Xmansmom

We are doing a 10 day port intensive cruise this summer. A couple of questions that my group has:

1. Can we watch movies (will there be movies) on the tv in the stateroom?

2. Are there any theme nights on this type of cruise?

2 hours ago, ColdCruise said:

On our last cruise from Europe to the US (Viva, Nov 23), we brought several bottles on board with no issue or questioning. We did have the drinks package,so that waived any possibility of corkage. 
 

if one thinks about it, if you have the drinks package, you’ve prepaid for any alcohol consumed from NCL’s onboard stores. If you want to bring onboard your own alcohol in addition to the drinks package, it works in NCL’s favor to let you. If you’re drinking your own wine, you’re not depleting their inventory …if you already paid for it but don’t drink it, it’s a winning proposition for NCL.

 

you should check the alcohol importation laws for your return to the US and or wherever you disembark to make sure you’re within those limits or meet their requirements (which may include paying fees).

Thanks. We are staying in Venice for a few days after the cruise. So if I can bring it back to the AirBNB then I should be good. If I can also consume onboard great. Just thinking one of my excursions includes a wine tasting so if I like I will buy some.

Not NCL but I would check out Romeinlimo. They have some great tours. Are less expensive. Limited to max 8 people. We are doing a tour to all the highlights in Rome for less than 100 euro a person. We very much enjoyed this tour last time and recommended this company. 

Can we bring back a bottle or two of wine when returning to the ship? If so, do they hold them till the end of the cruise or can we drink onboard? IF it matters we have the drink package and are cruising in Europe.

If you haven't checked out the company Rome in Limo you should. They do excursions in some of those ports and they have an excursion share site that you can use. I used them in Rome and did the Rome highlights tour. We paid around $100/person with only 8 of us and the ship excursion for the same was like $450/person. Many ports are easy to do on your own as well with a bit of research. Check out Rick Steves, he has a free travel app and his books are great.

Have fun. We will be on the Escape in June doing a similar cruise. Plan on spending a few days in Barcelona. It is an awesome city.

On 9/22/2023 at 10:56 AM, jsn55 said:

I've been 'working on' a very similar cruise for months.  I'm a fiend for research and really enjoy the process.  The advice above to only deal with one port at a time couldn't be better.   I'm not as efficient as usual because I started out reading about them all. 

 

I start at the library, several good guidebooks on Med cruise ports.  I am a big Rick Steves' fan; he provides all the little details and gives his opinions on everything.  You could buy his book and take the relevant pages along on your cruise.  Once you get a sense of a port from a book, you can branch out into all the excellent forums here on CC.  You'll pick up hundreds of 'tips' to pursue and lots of first-hand info to guide you.  It's a great itinerary and you'll no doubt love the whole Med experience.

I agree with the Rick Steves' part. Highly recommend. He has an app that has free tours. When I went last time, I used this app several times. In Venice, there was a tour riding the Vaperetto. In Rome, I used in in the Vatican. It was awesome. 

Following I was looking for the same thing.

They just started letting you pre-book specialty restaurants too. So you can pre-pay for them and the chef's table.

I have only gotten the spa pass once and it was on the Magic. I loved it so much that we got a spa room for our upcoming cruise on the Magic.

I have never had any problems with my Chef's Table reservation until our last cruise. Make sure you take your email with you. Last cruise for the very first time they didn't have my reservation. I had to pull up my email to prove that I was supposed to have a reservation.

I can't remember if I have the funtimes on there but here is my review from two years ago https://boards.cruisecritic.com/topic/2447386-review-carnival-legend-glacier-bay-aug-15/

Sorry forgot the PDFs for the Funtimes.

Wednesday April 24-1.pdf Wednesday April 24-2.pdf Wednesday April 24-3.pdf

37 minutes ago, mommiemudd said:

What was your all aboard time? We want to spend the day doing some things in Honolulu. We are usually the first group onboard but since we have five sea days we will have plenty of ship time!

6pm was the final onboard even though the sail time was 11 pm. I would tell you I love getting onboard quickly. I wish I had done this totally different. If I knew how the first day would be I would have gone ahead and waited till late. Those that waited till 3 or later walked right on. I will say the only good thing about the wait to get on. They had people doing hula, hawaiian music, making things with palm leaves, and giving out leis. My son got a new headband and a fishing rod with a fish.

So Wed. was the first sea day. The sea days are when the a lot of the extra Journey's stuff happens. This first day there was a Hawaiian night including the Luau deck party, a lecture on the Island of Aloha, and the first of the Academy of Fun lectures, Photography. Now our Cruise Critic Meet and Mingle was also scheduled this first morning. I totally missed it because I never got anything in my room. I only knew it happened because later I was looking at my paper Funtimes and happened to see it. I was a bit sad about it. But I had set our slot pull that afternoon.

So in the afternoon we were hanging on the Lido deck, DS swimming. There was a Lip Sync competition. DS tried to volunteer  me. I didn't get up there but probably should have. It was fun to watch. Right after they had a Fun in the Sun  Competition. I convinced DS to compete with me. OMG. We have never done anything like this but it was hilarious. Basically there were 6 of us to start. They would say items which we had to find on the Lido deck and return to the stage with. Last person back was eliminated. First things were a towel and 3 left flip flops. So it got down to 4 and it was me, DS and 2 others. We were right by Guys and they said mustard, ketchup and pickles. Me,DS and one other ran right over to the burger condiment station. I put it directly in my hand (bad example mom) and ran back and set my hand on the stage. DS (remember 10 yrs old) followed my example, put it in his hand and then came back and dropped the whole mess on the stage. 🤣🤣. It was down to just Me, DS, and one other girl and they asked us for false teeth. That through us all for a loop. After like 5 minutes they finally gave us a hint (comb or zipper). By then the other girl had gotten an actual set of false teeth. OMG. WOW. DS knocked me out with a zipper. The last thing was an ice cream eating contest. DS got beat but he still earned a ship on a stick.
 

