wilmingtech

Pro tip - One thing I forgot to mention is that on day one, on your in stateroom TV, you can make reservations for your tender on day 7. This was the only place that I found you could do this. You can log into your TV when you get on board and get "virtual" tickets assigned to your room key for tender boarding on day 7. We got our tender tickets by 4:30 or so and were on tender #5. In the end they canceled the stop in Great Stirrup Cay but figured I would share with you all. Also a couple noises from the room I forgot to mention - We like the balcony alot. Sometimes if we wake in the middle of the night we will just go out and sit on the balcony for an hour or two to look at the stars and see the moon reflect on the ocean. It's really amazing the size of the oceans and sitting there to take it all in is a rejuvenating experience for us. On this trip specifically we had some wind and waves throughout. Because of this we noticed that sometimes the balcony door would not completely seal and you could hear a little wind whistle through the seal, which for those that were sleeping was awakeningly annoying. So we found that moving the handle from closed to open and then not quite closing it all the way would seal the door without the whistle. Just a trick we found worked well and might work for you if you happen to have a whistling door seal on your balcony. The second noise in the room came during some of the larger waves we had on our return towards Cape Canaveral. The ship had turned from a western course with the wind and waves behind us, to a NW course heading toward Cape Canaveral. This caused the ship to start rocking in more of a side to side motion. At this turn came a noise that made loud clicking noises. It was loud enough to wake me from a deep sleep at 1am. I tried to ignore it but the clicking sounded like the noise a large piece of plastic or carbon fiber might make as you bend it, right before it snaps. After lying there for about 20 minutes I got up and started snooping around the room to see if I could find what was making the noise. I quickly narrowed it down to the parts and pieces that made up the valance around the balcony door. Pressing and pushing on each panel to see if it would create the noise or stop the noise from happening I noticed that the end of the rail that held the curtains up had a plastic cap. This plastic cap was tightly fitted up against the end of the valance that covered the slider door. The clicking noise was coming from the plastic piece building pressure against the valance and then clicking when the ship moved enough for the plastic piece to slide against the valance. This plastic cap was not screwed into the valance. With a little bit of work, I was able to wedge a piece of paper between the plastic cap and the valance and the noise stopped and we were all able to return to a peaceful night sleep. Other than those two noises the cabin was very quiet and cozy.

Enough with the head shaking 😁 Honestly I don't want this to turn into a spiteful tipping thread. We all have our own beliefs and hindsight I am truly sorry that I had even mentioned any amount of money because it always seems to stir the pot and rarely does anything good come from it. Lets see if I can make it to the end of this review without mentioning anything more concerning how much or how little myself or others should tip. Thank You All.

Agreed on the tips. I usually would have left 10 for 5 bags if we were dropping them off, more if they came to get them. But no reward for porters with poor behavior. Agreed on going to the cabin but the main door was open and guests were coming in and out of it. Our cabin door was closed. Honestly if there was an announcement about cabins being ready after we boarded we never heard it. I just noticed when we opened our cabin door the room wasn't quite finished which was why I asked our steward about leaving our bags. He had no problem with it, was out standing and we left him a nice tip at the end of the week. But you are correct, I would never go to my room had the main door been closed.

thanks for posting this, I must have got some older information or confused with another cruiseline. I'd love to know if I was truly lucky or if anyone without FAS has ever been charged the 15$ for the wine.

You are assuming a bit here. 1st of all, I have no problem tipping someone for services rendered. I started out in the service industry as a dishwasher and worked my way all the way through each position in the restaurant industry up to being a bartender through college. So I am very familiar with working for $2.13 an hour and having to make ends meet through earning tips. I don't make it an algorithmic calculation, I usually tip 1-2$ per bag. If a porter met me in the parking lot and loaded the bags at my car and walked us over to the port I would certainly tip more. No reason to breakout the calculator to figure that one out. What I had an issue with (and the point I was trying to make) is that when someone comes out and badgers me for a tip before they have even offered a service to me, it's really not earning any brownie points. If he took our bags first and said "don't worry about these, I will gladly take them and you are certainly welcome to tip if you want" it would have been a different game completely. If you tipped a porter with this behavior of badgery it would only reinforce the poor behavior and there would be more of it. It's basic psychology, reward good behavior. As for you "shaking your head" and coming out and telling me I'm incapable of being generous to a guy who comes across as shady and is being disingenuous? Web boards are meant to share information and experiences not persecute others for sharing theirs. In my years of experience the worst tippers were always the ones who would brag about how much they would leave on the table or publicly declare how much they would tip you. The ones who would tip best were the ones you would least expect a tip from. But I am not here to judge. I'll leave that up to the critics.

