eileeshb

I haven’t done that itinerary but it’s interesting to see Epic on that route, they usually have one of the Jewel or Dawn class ships on that sort of route for the European winter. You’re right about January being low season as almost all the schools across Europe will be in session then. You might see a few more Irish than in the past for that time of year as we’ve a new public holiday on the first Monday in February. The impact of that on our domestic tourism was substantial this year in Ireland so I imagine the travel agents here will be pushing overseas holidays for next year, and a couple of our colleges are off for January too. there is an increased risk of high seas going across to the Canaries as well since it is prime surf season for the big wave hunters of the North Atlantic. That may be why they’ve put Epic on that route as it wouldn’t feel the effects as much as the smaller ships.

the excursion credit was most definitely per port on my last 2 cruises, October 21 and Feb 22. That could have been a quirk of the EU t&cs, once upon a time our FAS Beverage package included specialty coffees with meals and 6 x 1Lt bottles of still water, but back then I also could only pick 2 FAS perks.

And yet there are cruiselines using that as an excuse. btw on the days there’s 6 you might notice 2 from a single cruiseline: one in the morning and the other in the late afternoon.

NCL seem to be treating the shuttle’s like tenders in terms of access. I’ve had one experience of NCL managing tenders for great stirrup cay and it was a complete mess. They’d call for a particular boarding group to go to the theatre, meanwhile all the folks without that ticket queued up through the casino so folks who had been called would join the queue thinking that was what they were supposed to do until some officers would wander by and ask what ticket you had. If it was one that been called they’d then tell you to skip the queue and go into the theatre. suffice to say a bunch of people missed their excursions because they hadn’t known to skip the queue in the casino, there was a near riot on the island as a result. I had a ticket for the first tender after lol the excursions and priority people and it was 1pm before I made it to the island. NCL suck at managing queues.

Norwegian Bliss docked at the railway pier this week and used shuttle buses from the ship to beyond the risk area for guests getting off.

I just got a warning for trying to link to the original source of those screengrabs so definitely can not post the link.

It’s only the railroad dock that is impacted the 2 smaller piers should be operating as normal as they did last year.

I have vague memories of the smoking section too but when I was a kid our foreign holidays involved a ferry to Britain or France . I think the one time we flew was a company party trip for my dad and adding the kids to the fare was nominal. I did a ski trip to Bulgaria and on the flight home a bunch of the seats were empty and when we landed they all fell flat, those things were metal frames with a bit of fabric wrapped around them. It was before Bulgaria joined the EU. I also had a flight from Russia that was in a converted cargo plane so no storage over the middle seats, when we landed in London the plane shook so badly part of the ceiling of the cabin fell down, damned lucky there weren’t any passengers in the seats directly below it. on my very first cruise my flight home from Miami got cancelled due to British airways having an IT meltdown in London, thankfully they got me onto the Virgin Atlantic flight which was actually arriving in London earlier than my original flight. For my second cruise Western Europe got slammed with a snow bomb which shut down a bunch of airports, thankfully it cleared in time for my return flight. For my last cruise a bunch of flights from the northern USA states got cancelled so the roll call was filled with stories of people renting vehicles to drive to their connecting airports for their flights to San Juan. Thankfully I’d booked to fly a couple of days early so made through JFK before the cancellations started. The ship actually delayed departure for one flight load but another batch had to meet the ship in Bonaire, they were extremely lucky that NCL and the airlines helped them out.

there’s been at least 2 increases on DSC charges and some changes to FAS on my next cruise since I originally made the booking. FAS:(for a studio guest booked January 2022 v’s now) 250mins free WiFi has gone down to 150mins 2 Specialty dining credits has gone down to 1 $50 excursion credit gone from 1 per port to 1 per excursion Without making any changes to my booking somehow I’m getting the improvement on the excursion credit without losing the higher benefit on WiFi and SDP. But when I applied another cruise next voucher last week I noticed my base fare has gone up over €100 yet if I were to book right now it would be €200 cheaper than my original base price. I haven’t yet reached out to NCL about the discrepancy as my final payment date is in September so I have plenty of time.

Day 5

Day 4

Day 3

Day 2

Day 1

There’s a guy posting screengrabs of the dailies on Facebook so I’ll re-post them here. He didn’t grab every page on the first few just pages 1 to 3.

Can you let us know if the PA stuff from the park rangers is playing in the outside speakers as well as indoor public areas ? I’m hoping to be outside with camera if the weather allows.

I got it from the Norwegian bliss group on Facebook

I know the t&cs that apply for me, which should be the same across the EU, officially we can’t cancel without forfeiting the deposit and if you try for a price drop there’s a good chance they will treat it like a cancel and rebook. It seems to depend on who answers the phone when you make the call. I got lucky once when I cancelled a booking as I wanted to switch to a different itinerary and they just moved the deposit across to the new booking but that was pre covid,

This week’s cruise did prime rib in the buffet on embarkation day according to the dailies posted on Facebook

Juneau passed a new ordinance or some such limiting the cruise port to 5 ships per day

Someone on Norwegian Bliss is posting this week’s daily newsletters on Facebook , here’s a screenshot of the page with the shuttle bus operating at Skagway for Norwegian’s ship docked at RRA.

I wasn’t familiar with NAS acronym and made the mistake of trying the NAS chocolate cake in the buffet… never again. Also avoid the cupcakes from cocoa, too dry. another vote for the chocolate lava cake in the MDR, closely followed by the scooped sorbet and sherbet in the buffet.

I was basically tech support for our customers, officially Europe, Middle East and Africa but the Brazilians didn’t like the Americans so would call me in Ireland and the Australians didn’t like the Malaysians so called Ireland too despite a 12hr time difference. I had a couple of long haul trips per year for conferences and the like, the worst of the lot was Russia as they kept changing the flight time by 6 hours and of course when they finally locked it in, the office in Moscow had closed for the day so the taxi they’d arranged had the wrong flight arrival time.

It used to be so much worse, I flew through there on my J1 summer in 1994 and a couple of times in the early 00s. Terminal 5 is all shiny and new, and most importantly spacious! The previous time I transited the old terminal was so busy you could barely even get floor space to sit let alone an actual seat.

Someone on the ship said they are using a shuttle bus from the ship rather than tenders, and the queue for the shuttle is long.