seemoreroyals

That's a good point. If you are Platinum and get 4 SD's instead of 2 and you are on a ship that has Q its probably worth a shot to give Q a try. If you only have the 2 from free at sea maybe not.

Food is subjective. Just not very good is better than terrible.

You won't be disappointed. There are not many who have actually experienced the vibe that complain about it. The flamers of the vibe are mainly people that have never paid extra for the vibe. Maybe in some cases a few that slam the vibe to keep the demand down so that the price will quit going up and so that it will be easier for them to book.

Kinda how I feel about LeBistro. Something about eating snails and duck livers that is not appealing to me. And most recently Palomar. Yuk...

@cruiseny4life Nice review. I think everyone should try Q at least once. It is really not that bad. We also got the Pitmaster Platter. I had forgotten what it was called.

This thread is the gift that keeps on giving. Really surprised mods have not nuked it yet. It started out productive gradually evolving into nonsense.

You must be in hog heaven today. Today January 17th is Popeye the Sailor Man Day.

We have been on the Prima and booked the vibe and it was fantastic. It goes all the way across the ship so will lend itself to outstanding viewing . As far as booking the vibe on a cold weather itinerary we have not done that yet. At first we probably would not consider it but after reading quite a few posts on cruise critic and FB I think we would do so now. On a cold weather itinerary they have blankets and bring coffee and hot chocolate. The infinity hot tubs are nice and never crowded. We are planning on booking the vibe for are planned Alaska cruise next year. Good luck to you. If I were you I would go ahead and book the vibe.

We had it on the Bliss several years ago. Considering you are getting it on a cruise ship and not able to smoke it yourself in your back yard we thought it was pretty good. We each got a platter that had a little bit of everything. This is also the place if I remember correctly had the banana pudding in a jar that was very good. As long as you are not expecting it to be as good as you can do yourself or as good as the best BBQ place where you live I think you will enjoy Q Texas Smokehouse.

What is interesting about tipping vs DSC is that the DSC has been around since at least 2002 according to a post I found on Cruise Critic from 2012 . I googled "when did DSC replace tipping on cruise ships". The very first article I came to was a thread from cruise critic in 2012. There were just as many diverse opinions as there are now. The more things change the more they stay the same.

Except when it is a DSC. The DSC came about as a replacement for tips. When we started cruising 30 years ago we left envelopes for the cabin steward, the waiter, matre'd at the end of the cruise as a tip for services rendered. Not sure of the exact time when it started but NCL and others came up with the ingenious concept of the DSC. It was meant at least in part to take the stress away from the tipping process. They had to do something because cruises became more complex with the advent of drink packages, sit anywhere you want for dinner, specialty dinners, etc. What they have did is fair IMO. Most people really don't understand it. Some feel they get bad service if they don't tip more. Or that the cabin steward is going to starve to death if they don't tip them an extra $50 at the end of the cruise. The reality is that on a 7 day cruise once a cabin of 2 people pay their $20 per person DSC, their drink package 20%, and their specialty dinner gratuities, they are ponying up almost $700 for services rendered. We have always for the most part had excellent service without feeling the need to tip more. Should you tip more? Up to you. We do on occasion if the service rendered goes above and beyond. Regardless of where it is received.

As I mentioned earlier I would not be very good at designing the next NCL cruise ship. But I would be very good at designing a new itinerary for them. The closest two ports to where we live are NOLA and Galveston. The only 7 day cruises offered from these two ports go to Cozumel, Costa Maya, Roatan, and Harvest Caye. I would gladly offer my services to help them go somewhere else on a 7 day cruise from either one of these ports. We have been to Cozumel so many times that we only get off the ship to get our daily walk in. Same way with the private island. It is nice enough there but once you have been there done that a few times it makes more sense to us to stay on the ship with free food and free drinks. I would like to see them leave out of Galveston or NOLA and take a more easterly route which might include something different like Key West, Bahamas, the other private island Great Stirrup Caye, and back. We like sea days so for us if we had one less port day and one more sea day that would work. Or if there is not enough time to do this substitute Tampa Bay for GSC. I have looked all the way through 2025 and see no 7 day eastern route itineraries out of Galveston or NOLA. There has to be some way they can make an eastern trip out of one of these two ports work.

The infinity hot tubs in the vibe were almost as large as the Prima's main pool. At least is seemed that way though we never spent any time there. The vibe infinity hot tubs were definitely less crowded.

