Steelers0854

We have the premium WiFi via DBE, I’m sure there is a difference but don’t quote me on that. Preliminary speed test looks great!

Here is the galley menu from today for both lunch and dinner. Galley Dinner Day 1.pdf Galley Lunch Day 1.pdf

correct. Atleast on embarkation day lunch that’s how they were doing it. Servers only came by to clear plates. to be fair, we didn’t even speak with anyone at Test Kitchen, we love a good dinner show and just made the change. So they may very well have been able to do something.

I wish I knew why half my photos are uploading as all black, sorry but you won’t be able to see a bunch of the photos I took. We headed to the galley for lunch. It’s an interesting concept with the food stalls. Staff instructed us to walk around and order from anywhere we wanted. If they weren’t busy you got it right away. If they were you got a pager that went off when it was ready and you went back to pick it up. DW confirmed they use the same allergen free bread most of the other lines use. But the station was apparently going though an inspection and they could only serve premade sandwiches and couldn’t make anything to order. Never fear the taco station was safe and she grabbed Al pastor tacos. She also found an açaí pana cotta she could eat for dessert. I got what you could only get on a cruise ship. Sushi and tacos. The sushi box was a combination of the daily offerings. Same with the tacos. Both were excellent! We started our ship exploration. After much discussion we thought we would spend our Sailor Loot on the Thermal Spa for the cruise. It’s not cheap, but we are taking a relaxed approach to this cruise and the space looked amazing. $328pp later and we still have a bit of spending to do but the majority of it atleast is dealt with. Can’t wait to relax down here. We grabbed some ice cream and sorbet, found our muster station and a great lounging spot out on deck 7. We basically chilled here and booked some show reservations until dinner. We had no issue booking any of the shows and got the whole week booked up. We did call an audible the test kitchen. While it’s right up my alley we thought it would be too hard for DW to eat there so we booked the dinner show for that night, so excited about that!

granted. But misbehave is tonight, so you may have to go back on your promise.

Day 1 Embarkation Day I’m certain all the good Virgin jokes have been said and over said before so I’ll skip those. It was a beautiful morning for our first foray into the Virgin experience. We enjoyed the included breakfast at the hotel and read by the pool until it was time for our Uber to pick us up at 1pm. It’s a pretty quick 10 minutes to the port from the hotel. Luggage drop off was just fine, took all of 5 minutes at 1:10pm. There is both a CVS and a Walgreens very close to the port in case anyone forgot anything and needed to pickup something. They were plenty of gatekeepers checking for Suites, DBE etc at the entrance and we were asked to show prof no less than 4 times before we entered the priority checkin waiting area. Half the room is setup for those that have already checked in, my guess is those are suites. They said at 1:45 those people would begin boarding and then we would get priority checkin behind them. So if you have priority checkin you get this nice air conditioned am waiting area. Those with a 2pm boarding time were queued up, in the shade but outside standing. Everyone else was outside the port. At 1:41pm they let the first group whom have already checked in start to board. Pro tip: if you have priority sit closest to the door you enter the room in. They start boarding closest to the door and work their way to the back boarding in sections. By 1:45 we were heading up to checkin. We were on the ship and in our room by 1:50.

We had a beautiful view for dinner tonight and Fogo de Chao didn’t disappoint. after dinner we scheduled our Uber for tomorrow to pick us up at 1pm. It’s about a 10 min drive to the port and it seems like the best time to try and head over.

We arrived later in the afternoon. Got to the hotel and had a walk around. These views will never get old. The photos don’t do it justice but the waves today are pretty fierce. we grabbed a couple of drinks, a comfy chair and our books and are taking in this amazing weather and beautiful view. Dinner tonight is at Fogo de Chao. Before you come at me in the comments it’s right across the street from the hotel, the food is excellent, it’s really easy for DW to eat at with her allergies, and it’s half the cost of what it is back home. So after a travel day it’s gonna hit the spot 😉

Ok wow. You are on a whole other level. I thought we had a lot and we have $700.