The Stateroom Experience - Our Stateroom was a standard BC Balcony Room with a pullman bed over the couch. (The basic categorization of Balconies is BC, BB, BA with BA being the best) It was up on the starboard/forward side of the ship on the 10th floor. Great Balcony View. I'll skip pics and videos of the room as it's like every other BC room out there in web land. The main things I will point out are - Power - 3 Edison Outlets (US) and 1 UK outlet on the countertop. Bring an extension cord if you need to plug anything other than a USB cord beside the bed (cpap, laptop, ect) The USB outlet on my side of the bed was great, it was not super fast charging but would charge the phone to 100% within 3-4 hours. My Wife's USB charger was wonky and would go on and off if you wiggled it. Being over 10 years old, I would assume this is the same for any other bedside USB port on the ship. Be prepared that the USB ports may be fidgety. Pro Tip - An extension cord to get power bedside if needed is a nice to have. Bathroom - Plenty big for all of us. A club balcony walk in shower would have been a nice upgrade but for me as a man if the water is hot and the shower drain works good I am happy. My wife and daughter said the bathroom size was fine and an extra sink would have been nice when they were getting ready each evening for dinner but it wasn't a deal breaker. Loved the bathroom layout. It worked well and they do have a UK plug for the 3 prong shavers that are internationally known. Balcony - Our balcony was great. It was toward the front of the ship, in front of where the lifeboats start. One thing I noticed when in port is that all of the lower midship and midship balconies have lifeboats in their view of the pier. So when we were in port at the DR there was no view of people walking (Or pier runners running) back toward the ship. So unlike other ships we have been on where everyone on the balconies are cheering as people come down the pier, this was not the case on the Escape. St. Thomas was an exception as the Escape is docked 90 degrees to where people walk back from the port. The other great thing about the forward balcony location is that it was far enough forward to be protected from the ocean spray that would come up off the bow and also the rain that would be blown back by the wind. I noticed that many of the balconies behind us were wet and covered with ocean spray especially the forward facing angled balconies. Those were getting doused. Beds - The room itself was finely kept and the beds including the couch and the pullman were all comfortable. I think the couch had a little more room and was more comfortable than one of the two single beds that were pushed together to make up the "queen" bed that my wife and I shared. The beds had "skinny" night stands that fit snugly under the headboard on each side of the bed. This allowed my wife to stick some extra shoes and other stuff on her side, mine nicely fit my cpap mask, book, extension cord, flip flops. It was perfect for what we needed. Under the beds we were able to slide all 4 of our suitcases. The beds were simple metal frames that were tall enough to allow an overstuffed suitcase unzipped to slide underneath. There was also enough room under the shelf/desk for the backpacks. We pulled the small ottoman under the shelf out and used it as a 3rd chair on the balcony and the remainder of the backpacks and shoes fit under the counter. Our Room Steward "Jay" (Joren Estamo) - He was awesome. On the 10th floor the room steward starts at the aft section of rooms they are assigned and works forward. This got him to our room around 1-1:30pm every day which worked perfect for us. There is only one room cleaning per day, no turndown service. At the end of day one the girls said that the toilet had a urine smell coming from it and we let our steward know. He took care of it right away, scrubbing and cleaning all around the toilet and the drain as well. We left him a cash tip on day 7 and he was very grateful and we walked into a room full of towel animals that night. As an Aside - we had a laugh walking out of our room and down the corridor to the lobby one morning as one of Jay's counterparts was in the hall and we said hello to him and he said the standard "Good morning, have a nice day" and then not three steps later a gentleman came out of the room and said hello to him and the room steward immediately perked up and his voice got louder and he said "Oh Goood Morning Mr. So and So!! So nice to see you this morning! Did you have a good time yesterday? Are you planning to leave the ship today?" And I told my son that is the service you get when you tip on the first day instead of the last. And we both laughed about it. Pro tip - One thing we brought this time with us was magnetic clips instead of hooks. At the dollar store we couldn't find magnetic hooks so we got magnetic clips instead. These worked much better than hooks as with two clips we were able to hang stuff including damp shirts and bathing suits on the wall as opposed to hanging on a hook as well as clipping up notes and the daily activity on the wall as well. Definitely got more miles out of the clips than hooks and will use them again. Next installment - Our Dining Experience

