rabidstoat

Day 2 (the first half): Nassau Boogaloo

I cruise a few times a year and on almost every cruise I've been on, day 2 is a sea day during which we head further down into the Caribbean. On this cruise, though, we stopped in the Bahamas on the way out and the way home, so day 2 was a port day in Nassau. This is a stop I've been at several times, and it was a year or two ago that I spent an extended weekend visiting Atlantis. (Note: I actually stayed at the much cheaper Comfort Inn that was across the street but I got to use the Atlantis facilities and used their slides and rapids. I also swam with pigs on another day, but that's a different story and I digress.)

I decided to get breakfast in the room as I didn't feel up to braving an early morning buffet line, so the night before I ordered some cereal and yogurt and a banana with that handy little door tag. And now is where we get to one of the greatest mysteries of the entire cruise.

Somebody stole all of the bananas!

There was no banana delivered to my room. Now, at first I assumed this was a mere oversight, no big deal, but as the week progressed and no bananas were to be found anywhere on the ship I realized that I was actually witnessing a nefarious plot more evil than initially imagined. What kind of cruise line has no bananas in the morning? What do these monsters have against potassium? I actually found lots of yummy fruit at the buffet -- watermelon and pineapple and kiwi fruit even -- but no bananas.

(Spoiler alert: the mystery of the bananas was ultimately revealed but not until after the cruise was concluded. I will leave the reader in breathless suspense and reveal the true depth of treachery toward the end of this journal.)

Anyway, somehow I managed to press on and get out the door to my excursion. Normally I don't book excursions through NCL. I find their excursions to be overpriced, and there are fewer options than third-party providers make available. However, when I booked my balcony room they were running one of those "all five perks!!!" deals so I had $50 credit at every port. What followed was me finding excursions in the $50-$60 range to partake in. For Nassau, it was to be the Zoo visit and City Tour. Okay, eh, whatever, it was only costing me an extra four bucks after my $50 credit.

I waited a bit outside for the tour group to amass and watched some poor person dressed up in a ridiculous bird costume get endlessly rejected as they accosted tourists for photo opportunities. We ended up riding in small busses to the Zoo, which meant that one of the people who'd hoped to come got turned away because his scooter -- which honestly broke down into a teeny tiny footprint when disassembled -- was deemed too big for the bus. I thought it would have fit, but nobody consulted me. I did run into the group later, and though they had planned to go sightseeing in the downtown area they ended up bar-hopping instead. They seemed pretty satisfied with their life choices when I chatted with them about it. Oh, also somewhat intoxicated. Yay, Bahamas!

Sage wisdom dispensed on the side of a building in town

Our tour started with a 20-minute drive to the Zoo, and the guide was nice and personable and described the various buildings and a bit about the town as we went. One of the more interesting things I learned was that the public buildings were all painted in the same color scheme: pink for government buildings, lime green for police stations, and I forget what color the schools were. It made them easy to identify, but also made it easier when it came time to repaint. Another interesting fact was that the courts were mostly open in the evenings when it was cooler and fewer people had work.

The Zoo was not really much of a zoo but I found it pleasant enough. We stopped by for about 90 minutes, which was about 15-20 minutes too long. The two highlights were the flamingo show and the feeding of the birds. (Random trivia note: a group of flamingos is more properly called a flamboyance of flamingos.) The show only took about 10 minutes or so and involved the flamingos strutting about a circular yard in some resemblance of coordinated motion. Every few seconds the flamingo-- er, I realize I don't know the word for the person who directs flamingos in a staged show for tourists. I will call him the Flamingo Whisperer. Every few seconds the Flamingo Whisperer would call out some command and the flamingos would run about as if they had some direction or purpose in life.

Hey guys, where did Herman go-- he wandered off again!

All the flamingos seemed pretty on the ball except for one highly distracted bird who spent most of the show completely oblivious to the fact that there was choreography involved, and was most often found on the opposite side of the yard from the main flock. I named him Left Shark. He did get with the program at last when the flamingos were led off stage and finally caught up with his flockmates. This was, we were told, because they were leaving to get fed, and Left Shark was a bird who clearly knew which side of his bread was buttered.

