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Escape From Miami - Kinda, Sorta "Live From" - October 7-14, 2017


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Ladies & Gentlemen, Boys & Girls, Moms & Dads, Children, Youngsters, Toddlers, and Wee Little Shavers – We’re pleased to bring you our very first “Kinda, Sorta Live From” on an NCL ship. We’ll be on board the Norwegian Escape’s Western Caribbean sailing from October 7th to 14th, 2017. This was originally scheduled to be an Eastern Caribbean itinerary calling at St. Thomas, Tortola, and Nassau. Unfortunately, Hurricane Irma caused severe damage to the Virgin Islands and we are now doing a modified trip. We really enjoy both the US and British Virgin Islands and our hearts go out to the good people there.

 

Our Modified Itinerary:

 

  • Saturday, October 7, 2017 - Depart Miami - 4:00 PM
  • Sunday, October 8, 2017 - At Sea
  • Monday, October 9, 2017 - Roatan, Honduras - 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM
  • Tuesday, October 10, 2017 - Harvest Caye, Belize - 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM
  • Wednesday, October 11, 2017 - Costa Maya, Mexico - 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM
  • Thursday, October 12, 2017 - Cozumel, Mexico - 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM
  • Friday, October 13, 2017 - At Sea
  • Saturday, October 14, 2017 - Arrive Miami - 8:00 AM

 

A little background: We’ve been doing this nonsense for several years on Holland America (most recent example) but we grew tired of the non-stop, rock & roll patio of fun that is HAL and decided to branch out to something more sedate.* We’re looking forward to seeing what a larger ship has to offer. Specifically, we're looking forward to experiencing the entertainment and to trying many of the specialty restaurants. To be perfectly honest though, we are a little apprehensive about the crowds though -- ‘cause we’ve seen pictures.

 

This is a family cruise with my brother-in-law, sister-in-law, father-in-law, my wife and me. The cruise was chosen by my wife’s brother (DBIL) and his wife (DSIL), who are big NCL fans & Latitudes Platinum. It’s my father-in-law’s (DFIL) third NCL cruise, having sailed them to Alaska and Hawaii years ago. It’s my wife’s and my first Norwegian cruise.

 

We have had this trip scheduled for close to a year and a half, because we're a planning people. It's a replacement for a cruise that we had booked for April on the Celebrity Silhouette that would have sailed out of Port Everglades (Fort Lauderdale.) That trip wound up being a no-go Because of some work schedule issues. Thanks to our apparent desire to head into the mouth of the Caribbean hurricane season, we booked the Escape for October.

 

I will admit that the Escape looks to be a much more action-packed ship than the Silhouette, and as long as the action doesn't involve tropical cyclones, it seems like a winning decision. And I have to confess that from an intro banner graphic design standpoint, the Escape was a much better choice. I'm sure that we could have come up with something for Silhouette, but Escape offered many more opportunities.

 

* - That's sarcasm. I really don't expect a ship with a ropes course and water slides to be more sedate.

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As a Floridian, you always keep an eye on the National Hurricane Center's website this time of year. As someone who has a cruise booked, the last thing you want to see is a tropical system fire up in the general direction your ship is expected to sail. That happened on Wednesday, when TD16 formed off the coast of Nicaraugua. The system was forecast to tropical storm Nate overnight on Wednesday. It did.

 

The storm is behind (or below, or to the southeast of) the Escape, which was in Cozumel on Thursday. The ship has a sea day on Friday as it heads back to Miami for turnaround on Saturday. If all goes well, the Escape will stay far out of harm's way on its return to Miami.

 

By mid-day Saturday, Nate should be up above the Florida Straits and into the Gulf of Mexico. By the time our voyage on the Escape comes through the straits on Sunday, Nate - then predicted to be a Category 1 hurricane - should be up in the northern Gulf of Mexico and our voyage will be able to slip in under the storm, which is predicted to be a hurricane sometime late Saturday. We won't be out of the Straits of Florida until Sunday. By then, the storm is expected to be in the northern Gulf of Mexico, far out of our way.

 

While I'm relieved that the storm will be up and out of our way, I feel terrible for the people whom it might impact. We are so over the 2017 hurricane season.

 

Please accept my apologies for this less than entertaining post. Just trying to the tropical storm annoyance out of my system.

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Following I enjoy your writing style. Very entertaining.

I sail out of Miami on the Escape Oct 28th for a much needed break for my family and myself.

I am interested for some one to check out the new menus.

 

The Department of Scanning Things just put new batteries in the scanner. Because we're here for you.