After unpacking and quickly figuring out the ship, I herded my wife and daughter up to the Forward deck on 18 for sail away. We are really not into the loud techno party music and crowds that are all packed onto the Lido/Pool deck for the sail away, rather we love the views of the port and surrounding area as we pull out into the ocean and watch the sunset as the land fades away behind us. Space X as we head out of Port Canaveral All the ships heading to sea Jetty Beach to the right, Playa Linda to the left As the sun slowly fades.... Next Episode - Our State Room

Thanks @TenForward I work in production for corporate events so the organization/planning is high on my list. I think this was the least planning I have done for a cruise out of all that I have been on but still had a spreadsheet and wifey call me "Cruise Director Keith" (Keith is not my real name, she calls me that because we jokingly and lovingly refer to her as "Cruise Queen Karen")

When you get on the ship there are green directional signs as to where the muster/assembly stations are. There should also be a sign explaining the location and how to get there on the back of your cabin door. They are not hard to find and you only need to know where your assembly station is, not all of the muster stations. They are assigned by your stateroom and cannot be changed. It's not a bad idea to spend 10 or 15 minutes getting to know where the muster station is once you get onboard and familiarizing yourself with that route. As far as I know there are no premade "maps" as to how to find your muster/assembly station.

Vacation Day, as it is known by the crew, is the last day for all passengers disembarking and the 1st day for all passengers embarking and it is the hardest day on the ship for all crew. They entire crew starts early in the AM and goes past their normal shift hours to get all things turned, cleaned, unloaded, loaded up again and back into place for the start of another 7 day adventure on the water. One thing we noticed on this trip that was different from the last 2 NCL Haven trips we did was the number of completely inebriated passengers down in the steerage area of the ship on Vacation Day. We were quite in awe, not that there were people that were drunk but at the high number of people we saw unable to figure out how to get on the elevator, lost on the staircase trying to find the buffet, struggling to get out a full sentence as we said hello when walking past. It was kind of funny, kind of sad but more amazing than anything else. From our previous cruises we learned that the best thing to do on day one is to skip the buffet and the pool area immediately after boarding. So after we dropped our bags we headed to Taste & Savor for a relaxing lunch and to just sit for a few minutes after the mad rush to get on the ship. We walked through the 8th and the 7th floor to get a glimpse of the ship as this was our first time on the Escape. The 8th floor had all of the specialty dining restaurants and The Waterfront which we were familiar with from being on the Norwegian Joy. It was also home to Tobacco Road and Syd Norman's Pour House. O'Sheehans was completely packed with standing room only and everyone there had a drink or two sitting in front of them. The casino made up most of the other half of the 7th floor with the theater at one end and the main dining room at the other. When we got to the main dining room, I asked the two people standing outside if Savor and Taste were open. They told us no and that the only places open for lunch were O'Sheehans and The Garden Cafe Buffet. So we started to head back upstairs and I had a gut feeling they were incorrect. So I told the family to wait a minute while I went downstairs to the 6th floor to check and sure enough, Taste and Savor were both open for lunch. Lunch was fantastic. We sat at taste and had a window view of the other 3 ships sitting in the Port with us. We talked about all the things we were looking forward to for the week. As the "Family Cruise Director" I went over our reservations that we had for the week and the excursions we had at each port we were planning on going to. We also took the time to use our last few precious hours of cellular to share our pics and brag with family and friends that we would be unavailable for the next few days while we exited the country to head to warmer and sunnier places. Pro Tip - When you first get on the ship, make the reservations that you have been unable to at this time. You can do this by heading to any restaurant, going to the service desk for restaurant reservations, or you can see the available reservations and make them through the NCL app. The NCL app is not user friendly but I was able to make all of my reservations from the app while sitting at lunch. I did have to turn on airplane mode, turn on wifi, connect to the Ship Wifi without logging in to use the app but it worked. We relaxed for about about 90 minutes while we finished up and then headed up to our stateroom to see if any of our bags made it so we could unpack and setup, spend some initial moments on our balcony, spy on some cruisers on the other ships with the binoculars that I brought (Pro Tip - Bring Binoculars on a cruise🙂 ) Amazingly the 3 dollar tip paid off and all the bags showed up. Some of them later than others but all arrived at our stateroom before our MDR reservations at 5:45. I'll post some of the pics from our meals but this review won't focus primarily on food so the food pics will be limited. Overall NCL has pretty good food for a cruise ship. Our Haven food was always really good and service up there was amazing. Food down in the lower class part of the ship was also pretty good and service was great as well. As with all cruise food, it's more like a catered meal, something you would be served at prom or a wedding. It's rare to find a dish on a ship made to order from scratch unless it's designed to be that way such as eggs cooked to order on the buffet or a fresh order of guacamole in a specialty Mexican restaurant (Not on the Escape 😞 ) I'll get into the food a little more on another episode but for now, enjoy some pictures from Vacation Day! Three Lovely Ladies - Single Porkchop Of Love - It was delicious The Sweet Corn Hush Puppies were the first thing to hit the table and were gone faster than I could pull my camera out to take a picture of them - In the next Episode - Sail Away!