After that, I roamed about a bit to see the seven other animals in the zoo. I exaggerate only slightly as there weren't really many animals. There were some peacocks, and some snakes, and some iguanas. The flamingos had even more buddies backstage. A big cage held larger birds, and people were let inside in small groups to feed them bits of food. Elsewhere I found two pigs, two very piggish goats that were being fed by a small boy, some monkeys that just seemed out of place, an exceedingly rude pair of geese, and a sheep who was quite jealous of the goats being fed. I say that the geese were rude because they were incredibly loud, and because my experience with geese has led me to believe that 'incredibly rude' is just their natural state of existence.

She's such a diva!

The last 15 to 20 minutes were spent in the gift shop (a 15-second trip), drinking a proper diet coke to wash out the taste of that diet Pepsi from the ship, and talking with others on the tour. Then we went back onto the bus for a 45-minute tour through the city on the way back to the ship. I rather liked the tour. It showed a lot of the local shops and neighborhoods, and I am always nosy about how people live so I found it quite interesting. Going into the excursion I didn't have much in the way of high expectations but surprised myself by enjoying it a good bit.

Once we were back to the pier I decided I needed to eat some local food. I ended up at a non-local chain restaurant, Sharkeez, because I was lured in by the promise of free wifi and an upstairs table on the balcony where I could people watch on the streets below. I had a conch salad which was not great but decent. All of the hot pepper was put into a single bite at the end and I almost died, but some more diet coke (have I mentioned that I much prefer it to diet Pepsi?) quenched the fire. I lounged, and people-watched, and used some free wifi, and eventually moved off in the direction of the ship.

View from the balcony of Sharkeez, which I posted to Facebook to taunt my snowbound friends back home

(A note on wifi: I had the 250-minute Internet package as a perk and aside from that bit of wifi at Sharkeez, it's what I used. I just connected for 3-5 minutes at a time to download a batch of email and upload some stuff on Facebook, and maybe check a few web forums. It worked well enough for a week, despite my strong Internet addiction.)

Next post will continue the rest of the afternoon and evening!

No answers but this leads to a question: why don't they just note on the itinerary when the formal nights are? It seems like the nights are pretty well set in advance and it's clearly something that some people want to know, for planning purposes.

Then again I should just be happy that I can log into my account again after the "upgrade", I suppose. :-)

I've never been but I'm going in 2019! I've got a solo balcony room booked on a cruise that a few other solo-traveling friends are also on. I'm doing it back-to-back with Bermuda, er, probably. I have to figure out how vacation time looks. For now, though, I have it booked B2B with the same solo balcony both times. I believe I have the itinerary that hits up Quebec as well, I'd love to see the old city!

Pretty sure you can book through a TA for double points, I think all that matters is that you paid 200% fare for a double occupancy room traveling solo. This wouldn't apply to the few studios that solos can book.

Incidentally I shared this reminder with my solo cruiser group and a few more people were able to get their points that they'd forgotten to check up on!

(Okay, this is going slower than I thought. I'm still recovering from cruise plague, might be walking pneumonia, plus I managed to slice my finger open making homemade chicken noodle soup because of the aforementioned cruise plague and had to go to Urgent Care. It's been a rough return from vacation.)

Day 1, aka Embarkation Day Fun

Getting to the pier was relatively drama-free. It went: drive to the airport, TSA Precheck, short flight on the plane (Atlanta to Orlando), meeting up the cortrans shuttle people, and traveling out to the port. (Incidentally, I can recommend cortrans company for port transfers at Orlando, they worked well for me and had good communication.) I checked my suitcase as it was just slightly too big to carry-on and was relieved to see that it made it. There were no flight delays, so no worries about missing the boat. The longest waits were related to traffic at the port, as it took about 20 minutes for us to get a stall at NCL to drop us off. Oh, and I did see the longest line of the entire cruise in this portion of my travels.

