A few Sky questions...

[lunyma]

We’re doing the Sky 4 night cruise next week and I have a few questions based on some things I’ve read.  

1.  Are they really serving drinks with no straws or have they replaced them with paper straws?

2.  What are the correct hours for the Local bar and grill, and will they let you take food out of there to eat poolside or in your room?

3.  Although we’re only Bronze latitude members, we were told, and I read, that we would receive a bottle of sparkling wine in our cabin at embarkation, but some people have said that it’s only on cruises of 5 days or more. What’s the right answer?

4.  Has anyone had any luck changing times for rerun flights home if booked by NCL?  They scheduled us for a flight from MIA leaving after 4 pm. I can think of things to do on our own for the day but don’t know what to do with our luggage. Does NCL have airline and baggage check in at the port like some other cruise lines?

5.  I also read in a couple places that NCL transportation from port to airport leaves the port between 8:45 and 9:00am. Can anyone confirm that?

 

I know I have more questions, but I can’t think of them right now. I’ll be back!!

TIA!✈️⚓️🛳🌞😎

[cliffd64]

12 hours ago, lunyma said:

We’re doing the Sky 4 night cruise next week and I have a few questions based on some things I’ve read.  

1.  Are they really serving drinks with no straws or have they replaced them with paper straws?

2.  What are the correct hours for the Local bar and grill, and will they let you take food out of there to eat poolside or in your room?

3.  Although we’re only Bronze latitude members, we were told, and I read, that we would receive a bottle of sparkling wine in our cabin at embarkation, but some people have said that it’s only on cruises of 5 days or more. What’s the right answer?

4.  Has anyone had any luck changing times for rerun flights home if booked by NCL?  They scheduled us for a flight from MIA leaving after 4 pm. I can think of things to do on our own for the day but don’t know what to do with our luggage. Does NCL have airline and baggage check in at the port like some other cruise lines?

5.  I also read in a couple places that NCL transportation from port to airport leaves the port between 8:45 and 9:00am. Can anyone confirm that?

 

I know I have more questions, but I can’t think of them right now. I’ll be back!!

TIA!✈️⚓️🛳🌞😎

 1:  No straws...  you can bring your own...  Walmart $1.49 a package... and they have some really distinctive looking foil looking paper straws....

 

2. The hours are posted in your Freestyle Daily each day...  YES you can walk away with your food and take it to a different area.

 

3.  Sorry, no latitudes benefits on a 4 day cruise.

 

4. I believe NCL does have baggage program if you use their shuttles... Ask at the reception desk.  No experience with NCL air.

 

5.  They leave at various times...  but definitely not much past 10:00 AM

 

 

[ColeThornton]

Small correction to Cliff's response:  NCL does NOT have a BAGS program at Miami, they did away with that quite a while ago.

[pinkie60]

When I was on her in July she had paper straws. 

[lunyma]

Thank you, Cliff, Cole, and Pinkie 😎

 

I’m all for the environment but I really don’t like paper straws, so I’ll bring my own. 

Bummer that we don’t get the bottle of bubbly in the cabin so I guess I’ll just have to get it by the glass. Just a PIA if I’m in the room and want a drink. We got the free at sea drink pkg so it’s really no biggie... Just an inconvenience. 

Happy to hear that we can take food out from the Local. I know that they have fish & chips and reubens. Does anyone have a copy of the menu they could share? Do they have wings?

Gonna try to remember to call NCL about getting an earlier flight home. I’m guessing that since it’s 8 days out from my cruise, there’ll be a charge. Probably not worth it. When I booked the cruise, my son worked for United so I wasn’t concerned about any cost involved if I wanted to change flights (only booked through NCL cuz they had the free air promo).  A couple days after I booked he told me that he had quit and had a new job. Crap!

We can obviously check at the airport as well. 

 

 

[jdvmd]

7 hours ago, lunyma said:

Thank you, Cliff, Cole, and Pinkie 😎

 

I’m all for the environment but I really don’t like paper straws, so I’ll bring my own. 