Avis dropped us off on the ship side of the escalators where the porters were collecting the luggage. I usually tip the porters a dollar or two a bag if they are helpful in getting the bags from us and over to the ship. But this was my weirdest interaction with the porters I had ever had. The Avis driver pulled all the bags and lined them up on the curb next to the large racks that the Porters put the bags onto to get loaded on the ship. So the porters only had to check that the bags were properly tagged and put them on the rack. I couldn't tell if the porter was trying to be funny or pressure us into tipping him but he kept trying to tell sideloaded one liners about how "We are not here to look pretty", "We take donations from all kinds" and comments like that. He came up to us and asked us which bags were ours and kept on the one liners about tipping. It was annoying and seeing as they had to move the bags about ten feet from where they were dropped, instead of asking him to break a twenty, I just gave him the 3 one dollar bills in my pocket. And then he slowly counts the one dollar bills while shaking his head in disgust and looking at me like... thats all you got? After that interaction I really wondered if my bags were going to make it the 10 feet onto the luggage trolly. We then proceeded to walk all the way around to the outside front of the terminal where the end of the line was to get on the escalators. This line would take us up into the security/emigration area and over to the check in desks to get onto the ship. The wait in line to get up to security was not more then 10 minutes and then another 10 minutes to get through security. There were alot of people but things moved quickly and the security team was efficient in getting us through onto the checkin desks so we could get onto the ship and out of the country. Pro Cruise Tip - Pre-Cruise we planned on taking 2 bottles of wine onto the ship. The "official" NCL position on bringing wine on the ship is that you can bring up to two bottles for free per cabin if you have the unlimited drink package. Per NCL, you should be carrying the wine in your carry on luggage and not have it packed in your suitcases. I am not sure if you are supposed to "declare" that you have two bottles of wine or if the security team is supposed to pull you aside when they see that you have it, but at no time did anyone ask, look in our bags or even seem to care that we had 2 bottles of wine with us in our luggage. As mentioned in an earlier post, we do not have the drink package and I was ready to pay15$ per bottle as we board the ship. Wifey thought that the 15$ fee was unnecessary as we would be opening the bottle in our room and would not require the "service" typically provided for a corkage fee. Either way no one cared and if she had packed 2 bottles of wine in her carry on as well we would have had 4 bottles of wine to enjoy for this trip. Check in was packed. It seems that on this sailing getting there late was a not a time saving decision. If you were looking for the Latitudes express line or Haven check-in area, you really had to weave through the people to find the signs that declared those areas. They were there if you were looking for them but it seemed that so many people just got into whichever line they thought was the correct line. The Haven area was over to the left and couldn't be seen unless you tried to walk past the lines, knowing where to go or until you waited in a line for a few minutes until you finally saw the Haven check in area to the left. When we did see the sign we all sighed having all known what we were missing after our last 2 cruises with NCL. The Latitudes line had just as many people in it as any other and I wondered if people just got into line there regardless of their status. The lines were so long they weaved through and around all the chairs that were setup in the waiting area. Lines moved quick and check in was uneventful. Our NCL representative that checked us in was patient and we laughed about a few things as we all tried to get our pictures taken. We did upload all of our pictures beforehand but still needed to retake pictures for our boarding/room keycards. Once we got past the check in area we excitedly boarded the ship. This was our first cruise since 2019 and we were all excited to be on a ship again. We had checked 5 bags and each of us had a carryon. As we boarded the ship, right at the entrance after getting off the gangway outside on the 7th deck there seemed to be a slow down. As experienced cruisers we new that we had already been "dinged" into the ship and did not have to scan our cards again but the lines of people in front of us all seemed to be stopping to pull out their cards to hand them to the crew in front of us. We stepped to the left of the people that were waiting in that line and walked past them on the right and onto the ship. As we rounded the corner there was another crowd of people. Most of this crowd was backed up from the elevators that everyone seemed to be stopping at right after we boarded but there were also a half dozen crew members just past the entrance doors asking to see everyone's keycards. It was loud and most seemed a bit confused as was I. When I got up to one of the crew members he asked to see my card and then told me "Go to B1, go to B1" and immediately I understood what was happening. In order to expedite checking into the muster station, the crew was trying to communicate to the passengers boarding that they should immediately report to their muster stations to check in and get scanned. For new passengers or even passengers new to NCL this may have been confusing. People were trying to ask the crew what they meant and their was no explanation as to where the muster stations were or how to find them. All the people in this cramped area talking at once. When I figured out what he was telling me, I told him no problem and we took a left and went up the stairs to the 10th floor where our stateroom would be. As we were climbing the stairs that same crewmember was hollering to me to go to B1. We ignored this and the crowds as the elevator lobby was packed and continued to head up to level 10. Once we got up to level 10 away from the crazy, we put down our bags to review our quick board plans before we proceeded. We all agreed that we should wrap up our muster check in before we did anything else. So two of us stayed with the bags while the other 2 went back down to the 7th floor to check in with our Muster Crew Leader down in O'Sheehans. Then we repeated with the other 2 and muster check in was done. In all honesty this is a really poor way to handle the muster. Communication throughout many things from the ship to the passengers was poorly handled by NCL. We saw this throughout our cruise and at one point it was kind of a bummer because it affected all the passengers. If there ever was a real emergency within a few hours of boarding, I think it would create a really dangerous situation especially those with an open bar drink package getting the biggest bang for their buck. All grouped together again on the 10th floor, Dad went off a did a little reconnaissance to find our room and see if it was ready. Typical for sailings we have been on, the guest rooms are behind locked doors or cordoned off areas where guests are unable to go until the rooms are ready. But I noticed the door to the guest rooms on the 10th floor starboard side was not locked, rather opened and guests were coming in and out of it. So I quickly found our room and while it was mostly ready, the couch had not yet been made up and there was one or two other things it needed. But our room steward happened to be just outside in the hallway and I asked him if it would be okay to drop our bags on the balcony so they would be out of the way while he made up the room. He was absolutely okay with this so I returned to the family to grab bags and we all dumped them on the balcony and headed off to enjoy.... what is affectionately known by the Crew on all ships as "Vacation Day" Up next ... "Vacation Day!"