We are excited to be here on our very first Virgin cruise! A little about us, we are DINKs hanging on to our 30s by the skin of our teeth, and have cruised most of the major US cruise lines. Our favorite is still Princess but we have enjoyed Celebrity, Royal and Disney quite bit. So this is going to be an interesting experience for us! We were originally booked at this same time on the same ship for 8 days out of Miami when we got caught up in all the re-positioning with the delay of the new ship. No big deal for us, we love PR, we have less days at sea, and go to places we have never been. Plus a boat load of Sailor Loot, a win win for us. DW has several food allergies (Dairy, Gluten and Egg) so we will be covering a lot of how that process works onboard. We have had mixed success across cruise lines on how its handled, and we are a little concerned as we generally rely on a consistent wait team to help with the process. In recent years this has become less common with the shift away from traditional set dining times. So while we are excited about the food offerings on board, we are cautiously optimistic things will go well. DW is already excited about the ice cream location that has several dairy free options! We had no issues getting status matched to DBE, so it will be nice to get the priority boarding and we are probably most excited about the daily coffee credit lol. We didnt have too many issues booking our dining and got almost everything we wanted at the times we wanted. We will be dining at Pink Agave (twice), The Wake, Extra Virgin, Gunbae, the Test Kitchen,and Razzle Dazzle for dinner and for breakfast Razzle Dazzle one day. We don’t have a lot planned for this cruise, on purpose. Being new to Virgin, and this new style of cruising they offer, we wanted to be really flexible and take in everything they throw at us. Plus, we have been all over the Caribbean and just like to wander around town these days. We are coming in a day early, as we typically do, and are staying at our favorite hotel, the Hilton Caribe. Based on folks experience on the cruise before ours I think we will plan on getting to the port around 1:15 or so.

Thanks everybody for the great info. As you can see it’s our first river cruise. Looking forward to it!

Does anyone know where I can find what times are are in each port? Ive looked everywhere and I cant seem to find what time we arrive and what time we leave each day. Thanks all!

I would be careful about taking general VPN advice. Most people don’t realize there are different VPN protocols and will just say “my VPN worked”. Well if your company uses a protocol that the cruise line blocks you’re out of luck. So while 1 VPN service works for 1 person, it may not work for you. Even 2 people using the same service can have different experiences if you aren’t savvy enough to understand that there are often times different protocols to switch between. Just don’t want anyone getting into a bad spot and must work only to find out they cannot connect to their corporate VPN.

This is one area where Princess lags far behind the rest. They focus on the main Theatre and small musical acts in various lounges but thats about it. I love the dueling pianos on some other lines (NCL included) and comedy shows outside the main theatre, and Princess definitely falls short in those areas. Completely agree. Maybe RCL’s Central Park gives it a run for this money but for a different reason (no ocean view but I mean a real park at sea and often very peaceful, just wonderful). This was a wonderful area that we enjoyed using, and we had beautiful weather for it, the issue is its small, so when you have a sea day itcan be very difficult to find a spot.

I think you will like it. Granted we have just done the one RCL cruise but IMO the specialty restaurants are better on RCL than NCL, but i think the MDR food is better on NCL. Look into the unlimited dining package if you do RCL, you can generally catch it on sale and I believe it can be an excellent value. Entertainment is great on the Oasis class ships (thats all we have been on), and plenty of free an open space. Nothing like sitting in Central Park on a sea day enjoying the beautiful weather!

Completely agree, but you should do so making an informed decision which is what this board is all about. The point of posting it here is that if you are someone who likes the Princess brand and what it delivers you should know how it may compare when looking to do another cruise line. As I said in my post your mileage may vary, and this is just my perspective. But with so many lines out there it’s nice to know what to expect from someone’s perspective before going. Not all of us are lucky enough to be able to go on 150 cruises, for some it may be a trip of a lifetime, and I for one would want as much info as I can beforehand to make an informed decision.