I spoke with the casino host and he brought me over some gifts to give away. We had about 15 of us. It was fun. We didn't win anything but we had fun. Dinner was our normal meet up with friends. There was a "Hawaiian Appreciation event" in the lobby with free wine, beer and punch. We stopped by after dinner and grabbed a couple drinks. We went and played for a little bit in the casino. I was itching to play craps. Now I will tell you I am definitely not big gambler. I am a no more then a couple hundred a day gambler. I was doing well on craps that evening, up about $200. The pit boss was even buying me drinks (I think because I was the only one tipping the dealers). Had a great time playing. When it was time for the Hawaiian Luau event we went up to the Lido. There was a Hawaiian group onboard that throughout all the sea days did thinks like the lectures, the events, teaching ukulele lessons, dance lessons. So they performed and taught the group the Hula. We were given grass skirts and flower lays. Inside there was desserts, a whole pig, and some Hawaiian salads. Food was good. I will say that by the evening time we had started to notice the drop in temps.

Don't know how current this is but http://www.zydecocruiser.net/menus/party/cocktailparty.htm

This has a menu similar to the one I got sent the last time I planned a event.

Just now, shof515 said:

 

thats strange. Usually they are 2 regular formal nights and then the Throwback Sea day is the 3rd formal night 

I was told the same thing before cruising for our 10 day Journey's but it was one regular formal night and one throwback. I think it is because it was only a 10 day. Most of your Journey's are longer.

18 hours ago, shof515 said:

journey cruises has 3 formal nights

Our 10 Journey's cruise in Hawaii only had 2 formal nights.

As far as first night our cruise left at 10 pm and dinner was still served normal times. Depending on when the all aboard is you will have muster drill probably right before dinner.

On 4/24/2019 at 9:41 AM, JaniceB said:

Good information on boarding after a repositioning.  I will be boarding the Legend in London after a T/A, I wonder if the same will be true?

I would tell you that one of the guys on our page on another sight made a big point to tell us about having patience on boarding day. He was the guy that did the Academy of fun talks. He went into a lot of detail on how they do the change over. I would say based on that when they do the repositioning to Europe they will face similar challenges. Trying to get European products on board, switching over all the sale prices to European going through customs in Europe with all crew members. Now I would say all of these things are probably harder in America. We all know we make things hard in the US

On 6/1/2019 at 9:25 AM, Kim_KS said:

We are doing this cruise next April - I really hope the review gets finished. I keep checking back for more!

I promise I am slow but I will finish. The thing that bugged me the most as that there seemed to be very little infomation about this cruise and there was definitely no funtimes posted. I promised at a minimum I would at least post those fun times. I am a planner and hated to not know what to expect.

On 6/2/2019 at 4:26 PM, mommiemudd said:

Thanks for the review! We have this booked for April. I have a couple of questions. Do you sail back to Vancouver? If so, how was the temperature on the sea days? And how far in advance do you book airfare? Thanks in advance!

 I am just getting into the sea days. But the short answer is it was much cooler then I expected. I didn't pack enough colder weather clothes. I actually bought a Carnival Legend sweatshirt which is one of the softest sweatshirts I own. We sailed from Hawaii back to Vancouver. By sea day two the colder temps had set in. We booked airfare way in advance (as far as I could) but I don't have a lot of options and I like to be able to go out of certain airports.

On 5/19/2019 at 11:01 AM, CruisinginWonderland said:

I’m so curious about snorkeling in Alaska! That sounds like a bucket list item for sure!

It was absolutely a bucket list item. It was one of the most colorful experiences. I expected this to be very drab but the life in Alaska was very colorful. It was cold but the wetsuit made it bearable. It was amazing and really cool when two whales surfaced about a football field distance away from us.

The PDFs are the Funtimes for that day. We were back onboard by about 6 pm that evening. We did our normal dinner. OUr dinner mates were a bit late that evening but did wind up meeting up with us. It really confused the people sitting folks. They didn't want to let them join us but we finally convinced them it was ok. We were pretty exhausted from all the port days and were looking forward to being able to see in the next day. This is the first night that the clocks would turn back an hour. I had wondered before how time would work on this trip. With the huge change in time from Hawaii to Canada it was nice to see that it was done gradually. Every other sea night the time would go back an hour.Transiting the 3 hrs.

Sorry it has taken me so long to continue. Been busy. Any woo, Tuesday was Maui. I had found another couple on our cruise to share the Road to Hana with. I seriously considered just rented a car and driving it. The tour was expensive (almost $700 for the 3 of us) but it was awesome. I am so glad that I wasn't driving. It allowed me to really enjoy the sights. Plus having just 5 of us on the tour was great. The tour was through Holo Holo tours. The tour guide was a local who had grown up in the area. She was extremely knowledgeable and had great personal stories to share about the area. I was able to check off a few of bucket list items during this trip. The Road to Hana is almost indescribable. Beautiful cliffs and waterfalls. Lava tubes and black sand beaches. And don't forget some of the best banana bread you've ever had. My DS and I jumped off the cliffs of the waterfalls. The whole group crawled through a lava tube in the side of the road. Visited a black sand beach with a lava tube that went out to the ocean.

Tuesday April 23-1.pdf Tuesday April 23-2.pdf Tuesday April 23-3.pdf

Here are some pictures from 2 years ago when I was on the Alaska Cruise. I would tell you besides a few minor decorative changes and the additions of Guys burgers, Blue Cantina and Alchemy Bar there weren't too many changes.

I will admit I didn't do a good job of taking pictures of the ship this time I have been on Legend 4 times now. These are from this time.