Wifey's a frugal one. It's not that she is cheap, rather she want's the best thing she can get for her dollar. Nothing bothers her more than spending a few extra dollars on a sub par product when she knows that she can get a better product for less somewhere else. So she is really wrestling with her options for sun screen at Buc ee's because it's not the product she wants and it's at a touristy price. I point out that there is a CVS down the road and I tell her if we go, we have to make it quick. So off we go to CVS. Everyone has to go into the store again. Wifey disappears, I buy some sunglasses after trying on a half dozen pairs as we were blinded driving south to Buc ee's and if I just sat in the car waiting I would stress myself out. After I buy the sunglasses I sit in the car....waiting. I'm sending her texts and wherever we are parked the cell tower cannot reach. Finally Wifey comes out and I can tell by the look on her face that its better to not ask her what happened in the store. We go to back out and realize my son is still in the store, starting to feel a little but like a circus at this point. Finally we are all on our way to the port. Dad's driving at 90mph when he can and it's not taking any minutes off of our arrival time in google. We stop one more quick stop 5 minutes out to top off the gas tank in the rental car and a potty break after I am extremely clear that there is nothing in this convivence store worth buying and will leave them here if I finish fueling before they all get back. I only need a gallon or two to top off and I get the slowest gas pump this side of the Mississippi. Everyone makes it back to the car on time. Avis seems packed full of people and cars. We wait in the line of 3 cars to get into the parking lot. It's a few minutes past high noon and we pull up the rental car and I will spare you all the details here because there really are not any, this Avis rental car location in Cape Canaveral has it dialed in. Within 15 minutes we had dropped off the rental car, got our receipt and they had us loaded into the van and on our way to the terminal. Service was fantastic, Doug, Jeremy and our 7'6" tall Avis driver delivered superb customer service. Some Pro Tips here for renting a car and dropping it off at the port - Initially we had planned to drop off Wifey and the kids at the port while I took care of the car rental. Being later than planned, we made a last minute audible for all of us to go to the Avis rental instead as it was getting late and if anything crazy happened we would do crazy together. This was the right decision. The Avis bus does not have to wait in traffic and can zoom in through the bus lane and drop you right off at the curb by the escalators and porters. There were two men in our Avis van ride who dropped off their families and they said it was a 45 minute wait in traffic to drop off the family and then a stressful drive over to Avis to wait for the Avis van and they both said hindsight it would have been faster to just get everyone to Avis to get on the bus. There may not be all of this traffic at all times but on our sailing I think there were very few early arrivals so the lines were long later in the morning into the afternoon. Next episode... getting on the Ship!