DW and I really started our cruise journey with Princess and while we have tried most of the other cruise lines we have consistently found that Princess is our favorite line. We had the opportunity to book an NCL cruise out of NY at a fantastic price and we have wanted to sail from Manhattan and go to Canada for a while so we went for it. It’s on the newer NCL Escape (2015). We had cruised NCL once before back in 2010 and remember it being fine. Other than Disney, Celebrity has been our second favorite thus far to Princess. I have to say NCL was a disappointment for the things that we like most about cursing. TL;DR: They don’t cook a lot of their buffet food onboard, and their ship has so many paid restaurants there is no place to sit and relax or enjoy any of the entertainment. It’s a hard pass for us. 1) Food (Free): The food was inconsistent at best. The buffet didnt have really any variety between each day, it was a lot of the same food with a slightly different version. The buffet layout was not great which meant a lot of crowding and it wasnt easy to get around and seating was difficult. I did like that much like Princess the buffet was open all the time, most other lines close their buffets often, which is very frustrating especially when trying to time meals with excursions etc. The MDR would have some really good dishes and some really not good ones. I find both the Princess Buffet and MDR to be much much better overall. Also, the vast majority of their food is NOT made on board in the buffet. I’ll get into this a little more below in point 3, but this was disappointing as it definitely looked and tasted premade, where Princess makes almost everything onboard. 2) Food (Paid): this has to be a separate category given the sheer number of paid restaurants on board. We had several specialty dinings included in our cruise fare so we went to 3 of the specialty restaurants. The best of the bunch was the Brazilian Steakhouse Moderno. Fantastic food, unlimited, solid price. The steakhouse was an utter disappointment and the Food Republic was not only the most overly priced dining at seas but the food wasnt good either. Moderno may give Crown Grill a run for their money, but when you consider to cost Crown Grill wins hands down. 3) Food Allergies: DW cant eat gluten, dairy or egg. Cruising has been the best way for us to travel as she generally is well taken care of and she can relax a little. That said, NCL ended up being as bad as Carnival at handling her allergies. Anything that wasnt made on board they wouldn’t serve her, even if it had a label that they or we could read, they refused to let us see the label and refused to serve her anything. With the vast majority of the buffet being stuff that is premade this meant she could only eat a handful of things each day and they were the exact same day to day. Also, on night she got sick from food served to her in the MDR and there must have been something in the sauce that was served to her with dinner. Also NCL lacks complete creativity on dishes and desserts. We have had such wonderful meals on Princess and Celebrity where the chefs were amazing and created dishes that were absolutely delicious. On NCL she got a bowl of blueberry pie filling for like 3 nights in a row. I know they cant make everyone a unique dish, but you know a day in advance, I cant imagine its that difficult since we have had it on other cruises. 4) Entertainment: Well the entertainment looked great, but for the majority of it (Live bands, comedian, etc) the venues are so small and uncomfortable if you didn’t get there an hour early you were never going to see anything. We did see the main production show the Choir of Man and it was one of the best shows we have ever seen, on land or sea. But for the other shows it was so disappointing to not be able to get in to see any of them. 5) The ship: this plays into point 4 above, but because they have a casino that takes up almost an entire deck, and more paid restaurants than cabins on board there are no places to sit, no lounges, no comfortable chairs, nothing. I have never been in a position on Princess where I couldn’t find a comfortable chair somewhere to sit and read a book, play a card game or enjoy some live music. It’s impossible to find on NCL. The one area they have for this, the atrium, is so small that no matter what time of day you went there no seats were available and they had to bring in folding chairs, yup folding chairs, to help add additional seating for some of the planned activities there. All in all NCL was a disappointment. In almost every way Princess is superior. The ONLY thing that was great about NCL was the MDR process. You could literally walk up at any time you want and wait 5 minutes or less for a table as long as you weren’t a large party. But, that being said, we much prefer to have the same waitstaff each night, especially with DW’s allergies, and we did try and do this but they wouldn’t honor it and it was basically impossible to do. Suffice to say NCL wont be on our list to do again, it’s just not for these Princess cruisers. YMMV.

Choir of Man. Amazing. Incredible. Don’t miss this show. In fact see it twice. One of the best shows I’ve ever seen. Period!

Day 7 Sea Day 3 It’s like groundhogs day but in a good way. We slept in, got up, hit the track/gym and then to the buffet for breakfast. DW grabbed her usual bacon and oatmeal, I’m holding out for lunch. We hung out and read, and eventually grabbed coffees. Side note: you have a bar in the buffet, why not do specialty coffees there in the morning. Instead you gotta track down to deck 6 then all the way back up to 16. Seems like an over sight. Lunch started off looking promising. Mexican day, DW’s favorite. Which quickly turned sour. They bring in from the outside all the beef taco meat, chicken fajita, bbq pulled pork etc. They said none of it could be considered safe. If they bring all this stuff in from the outside surely they have ingredient labels on them!? Why the hell can’t you go check those or bring them out for us to look at? We asked and got blank stares back and the party line “we can’t guarantee the safety” response. If you can’t trust food labels DW would literally never eat so it’s a BS excuse. So DW got another burger patty, some of the taco fixings and had lunch. So disappointing. Laziness, unwillingness, and apparently nothing actually made on board. It’s very frustrating. Princess, Celebrity, even Carnival does a better job (Guys burgers, blue iguana and several buffet items per day). Sorry for the rant, but it’s frustrating to eat the same thing 7 days in a row with no variety and no desire to do anything about it. I grabbed the bbq pulled pork and put it atop a burger with some fries and it was good. Checked the box for the burger craving I had.

