Cretia

I will call you next time I am in NYC with my Daughter . How is your British Accent ?????? You can be Sabrina's mother *LOL*

 

 

That was a few years ago. I am hoping she gave up that alter ego long ago.

If my accent weren't so terrible I'd take you up on it! ;)

Or maybe if we hit a bar with drunk enough patrons, I could pass! :eek:

We never had that problem. Being from Alaska, all we have to say is "We're from Alaska! and the conversation takes care of itself...

 

Typically, the first question we get is "Do you know Sarah Palin?....Now, many years ago I actually met Sarah Palin (when she was Mayor of Wasilla) so, there is no problem having to pretend....:D

Ha! This actually reminds me that I have actually done this. I grew up in North Dakota and took a trip to France as a high school student. Whenever people asked where we were from (as it was painfully obvious we were tourists), when we told them "North Dakota" we would get a blank stare.

Trying to describe where the state is set geographically usually ended up with them asking us if we were from Chicago.

So to the entire group of French people that I "played for fools" by telling them I was from Chicago. Sorry about that. It got old giving the real answer.

I couldn't even read this thread beyond half way down page one.

It blows my mind someone would even think to role play like that.

I am who I am, what you see is what you get and I don't know how or

want to know how to live anyway but that. I don't have to remember what

lies I told if I don't purposely deceive others.

 

Of course, I have no interest in telling anyone else how to behave or live their lives. If you call that fun...... :confused: :eek: I just hope I am not one of those people you meet and play for a fool. How do you think those people feel when they may discover you have played them that way?!

 

Poor OP. He asked a fun question and got these responses.

Why on earth would you be "play(ed) for a fool"? Why would it matter if a complete stranger on a cruise ship told you he was the inventor of sea sickness pills? He's never going to see you again; you're never going to see him again. The only way I could see it rebounding on you is finding out later when you're telling everyone you met the inventor of sea sickness pills. And in that case, shame on you for being a name-dropper. I'll take a "liar" any day over a name-dropper. At least the liar isn't tedious.

On point:

I will confess I've been tempted. I'm a statistician and the dismissive "oh" and glazed over eyes I get when I tell people is obnoxious. However, I like what I do, so screw them anyway. I'd also have to get my husband to play along though, and he's a bit of a fuddy-duddy, so even if I didn't get a perverse pleasure out of my annoyance, I couldn't do it anyway.

On the flip side: Anyone is welcome to spin any stories they want to me. If I find out you're playing a role, that's totally cool. I can't imagine being that hung up on what strangers tell me.

This video popped into my head when you said this.

Omg, I laughed so hard at that video that (if they didn't already think so) my coworkers now think I'm insane.

OP, I've never been on the Epic and so I probably don't have an opinion worth posting in this thread. I will say this though:

Only you will know if the bathroom situation will bother you. Google more videos; see different angles and cabins. Only you can tell if the discomfort would be worth $700.

I can say for certain I'm glad I'm living (and vacationing) in the days of youtube and Cruise Critic. Because of these resources, I knew enough to talk my husband into the Jade versus the Epic for our trip later this year. I couldn't even begin to imagine the horror, for me personally, if I had walked into that cabin with no clue as to what to expect.

Where does "threatening and agressive" come into play. PLEASE go back and re-read the original question...I asked about someone using te language "from the show" and performing the simulated sex acts "from the show". The words "threatening and agressive" were never used.

A stranger approaching a child in the park is where the OP got the idea of "threatening and aggressive". I too would find that threatening and aggressive, whether the stanger in question was singing something from Rock of Ages or something from Snow White.

Imagine that you are at a local park with a 5 year old child and another adult approachss the child and proceeds to use the "language" from the show in front on the child and then performs the "simulated sex" acts from the show in front of the child.

Approaching the child is threatening and aggressive. Perhaps the example would have been more apt if you had talked about coming across a group of adults singing the songs from the musical while walking in the park with your child, but that doesn't quite provoke the same parent-shaming, does it?

OP, I don't really have much of an opinion on the matter, although I would recommend that if there is a possibility your 5 year old will get bored, which would be understandable in a 5 year old, you might want to sit near the back to disturb as few people as possible in the event that you leave.

From my personal experience primary care doctors are generally less than helpful when it comes to headaches, probably because there are so many different causes. I wish you the best of luck in finding a fix for her.