Bummer that we don’t get the bottle of bubbly in the cabin so I guess I’ll just have to get it by the glass. Just a PIA if I’m in the room and want a drink. We got the free at sea drink pkg so it’s really no biggie... Just an inconvenience. 

Happy to hear that we can take food out from the Local. I know that they have fish & chips and reubens. Does anyone have a copy of the menu they could share? Do they have wings?

Gonna try to remember to call NCL about getting an earlier flight home. I’m guessing that since it’s 8 days out from my cruise, there’ll be a charge. Probably not worth it. When I booked the cruise, my son worked for United so I wasn’t concerned about any cost involved if I wanted to change flights (only booked through NCL cuz they had the free air promo).  A couple days after I booked he told me that he had quit and had a new job. Crap!

We can obviously check at the airport as well. 

 

 

There are wings!

[lunyma]

17 hours ago, jdvmd said:

There are wings!

 

Awesome! Thank you 😊 

 

Another question...

 

Are there robes in the cabin and if not, can I request them from my cabin steward?

[jdvmd]

46 minutes ago, lunyma said:

 

Awesome! Thank you 😊 

 

Another question...

 

Are there robes in the cabin and if not, can I request them from my cabin steward?

It all depends on what category cabin you are booked into? Usually balconies and above receive. That said, if you are in one of these cabins and do not see the robes, do ask.

[GA Dave]

7 minutes ago, jdvmd said:

It all depends on what category cabin you are booked into? Usually balconies and above receive. That said, if you are in one of these cabins and do not see the robes, do ask.

NCL robes.  These were in a Haven room.  They provided slippers too.

[lunyma]

Thanks guys... No balcony this trip. Just a midship outside. Never hurts to ask once onboard though! 😎

[Becca11]

We were just on the Sky sailing on 9/23 through 9/28.  It's a smaller ship but recently renovated.  On our sailing it was spotless, almost smelled of fresh paint and new carpet!  The crew was super chill and very friendly and happy.  We had a great time, and  you will too.  🙂 🙂

 

1. Paper straws, yes.

2. You can take food from any of the venues to your room.  The server will even box it up for you.  We had to take dessert back to our room from Cagney's, couldn't finish it.  NOTE THIS:  you cannot bring food or drink from "outside" (port of call, embarkation) onto the ship.  They are strict about it, or they were with us on the Sky.  So if you eat a meal in port, don't count on bringing anything back onto the ship with you.  You also cannot take food from the ship off of the ship.  Ergo we ate our chocolate cake from Cagney's for breakfast on disembarkation day.  🙂 🙂  (Maybe the first time in my life I've legit had chocolate cake for breakfast.)

3. The Local- don't have a picture of the menu, but they for sure have wings, which seemed quite popular.  Didn't order them but would next time.  They have fish and chips, a very good cheeseburger, and reubens as well.  The spinach and artichoke dip is good.

4. We were in an aft balcony room for a 5 night cruise and we had neither robes nor bubbly in the room- but we didn't miss either.

5. You're gonna love The Great Outdoors, the aft deck dining area behind the Garden Buffet.  It has its own buffet and full bar.  The buffet is not as extensive as the indoor buffet at the Garden Buffet but the food is laid out nicely and the selection was more than adequate for us.

6. ROOM SERVICE WAS GREAT.  I made a classic "sea day" blunder and didn't pace myself, ergo between day drinking and sunshine and running about all day on the ship, I was in bed asleep by 8pm that night, no dinner.  I awoke at 4:30am, slammed the light on over our bed (my husband was THRILLED) and announced that I was STARVING (my husband was THRILLED.)  Cue room service breakfast, which was delivered in about 30 minutes, hot off the grill and really good.  It was worth every penny of that $7.95 service charge!

7. I awoke at about 4:30am again, on the last morning of the cruise, for no particular reason, and stepped out onto our balcony around 5am.  I could see the lights of Miami on the horizon. I got up, got dressed, and headed for the stern deck behind The Great Outdoors for our entry into the Port of Miami, in the dark.  All of the city and port lights were on, and it was beautiful.  It was a magical way to start the last day.  If you happen to be up, it's worth the early breakfast.  🙂 

 

Have LARGE, LARGE fun!

