sseknichols

It looks like they are changing the entry rules beginning Feb. 2.  If you are flying in for a cruise (we are on March 12) then it would seem like we just have to upload vaccine cards.  There are other statements for non-vaccinated, coming into port on a cruise, etc...  https://www.discoverpuertorico.com/info/travel-guidelines

We have two couples on separate reservations cruising together.  We are going to book our reservations for the specialty restaurants together.  Do we book two reservations for two people each or book one for four people and tell them we have the free dining for all?  Thanks!

Thanks everyone!!  We are just 61 days out and I am so ready to get away from cold and snow and back out to the sea again.

Great review!  We are booked on similar itinerary in March.  

This will be our first cruise with NCL and thus the Epic.  Any suggestions or pointers from the OP or anyone else?

Thank you all so much for the great information!  We also booked airfare through NCL.  I have always done my own but between Second Person Flies Free, a relatively small airport, and it being spring break season, trying to get my own was running double what NCL was giving me.  I know I can't control times and seats (at least I don't think I can on seats) but is there any kind of other information I should know? 

We are flying in the day before.  Would I assume that we will likely get in late?  Also, on our reservations packet it says that we are connecting through Chicago.  I believe I read that they don't really set that all up until about 60 days prior to the cruise.  So would that be accurate or is it more of a placeholder?

Thanks again and sorry to ask so many goofy questions - I must be more excited to get out than I'm willing to admit.  🤪

Hi everyone!

We just booked a Norwegian cruise on the Epic for March 2022  out of San Juan with some friends and it will be the first Norwegian trip for all of us.  We have only done Carnival in the past and we have always had great experiences on Carnival but were looking for something different this time around.  I was wondering what kind of advice you can give to us as to what to expect, what the differences would be, how things may look or operate differently - especially at embarkation and debarkation, and so on. 

We are in our early 50's and this will be our first cruise without at least one of our kids along so that will be new.  We generally enjoy the trivia, the shows, love the Seaside Theater (which I guess Norwegian doesn't do) and the popcorn that goes with it, and the Comedy Club.  My wife and I are not real big drinkers so the bar scenes are not for us (we will have a drink or two though), although I think I read there is a piano bar so that would be a lot of fun.  We will mess around in the casino but not a ton.  Does Epic have a Love and Marriage type of show where they pick couples from newlywed to married 25+?  Those shows on Carnival are must see!  Oh yeah, and the 24 hour pizza and ice cream.  Gotta love that too!

With the curved arrangement of the rooms on the Epic, it looks like the beds run small.  I'm 6'6" so I'm used to my feet dangling over the edge a bit but I am a little concerned.  We have a balcony cabin on deck 11 if that makes any difference.

One thing we don't like on Carnival is the way the bombard you with photo-ops all the time.  Does that happen with NCL?

This will also be the first time we have sailed from San Juan, or a "foreign" port for that matter.  We sail on a Sunday, but are coming from the upper midwest so we are flying into San Juan on Saturday just in case we would have weather issues.  If anyone has any advice about the port, the airport, or a place to stay, that would be fantastic.

Thanks in advance for anything you can throw our direction.

Or maybe just dumb, but it can't be too dumb if it's kind of important to us, right??  🤷‍♂️

Do Mexican Riviera cruises sail far enough out to sea so that you can't see the shoreline the whole time?  When we cruise, we get the balcony rooms and my wife and I enjoy just letting the sea roll by.  Say it's the call of the sea or whatever, but I am so relaxed in those moments.  Seeing the shoreline for half the trip would just kind of blow it. 

We're looking at a possible spring cruise and I was thinking about a non Caribbean cruise for the first time so I am curious...TIA

It's been a couple of years ago but we stayed at the Springhill Suites Fort Lauderdale Airport and used QLS for transportation.  Had a very good experience for both. 

On 2/10/2019 at 11:39 AM, ober134 said:

We have used SAS transport shuttle multiple times from pom to FLL. Price per head was $15 last time. Must book ahead...service has always been excellent. 

We have also used SAS - great service!

We stayed at the Homewood Suites - Miami Airport West last summer and really liked the hotel.  It had a free airport shuttle.  We used QLS for transportation to/from the port.   

I have used QLS twice for private van service and they have been great.

We are booking 4 rooms total and the three teens all be in one of the rooms, all the rest would be  two person adult rooms.  I am having a hard time finding rooms in the area of rooms where we want to be that has a 3 person room within the three room limit of a 2 person room.  The closest I have found is 5 rooms away.  Basically, I was trying to do some leg work on room locations before I book with my PVP, but I didn't know how the age limit would be interpreted if there is an 18 year old in the room.