Longest line of the trip: the morning Starbuck's line at MCO

Embarkation was slow. It took about 90 minutes for me to go from getting to the port to getting on the ship. It was about 1:30 before I got on the boat and I was hoping that my room would be open so I could drop off my smaller bags, but nope! Rooms ended up not opening up until 2:00 on the dot, which I gathered was their ship-imposed deadline. There were consequently a lot of people milling around with their bags and carry-ons, filling up the ship. It was super extra crowded.

And elevators were a nightmare in terms of lines, as typically happens on embarkation and debarkation days. It was so bad that I actually walked six flights up, with a few small bags, that first day. Being way too out of shape to do that routinely my threshold for stair-climbing quickly dropped to 'two flights up, six flights down'; by the end of the week, I caught myself taking the elevator for a single floor trip sometimes, as stair enthusiasm waned.

Eventually, I did get into my room and dumped my bags, a laptop bag and a CPAP bag. I had booked a balcony room all to myself, as a splurge. Gotta say, I'm not a fan of the room design on the Epic. The wavy walls seemed more annoying than anything, and for some reason, the room seemed smaller than its square footage should've made it. There was a lot of storage space, which I think took away from some of the floor space and made it seemed more cramped than other rooms I've been in. The drawers in the dresser were huge. This would be great for people traveling with a lot of clothes and such, but it was overkill for me and my single carry-on's worth of clothing.

And then there's the split bathroom. I actually liked it, but that's because I was in the room by myself. It seemed to make the shower a little bigger than others I've seen. My opinion would probably change if I was sharing the room with someone as that frosted glass on the bathroom compartments is a bit revealing. I did make sure to flip the door lock when using the shower, to prevent any inadvertent arrival of the room steward.

With my bag dumped I went out to find some much overdue lunch. I didn't want anything heavy as it was 2:30 at this point and the buffet was just about closing up for lunch anything. I grabbed a slice of cheese pizza and made up the world's laziest salad to scarf down. A note on the salads: I kinda liked it that there were containers of fat-free Kraft dressings to choose from, made for a nice lower-calorie dressing option. I did have a moment of confusion trying to find the silverware, which led to this exchange with the serving staff: "Where is the silverware?" "On the table, ma'am." "....oh."

After a quick lunch I found a diet Pepsi (which is inferior to diet Coke in every way, but we all must make sacrifices) and roamed the public areas a bit before retreating back to my cabin for a few minutes. My suitcase was waiting for me in the hallway. Hooray! Muster drill was nice and civilized, with my station being in the big top spiegel "tent". I'm not entirely sure how useful it is as a muster drill when you never go to the boats, but hey, it made it a lot more comfortable to just sit around for it. Then it was upstairs to the main outside deck for sail away!!!!

Sail away! I was hanging out on the starboard side of the ship. At least, I think it was starboard.

I found another drink (diet Pepsi, as I only had two glasses of wine the entire trip; I'm not much of a drinker) and watched until we well out of port, after which I braved the throngs of deck mongers to find some folks I met on a Facebook group prior to sailing. I got some mardi gras beads and met some people but didn't really stick around much, as I'm not much for drinking or dancing and there was mostly that going on. I decided to go back downstairs to prepare for dinner.

Dinner was at Taste, and it would be the only time I ate at that restaurant for the cruise -- not because it was bad, I just ended up at specialty restaurants or Manhattan for other nights. Now, I'm not really picky when it comes to food, which means that the majority of the food I ate can be reviewed as "tasted good to me!" I had an Asian noodle soup with shrimp as an appetizer and pan-seared hake fillet over some mashed potatoes and spinach as the main course. I got something for dessert but I can't really remember what it was at this point, so I guess it wasn't super memorable. Everything "tasted good to me!"

The rest of the evening was pretty low key. I tried going to the family karaoke event, which was fine at first -- some middle-aged and older folks were singing some country songs I didn't know but they were decent enough -- but quickly took a turn for the worse when a quartet of pre-teen boys did what I guessed at the time was a rap song. It was bad. It was really, really bad. Turns out it was a song by Beyonce called "Run the World (Girls)", which I'd never heard before. Mostly the boys mumbled and laughed and shouted the one line of the song they knew. I left midway through to save my ears. Now, I didn't mind the kids at all, they were clearly having fun and they weren't being rude (just awful singers!) and it was family karaoke, but it was oh so very bad.