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Hi! DSIL checking in where hubby and I are pregaming our UBP at the Hyatt Downtown Miami. It's important for your liver to be in top physical form prior to embarking on the UBP program. So many bars. So many free drinks. So little time......

 

In addition to family, we are also traveling with 4 other families (and their families) who used to sail Disney this same week all together. We collectively moved over to the Escape circa April 2016, after bring totally disgusted by Disney's pricing model. YIKE$$$$. This puts our group total at 43, if you care to be discrete!

 

In the meantime, here's the view from our hotel room.

 

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Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G925A using Forums mobile app

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Hi! DSIL checking in where hubby and I are pregaming our UBP at the Hyatt Downtown Miami. It's important for your liver to be in top physical form prior to embarking on the UBP program. So many bars. So many free drinks. So little time......

 

In addition to family, we are also traveling with 4 other families (and their families) who used to sail Disney this same week all together. We collectively moved over to the Escape circa April 2016, after bring totally disgusted by Disney's pricing model. YIKE$$$$. This puts our group total at 43, if you care to be discrete!

 

 

Welcome to formerly sunny south Florida! I swear it was nice up until a few days ago Wrapping up some last minute work stuff and trying to finish packing before DW gets back from her mani-pedi. (Under threat of death by well-manicured hands.)

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A Little About Us

 

This is the obligatory “who we are” post. It’s probably not going to be important to the plot, so if you want to skip it, feel free. You'll be sad, and probably feel like a hollow shell of a person.... But skip ahead, by all means.

 

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My lovely and talented sister-in-law* posts as AlexandNessa on CruiseCritic. My brother-in-law does not post on CruiseCritic. DBIL and DSIL are from New Jersey and have sailed NCL fairly extensively in the past few years, enough to achieve Platinum in the Latitudes program. They are sailing in an H3 Owner’s Suite in the Haven. They’re both in their late 40s, although I am contractually obligated to say the AlexandNessa is the youngest person in our party.

 

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My father-in-law doesn’t post on CruiseCritic, and probably has limited awareness of its existence, and only because he hears us talking about it. He lives in Tennessee and is Bronze in Latitudes from his two previous cruises on Norwegian. He’s celebrating his 80th birthday this year. While the rest of us are usually content to hang out, he doesn’t like to sit still very long. If we’re in one place too long, he goes into Sputnik mode and gets up to wander around (orbits) the ship. He comes back into low earth orbit around dinner time each day.

 

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Huskerchick, my beautiful wife*, posts on CruiseCritic, but quite a bit less than me owing to the fact that she has a life. I post as POA1**, which should be pretty obvious if you’re reading this. The two of us have never sailed on NCL before. Most of our cruises have been on Holland America, where we’re 4 Star in their Mariner program (121 actual sailing days, 230 cruise day credits) which is HAL’s equivalent of Platinum Plus. This really has no bearing on this “Live From” but it may help you to understand our perspective should we compare anything. We’re in our 50s but DW is younger than me.* We live in Fort Lauderdale right by the exit channel for Port Everglades. If you’ve sailed out of there and you noticed people in the high rise condos blowing air horns at the ships, that’s where we’re at.

 

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* - Yes, I am absolutely sucking up to the ladies.

 

** - No relation to NCL’s Pride of Americas. POA1 stands for Point of Americas I, which is where we live. I picked it because it was a nice, short user name.

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Before we begin, I would like to ask a favor of you. If you are going to do a “quote & reply,” please try to edit the quote down so that you’re not quoting a huge block of text and photos. Try to keep only the relevant parts if you can. It will keep the thread a little more compact for people who are reading on their phones. Thanks!

 

As part of the National Institute of Cheer’s commitment to knowledge, research, and scholarship, we aim to provide some actual information in this thread. Will we be successful? Who knows? (But you’re on the edge of your seat aren’t you?)

 

Whenever possible, we’ll try to provide copies of menus, Freestyle Dailies and any other pieces of paper that might be helpful. We have an entire Department of Scanning Things that handles this function. We’ll definitely get the specialty restaurant menus for places we dine, and cocktail menus for any bars we go to. (That’s likely to be all of them, because bars are sort of our research specialization.)

 

If you are looking for something in particular, please feel free to ask. We may not get to everything because this is a really big ship and we only have one week. We also have the UBP (Ultimate Beverage Package), and that may impeed our performance – especially since some of our crucial research projects revolve around it. Whenever possible, we’ll try to answer any questions you may have.

