around 14K as a solo. The other thing to consider is that many of the Galapagos trips are 100% included - meaning no extra charges for drinks, specialty dining, wifi, tips, flights.... it's all there. So yes, 14K for a week is high, but it's a private yacht with only 15 other passengers and the only other expense is the Uber to get you to the airport (which on our package was covered as well). Specifically on Flora, the worst cabin on the ship (which is what we booked) is still considered a decent sized suite on any other regular cruise line. You're not getting an oceanview cabin <200 sq ft in size for that big price. The soda package is $10/pp/day. Which comes out to only 3 sodas a day. I'm in the camp of when I'm on vacation I never want to convince myself that something is 'worth it' and whether I should buy it or not. If I'm thirsty for something other than water, I want to just drink it without hemming and hawing over whether it's worth the $3 or not. And yes, Galapagos cruises are pricey due to the limited number of guests on board. We got ours at a very good price considering everything that's included but it's still our 2nd most expensive cruise booked to date. The only thing that trumps it was our ill-fated Prima Haven trip which we egregiously overpaid for and will never do again. Galapagos trip includes all of this: car service to/from our home and JFK, flights to/from Quito, 2 hotel nights & tours in Quito pre-cruise, 1 hotel night post-cruise, flight to/from Baltra, 7 night cruise, drinks/wifi/tips/excursions/laundry/dining on the cruise and in the hotels. Literally the only thing left to do is pack our toothbrush and swimsuits. The Prima trip was the price for a 10 night cruise with the basic FAS package. That's it. Had to pay extra for flights, transfers, pre-cruise hotel, all excursions, gratuities, etc etc. And if I ignore the $1350 OBC we had the price was even worse.

We would never sail without at a minimum the basic soda package. Do you typically get that or not even the soda deal? Celebrity has 3 different ships that go to the Galapagos. Only is reallllly tiny (only 16 people I believe), one is newer and holds 100 people max, and the other is in between around 35 people I think. So not really a cruise ship that most folks are used to - more of a luxury private yacht. I'll know more in October when we get on board...

With all things being equal, Celebrity Retreat is always much higher in cost for us than NCL Haven. Our one and only Retreat experience was on a smaller ship (Summit), and did not even come close in comparison to what we experience on NCL (NCL was leaps and bounds better, except for the private restaurant, Celebrity wins there). Celebrity is no longer including gratuities for free, so no different from NCL's daily service charge. Celebrity doesn't include the mini bar for free unless you're in a top tier room, so no different from NCL. NCL's drink package is pretty reasonable at only ~$21/pp/day - you can decline it if you want and just get a soda plan. NCL Butler can bring you a pitcher of ice water, lemonade, fruit juice, or fountain soda for free - you can't get that in the Retreat unless you're in a 20K+ room. They charged me $5 for a bottle of water just for removing it from the fridge and putting on the counter so I can put my own water bottle in there - never had that with NCL. Butler on NCL will also bring you snacks throughout the day of nearly whatever you want. With Celebrity, my MIL was only in a sky suite and told she can walk herself to the lounge to get a snack (she was in a wheelchair BTW). We were in a celebrity suite and only got anything because we asked the butler about it, and he brought the exact same thing every day of the trip. NCL butlers will mix it up based on what you tell them you like. Snacks in the Retreat lounge never changed for us - ever. Some veggies, popcorn, and small canape sandwiches - that's it. With NCL depending on the ship you'll be on, if you're on one with a full Haven observation lounge there are free snacks there throughout the day that change up often and have a much wider selection than Celebrity gives you. Wait staff come through both there and the upper sun deck outdoors to take drink orders, or to get a bigger bite than the self serve snacks - never saw that with Celebrity. With NCL the pool, sun deck, lounge, private bar, private restaurant - they're all in the same general location. So easy to go from your room to any of those exclusive areas without having to fight through the crowds of the regular ship. With Celebrity the restaurant was aft, the lounge forward, sun deck not accessible for MIL in her wheelchair as the elevator has been broken for 2+ years and they didn't tell us until we got on board, no pool - only a hot tub, and to get to it you had to walk through the crowds near the regular main pool area. So we went once to see it and quickly left. It honestly all depends on the Celebrity ship you're used to, and the NCL ship you're looking to try out. Not all NCL ships are built the same, and I'm sure if we had enough money to try Celebrity again on a newer ship in a fancier room our experience may be different - but that first trip didn't make us think it was better than the Haven at all. Not counting the Galapagos trip as that's a completely different beast all together, our next Celebrity trip will not be in the Retreat - not worth the price of admission at all. *Edit - also forgot to add that the tip for butler and concierge on Celebrity are not included either. Butler made a point to remind us on day one, and we only spoke to the concierge once on day 3 after having many issues with MIL's room and level of service she was getting. Never saw our cabin steward until the last morning when he showed up with his hand held out for a tip with the butler.