We are setting up a multi-family cruise and one room would have an 18 year old and two 17 year olds.  Does anyone know if the age policy of having to have them within 3 rooms of the adults would apply since one of them would be 18? Or does the fact that there would be 17 year olds in the room make it subject to the policy?

We have a Glory cruise booked but haven't booked transfers yet.

What is QLS?

It's Quality Limousine Service. I've used them twice for cruises in Miami and Ft. Lauderdale, once as a multi-group shuttle and the other as a private van service. They have always been great for us.

https://www.qualitylimoservice.com/

It was the sailing before the rescue.

I honestly don't remember the comedians' names but it was the PG shows. The first was an African American comedian and he was OK, but nothing real funny. They other was older and Caucasian. He came on board mid cruise I believe and it wasn't good at all. He said at the end he was famous for his sound effects if that helps. It was bad enough that he was trying to make jokes about nobody laughing. :o

They are good! But I'm pretty sure you weren't eating there at 11:00 since they don't open until 12:00PM. On embarkation day they open at 11:30AM. Have they recently changed the hours?

I thought it was 11 but I'll admit to being on vacation time so everything's got some wiggle room to it! :D

I've been on Glory 10 times with the last being in April and with the exception of pizza late at night and breakfast in the morning at the buffet, I haven't had the same experience. The pictures that OP posted were after muster and before dinner. Notice the Blue Iguana was closed at the time.

 

Guy's Burgers also has 2 lines. I just sat there and laughed that so many people would stand on one side and not even notice the other one. They really crank those things out. Even if there were say 10 people in front of you, the line goes really fast. I can't say the same about the condiments section. Seems like there are 2 speeds there - slow and stop.

That's funny - because we had the total opposite experience. We would wait in line at Guy's and then there was never a back-up at the condiments. Probably because people were getting through the lines so slowly. And I would totally agree about the two lines. For whatever reason, the line that was on the pool side was always faster (and therefore shorter) than the other side by the ice cream machines.

For our cruise, I think the biggest hang-up was they kept running out of things, no matter the time of day. We ate there as early as 11 and as late as 3:30. They would be out of patties, or fries, or have to go get more buns. It always seemed like there was something slowing them down. It was really more of an organizational thing I think. But of course, we kept going back because they are AMAZING!!

Just got off of the Glory yesterday and had some thoughts to share for those looking at the Glory or those who are just curious. :cool: A little about us, we are two families travelling from the Midwest. My family has cruised multiple times and the other family had never cruised before. Both sets of parents are floating on either side of 50 and between us we have three high-school aged girls. The girls shared a room and the adults had their own rooms. We flew in the night before and were very glad we did because of flight issues. We had FTTF (I know that is a hot topic, but for the record, we LOVE FTTF).

1. Getting to the ship - We stayed at the Homewood Suites - airport. It was a mess getting there as we had flight issues so we didn't get to the hotel until about 1am. Not a deal breaker except none of us had eaten since an early lunch and of course, everything is closed. Fortunately we had microwaves in our rooms and they sold microwavable meals. I was eating a spaghetti tv dinner (do they still call them that?) at about 1:30am - it was like college all over again. We used QLS to and from the cruise port and they were prompt and very nice to work with. FTTF got us around the lines and on the ship very quickly.

2. Room - We were in the aft portion of deck 8 with two balcony rooms and an interior that were more or less under the Seafood Shack. We were worried about noise from the traffic to and from ice cream, pizza, etc... but really there was not much noise at all. Room was clean and the steward was awesome! He even joined in on teasing the girls occasionally which is nice to see them relatable like that.

3. Ship - Very nice and clean all over. Staff was always friendly and we never had any issues. We had a few guest services questions and we liked being able to get them answered quickly by using FTTF to get ahead of the lines.

4. Entertainment - The production shows were all fantastic! We ended up seeing all but one of them. The Fun Staff as a whole did a great job. A special thanks to Michele. She recognized us after a couple of Bingo and trivia things and then was sure to talk and wave to us throughout the cruise. She really left an impression on our first time cruisers.

We also did some casino things and that was fun, except the losing part....:rolleyes: The comedians left a LOT to be desired. And of course, with three teenage girls we had to see a lot more karaoke than I ever care to see again. The Piano bar singer was good but he sang every song at the same pace so rock songs, ballads, 70s classics all sounded the same.