I stopped into Headliners for a comedy show I'd booked, and like all of the comedy acts I enjoyed it a lot. Comedy shows are one of my favorites, and why I like Carnival so much, they have lots of comedy. But this was good, there was the intro act and then the headliner. And then the night was capped off with Howl at the Moon dueling pianos. I really knew nothing about what to expect but it quickly became a favorite event of mine and I stopped in for at least a few songs every night they were performing it.

Oh, I also decided that one of the performers was going to be my secret cruise boyfriend, but then I felt bad because he was probably young enough to be my son and I got all these Mrs. Robinson vibes. I decided that he could not be my boyfriend after all for age differences, but he was very easy on the eyes, I must say.

As I'm an old fuddy duddy I was in my cabin before midnight. This was when I discovered the one thing I forgot to pack for my trip, which was my toothbrush. I was too tired to go and see if a shop was open to sell me one so I figured I'd sort it out later, and make do with the approximately 300 flossers I did apparently pack.

Next day: Nassau!

I'm curious too. Someone on a Disney cruise forum asked about this also and my first thought was "Why would people want to swim with pigs??" I don't get the attraction.

Novelty. Though to be honest, I swam with them for about, oh, three minutes? Until they got near and I realized they were huge. I got back in the boat and fed them from the boat, and the captain brought over some piglets for me to pet, they were very cute. They do look kinda funny paddling around and trolling for food.

Thanks for the reminder, my two cruises from last year were missing the points!

I've done it with Harbour Safaris and had a good time BUT I was on a land-based tour, it's a long way out and I doubt you'd have time to do it on a cruise unless the ship was overnighting. They advertise that it doesn't return until 4:30pm. Well, we had a freak pop-up storm and had to take shelter on shore for a couple of hours (and luckily, the place we docked up was a private resort island that welcomed us to ride their jeep up to the full-service bar) and then were slow getting back, it was after dark and close to 8pm by the time we returned! Evidently this is very rare but things happen.

-If you didn't arrive at least half an hour to one hour prior to entertainment, all seats in the theatre were taken and you could not see your show, EVEN IF YOU HAVE A RESERVATION. NCL assigned an employee at 7 PM to apologize to people when all seats are taken and to advise people to come back for a later showing at 9 PM. Parents responded to the NCL employee, "but what if you have kids and they cannot come back for 9 PM?" NCL obviously doesn't care about families at all.

They don't overbook the shows but at about 15 minutes before they start they release the standby line, so if you have a reservation and you're not in a seat by then, you may lose out. You need to get there before the standbys are allowed in. Obviously letting them in the second the show started wouldn't work, so they do it a bit before.

I sometimes ask for a lime in my Diet Pepsi to try to hide the fact that it's Diet Pepsi and not Coke Zero. And in port I'll buy a can of diet coke (or coke zero if available but I don't know if I've ever noticed it) to drink. Otherwise, like others, I make do.

Here is an actual exchange I had with someone in a restaurant in the US, outside of Atlanta (which is where I live, and Atlanta is Coca Cola world headquarters):

Me: I'll have a diet coke.

Waitress: Is diet pepsi okay?

Me: What-- no, it's not okay! What is wrong with you????

So glad to read you are happy to recommend Cortrans. I'm using it next Wednesday after disembarkation from the Epic. I've been rather stressed about the whole transportation issue.

It took longer than I expected because of issues outside of cortrans control, the port area was just backed up with four ships in ports and they had to wait in line for a slot at NCL which seemed a bit of a disaster. Maybe 10 minutes added to the time to get a slot to pull in.

