AdoraBelle

Then you're misusing the word 'demographic'. But I suspect in reality you're being a bit disingenuous above, because you also said this: "Agree that demographics plays a major role in these activities." What specifically plays a role? Because if you're going to pretend you didn't mean any particular subset of people, then your assertion is basically: more people floss their teeth in public these days because of the growing public tooth-flossing demographic.

Panama Canal water levels at historic lows, restrictions to remain

2-3 days before sailing max. It was a nice surprise because I didn’t even remember bidding.

I loved my cheeky corner suite on deck 8. It was about ten seconds to walk to the smaller aft elevator, to go up to the galley or whatever. I did get some noise that at first I thought was club or party noise, but by night two I noticed it was always the exact same tempo and it made me wonder if I was hearing engine noise. (Didn’t mind—as a light sleeper I always bring good earplugs and a travel white noise machine that I can set on the pillow next to me. That combo means I can sleep through almost anything.)

Not gonna lie, I saw the rumors on this thread and booked a cruise I had been considering for next March on SL, in case there’s an unexpected loss of room inventory for the first few months of 2024.

I'd love to see photos of the non-logo merchandise. A lot of the logo merch is stuff I saw week before last, before the shutdown. (There are new items, too, to be fair.)

A friend is regretting not buying some pieces she saw, and we can't for the life of us figure out who the designer was. I've watched a bunch of walkthrough videos and looked at images and no one ever goes into the store far enough. 🙂 The stuff we're looking for was on the opposite and far end of the counter that is briefly shown here: (Time stamp about 09:00-09:06 if this doesn't take you right to it.) It was silver and spiky and looked like something elves would wear in LOTR. 🙂 It's not Vivienne Westwood or one of the Bvlgari sub-brands. It was still on the ship as of May 2023. Thanks!

And now the Coral shop is gone too. 🙂 (I’ve definitely bought RayBans onboard before, but I can’t remember if it was Scarlet or Valiant.)

Everything is still empty except one store that has items boxed up to be shipped elsewhere (to other lines’ ships). Booze store is empty. MAC is closed and about half the merch left has been boxed up. Logo stores closed. Have sailor loot and nothing to spend it on. I tried to buy a bottle of bubbles at sip to take back to my room, but they said they’d have to open it first. I probably wouldn’t have wasted one of my MNVV deposits on this sailing if I’d known. (I like using the loot to buy silly stuff I wouldn’t buy otherwise.)

Doesn’t the other party need to have their own app login/VV account? It seemed that way when I sailed with my spouse.

Everything is empty and locked up. Bare shelves. MAC has some stock but seems to be closed. There are a few things in the “logo” stores (also closed— but it’s night one and maybe they open later). Even the vinyl is gone. I’ve heard they’re changing retail partners so I assume they won’t go without retail shopping forever (I was surprised that even the liquor store was shut down/gutted), but this is a heads up for people who like to shop onboard or have Loot to spend.

I remember when I started cruising in 2015, I already felt like I had missed the 'golden era' of cruising by a mile. (Midnight feasts, lobster, better food, free room service, champagne sail-away, fewer lines, etc.) I guess now I get to be someone who is grateful to have gotten to sail during the days of 2 x a day room servicing. I fall into the category of people who keep the room tidy, and I get all my personal stuff out of the way when I know a cleaning is due, but I absolutely love coming back to a room where someone has made the bed, vacuumed a bit (I have short but thick hair and it gets everywhere when I blowdry it), and given me fresh towels and washcloths. Coming back to the room at night after dinner/drinks/entertainment and taking a shower in a nice clean room with clean towels is such a relaxing thing to me that I can just picture it and feel some of that relaxation. Needless to say, I've done way too much housework in my time on this planet.

Can confirm that I essentially just walked out of the port on May 26th. No customs stop.

Hope this doesn't bring in the more obnoxious segment of the party crowd.