Motion-sickness headaches are often an inner ear issue - consider seeing an ENT specialist? It might be as easy as using a decongestant to keep the eustachian tube open and equalize the pressure - this is something you can consider asking the doctor about.

That was my first thought.

Does this mean that the menus that debuted on the Getaway won't be on the Jade before next year?

If so, I'm disappointed :( I really liked the sound of them.

<snip>

 

Then wouldn't it follow then that all smoking area's have to have this costly fire suppression system?

 

<snip>

Not necessarily. In areas outside of staterooms/balconies, staff are much more likely to be around, which means less time a fire is likely to smolder and more time to react before it gets out of control.

This is good news.

Any idea when these new regulations will be in place?

 

At this point it's just a rumor, although one that makes sense to me. NCL's CEO stated in an interview in January 2014, that NCL had no plans to change its smoking policy at this time. About a week ago, Carnival announced their change, with an end date of Oct 1 (if I recall correctly). This week, NCL is on the verge of an annoucement that they will be changing their policy, with an end date of Nov 1, less than a year after the CEO mentioning their lack of plans. NCL previously gave about a year's notice when they ended smoking in their staterooms. The lack of notice is, of course, jarring.

To my mind, a CEO who felt comfortable 7 months ago saying they had no plans at the moment to change their policy is more likely to wait and see what revenue changes and clientele shifts the Carnival change would bring to his company than to immediately jump on the same bandwagon a week later.

I believe that only a significant financial pressure, from regularions or insurance, would be the trigger for such a rapid change of policy.

The rumor may be complete bat-poop, but it's bat-poop that fits my understanding of corporate policy making.

I just wanted to throw out one of the main speculations from the NCL board that doesn't appear to have made it to this thread. The NCL thread unfortunately got ugly, so I wouldn't recommend reading it.

The rumor is that new regulations will require cruise ships to ban balcony smoking or install very costly fire suppression systems and upgrades. Carnival, NCL, and HAL may simply be annoucing these because, from a financial standpoint, they really don't have much of a choice.

My roll call for the Jade in November has been a busy hive of shore excursion activities. Yours doesn't seem as busy, but I'd check and see if any of the tours that your rollcall mates are putting together have space and/or sound interesting.

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1965982

I've also found that Rick Steve wrote a decent guide outlining which cruise ports on the Mediterranean are good for doing without a guide.

I have no practical experience, as I haven't been there yet, but hope this might help a little.

Edit: I see you found your roll call. That's what I get for skimming instead of focusing!

I wonder if 11:55 would be safer? Seems that most of what I am reading recommends 6 hours and that would be 5 min shy of 6 hours.

What drove the decision for me, and, reading into his response, Grovesteve is how comfortable we either were or weren't with the risk of something going wrong.

My husband is very, very, very risk-adverse to problems when traveling (and yet, bizarrely, insistent on direct flights) so we made the decision to fly out the following day, as the DC area only has one direct flight daily. I have friends ranging on the scale to okay with sudden changes to those I suspect travel by the seat of their pants on purpose for the thrill of it that would take the earlier direct flight in a heartbeat.

You'll just have to ask yourself where you are on that range.

I've not yet done the route myself (we're sailing a month after you); I've just done the research on almost the exact same question (our flight was at 10:45 am).

I've been told, and other links in the same area point to a similar answer, that it is possible. Unfortunately a good amount depends on what happens on your cruise, the weather, etc, but I've heard that if nothing major goes wrong, 7am is realistic.

General consensus on the Italy port forums is usually around 11:30. 11:00 am seems doable to the people who are familiar with the port as well

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1668403&highlight=earliest+flight+fco

I'm amused but not surprised by the defense of NCL on this.

"It would never occur to me to use the spa shower after a massage if I hadn't bought a day pass." SMH.

I haven't done any spa services on cruiselines in years (I dislike the upsells) but it would be unheard of to go to a high quality spa on land and be denied use of the facilities after having purchased a treatment, at least on the East Coast. Of course, the insane upsells are also completely unheard of at the spas on land that I frequent too. The OP is not at all unreasonable for being surprised at this policy.

That being said, the posters are correct in that this is NCL's policy, as bizarre as it seems. The decision to make on this point forward is whether nor not you choose to continue to purchase services.