The flight deal depends on the specific cruise you're looking to book - it's not offered on all of them. If you have specifics about what trip you were curious about and the cabin you're interested, I don't mind price checking it for you. Current homepage of the US site with the miniscule *** to show that nothing in life is ever actually free. 645 cruise options with no filters applied, if I apply the 'free airfare' filter then it drops down to only 509 options. So most, but not all qualify.

NCL has a new promo they rolled out where teachers get an extra 5% discount. Call them up and see if you can get that added to your trip to save even more money. https://www.ncl.com/teachers

Ahh, ok. I think with enough notice and willingness to pay, DaS is able to work with other cruise lines if they have conference room space to set up their equipment. Hubby's uncle isn't in a position to be able to do anything on their own, so we'll have to just do a bit more research between both DaS and the requirements for each cruise line that we're considering. It's just nice to know there's options out there and the whole family can still travel together even with different health issues and such.

These are not my gripes... these were from the OP 9 pages back who farted and left the building for the rest of us locked inside to smell. Maybe because I show up a bit later in the day, but the last few times I've arrived for a cruise there were a half dozen Haven employees standing around waiting for us to decide we wanted to go on the ship. So again, depending on the time of day, they're either super busy or doing nothing at all.

Chickie nuggs all the way..... The safe in the closet will look similar to this (might not be exactly this one). You create your own 4 digit code to use and that will lock/unlock it. We tend to keep our passports and main wallets in there and not even bother to lock it, just keeps it in a well known spot for us in case of emergency.

What time was the flight you were looking at? As mentioned above, if you can book something no earlier than 12pm you should be ok. If the cruise ends in "Rome" it's about an hour away from Rome. So you have to take that into account when estimating how much time you need to get to the airport. The airport is also a bit confusing (to me at least), so for our fight home from there it took us a good 2 hours to get through all the different lines and security check points and make it to our gate for take off. It's a short flight from Rome to Munich, so even if the concert was that same night you still have plenty of time to drop bags off at your hotel, freshen up a bit, and get to the concert if you took a 12pm or 1pm flight over there. There's a nice 12:55 trip on Lufthansa nonstop for <$100 available which would be perfect... Another slightly crazy idea would be to look at Ryanair. They only fly on certain days from FCO, but if you can fly into Memmingen the price is only $18. Yes, 18. You would then need to figure out how to get from there over to Munich (about 60-90 mins away) which might negate the crazy cost savings, but there's a train and I doubt it costs $100+. So yeah, depends on what day the Swifty show is, but yes, it's doable and fairly cheap to get there once you're in Italy.

NYC public school break info: https://www.schools.nyc.gov/calendar/2024-2025-school-year-calendar (Mid-winter recess Feb 17-21, 2015; Spring recess April 14-18, 2025) NJ school break in one township: info: https://www.paramus.k12.nj.us/accnt_308692/site_308693/Documents/2024-2025-Calendar.pdf (no mid-winter break, same spring break as NY) Different NJ township: https://www.monroetwp.k12.nj.us/pdf/District_Calendars/School_Calendar_Next.pdf (Spring break April 18-25, 2025) With regards specifically to "spring break", for comparison NYU college will have it from March 24-28, 2025. So it's all over the place and depends on specifically which crowds you're trying to avoid.

In Seattle we stayed across the street from the port, so dropped luggage off as early as we could, got our key cards and all squared away, but never stepped foot on the ship. Left the terminal building to wander Seattle a bit before returning and then getting to skip some (not all) of the lines to actually get on the ship. Unless you're in the Haven, your current plan has a lot of flaws and won't leave you a lot of time to wander NYC. Better to either leave the bags at the hotel, or do something similar to what I did in Seattle where you get all squared away but don't go on the ship. So drop the bags off at the cruise and then explore the city some more before starting the cruise. Realistically you won't be boarding the ship until after 11-12. So if your plan was to run and do things on the ship, then get off to do city things, only to return just 3 hours later - seems like a lot of wasted time. But it all depends on what specifically you wanted to do in the city. So long as you sign up for the latitudes stuff that first day, I've never seen a need to be the first on board to sign up. They run more than one behind the scenes tour.

Go straight to the NCL website for more up to date info on what is or isn't on board. https://www.ncl.com/cruise-ship/Gem

All that saves you is maybe 15-20 mins. You still have to wait for the ship to be cleared, wait to disembark, walk through the maze to get from the ship, through the terminal, through customs, and outside to hail an Uber/Lyft/taxi/car service. Then the drive to the airport, the check-in for the flight, possibly checking bags there, security, walk to the gate.... You also didn't mention where the cruise is traveling to/through. A short trip with just a handful of 'normal' stops will have a faster customs line to get through than a 15+ day Panama Canal transit.