That explains why I was able to grab a cheeky corner suite that suddenly appeared about two weeks before sailing on my last cruise (about a month ago now).

I haven't been able to get promotional emails from VV for a long time. (I get booking-related emails, just no promos.) I'm sure I opted out during the pandemic, but I can't opt back in to save my life. This means, for example, I don't get stuff like 10% off QR code that was running a while back. (That said, phone service helped me with that specific promo.) A friend of mine forwards me all the promo emails I don't get. I've selected/unselected/re-selected 'opt in' to marketing materials from many different places. They are not landing in my spam folder. (I would never have marked them as spam anyway, I know how to unsubscribe.) I've been using the same email address the whole time. Every once in a while I try emailing them about this, because it's not really worth a phone call. I usually hear back from them about 4-5 days later, basically saying something that amounts to "we investigated ourselves and found no evidence of wrongdoing", proclaim my problem fixed, and then send me a survey five minutes later. TLDR don't count on email support. 🙂

I loved NCL's thermal suites in my pre-VV cruising era, but by the end of that (just before the pandemic), it had gotten to the point that the chlorination (I may have the chemical wrong here) in the air was so thick my eyes would start watering immediately and I couldn't spend much time there. I sure do miss that big indoor pool though, and the comfy lounges with the awesome views. VV's thermal suite was ... not any of that. The largest water feature was way way too cold to get in (for me), and the flat marble slabs were a weird choice.

Scarlet Lady did fine on my May sailing with 2k+ pax. Had one dinner that ran weirdly long at Pink Agave. Got every dinner and show reservation we wanted.

You've hit upon my biggest peeve. 🙂 I liked the way NCL's big ships did it ... they'd switch half of the buffet over to lunch, while keeping breakfast lines open on the other side.

Side note, I could be imagining things, but I feel like the slots (Scarlet Lady) are a bit 'tighter' now than they used to be. I had leftover sailor loot on my recent trip and transferred some of it to casino money. On my last cruise in Feb, I was able to break even enough on some particular machines that I was able to convert a lot of sailor loot to cash. Same machines in May, this time I was losing much more quickly, felt like being in a Vegas strip resort. I know slots are inherently dumb/random, but you get a feel for how fast one of them will take your money, and we had spent a couple of hours with this same set of slots in Feb.

The answer to this question is always Carlos

I didn't have any problems, but I didn't use the pool bars. My booze showed up quickly at the restaurants too. I think in one instance they had to get another bottle of (something) from another location before I got one particular drink. Same cruise as this one.

Five VV cruises down, and I think Tacocat has ended up answering questions for me ahead of every single one. 🙂 Two MNVV credits hanging around, pending some ongoing health issues. Fun trivia: I was originally booked on the two 'sneak peek' short trips that were supposed to happen in March 2020. That's how long I've been excited to sail on VV. I wish I would have resumed cruising a little earlier than I did (late summer 22), so I could have cruised more when it was super cheap, but I was still anxious about travel--covid didn't catch up with me until omicron, but it messed me up for a while. Anyway, despite the return to normal travel/normal travel prices, I'm excited about my future VV cruises, seeing the new ships/origin ports/etc. I have some old NCL credit that I can't imagine I'll ever use at this point.

I’m in this delayed boarding mess and I’m exhausted. This feels way too late to be boarding a cruise. (Also, I95 southbound is closed due to a bad accident, or so I overheard. I think I just missed it inbound.) They’ve let one group on, a group of mega VIPs being led by one of the butlers (I can’t remember the right word). I recognize That was like 20 minutes ago, though. (line started moving but I hit enter anyway)

I think there's also a certain sub-demographic now who I think of as "pro-disease". They're the ones who brag about how many times they've had covid and how they're just fine, with this sort of subtext that having to fight off a bunch of novel viruses is somehow a good idea for your body. From there I assume it's not a leap to "and so I won't cover my mouth when I cough, because I am helping people get strong".