I was a little stressed for disembarkation because it said we arrived at 8, and I booked my shuttle at 9:45 thinking we'd take an hour to get cleared for disembarkation before I could 'self-assist' myself and my suitcase off. I thought I might be time-pressed, and that was the latest I was comfortable leaving for a 12:15 flight. But then, turns out the day before disembarkation I learned we got in before 7 and I emailed them to change my return to 9:00am. They responded pretty quick and said no problem. I got there a few minutes early and they seemed to just be loading people up and crossing off names as the buses swung through, making sure whoever reserved the timeslot had space and then let early people on extra seats. It wasn't super crowded, the driver was fine and safe.

One note on arrival at the airport: MCO has two sides, north and south, and a bunch of different airlines at each side. Though they picked up at both north and south, they dropped off at only one of the sides for everyone (possibly because the traffic was pretty bad, but maybe they always do that). If your airline is on the other side like mine is you have to cut through the shopping & food court area. Plan on another 3-4 minutes, no biggie after shlepping bags across the freaking cruise ship and terminal but if you're packing a dozen steamer trunks without wheels while herding half a dozen children under the age of 10 all by yourself, say, you may want to track down a porter.

Edited to add: And if for some reason you're pressed on time, you can shave off 5-10 minutes in customs line by bribing a porter to take you through, probably should throw them $10-$20 depending on lines and baggage and number of people. And then if you're stressed on the airport run and think you're running late there's always the option to ditch the shuttle and take the loss there, and find an uber for $70 to $140 depending on how many people and how much baggage. But really, we got in a lot earlier than I thought so though there was more traffic than I expected, I actually got to the airport earlier than expected.

Our eco boat tour guide at GSC claimed that: a) the cranes we saw in the water by a nearby island were working on a way to build a pier for another private island, might've been Harvest Cay, forget what's out there; and, b) after they were done NCL was going to hire them to build a pier for GSC.

I'm not sure how privy the eco boat tour guide is to the business strategies of Norwegian Cruise Lines, but that was his belief. I did hear a vague rumor from someone unimportant that NCL did want to build a pier, which of course makes sense. Dunno how or when or even if they will get to it.

(Incidentally, I am hoping to finish this journal up one post per day by the end of the weekend, or perhaps sooner, before my scattered brain mixes it all up. I'm more than a bit sick at the moment and legally drugged up because of this, so I am not responsible for devolving into any rambling incoherencies, appalling misspellings or typos or other grammatical indecencies, or self-serving and bald-faced lies along the way. Please fasten your seatbelt, and make sure your seat backs and tray tables are in the full upright and locked position. This journal is now resuming.)

Day 0, aka The Day Before, aka the Final Countdown

My flight left Saturday morning for a cruise leaving Saturday afternoon and, feeling no need to impose planning and organization at this late stage in the game, worked a half day Friday morning and then put off packing until about 10 pm Friday night. Actually, I had done a little planning. I had quite wisely booked a flight to get me from my city to Orlando, and even had booked a shuttle (cortrans, for those keeping score at home, which I would not hesitate to recommend for all your shuttle-y needs in Orlando) to whisk me along to the pier. Why, I had even pre-booked some restaurants and entertainments, which seemed positively like overachieving for it being a 'freestyle' vacation and all.

So at about 10pm, I packed.

All I have to do is zip it and I'm done!

Okay, even I had to admit that wasn't quite cutting it. I folded and prioritized and consulted a list and removed a stowaway cat once or twice and double-checked that I had underwear and medication and a credit card and passport. I didn't really pack anything dressy aside from some black slacks and a nicer blouse or two. No shoes other than walking shoes and crocs. No jewelry. A few toiletries and medicines. A laptop because I'm a computer geek by trade (software engineer) and it was stuffed with Netflix TV shows for my anticipated middle-of-the-night insomnia. All in all I managed to pack everything I needed except, as I would discover later, a toothbrush. More on that saga later.

I live alone so I had to secure and clean the house, deal with trash, handle the mail, clean out the kitchen, etc. Remarkably I managed that all around midnight, with the one little exception of forgetting I had cooked a potato in my Instant Pot and needed to clean out the scraps. Whoops. That was fun to return to seven days later. Since my two cats, Miss Mousey and Jax, were not allowed on the ship they had to stay at home, despite several concerted attempts by Miss Mousey to very casually stow away in manners she thought I would not notice.