 

Edited October 5, 2019 by Becca11

[Becca11]

Oh, addendum- The Pinnacle Lounge and Sushi Bar was one of our favorite venues.  Very good sushi if you like sushi, and we thought the ala carte price was reasonable.  The rolls were generous as well.

 

If you don't like sushi, it's an attractive and elegant place to hang out for a cocktail.  

[lunyma]

2 hours ago, Becca11 said:

We were just on the Sky sailing on 9/23 through 9/28.  It's a smaller ship but recently renovated.  On our sailing it was spotless, almost smelled of fresh paint and new carpet!  The crew was super chill and very friendly and happy.  We had a great time, and  you will too.  🙂 🙂

 

1. Paper straws, yes.

2. You can take food from any of the venues to your room.  The server will even box it up for you.  We had to take dessert back to our room from Cagney's, couldn't finish it.  NOTE THIS:  you cannot bring food or drink from "outside" (port of call, embarkation) onto the ship.  They are strict about it, or they were with us on the Sky.  So if you eat a meal in port, don't count on bringing anything back onto the ship with you.  You also cannot take food from the ship off of the ship.  Ergo we ate our chocolate cake from Cagney's for breakfast on disembarkation day.  🙂 🙂  (Maybe the first time in my life I've legit had chocolate cake for breakfast.)

3. The Local- don't have a picture of the menu, but they for sure have wings, which seemed quite popular.  Didn't order them but would next time.  They have fish and chips, a very good cheeseburger, and reubens as well.  The spinach and artichoke dip is good.

4. We were in an aft balcony room for a 5 night cruise and we had neither robes nor bubbly in the room- but we didn't miss either.

5. You're gonna love The Great Outdoors, the aft deck dining area behind the Garden Buffet.  It has its own buffet and full bar.  The buffet is not as extensive as the indoor buffet at the Garden Buffet but the food is laid out nicely and the selection was more than adequate for us.

6. ROOM SERVICE WAS GREAT.  I made a classic "sea day" blunder and didn't pace myself, ergo between day drinking and sunshine and running about all day on the ship, I was in bed asleep by 8pm that night, no dinner.  I awoke at 4:30am, slammed the light on over our bed (my husband was THRILLED) and announced that I was STARVING (my husband was THRILLED.)  Cue room service breakfast, which was delivered in about 30 minutes, hot off the grill and really good.  It was worth every penny of that $7.95 service charge!

7. I awoke at about 4:30am again, on the last morning of the cruise, for no particular reason, and stepped out onto our balcony around 5am.  I could see the lights of Miami on the horizon. I got up, got dressed, and headed for the stern deck behind The Great Outdoors for our entry into the Port of Miami, in the dark.  All of the city and port lights were on, and it was beautiful.  It was a magical way to start the last day.  If you happen to be up, it's worth the early breakfast.  🙂 

 

Have LARGE, LARGE fun!

 

 

Sounds like you had a great time!!! Thanks for your input 😎

[lunyma]

2 hours ago, Becca11 said:

Oh, addendum- The Pinnacle Lounge and Sushi Bar was one of our favorite venues.  Very good sushi if you like sushi, and we thought the ala carte price was reasonable.  The rolls were generous as well.

 

If you don't like sushi, it's an attractive and elegant place to hang out for a cocktail.  

 

We do like sushi and we plan on having a light dinner there one night. I hope they have hot Sake!

[Becca11]

The Pinnacle Lounge does have sake!  We were offered sake!  Don't know if it was hot or not because we were drinking other things.  🙂 🙂

 

The Pinnacle Lounge is one of the most elegant places on the Sky.  The service is wonderful and the atmosphere is perfect.

 

I was impressed with the freshness of the ingredients and the generous size of the rolls, and also with the modest prices.  Sushi rolls in our area (upper southeast coast) are at least a third higher for a less generous serving.  

 

A couple who was in the Pinnacle Lounge the second time we visited based their  order on the prices and sizes of rolls from their home town.  They severely over-ordered and it was actually funny.  It was sort of like an overwhelming sushi Christmas gone off the rails.  They could no where finish what they ordered!  

