vacation44

Do you and your husband like the Beatles? The Beatles show on the Joy, to us, is great. My husband is not a Beatles fan, but I insisted we go the first time in the Joy and he enjoyed the show so much, we had to see their other shows in the Cavern.

Not sure if this is where @DrUrsulawent but we had our breakfast at the Soggy Dollar Bar. I just had a bagel but my husband had a breakfast bowl which he said was very good.

Thank you. This is the most up to date information I have read so far. I will continue to check daily.

The cabanas come with two Vibe passes. You can only share your cabana with other Vibe passengers.

The cabanas come with two Vibe passes. You can only share it with other Vibe passengers.

Tortola. It is typical if the ship arrives at 6:45 a.m. and all aboard is 2:00 p.m. There were a lot of excursions offered for very early morning. Those with an early excursion had to meet in the theater at 6:45 a.m. I am just saying it would of been nice to order room service for 6:00 a.m. instead of going to the buffet.

As we are up every workday at 4:45 a.m., we tend to get up early on vacation. However, we are also on the mindset we would rather partake in our vacation then spend extra hours sleeping in. There were also roughly a couple hundred people in the Theater that morning waiting for their excursion so we were by far not the only ones up.

No

Our Plan B: We are huge fans of the British TV show Death in Paradise. The show is filmed in Guadeloupe and the filming sights are all open to the public for the most part. We plan to stay at the hotel where the crew stays and murders have happened (on the show). Getting there, we are flying into Dominica for a few days, then taking a ferry over to Guadeloupe for a few more days. We will be spending a lot of time relaxing on the beautiful beaches. Did you replace your Encore cruise with anything else?

While I would normally agree, we had to meet for our excursion at 6:45 a.m. and we do like some time after breakfast to use our cabin bathroom.

Having done five cruises on NCL since the restart, we definitely do see the recent changes. Food quality/choices at the buffet and nighttime entertainment leading the way. We tried to place an early room service order for one morning for breakfast and was told the earliest it can be delivered is at 6:30 a.m. which was too late for us. The MDR was opening at 8:00 a.m., buffet at 7:00 a.m. and the Local at 6:00 a.m. I do not remember in all of our previous cruises as not having at least two options. We also wished you were still able to reserve the comedy shows as you used to be able to. On the Encore recently, we had to get to the venue way too early just to get the last two seats. As I mentioned in another thread, while we still love NCL, we love NCL a little less now.

Jamie, welcome back to the NCL boards! Yes, you will have four specialty dining credits in total as platinum. There is now a thermal spa on the Joy. We were on the Encore two weeks back and late time snacks were hard to come by as the buffet does now close down early with no more evening late night snacks. We also noticed a difference in the food options available in the Buffett since our last two cruises this past August and March We are looking forward to our Joy Bermuda cruise this June though as overall, we are still happy with the NCL product.

The process to book them is the same as securing a Vibe pass--online, the NCL App or phone call. Our PCC secured a cabana for our Viva cruise instead of two Vibe passes for next year. You can buy it online too, but then it would have to be paid for immediately instead of with final payment. They are rented out for the week. You are assigned one and that one is for your exclusive use for the week.

Any word yet on the 2024 Ferry schedule? Trying to finalize our early June plans.

Thank you! This does make more sense.

They did raise the prices of the cabanas recently and they are still for sale on other ships. We currently have a cabana reserved on the Viva for February 2025 and I can reserve one for our June 2025 Encore cruise. My point was I do not understand why they would not sell them instead of just letting everyone use them on a first come basis on the Joy.

I am also waiting and hoping they start preselling the cabanas as they do on other ships. I am very surprised they have not done so yet as it would create more revenue as they all would be sold.

Really enjoying your live report as usual. We did have the latitudes coupons on our Encore cruise two weeks ago so wonder if that is a new thing or ship thing. Have a great time and looking forward to your daily report.

There were also no wrists bands on the Encore last week.

Thank you! I really hope they change it to reserve as in the other Vibes. Like the Haven cabanas, it will be almost impossible to get one as they will be saved by early risers. Thank you again and have a wonderful cruise.

Any update on the Vibe Cabanas?

