MeHeartCruising

Thanks for this. I had ran across Piran in my early research but had forgotten it. I’m going to study this a bit more. It sounds like a better day than what I currently have planned. Thanks again.

Yes, I was referring to getting to the port early, so you check in early, so you get a low number boarding group. In LA, we checked in at the Platinum desk and that is where we were given our boarding pass with the group number on it. Platinum groups were lower numbers than non-platinum groups. But we still had a number.

I was on an NCL cruise last week and the steward only did room cleaning once, any time after we were up and about for the day. We found ours always done by 10 am or so. But we saw him in the hallway working well into the afternoon on cabins for the late sleepers, etc. If we needed something we had a phone number to call if we could not find him in the hallway. He gave us clean towels every day. I personally saw him vacuuming cabins, so I assume he vacuumed ours either daily or as needed. We had zero issue with this. My cruise experience was not negatively impacted. I always found the evening service to be a nice, but unnecessary thing. We are not messy cruisers.

Probably depends on the port/cruise terminal you are in. Last week in Los Angeles, there was no significant audible announcement system in place. There was confusion/chaos as they opened for boarding. The people stopping passengers from boarding could not tell when they were supposed to let the priority passengers board. Someone "in charge" yelled across the crowd to "let them in..." -- people rushed the door. The "in charge" person then finished their sentence "if they have priority passes". But it was too late. The crowds were moving thru the doors as fast as they could hand their boarding passes to the overwhelmed door agents. I would not pay anything extra. Get there early. Get you early pass and then cross your fingers.

For my upcoming May cruise, my research didn't lead me to many satisfying options for doing things on my own for Koper. I ended up just going with an all-day ship excursion -- "Best of Slovenia". As you note, it has a lot of driving involved and I'd also rather not do that, but I didn't see much of an alternative given what my interests are. I just decided to use the ship excursion for simplicity instead of arranging it on my own. I'm mostly doing my own thing in other ports, so this one is an outlier.

Royal sells 2 different shuttles. One takes you to the Venice Marco Polo Airport, where you could catch a water taxi (fairly expensive) to your hotel or a water bus. The other takes you to the "city center", which is not really in the center of the city, but rather near the major parking location for Venice on the western side of the city. This city center stop is at Tronchetto, which is a road-connected island that has a large parking garage/area. Nearby is the last station of the "People Mover" elevated train that will take you over to Piazzele Roma, the major transportation hub for buses and vaporetto boats. You could also catch a vaporetto boat at Tronchetto to get to your hotel. You can study route maps for the Alilaguna and vaporetto buses and/or contact hotels for suggested ways to reach them.

I have not been to all of the ports. What stuck out to me right away was that it does not include Dubrovnik, which is sort of the crown jewel for Adriatic cruises. Ending in Ravenna, you will ideally want to get transportation into Venice and then spend a few days there before heading home.

I haven't seen the small, foldable, paper deck plans handed out in years. I think they are a thing of the past.

Because of the upgrade bidding process now used, they usually assign guarantee cabins fairly early now. I had mine a week after I booked it which was about 6 weeks before the sail date.

If you are arriving at Amsterdam and not nearby IJmuiden, you can actually walk to the train station in 10-15 minutes. It is a smooth sidewalk the entire way. I’ve done it twice, with luggage on wheels. There is also a tram that can be taken. I will leave the tram details to someone who is familiar with the details.

The website has been a train wreck today. The search function only seems to work if you only select one criteria (like a date). For me, at least. And then when you try to drill into a single cruise, it can't display all the screens for it either. Trash website.

The advantage in Barcelona is that the wine shop the OP is asking about was AFTER the security checkpoint. So you could go thru security with no wine, then buy it inside the terminal. You were then able to take it on the ship without further scrutiny of the cruise line, thus bypassing any limitations (and fee$) they have for carrying on your own wine.

I agree with Taormina. I've been there twice and enjoyed it as a nice day. You don't really need a tour/guide. You just need transportation to get there. If the ship offers a "Taormina On Your Own" excursion, that works just fine. They get you there and back, but you are on your own to do as you please once there. The town is small and walkable. Perfect for a few hours visit.