[lunyma]

It took me a long time to get my DH to like any kind of sushi, so we don’t have it often. On our last cruise however (Carnival Breeze), we ate at the sushi bar twice for snacks and once for dinner  It was that good. Besides rolls, they had a few other appetizer type items like you’d see in most Japanese restaurants or sushi bars and it was all delicious and extremely reasonably priced. We ordered a little at a time, just in case, and they didn’t seem to mind. A lot of people didn’t find it till later in the cruise too, so we got excellent service 😉

[Becca11]

Well, if you gotta spend an afternoon in Miami, you gotta visit the Ball and Chain in Little Havana for delicious food, awesome mojitos and amazing live music!  Check the Events calendar to see who is playing on the afternoon that you'll be there.  You can also take a look at the menu.  I can tell you for a fact that the jerk roasted chicken wings are to die for, as are the quesadillas, and the tacos, and the chilled jumbo shrimp.  🙂 🙂

https://ballandchainmiami.com/

[lunyma]

6 minutes ago, Becca11 said:

Well, if you gotta spend an afternoon in Miami, you gotta visit the Ball and Chain in Little Havana for delicious food, awesome mojitos and amazing live music!  Check the Events calendar to see who is playing on the afternoon that you'll be there.  You can also take a look at the menu.  I can tell you for a fact that the jerk roasted chicken wings are to die for, as are the quesadillas, and the tacos, and the chilled jumbo shrimp.  🙂 🙂

https://ballandchainmiami.com/

 

Thanks for the recommendation Becca. My husband and I are pretty familiar with the Miami area. We’ve been there many times and both of us have family that lived there in the past. I also have a few friends who live in and around ft lauderdale. I’d rather get an earlier flight home though as I don’t want to rent a car and/or deal with our luggage all day. 

[Becca11]

^^ Understood.  Even Uber-ing or Lyft-ing all afternoon with luggage is challenging.

Huh.  I wonder if any of the resorts in the Miami area have resort day passes?  If you can't change flights?

 

[lunyma]

I have a feeling that we may just end up spending the day at the airport. There’s a lot of earlier flights though so I think there’s a good chance we may be able to hop on one of those. If not? If they let us check our luggage in early, we might head over to Bayside or see if my FLL buddy will pick us up and hang out... somewhere.  Or...  Maybe we’ll go get a couple tattoos?  We’ve both gotten a couple in that area before 😎

[lunyma]

And yet another question...

 

Do they have flavored coffee creamers at the buffet?  My husband is lost without his French Vanilla. I bought a box of the little cups that don’t need refrigeration but don’t wanna bring ‘em if I don’t need to. 

I honestly don’t feel like I’ll be cruising in 4 days. Other than a driving trip to Toronto for one of my boys’ weddings a couple years ago, it’s been about 5 1/2 years since my last real vacation, which of course, was a cruise. I’ve had some health issues that have kept me home all this time, along with other “stuff”, and I can’t say I’m not just a little nervous about this trip, but I desperately need it!  We used to cruise 2-3 times a year and although a lot of them were short cruises, this will be my 30th!!! Unfortunately, due to circumstances beyond my control, it may be my last as well so I’m hoping it all goes well. Chicago is gonna get hit with storms and a cold front on Friday, so we’re getting outta here at a good time. I just hope the storms hold off till after we take off. Wish me luck!!!

Edited October 7, 2019 by lunyma

[Becca11]

We will wish you good weather!

 

I am not a coffee drinker so I didn't explore all of the coffee options. Also when we used the buffet as a meal option,  we consistently walked straight through the larger Garden Cafe to The Great Outdoors,  which was a slightly smaller buffet.

 

I do drink hot tea so I prepared that at the coffee station every morning.  The coffee that I saw available was plain regular and decaf. The cream dispenser had regular milk and half and half. I did not see flavored creamers but I was not looking for them either. They could have been there. There was a wide variety of tea bags so it wouldn't surprise me if there were flavored creamers and I missed them.