I’m pretty sure NCL has lost their minds. We thought we would book another cruise on board since we could do CruiseNext and have the 10% offer they gave us. We found a 3 night cruise that aligned nicely with another cruise we were looking at doing and headed down to book that one. It’s in February next year in a balcony cabin. They wanted $1900 for 2 people. For 3 days and that’s with their 35% off promotion. Insanity. For a quick comparison a Disney cruise in the same time period in a verandah (equivalent to a mini suite on NCL) would have been $500 more, total, for 2 additional days, on Disney. I mean I could even do a Princess cruise for a week in a balcony for almost that much. I guess they are getting someone to fork over that amount but I thought that was crazy. 🤷‍♂️

Day 6 Sea Day 2 Cont After trivia we got a quick snack at O’Sheehans. DE got fries and I tried the pretzel bites and the carrot cake. The pretzel bites were great, soft not stale, warm and a good cheese sauce for dipping. The real star of the show here was the carrot cake. It was amazing. I love carrot cake and this was one of the best I’ve had. Glad I found it at the end of the trip otherwise it would have been really and lol. It was moist and flavorful, the cream cheese icing had a rich cream cheese flavor. It was everything I want from a carrot cake. After that we hit the waterfront and relaxed until dinner. DW had preordered the avocado hummus, a salad and the chimichurri beef. The hummus was solid and so was the salad. The beef was the star of the show. Great flavor. Super tender. Delicious. For dessert they did a play off tonight’s dessert and gave her cinnamon baked apples, they were excellent. Really anything other than the Blueberry compote would have been welcomed. I grabbed the coconut shrimp, baked Brie salad and the chimichurri beef. The shrimp and salad were both solid. The beef was great. After dinner we went to Uptown Boys. Sorry to say they aren’t very good and us along with a bunch of others bailed early.

The rumors of our being able to pull into port overnight unfortunately were greatly exaggerated. However, the captain was nice enough to spin the ship so the people on the other side are able to get the beautiful view. a cool, cloudy morning.

Pictures don’t do this justice. What an incredible opportunity to have this view that people literally pay millions for. Lemonade out of lemons.

Day 6 Sea Day 2 Last night we finished it up by going to Wheel of Fortune. It was a lot of fun even though it was clearly a cash grab. Minimum buy in was $25 to play along. It wasn’t a terrible cost but even without paying we still enjoyed ourselves. There was one question I didn’t think they were ever going to answer but finally one of the constants got it. We got up this morning in enough time to see us sailing into the harbor thanks to the extra hour of sleep. We headed to the MDR for breakfast, DW didn’t preorder but she only wanted oatmeal and bacon, which was no issue for them. I got the breakfast sandwich which was delicious, I would have preferred a fried egg and maybe they would have done it if I had asked, but it was excellent. We headed right up to the jogging track to work off a bite or two of breakfast and enjoy the beautiful view as we sailed in. It was legit cold with the wind so glad I was sporting pants today. We got ready and went to the buffet to relax for a bit. It’s the only place to sit with any level of comfort. So we sat and read here for a couple of hours until lunch. DW wanted pasta and loves it with just simple olive oil. This was no issue they cooked her up some GF pasta with garlic, peas and olive oil and she was tickled pink. The chicken on the buffet had soy sauce and she didn’t feel like asking for one to be cooked so she just stuck with the pasta and salad. I picked up a compilation of items, the hits today were the seafood quesadillas and the veggie fritter with Asian bbq sauce. They were both excellent. The chicken tikka was also excellent. They also had cannoli’s today and they were excellent! Nice and crunchy, perfect consistency and the right flavor profile. After lunch we headed down for some Harry Potter trivia.

I would disagree, I don’t see them needing to do anything to compensate us. They have no control over the weather, everyone knows what they are getting into when they book a cruise during hurricane season. Any compensation they offer is over and above what they should do.