Curious to know what the seas are like as you guys departed Port Canaveral.

We chose this specific sailing for a few reasons. 1. On our last Haven sailing we received over $1000 of OBC. Being in the Haven with free drinks a dining package and all the Haven benefits we really didn't have much left to spend the OBC on. So we bought cruise certificates with it. Then 3 months later everything shutdown. So we wanted to get rid of the cruise certs and through our TA and the sales that NCL was having we were able to cash in some of the certs on this cruise. 2. Every year between Thanksgiving and Christmas there is this one week when most people are caught up in school, work and holidays and most don't have time or money for another trip between the holidays and it makes this week one of the less crowded weeks and typically its a less expensive week to travel. 3. We booked on October 31st and between NCL and our TA were able to get $250 of OBC for this cruise. This would pay for the additional drinks should we choose to have them as well as taking our kids out to a specialty restaurant one night as only the 1st two people on the reservation get the dining package. 4. We haven't taken a cruise since December 2019 and it was time for a vacation Our Choices were the Escape out of Orlando on a Saturday or the Encore out of Miami on a Sunday. My wife really wasn't a fan of driving down to Miami (We have family and friends in the Orlando area and the 4 hour drive down and back would be more of a time suck all things being equal) So we ended up with the Escape. Our plan was to fly into Orlando on Thursday the 7th, rent a car, stop by to see my wife's dad and stepmom and then drive to the Palm Coast to stay with my sister and her husband. A direct flight from Seatac to MCO and we quickly found ourselves at the Avis rental desk. I have to say that when we first got to the Avis desk the line was pretty long. Now after having rented the car I can understand why. Avis here in Orlando was probably the best car rental experience I have had in the past couple years. I'm usually renting a car 4-5 times a year for work and travel and often use Turo because it's sometimes easier and you know what car you are getting but I will say that Avis did great. More in a minute.... My brother in law had cooked dinner for us and we had a great time making moscow mules and relaxing for a few hours before bed. The next morning we went out and hiked through the Florida Wetlands along the Princess Place Preserve. It was a beautiful cool morning and nature was out and about. Dolphins and Herons gave us a show and after we got a few miles in the topic of lunch quickly came about. My sister suggested that we headed over to the beach to grab some delicious food at Ragga Surf Cafe, a neat little converted bus kitchen over in Marineland that we had nothing but praise for. if you happen up this way, try it out. It's definitely worth the adventure. While it was less than half a mile from where we were hiking, that half mile was across the wetlands and we had not a boat to take us. So we jumped in the car and drove the 45 minutes out to marineland. For dinner we took my sister out for her birthday. I have a few friend's that have lived and still live in the St. Augustine area. Before our travels I made a few calls and each of my friends all unanimously agreed that Lotus was the must try place there. So that is where we ended up for dinner. The food was fantastic and Lotus did a really good job. The only thing I think we all struggled with was that while the main course was great, it seemed like a lot of money to pay for ramen noodles as we have often had great ramen in places like San Francisco and Vancouver for half the price of Lotus. But the quality and flavors of the ramen was right up there with the best of them. Appetizers were amazing. If you do decide to go, make reservations a few days out as we made reservations on the Tuesday before the Friday meal and there were not may options left. The next morning we packed up and headed to Port Canaveral. I will just say here that I am the planner in the bunch. No one else in my family has the ability to see time and space. By trade I work in Production for large events and everything I do for work has a very specific schedule. Logistics, equipment, installation, labor calls, schedules and timing for it all. It's something I am very good at and love to do. My family not so much. They cannot see the future. When I say we need to leave by a certain time, I take into account filling up the car with gas, getting coffee, stopping at a bathroom to deposit said coffee, dropping off the rental car, time to get transportation to the port, buffering time for all of this and having a backup plan. The argument from my family is that the port is only an hour away (It's closer to 90 minutes), Why do we have to leave 3 hours early ? My plan was to leave at 9:00am stop for fuel, coffee and bathroom all at the same location and head on to Avis to drop the car. Be at Avis by 11:00am, 11:30 at the latest and then get transport over to the port and be there no later than 12:30pm. My wife and daughters plan was quite different. My Brother in law offered to make some Brazilian cheese bread before we left and my kids and wife were absolutely going to say yes to that (It was hard for me to say no). I found out all this was happening about 15 minutes before we were supposed to leave as I was after the kids and my wife to put their bags together to load up the car to leave. My wife told me we could leave at 9:30 and we would still make it to the port on time. My question was how long would it take to cook the bread? 