I had a solid reply typed out but then the internet ate it.

So TL;DR

Exchange rates absolutely can be predicted. It's not for the faint of heart or for the easily bored, but people make millions daily on the FOREX market. The flucuations of the exchange rate are directly related to decisions made in the private sector, decisions made by governments, and decisions made by central banks. If you are paying attention, it's not hard to guess at the directionality of a change.

It's worth noting that even with these fees, the rate is still better than you would get from trying to purchase euros from a bank in the US and much better than you'd find at a money changer at an airport, hotel, or onboard a cruise ship.

Not to let the math nerd in me get out of control, but this is not necessarily true. If you are planning in advance, like I am, you can watch the exchange rate to possibly get better deals.

For example:

Today's exchange rate is $1.38. €500 would translate to (with an ATM fee of 3% + $5 service charge as in other examples) $715.70 today (there is an additional opportunity cost of the time spent finding at ATM that I am currently not calculating). If I had purchased €500 on July 1st, 2013, when the exchange rate was down to $1.30, even with a high estimated fee of 10%, it would still only be $715.

In the planning in advance situation, this would also be protection against the exchange rate going up (in the last five years, the highest the exchange rate seems to have been is $1.50 and the lowest $1.20).

The last couple of years saw a dip in March and July before reaching a peak in January-ish. However, this year we didn't see a drop in the exchange rate for March (Crimea?). I'm currently waiting to see what July will bring.

If anyone is still reading without their eyes being glazed over, I found a spifty website that puts exchange rates in neat graphic form here: http://www.oanda.com/currency/historical-rates/

Get rid of Pepsi and carry coke products like most other cruise lines do.

Please stick with Pepsi products, and don't try to emulate other cruiselines.

I don't really care if NCL stocks Pepsi or Coke products, but more diet options of whichever product would be great. It gets old when diet pepsi/coke is your only option when they could offer diet versions of Mt. Dew, 7up, Sierra Mist, or Pepsi Max or their Coke equivalents.

Probably not as bad as some of the stuff we drank in school

I shudder to remember that stuff.

Anyway, while the Gawker network isn't for everyone, I firmly believe they know their alcohol. So when I was reading about the back-peddling of approval at Gizmodo, I came across this article:

How to make powdered booze at home

For those who do not care for the Gawker network, the actual article was published online for the Popular Science magazine, so the link is safe.

If anyone tries it, you really have to come back here and let us (me...) know how it tastes.

But just because you have to complete the rest of the card doesn't mean they didn't ASK YOU to do it. While having the person's name filled in for you can be innocent, it can also be because they are soliciting hero cards. As long as you fill out your own card, they are off the hook for any wrongdoing. Why try to get them in trouble?

I'm not sure management actually has a legitimate concern with staff soliciting cards. As a statistician, I've worked on a number of surveys, ranging from completely voluntary to packing a hefty fine for non-compliance, and can say with much experience, no matter how many times you ask, no matter how easy you make it, no matter how you reward or punish people, they are absolutely not going to fill out a card/form/survey if they do not want to.

I like hpecorai's idea. While it would likely lead to a number of trashed cards (which I expect is actually management's concern), for someone like me, who can't remember names, faces or how to spell almost anything, this would be of great help.

Has anyone ever tried one of these?

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0014KKV7W/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=3FH43Y61HZEOQ&coliid=I31JX5JB71952G

It's a device that changes an av output into a coaxial output. Presumably, the coaxial input on the tv can't be disabled for the tv to get the signal.

While I appreciate the situation NCL is in, where they don't wish to have the inputs enabled for general guests (to avoid the constant calling of room stewards to "fix" the tv), it would be nice if there was a way for those of us who knew what we were doing to use our portable stuff.

I love I, Claudius -- forgot about that one. Very entertaining and quite accurate info.

 

Re: the Masters of Rome -- it's obvious McCullough was more invested in Marius and Sulla than in later characters. Either that, or because there are so many more historical sources of information (some of it conflicting) on Caesar, it was harder for her to "draw" a living, breathing character out of it...

I've never cared for how histories have glorified Caesar and Augustus. So much perfection just induces nausea. I know history is written by the winners, but still... even winners have flaws. I should probably note that I only made it through about 75% of Fortune's Favorites before I just had to move on. I wanted to finish it; I hate not finishing books but...