We had an absolute blast trying to do the different trivia, game shows (Scattergories, Clue), and the like. My only complaint there is that we worked the entire cruise to figure out 'whodunnit' for Clue - we were there for the clue sessions, we figured out the puzzles and so on. Come to find out the winner got a CLUE board game and travel size game. C'mon - get a better prize than that. The winner drawn turned out to be a kid that looked to be about 10 so he seemed happy at least.

We always enjoy the Dive-In Movies but they need to get the popcorn situation figured out. It's never been a fast process on any of our other cruises but this one was painfully slow. I think the kettle heater was about shot...

5. Food - Well....this was the one area that needed work. the flavor was good and the food was fresh, but getting to it was a trial of patience. There were constant lines pretty much all the time. We didn't always eat at the "rush hour" times but there was a line anyway. For example, on one of our sea days a person in our group went to get a sandwich from the deli and another went to Guys. It was around 3:30 in the afternoon. Guys took 7 minutes and the deli 13 (yes we started timing things).

The worst was when they shut everything down after 9:00. On previous cruises there was always something called "Late-night eats" or something along those lines and it was hamburgers, hot dogs, fries,and so on. It went like 10p-1a. The Glory didn't have anything like that so after 9 it was pizza, ice cream, OR the room service that you now get charged for. Hmmmm... But anyway, there was only one time that the pizza line was shorter than 16 minutes. The latest we went was around 12:30 so I'm sure the lines died down eventually....

The exception was the MDR. Our server, Armon, stole the show and the girls wanted to go back each night to see him rather than eat the food (but the food was all very, very good too). He was great and the girls all loved the attention. LOL

6. Drinks - we didn't do a lot of drink service, but the times that we did were all fast and efficient.

7. Ports - We did the Eastern Caribbean cruise and booked all excursions through Carnival. Grand Turk (3.5/5) - we did the drive your own Hummer tour. The Hummers were fun to drive and we had a good time but the sightseeing was minimal and only took us through the more run down sections of the island. I wish we could have seen more beauty. The girls enjoyed the wild donkeys everywhere though. San Juan (4/5) - we didn't book an excursion here. Instead, we just wandered around Old San Juan looking into shops and such. St. Thomas (5/5) - we did the parasailing. LOVED IT! The crew that we were with made everyone feel comfortable and they did a great job of giving you time to enjoy the view. Highly recommend it. Amber Cove (4/5) - we did the VIP Beach Day and it was nice. It wasn't the white sandy beach we were hoping for but they had beds, hammocks, etc... and they were very comfortable. Staff was nice and it was relaxing, except for major sunburn that I got! LOL

That's about all I can think of right now. It was a great cruise overall and it was the ship's staff that made it that way. Our new cruisers were already talking about another one and that's always a sign of how good they felt about their experience. If there are any questions about what I wrote or things I may have forgotten, please feel free to ask!

That is exactly what happened and I brought it up before. The OP even confirmed as far as I can remember without going back through as this was a while ago. These pictures aren’t an accurate representation of food options at embarkation.

I would totally disagree. I just got off of the Glory yesterday and those lines were indicative of not just embarkation, but every meal we went to that was not in the MDR. Once in a while we caught a good time at the buffet, Guys, etc... but it got so silly that we started timing the lines just to see how long it would take. The lone exception was the BBQ which usually had no line but i's kinda hidden so I'm not sure how many people really knew it was there.

The worst was after 9 when everything shuts down but pizza and ice cream. We had one wait that was shorter than 14 minutes for pizza out of a group of seven on a seven night cruise (the latest anyone went was 12:30ish so I'm sure at 3am they are shorter). The other cruises I had been on all had burgers, hot dogs, fries, etc... from something like 10p-1a but the Glory did not. I'm not sure if that is a company-wide change or just a Glory policy. Food service was really the only sore point in an otherwise fabulous cruise.

98!!

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We've always found it to be a handy service to use and never had a problem.

This may be a dumb question, but.... Is Uber back up and going in Houston after Harvey? We (2 people) need transportation from Hobby to Port of Galveston this Saturday. It looks like it's estimated at about $50. Does that sound about right?

My PVP told me they are using a new system and there have indeed been glitches. I also purchased FTTF but my credit card was charged twice for each of our 3 rooms. It took several emails/calls before they would even believe me even though I sent screen shots of my credit card statement.

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Thanks! I switched to Firefox and it worked just fine. It's weird - I used Chrome last week for the same thing and Chrome worked, but then this time, it didn't. Gotta love technology.... :rolleyes:

I've been trying to log in and make payments for a couple of days and have had several different issues ranging from failure to accept gift cards to failing to load the site at all. Is anyone else having problems or is it me? (yn)