 

 

 

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The Department of Theming Things with Graphics would like you to know that our banner graphic is based on the 1981 John Carpenter film, “Escape from New York.” They replaced the Manhattan skyline with Miami’s, added the ms Escape to the harbor, and swapped out Lady Liberty for Mr. 305/Worldwide. You can see a larger version if you click on banner image in the first post in the thread. If you want to see the posters that they used as inspiration, you can see them here and here.

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I am leaving on the Escape when you get back---10/14.

IF you happen to hear anything about what is going on with the Thermal Spa next week please let us know. NCL has been very tight lipped with us as far as why it will be closed during our sailing. Maintenance is all that we have heard. Several of us are very disappointed---the Spa was the main draw for me to book the Escape again.

While I have received a refund for the spa pass that I purchased, NCL is still selling them for our sailing so something just doesnt add up.

Enjoy the cruise and take care of that ship for us! Good luck with the weather. Hope it is perfect for you folks.

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I am leaving on the Escape when you get back---10/14.

IF you happen to hear anything about what is going on with the Thermal Spa next week please let us know.

 

It's on the list of things to find out.

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More dull pre-trip, background stuff. Again, feel free to skip this if you want.

 

My marvelous wife*, Huskerchick and I are booked into a midship balcony (category BA) port-side on Deck 14. DFIL is in a BA next door. My wife’s brother (DBIL) and his wife (DSIL/AlexandNessa) are uptown in the rarified air of a Haven Owner’s Suite (H3) on Deck 17 forward.

 

We have the UBP as one of our promos and prepaid gratuities/service charge as the other. DFIL has the three meal specialty dining plan (3SDP) and prepaid service charges. DW & I purchased the 4SDP to cover most of our specialty dining.

 

AlexandNessa/DBIL get the whole gamut of promos because they’re Platinum and in a Haven Suite. (Not 100% sure of the particulars, but I think they get the UBP, SDP, some Platinum dining credits, prepaid daily service charge, a pony named Kevin, 3 bottles of liquor for the room, Internet minutes, OBC, and a bottle of wine with their Platinum dinner.**)

 

My alluring and capable* sister-in-law made our dining reservations for us. In terms of specialty dining, we’re having dinner in Cagney’s, Moderno, Le Bistro, Bayamo, and La Cucina. We intend to have our embarkation lunch in Margaritaville. DSIL has arranged for dinner in Taste’s Private Room one evening. (She has people on this cruise that she knows from somewhere – Disney for the most part, I think. She organized the group dinner for all of us.) We have one open night and we’ll make a game time decision on that. I’m lobbying for Food Republic, but mine is only one of five votes.

 

Knowing us, I’m sure that O’Sheehan’s will work its way into the lineup, for a late night feeding if nothing else.

 

DW & I are talking about trying to work Pincho y Tapas in for lunch one afternoon. When we received the September issue of Food & Wine Magazine, which focused on Spain, we were like, "We should go to Spain. This food looks great!" But then we were like, "That seems kind of far to go just for some food. And, we only have a limited amount of vacation time."

 

So then we were like, "Hey! We're already going to have dinner at Jose Garces' 'Bayamo' on the cruise. We could just add 'Pincho y Tapas' and that would give us two kinda sorta Spanish dining experiences. No jet lag, either. We live in south Florida. I bet that there are places we could go to to find one or two people who speak Spanish, to round out the experience."

 

And finally we were like, "What's with all the 'We were like' twaddle? That's like totally annoying. We should, like, stop it. People are going to be literally annoyed."

 

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* - Still sucking up. Trying to bank some credits in case I get in trouble later this week.

 

** - Really not sure if they get all those things. Except for the pony named Kevin. That's a definite.

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I LOVE Snake Plissken!!!!

 

I'm not even sailing on NCL and I'm already enjoying your report. Looking forward to reading some as you sail along.

 

Totally cool location to live...you get to see the ships regularly.

 

45...my take is mid-40s. 40 is...40. 41-43 is early, 44-46 is mid, 47-49 is late. Now, that's just my take on it, given that 45 is so far in my rear view mirror that it's just a vague shadow at this point. I've entered in my mid-50s now.

 

ETA: Pony named Kevin!!!!!

 

Have a great time.

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Requesting a picture of Kevin, please.

 

Also wondering if Poohby-Joe will be taking the trip with you?

 

I'd offer the use of my liver, but will be putting it in "strenuous mode" on our 25 day Med / trans-Atlantic in a few short days.

 

Smooth Sailing! :) :) :)

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