We also get the club balcony suite for the larger bathroom.

If anyone is interested, here are the Freestyle Dailies from our Encore last week. Couple of thoughts on OUR experience: 1. As usual, we had a great time and did enjoy ourselves. This time around it was just my husband and myself (upper 50's) and we stayed in a club balcony suite which had an extended balcony. 2. This time around, the once-a-day cabin upkeep did not affect us. Our cabin was cleaned every morning on the early side which would great for us. Upon meeting our Cabin Steward, we requested four towels daily so we always had clean towels. 3. We did miss the absence of an additional Broadway style show other than the new game shows in the main theatre. We have no interest in the game shows. 4. In general, you had to get to the comedy shows in the Social a good half an hour before show time to get a seat. We miss the old way of making reservations. One night we got there around 45 minutes early and had trouble finding two seats together. This kept us from going back and seeing another show. 5. Los Lobos--wow! For the first time, we tried Los Lobos and both agreed it is now our favorite NCL restaurant (not counting The Haven). We even went back the following night! That night we had dinner reservations at Cagneys and we were placed at one of the tables outside the restaurant near the very loud bar. We asked to be moved to another table inside the resaturant and were told it would be an hour and a half wait. I nicely said that we did not make our reservations at 125 days out to be sitting outside the restaurant as an overflow. The Manager did try to talk us into waiting the hour and a half or to come back another night. We thanked her and walked ourselves over the Los Lobos, which is across from Cagneys, and got seated 15 minutes later. Again, another delicious meal. We were told that we were the fourth party that night to come back again without reservations. It seems to be really catching on. The only drawback on us walking out of Cagneys was I missed the seven-layer cake. 6. For Embarkation, as Platinum, we boarded right after the paid upgrade to priority boarding which boarded after passengers needing assistance and Sapphire, Diamond and Ambassador. While we still boarded on the very early side and got everything accomplished upon boarding that we needed to do, I did not think it was right that paid priority boarding went ahead of platinum boarding which we earned after spending many, many, many thousands of dollars to achieve. But that is my opinion. 7. While the Vibe on the Encore is not my favorite, for us, it was worth every penny (59,900 of them). The service was, as usual, top notch. Lounge chairs could always be found in both the sun and the shade. 8. We loved both the Boss Underwater Excursion in St. Thomas and Escape to Jost Van Dyke excursion in Tortola. Both were the highlights of our trip. We also did the Discover Puerto Plata tour which was unusual for us as we always are geared to water-based excursions. My husband was happy as he was able to purchase rum and cigars while I was able to purchase chocolate. Note there was a good amount of walking on this tour which did take a lot of people by surprise. On Great Stirrup Cay, we rented a Villa at Silver Cove. 9. The buffet. I have seen a lot of comments lately about the quality and amount of food choices going down lately at the buffet. We agree. This was our fifth cruise since the restart (and third within 11 months) and have noticed a big difference this past year. 10. CruiseNext Certificates--we purchased them and were able to apply them to our three cabins on our June 2025 Encore cruise which we booked in March 2023. So far, so good that they have not been kicked back yet. We do still love the NCL product, but I think we both love it a little less now. We are up again this June on the Joy with our young adult children, their significant others and extended family and are both still looking forward to it; however, I think we are going to cancel our February 2025 Viva cruise and go with our Plan B which we formulated while we were waiting for NCL to release the Viva Vibe passes. Any questions, please ask and I will try to answer. Day 1.pdf Day 2.pdf Day 3.pdf Day 4.pdf Day 5.pdf Day 6.pdf Day 7.pdf

We would of preferred to receive the plate of various chocolate instead of the platinum strawberries last week!

Interesting. I do not think this was available last week on the Encore, but we would not have ordered anything from that menu. The one time we were allowed to order food in the Vibe, it was free and it was differently the Haven snack menu. I definitely can understand why NCL did not move forward with this option as NCL moved to make all of the Vibes bigger which means more orders. Now that I am thinking about it further, I believe when we were on the Escape last, it was right after the price increase to $199. Maybe they threw in the option of the Haven snack menu to make the increased price more appealing. Whatever the case, still a huge Vibe fan with or without the snack menu!