 

I do not remember seeing any sort of coffee maker in our cabin. If it was there I missed it.

 

The Sky was super strict about food being brought on or taken off the ship. We had to throw away our boxes leftovers from dinner at Key West before we were allowed to board.  We saw people being made to throw away what appeared to be plain non-alcoholic drinks in to go cups with lids on them before they were allowed to board. One of the announcements preparing us for disembarkation reminded us that we couldn't take food off of the ship.

 

That being said, there is a full service Starbucks on board and the prices were fairly reasonable for Starbucks.  I got a large tea, Husband got a medium coffee and we shared a chocolate croissant from Starbucks on the morning we docked at Nassau.  It was around $12 for all of it. Security let me walk off of the ship that morning in Nassau with my Starbucks tea, because it was covered with a lid. ??? 

 

Anyway. If nothing else, there's a Starbucks for flavored coffees. 

 

Hope that helps!

Edited October 7, 2019 by Becca11
Spelling

[lunyma]

We have no plans to take food on or off the ship. We’re really not big coffee drinkers either. I make a pot in the morning and usually just have a cup. Hubby might have a few throughout the day. Every once in a while I do stop at Starbucks for a Frappuccino or a latte, but it’s not a necessity. I bought those little creamer cups for DH so I’m sure he’ll be happy 😊. 

We’re definitely not getting off the ship in Nassau, and probably not GSC either. Key west is still up in the air. We’ve been to both ports and although we’ve never been to GSC, it’s a lot of walking in sand which our old bodies don’t like. As I said when I started this post (I think?) this cruise is to relax and recharge and nothing more...

 

Oh!  Will the casino punch a hole in our cards and provide one of those stretchy thinks to clip on your clothes?

[Becca11]

Lunyma, someone was punching holes in the ID cards for passengers because we saw many people with their ID cards on lanyards, attached with the clip through a punched hole.  Not sure who was doing it/where they had it done, though.

 

Don't know if the casino was providing lanyards/clips or punching holes.  We only walked through the casino a few times, didn't spend any time there, didn't know to ask about lanyards or ID clips or holders there.

 

Husband found a lanyard with a decorative holder in the photography section of the ship but the ID holder was HUGE and decorative, so we passed.

 

We heard others inquiring as well, and no one seemed to know how/where to acquire lanyards once on board the ship.  

 

I ordered ID holders on lanyards from Amazon Prime for a few bucks for two, and they were delivered in two days.  At this late date maybe your best bet is a run to Walmart or Office Depot or Staples or the like.  There are a bunch of CVS stores in Key West; one of them *might* carry lanyards, I dunno.  We stopped in one CVS store to get me some hair scrunchies to tie down my mane. 🙂

[lunyma]

7 hours ago, Becca11 said:

Lunyma, someone was punching holes in the ID cards for passengers because we saw many people with their ID cards on lanyards, attached with the clip through a punched hole.  Not sure who was doing it/where they had it done, though.

 

Don't know if the casino was providing lanyards/clips or punching holes.  We only walked through the casino a few times, didn't spend any time there, didn't know to ask about lanyards or ID clips or holders there.

 

Husband found a lanyard with a decorative holder in the photography section of the ship but the ID holder was HUGE and decorative, so we passed.

 

We heard others inquiring as well, and no one seemed to know how/where to acquire lanyards once on board the ship.  

 

I ordered ID holders on lanyards from Amazon Prime for a few bucks for two, and they were delivered in two days.  At this late date maybe your best bet is a run to Walmart or Office Depot or Staples or the like.  There are a bunch of CVS stores in Key West; one of them *might* carry lanyards, I dunno.  We stopped in one CVS store to get me some hair scrunchies to tie down my mane. 🙂

Thanks. I was at Dollar Tree yesterday and they had lanyards but that’s not what I wanted. I actually have lanyards at home but they say Carnival 😁. Most casinos will give you a springy cord like thing with a clip on one end so you can keep you don’t forget to take your card out of a slot machine when you walk away. I don’t know what they’re called 🤔.  Anyway... I’m sure I have a few around the house so I’ll just bring ‘em with me if I can find them.