Maybe if I sit very still and avoid eye contact Mom won't notice me

I was paying my standard pet sitter a small fortune to check in on them daily, to scoop and supply kibble and dangle feathers on a string for their amusement. As a random aside, in the past I've had them come every other day which is really fine in 99.9999% of the cases, where one of the 0.0001% cases where it wasn't fine happened to my friend whose kittens managed to flood the entire first floor of her house and cause roughly $30,000 of insurance-covered damage before the cat sitter made it over for their 'every three day' check. Just something fun to reflect on if you're having cats you leave behind!

And that was that for day 0. I set two separate alarms, piled my purse and bags in front of the door to the garage where it would be impossible to miss them, made a few last minute notes of things to do in the morning, took a quick shower, and crashed into bed far too late for someone with an early morning flight to catch.

Sorry. I thought that since you booked it at the SHORE excursion desk and the tour was given by SHORE excursion members that maybe you could use the credits. Not quite sure why you have to be so condescending.

Yeah, huh, well anyway, I did mention how the one person suggested that you could still ask because, hey, it never hurts to ask. Worse that happens is they say no. I ended up not pursuing it as I decided not to take the tour that trip anyway. I mean, I figured it would be 'no' as well since it's not a 'shore excursion' but like you said, still an excursion sold at the 'shore excursion' desk. Can't hurt to ask if it'd just go unused anyway.

About Me

I'm a female purely solo traveler in my mid-40s who started cruising a few years ago and now does 3-4 weeks of cruises a year. I've traveled on NCL previously to Alaska, with my other cruising experience being in the Caribbean on Royal and Carnival. I've traveled in all the standard cabins, but never suites. My 'price point' usually puts me at ocean views, though I have several solo studios booked on longer 2-week trips in the coming year.

Me January 2017 in St. Maarten

As one can tell I am rather a large person, though I did lose a bit of weight since this photo (I think). I've been on Weight Watchers for a few months and had good success, and one of my concerns about cruising is that I would fall back into my chaotic and excessive eating habits on the cruise and -- even worse -- not rebound into a healthier routine when returned from the cruise. Given that I'm trying to get healthier I decided to put some effort into it, while not sacrificing the good food that I do associate with cruising.

(Spoiler alert: I was reasonably healthy and moderate given that it was a cruise and managed to drop a pound and a half during the week.)

I don't really drink too much in the way of alcohol, and my onboard interests tend toward the lazy. I can be lured out to some of the less physically demanding (and weight-restrictive) shore excursions, and will splash about in the pool if it's not too crowded (ahahaha I said 'not crowded' ahahaha!), and otherwise like to lounge about and watch shows and read and enjoy downtime in the room with TV or movies or video games or books and venture out to shows or music or short activities like trivia and oh I love playing small-stakes blackjack. That's really it.

This cruise was really a spur-of-the-moment purchase around November of last year. I was stressed at work, stressed about the holidays, stressed about being stressed, and -- anticipating an upcoming end-of-year bonus -- decided the sensible thing to do was book a third cruise for 2018 with little to no advance thought given to the cost or planning requirements. As a solo traveler, I either need to pay double the cost for what's normally a double-occupancy cabin all to myself or book a last minute cruise where they waive the single supplement or book a single-priced studio cabin. The good news is the cruise I was considering, the Norwegian Epic, had those studio rooms and some were available. The bad news is that I was sucked in by the 'get all the perks!' promotion and got a balcony by paying double cost.

Um, whoops?

Oh well, I was sure it would all work itself out by the time February rolled around!

Royal likes their $6 minimum on the 6:5 table. Their hope is that people will put the $1 on Lucky Ladies, as that has abysmal payout odds. Second best is that people will bet the $6 on the hand, and lose the $0.20 on a blackjack. Some people will stubbornly bet $10 minimum to not lost the few measly cents extra Royal is willing to part with on a blackjack.