Is the sequel to I, Claudius worth the read? I'm not far into the book, but definitely enjoying it. On a similar note, someone who was inspired by the 70s TV series - that I didn't know about until now - has a book up on Amazon for pre-order titled I Am Livia that intrigues me. Can't recommend it, technically, but it does sound interesting.

I hardly know where to start. I am always finding more books to read, both fiction and nonfiction, about the Mediterranean and my favorite places there. Here are a few:

 

Rome: Colleen McCullough's "Masters of Rome" series -- each book is really long, but she is a good story teller (although sometimes not as good as I'd like at fleshing out the characters.)

 

...

Bah! You beat me to the suggestion. Adored the first two, but I feel like I'm slogging through the third. I loathe Caesar and Augustus so I'm thinking about just abandoning the series, but The First Man in Rome and The Grass Crown were just enthralling.

I just started (I couldn't take another moment of Caesar) I, Claudius by Robert Graves. It's interesting so far.

This is to cut the losses with the double dipping people have done in the past. I never fail to see, someone with a drink passage, then passing off their card for some one else. I have been on 5 cruises this year, other lines, and saw it on every ship. Especially with families. The parent would tell the kid to go get them something- kid whines, but goes up, then passes the drink off to the parent. :( So I don't blame them at all, with this "requirement" which still has loop holes.

Selectively quoting FTW? :o

You cut out the part of my statement that indicate while I was comparing NCL's policy to Celebrity I wouldn't expect to NCL to adopt the same requirements as Celebrity where Celebrity does not require all parties in the cabin to have the package.

You also ignored my points that the policy would be more palatable if the package were more inclusive in cases where some parties in the cabin cannot (pregnant) or will not (my husband) drink alcohol, which I think is a very valid point.

Perhaps if enough people request an unlimited everything drink package NCL would bring one out. I would imagine if thy do the rules about everyone in the cabin having to get it would apply as well.

Honestly, the requirement for all parties in the cabin to have a beverage package would be significantly more tolerable if the UBP included more non-alcoholic options.

I really like Celebrity's approach to the beverage package (note - as of my last sailing with Celebrity they didn't require all parties in the cabin to get a package; while I really like that approach, I wouldn't expect it of NCL if the packages were better rounded).

NCL - Ultimate Beverage Package:

 

Enjoy a wide selection of soft drinks, beers, spirits, cocktails and wines by the glass during your entire cruise. Beverage packages must be purchased for all guests staying within the same stateroom, additional stateroom, adjoining stateroom or travel with.

Classic Non-alcoholic: In addition to enjoying your favorite Coca Cola can and fountain sodas selections such as Coke, Diet Coke, Sprite, Fanta Orange and Coke Zero, you may also enjoy fresh squeezed and bottled juices, premium coffees and teas, and non-premium bottled water.

 

Classic: Upgrade your cruise experience and pay one price to enjoy all of the benefits of our Classic Non-Alcoholic package as well as all beers up to $6 per serving, and spirits, cocktails, frozen drinks, and wines by the glass up to $8 per serving. Plus, with purchase of this Classic Package, you can enjoy a 15% discount on all wines by the bottle purchased on board, even our prized Reserve Wine list and Rare Wine list.

 

Premium Non-alcoholic: Enjoy nearly our entire selection of sodas selections on board including all canned and fountain soft drinks from Coca-Cola, premium bottled water from Evian, Perrier and San Pellegrino, specialty coffees and teas, non-alcoholic frozen drinks and smoothies, Red Bull Energy Drink and specialty waters from Vitamin Water.

 

Premium: For the ultimate in value and convenience, our premium package provides all the benefits of our Premium Non-Alcoholic Package. In addition, you can enjoy our entire selection of Beers as well as Spirits, Cocktails and Wines by the Glass up to $13 per serving. Plus, with purchase of this Premium Package, you can enjoy a 20% discount on all wines by the bottle purchased on board, even our prized Reserve Wine list and Rare Wine list.

Please don't flame me for bashing NCL but...

I do think it's unfair to have the cabin requirement & the very limited non-alcoholic options when there are very common situations (such as pregnancy) where alcoholic drinks just absolutely will not be consumed. The requirement or the lack of diversity, but I think having both is limiting the appeal for NCL's beverage package.