35 minutes. How long will it take to eat the bread? 20 minutes. Being the planner I am we can still make good time and be to Avis by 11:30, 12 at the latest if we are in the car driving by 10am. A reminder that while I am on vacation it's still only day 2 (Travel days don't count as vacation 🙂) and I am just having come off the largest event I do every year so the stress level is a bit higher than normal. On our way by 10am, everyone has to pee. Wifey realizes she forgot to buy sunscreen and everyone else needs to buy something as well. So I make the executive decision to stop at Buc ee's because the gas is cheap and they have everything you could ever possibly need on a road trip. Except for one thing. The sunscreen my wife likes. At this point it's 10:30 and still over an hour to the airport. I have no idea what the traffic is like at the port nor do I know what kind of service we are going to get at Avis when we return the car. Is it 30 minutes of waiting to get to the port? Does Avis have one van that takes 8 people at a time to the Cruise Terminal waiting in that 30 minutes of traffic for each turn? Are we going to make it? You'll find out in the next episode...

Not even a few hours ago we disembarked the Norwegian Escape. We were on the 12/9 sailing to Dominican Republic, St. Thomas and Tortola with an initial planned stop in Great Stirrup Cay. Whilst on this cruise I kept a list of notes during the past week and thought I would share based on our experience on our 4th Cruise with NCL and 7th overall. On this cruise we were a family of four. In the past years our 2 oldest would be with us but both having recently been married and starting out in their adult lives, they could not find the time to take off and get away on this one with us. So it was Mom, Dad, Daughter and Son. Parents at the 50 year mark and the kids were 18 and 16 respectively. I'll share a little of their experiences as well. Our family is probably quite different than that of the average cruiser. We cancelled the drinking package for this cruise as my wife and I couldn't justify spending $300 on alcohol (The cost of gratuities for the free drink package). Not that it's expensive or that we won't have a glass of beer or wine with dinner and occasionally we will partake in a cocktail while we are out and about but one or two nights of 2-3 drinks is plenty for us. Along with the 2 bottles of wine we planned on bringing, at an average 10-15$ per drink we would have to drink another 20-25 drinks to make it worth it. Living in the mountains of the PNW we are also highly active outdoors and trend towards a health conscious lifestyle. An example of this is that we make an effort to never set foot in an elevator for the entire cruise. When it comes to excursions, nothing is more painful for us than to have to stand in a line with 50 other people and be told where to go, what to do and how long we have to do it. A typical excursion for us is to quickly get as far away from the tourist locations as we possibly can and explore the local less beaten path of adventure. This often serves us well but sometime, not so much. All this to set the ground level for the type of cruisers we are and that our experience overall may be very different than that of most on Cruise Critic. One more thing to point out is that on our last two NCL cruises we were in the Haven (Our 1st NCL cruise did not have a Haven). This cruise was more of a last minute decision (Booked past final payment) and by the time we booked there were no more Haven rooms available for 4 of us. So we booked a guaranteed balcony and put in our best effort to upgrade but that never happened. We ended up in a standard Balcony Room, #10728 on the front starboard side of the Escape. We had the opportunity to bid on a slightly larger club cabin but I liked the location we were in and all of the club cabins that were available were down on 9 mid ship. We are balcony lovers and spend alot of time on the balcony. In the morning, afternoon and night, at sea and in port. So as a group we decided that our balcony location with the room we were assigned (10728) was more important than getting a guaranteed club with a larger bathroom and other amenities. Without the upgrade to a Haven room we would have to slum it through the week down in steerage. On the next installment I'll cover a little bit of our pre-cruise adventure and how we planned on getting to and from the port.