I don't like people being rude in general at the tables, but people should especially not be rude over anything, strategy-wise, that a player at the $6 minimum tables does. That's where the beginners play to learn. That's also where sometimes people just screw around even though they know better, like the guy I saw who was quite knowledgeable but started deviating from basic strategy after the dealer was winning repeatedly on really unlikely hands. His joking logic: "If the dealer is playing unconventional, so am I!" (He actually did start doing better, coincidentally.)

But in general, sheesh, I wish people didn't obsess over how others are playing at the minimum table. I don't care how "if they played by strategy the dealer would've busted, they ruined the whole table!" Because sometimes they play crazy and the dealer loses, whereas basic strategy would've had the dealer win. It cuts both ways.

Though funny story. I was playing at the minimum bet table during the middle of the day, and a couple of guys were grousing about how this woman got two tens against a dealer's showing eight, and decided to split them. They said after that hand -- which ended up with everyone losing where they were convinced if basic strategy was followed everyone would have one -- all four other players at the table quietly left and decided to play at a higher limit table. They didn't seem super upset or anything, but one of them was astonished enough to mention it. Gamblers, after all, are a suspicious lot with their quirks.

Later that evening I was at the low minimum table again, and there was a woman there who was obviously a beginner. She would ask questions and was slowly picking up on basic strategy as we and the dealer offered advice when sought. At one point she told a story about how earlier that afternoon when she was just starting out she split two tens, and how everyone at the table left after that, which is how she learned she wasn't supposed to do that. And I blurted out, "Oh wow, I heard about you, I heard that story, you're famous!"

Poor woman looked a touch embarrassed. I assured her it was no big deal, it's a minimum table and that's where beginners play, if people are hard over at a $6 table that's their problem. I still think it was hilarious that I heard the story from both perspectives in the space of a few hours!

I imagine for teens it depends on the responsibity and attentiveness level of the kid in question. Some might not realize how much money they're spending at the arcade, say, because they design things so that it's visibly posted by not always "in your face." In the excitement even a good kid could get carried away without realizing it, but like I said, totally depends on the kid.

Does anyone know if you have the excursion credit, could this be used toward the paid tour since you book with the ShorEX team?

 

 

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I had issues with Chrome for ages. It wouldn't load my reservations. I whitelisted NCL on my ad blocker (uBlock Origin) and it started working again.

When I went tu Teppanyaki last week it was me solo, and four couples. At first people were pretty into themselves and I worried it would be an awkward dinner.

Then they took drink orders. People began talking a bit to others. We were so quiet and subdued, and quietly discussed how strangely boisterous the other table (who were in the "show" portion of dinner) were behaving.

Fast forward 20 minutes. Drinks were rolling. The chef came out. We were talking across the table, across groups, and acting like old friends. More drinks. Turns out the youngest couple were on their delayed honeymoon. We got louder and were singing and cheering and by the end, the newly arrived group at the next table were quietly settling in and giving us these sidelong "wow aren't they rowdy" looks. Heh.

If there's a port fee for a missed port I think you get it refunded.

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I'm hoping in all the confusion I get accidentally misplaced in a suite. :-)

I've booked guarantee interior on RC three times, and I'm one for three on free upgrades. I got an oceanview on one of the cruises, and a really nice room at that. A good ploy by RC too, as it made me shift my preference from interior to oceanview (though maybe not so clever by them, as I decided oceanview, for me, is nearly as good as a balcony, as what I value most is the natural light and view as opposed to the fresh air or sitting outside).

None whatsoever,

I figured it'd be a long shot, being a 'shore' excursion perk. Last cruise I was on I had all the perks, but one of the ports I wanted to do a third-party tour. It seems like there's never something I want to do through NCL in every eligible port. Usually, the shore excursion credit is my last choice because of this, so I don't always have it.

what if the NCL website has no excursions offered on that port? For instance there is no excursions listed for Jamaica on our upcoming epic cruise on NCL website.

They'll have excursions added at some point, just might not be right away. When I go and it's still a few months before my cruise I'll sometimes see excursions at some ports, and none at other ports.