Ours worked just fine. Spent most mornings out there with a cup of coffee. Great way to start the day before breakfast.

I have no interest in helping to design the next NCL ship. If I was I am sure there would probably be quite a few that would agree with my ideas. But there would also be quite a few that would not. Such is human nature. We all value different things. Trying to make everybody happy is an impossible task.

I think where the designers of the new Prima class ships went wrong was they tried to be all things to all people. Because that is not possible many are left disappointed. Where they went right was indulge food court. Great idea. Rarely hear negative comments. They nailed the vibe. Can't imagine what they could have done to make it any better. We always stay in standard balcony rooms. The standard balcony rooms were the best we have experienced on any ship. They even upgraded the balcony chairs where they recline.

Second week of December on Prima we had 3700 people crammed on a ship designed for around 3000. Venues like improv, atrium, buffet, observation lounge, pool area, and pour house were almost always overcrowded during peak times. The belvedere bar and sometimes the metropolitan bar were the only two bar areas that seemed to have elbow room in them. With as many kids on board I can understand why pool, buffet, and observation lounge were packed. We expected the pour house and improv to be packed and they were. In the improv as others have reported it was literally packed like sardines. Our thoughts were after a certain point you would think they would quit letting people in. But people kept coming in. Our biggest disappointment was the atrium area in the evenings. We could rarely get a seat to listen to the lounge acts. There was this oversized couch just off from the main seating area that took up a lot of space that could have otherwise provided additional seating to watch the entertainment. It was often occupied by one or two families and 5 to 10 kids jumping around and doing what kids do.

Agree. Hope we get more info on the rest of the story. $50 is not enough of those whose vacations were impacted by this.

We have also did all three ships. Loved the Epic mainly because of itinerary; Italy, Spain, France cruise. Liked the ship well enough to go on Epic again sometime. We loved the Breakaway mainly for the ship itself and the entertainment on board. We also loved the Prima. Ship was quirky and the time we sailed had way too many kids on it. Thank God we booked the vibe. Looking forward to your thoughts on the Prima as well. I can see now having sailed on it why there is so many contradictory opinions on it. We would do it again but definitely not without the vibe.

One of the FB posts said that three different people in their group had their vibe passes cancelled. She said they were disappointed because they wanted to all be in the vibe together. Leads me to believe that some of her group still made it in. She never elaborated other than there was a glitch that allowed NCL to sell too many vibe passes on this particular cruise. That is why I was wondering how long ago OP purchased their vibe passes. The only fair way to deal with this problem, if there is a fair way, would be to go back and fill vibe to limit in order of signing up for vibe. The rest of the people that did not make it should be properly compensated as I am sure there are a number of them that probably would not have booked this cruise if they were not able to book the vibe along with it. In any event IMO they should have been compensated a lot more than the $50 NCL is apparently is offering.

I did some research this morning since it is not clear what actually happened to cause NCL to cancel and refund monies for vibe passes for several people on the 1-14-24 sailing of Encore. I went to a website that rhymes with basefook and could only find 2 small threads addressing what happened. One thread showing a brief video of a couple just getting into vibe at 11:30 and enjoying their first drink. And another thread about 4 hours later another thread was started similar to what the OP posted here on Saturday, the day before the cruise. All that was said was that due to a technical glitch the vibe was oversold. There was no mention in either what exactly happened and how many people it affected. No indication on whether or nor a large block of people were replaced by a another group that was given special treatment by NCL. So we really do not know what happened. We may never know. Hoping OP or someone else who is on this cruise that knows what happened will come on here and enlighten us. For now it appears that just a few people were displaced from vibe by this due to technical glitch causing vibe to be oversold.

Who, what, where, when, why or how. I would still like to hear back from OP or perhaps another person on this cruise who is directly impacted by NCL's decision to revoke vibe passes from quite a few people that had already paid in full.

There is still a lot unanswered in regards to the what and the why. And the $50 offer for being displaced from the vibe. That is not acceptable. OP said they were going to fill us in and so far we have not heard back from them.

Anyone know exactly what happened yet?

I guess the envelope is hit or miss. Our platinum meal tickets and laundry voucher were together inside an envelope on Prima when we sailed her Dec 15-22 2023. As long as people know what they have coming in platinum benefits that is the main thing.