On this 12/9 sailing there were 4750 passengers and 110 of them were teenagers. I dont have counts on kids 12 and under but there were not many. At 51 I often felt younger than most in the room on this cruise. There are supposed to be over 5400 passengers on the 12/16 sailing and my son told me the manager up in Entourage told him there are 750 teens on this next sailing (not kids but 13-17 y/o teens)

With 4750 people on our sailing you just never know when everyone is going to show up. It's never consistent. There was probably a bunch of people on your sailing that showed up early. I was hoping the same for our sailing but it was not. I've got some stories but I'll save it for my post cruise review 🙂

I'll share my experience from this past week. Understand that this is quite out of the normal and we went into this with the understanding that both my wife and I would get our dining credit and we would be paying the flat rate of $59 +12$ grat for Modernos for the kids. My wife and I both had the 2 dinner specialty package that everyone gets with a standard NCL "Sale" when we booked. We had a date night on Wednesday and each used one of our dining credits at Bayamo. On Thursday we planned to take our 2 teen kids to Moderno for a special family dinner night to burn through our OBC that we had quite a bit of to spend. When we came up to the hostess we told her it would be 4 of us and that we would be paying Ala Carte for the kids. She sat us, we had dinner. It was a fantastic time and we all loved it. Food was fantastic. When it came time to pay our waiter (Who was mostly non existent through our dinner as the assistant and the "meat guys" provided the service) he told us that if we each gave him our room cards he would use our dining credits for the kids as well. He walked away with our cards, came back 10 minutes later and the bill was zeroed out for all 4 of us. So we were stuck with the ~150.00 of OBC and had to find other ways to spend it. The waiter said he would use all our dining credits (I'm assuming he thought we had 4) and we were quite suprised when he came back with a zero dollar ticket for each of us as we only had one credit each left on our account. This being said, you should not expect to be able to share your dining credits with your kids or fellow cruisers. But that may be a decision that is going to be up to the Maitre 'd / manager to decide. I would go into this either purchasing the 2 dinner package for your grandson or expect to pay Ala Carte for him and leave it up to the waiter/maitre'd to decide how to bill you. Just be sure you take care of them if they take care of you.

Light rain and cloudy. No reason to have delays on the 9/16 sailing weather wise. Just bring your umbrella because I don't think there is alot of shade where the line outside runs from the escalators around the corner to the drop off point. We got there around noon on 12/9 and it was about a 15-20 min wait to get up the escalators.

@www3traveler

Well they honked the horn haha. Still waiting. We had to head over to Syd Norman's to watch the Fleetwood Mac cover band. Had to get there early for seats. It fills up quick. Back to your regularly scheduled program....

They just made an announcement on the ship for the 5 missing people to call in if they are on the ship.

10 people reported missing so far. This is according to my son (16) who went down and spoke to the NCL agent. They might also be willing to wait much longer tonight as it won't take more than an hour or two to get over to Tortolla.

NCL talking to the port agent