We were refunded $13.81 per person automatically to our onboard account last week on the Joy. We did not miss a port. We assume this was a reduction in port fees to NCL and they passed it on to the passengers.

We had the "good" paper straws on the Joy last week and loved them. Then we went to one bar and they only had the "bad" paper straws. So we stopped going to that bar. The "good" ones last just like the plastic ones did.

We ate at Q on the Joy last week. Our dinner reservation was for 5:30. The band was starting to set up when we arrived and started playing around 6:00 pm. They were pretty decent, but not spectacular. Mostly played 1990 and onward music -- Randy Travis, Clint Black, Garth Brooks, etc. We enjoyed the music. It was at a volume that was fine for us during our meal. We were seated in a booth up against the wall, furthest from the stage. As for the meal, we thought it was OK. Not wonderful. The meats were good. The baked potatoes were good. The other sides were nothing special. But we would eat there again.

I can’t offer advice specific to Reykjavik. Is the ship arriving that morning and ending a cruise? I would assume so. In my experience at various ports, the porters will not start accepting luggage for the next cruise until they have finished the bulk of their work from the disembarking cruise. They are usually involved in helping to organize the luggage from that cruise and even assisting those passengers with their bags. As that gets further underway, they start transitioning to arriving passengers and their luggage. In Southampton last fall, the arriving passengers also had to wait for a while as the porters were on a brief rest break in between duties for the 2 cruises. I would not be surprised if at 8:30-9:00 or so they may not be willing or able to take bags from arriving passengers. In Barcelona we arrived and were told not until 10:00. The ended up starting at 9:45. Not much help, but I think you might need to delay your tour a little or take your luggage on the tour with you.

It could be that Celebrity’s excursion gives a cable car ticket to those people who wish to return to the ship on their own after spending additional time in Fira. For those that don’t wish to do this, they take them back to Athinios to board the ship via a tender. That would seem quite possible, especially if the excursion ends a few hours before the ship is scheduled to depart.

@irishgal432 I purchased the ship to Venice Marco Polo Airport transfer shuttle on Friday by calling Royal Caribbean. The price was $54.95 per person. They record all your flight details, so you need to have that ready if you decide to buy it.

I found this picture of shuttle times from previous cruises here on CC. It shows they had a shuttle designed for flights as early at 11:00 am. However, there's no guarantee they continue to offer that. Based on the comment above, it sounds like they might not be.

I love visiting Paris. However, I don't think I would recommend doing it from Le Havre as part of a single-day cruise visit. Is it possible? Yes. But I think the overall experience of the day will be negatively impacted by the lost time just getting there and back. Save the visit for a future land-based trip where you can do the city properly. Do something closer to the ship that day.

No. The Royal Caribbean website does not provide that capability. All you can do is to filter down to a list of cruises via the search criteria and then pick one for more details. Then a subsequent screen allow you to lower the number of guests to 1 for that particular cruise. It does make it difficult to compare solo pricing for multiple cruises.

On my very first cruise that stopped in Athens, I took a ship excursions to Cape Sounion. There is a Temple of Poseidon there and the views out over the water are great. I don’t recall the drive there to be all that memorable though.

I'm also investigating how I want to get to Venice VCE airport at the end my cruise in May. I just called Royal Caribbean and the agent told me a transfer from the ship in Ravenna to Venice VCE was $54.95. Not bad, I think. But then he said this would be for a "taxi car shuttle". I said, "it's a bus isn't it?". He said, "no, there is no bus shuttle service. Just a taxi." Weird. I'm assuming he doesn't have correct info. I hope. I'll call again tomorrow. I don't want to be out at the curb looking for a specific taxi/car.

NCL's Norwegian Dawn has visits to Kirkwall, Orkney Islands on it's British Isles: England, Ireland and Scotland itineraries for 2023, 2024, and 2025 from what I can see. I was on this itinerary in September. Unfortunately, I booked at the last minute and could not find any tour or car service to take me to some of the neolithic sites I wanted to see. Everyone was fully booked. All I could do was walk around Kirkwall and explore the local sites. It was still a nice day. I just re-read the OP's original posting. Note that the Dawn's itinerary has multiple stops on the mainland of the UK and Ireland. So it may not be a good fit.