Waiting for Sail Away on the NA

[puppycanducruise]

Great pictures, thanks.  Hope you have a wonderful cruise.

[Sea42]

On 11/13/2021 at 7:56 PM, 510picker said:

We are waiting to sailaway with you! We were actually the first people they let on the ship! We were onboard at 11:45 AM. We have a Family Cabana in the Retreat Area. Come by and say hello if you get a chance. We have the cabana on the Starboard side, Costa del Sol. 

As is my custom, we spent sail away on our balcony with wine and cheese plate. BTW, no crackers for cheese plate but there were Parmesan  crisps which were an adequate substitute.  It was my first time with an aft balcony and leaving Fort Lauderdale was beautiful for our 9 Pm sailing.

I do believe I saw you up in the Retreat one day! You were sitting at the corner and I said hello as I was walking below on deck 10. At least it looks like you judging by your profile pic.

I hope you had a wonderful cruise!

[VMax1700]

15 minutes ago, Sea42 said:

no crackers

No, no, tell me it's not true. 😭

[Sea42]

I'm back home from a very good cruise on the NA.

Random observations:

Our cruise was at about 60% occupancy. 1100 people. No lines for anything and getting on and off the ship was a breeze. No lines at either embarkation nor disembarkation. Both took no more than 10 minutes.

On leaving the ship Saturday morning the only thing required was a facial scan. No customs, no checking passports, the booths weren't even manned. I should have bought a ton of alcohol and cigarettes as there were even no customs form😁 We were told it was the busiest day in Port Everglades post Covid. 6 ships that I could see, several of the huge ships.

There were many people, including us, who were sailing in "free" casino cabins and the casino was hopping! As I only played my $50 dollar free play and gave them $20 more, I doubt I'll be offered a balcony cabin again.

I did purchase Club Orange so I could pick an aft balcony and it was definitely worth that cost to me. I loved the aft cabin and look forward to booking one on a longer cruise. I would use it again for cabin selection. The extra dinner options were disappointing. Mom did ordered the veal chop which was offered one night and it was excellent but the other choices were uninspiring. There was no special event that had been advertised. An added extra that I liked was that we could disembark anytime we wanted and stayed on the ship until the last group was called.

More to come...

 

[Sea42]

7 minutes ago, VMax1700 said:

No, no, tell me it's not true. 😭

Alas, it is true. The struggle is real.

[510picker]

50 minutes ago, Sea42 said:

As is my custom, we spent sail away on our balcony with wine and cheese plate. BTW, no crackers for cheese plate but there were Parmesan  crisps which were an adequate substitute.  It was my first time with an aft balcony and leaving Fort Lauderdale was beautiful for our 9 Pm sailing.

I do believe I saw you up in the Retreat one day! You were sitting at the corner and I said hello as I was walking below on deck 10. At least it looks like you judging by your profile pic.

I hope you had a wonderful cruise!

Probably was me, but sitting in that corner I said “hi” to many people walking on deck 10. We loved the Family Cabana and wish I would have asked you to come up and say hello. I am in a wheelchair and the Family Cabana gives me room to move around, but we still had plenty of room for guests to visit. 

[Sea42]

A note about pre-cruise Covid test.

I ordered the Binaxnow test that are medically supervised, online test. Unfortunately, I live in a rural area with satellite internet service and I was unable to maintain sufficient video quality to complete the test. Fortunately, we had made back up appointments in Florida. Upon arrival in Fort Myers (where Mom lives) we went to a free community test site and had our negative results within an hour 👍

[zounds]

Thanks very much, Sea42 for the pics and remarks.  We board Dec. 4 and have wondered why our bding. times have gone from 2 pm to 1:40 to 1:00 for a 4 pm sail away but boarding by deck # makes sense.  We're hoping to board ASAP since our hotel check out time is 11:00.  

[Sea42]

Dinning - We had meals in the MDR, Lido, Dive In, Tamarind and room service. With so few people onboard service was efficient and the food was good to very good in each venue.

I thought the MDR dinner menus were very limited when compared to past cruises. I would not want to do B2B cruises where the menus repeat each week. I found something I liked each night we were there but a second or third week would have been a challenge. Having Club Orange did give us an extra entree to choose from each night but the only one we tried was a veal chop, which my mom said was very good. We had purchased a wine package, so when we were seated we asked for a bottle and it was delivered promptly and left at the table so beverage service was not a problem for us. The sommelier, Lucky Charm, was wonderful but sorely overworked. I can't imagine how busy she would be with a full ship.

We used the Lido mostly for lunches. The choices available were great especially for various salads and sandwiches. A couple of times we had a nice healthy salad for lunch and then rewarded ourselves by sharing a Dive In burger and fries afterward!

Tamarind was our best meal of the cruise. We had the satay sampler and lobster tempura (extra charge) for starters and barramundi and Szechuan shrimp for our entrees. All of it was delicious and we topped it off with a wonderful mango dessert. The only down side here was the diner at a nearby table lecturing the waitress about spice levels in the food. He let the waitress know that not everyone was from "their culture" and that the dishes should be offered with no spices as the mild spice level offered was just way too spicy for most people to enjoy. What a royal pain he was!

We had room service every morning for coffee, always delivered on time and hot. I enjoyed a club sandwich for lunch one day and a plate of cookies a few afternoons. And as mentioned earlier, we had a cheese and fruit plate at each sail away which went well with our white wine. We selected a couple of whites with our wine package and had them delivered to our cabin to be used for those occasions.

 

[Sea42]

Oh and one of the white wines traveled with me to the Gallery Bar to watch the Packers game😁

[510picker]

We were definitely spoiled on this cruise by only having 1103 passengers. Our service was exceptional throughout the entire cruise.

[Sea42]

One big disappointment was afternoon tea.  For a table of 4 we had 3 pieces of tea sandwiches, 3 scone type treats and 3 sweet treats. I get that tea is just a snack but it just seemed so paltry. Our table mates did ask for more but we left before it arrived.