philesian

My husband and I just returned home last night from the 2.2.2020 cruise on the Encore and definitely echo your concerns about the pool deck. We were very frustrated one sea day when we could not find anywhere to sit in the sun. We walked the pool deck and running track deck twice and found nothing. Oh, we found folded up towels on chairs and bags on chairs with no bums in the seats and that was it. We tried to waterfront as well, and there was no where to sit there in the sun either. We did have a balcony room, but the sun wasn't shining on our balcony that afternoon.

The buffet was decent. We really enjoyed the wok station and asian dishes they had in the one section. We ate at the Local and enjoyed it. We also ate at Onda (amazing), Teppanyaki (fanatstic job on the filet), and Los Lobos (I really enjoyed this one). We didn't have a bad food experience outside of my breakfast syrup always being honey (which I don't like) because the honey and syrup jugs were identical and always mixed up. We spent every evening in the District Brew House after the shows. The guys working there were fantastic.

We had a wonderful cabin steward, loved the layout of the ship.

We might sail the Encore again if it has an itinerary we feel like we HAVE to do, but we haven't come across one yet.

We have our next cruise booked with NCL on the Escape with our 4 teenagers for just after Christmas this year. Looking forward to getting back out on a ship!

We are scheduled to sail on the Encore Feb 02 2020. We had over 40 excursions listed in the summer and all of a sudden they removed all but 15. They haven't added any back again yet.  So we sit and wait.

23 hours ago, Shoppie124 said:

My concern is my DD will be bored as she is very mature for her age and very athletic.  so she doesn't sit still very long.  She doesn't play with dolls or toys.  She'd be more in tune with the 13-17 year old group but sadly I hear they are really strict about keeping out the kids who haven't officially hit their 13th birthday.

My then 12 year old dd was able to get into the teen club when we cruised NCL about 4 years ago. It's going to depend on how many kids they have in the teen group already. We signed her up for the tween group, but she never went and only went to the teen group. They wouldn't allow her to technically sign in or sign up for that group because of policy, but we managed around it. She just showed up with her older brother and no one asked any other questions. lol

Not sure if this has been posted yet or not.

We've taken all our kids on the Sky and it was totally appropriate for them. Like another poster said, you can avoid inappropriate activities by reading the dailies. People are going to drink on every cruise you go on, I don't feel like this one is really different. We cruised on the Sky 2 separate times. Once was before it was all inclusive, we went without the kids. The 2nd time was after it was all-inclusive and we didn't notice a difference. We stayed away from the night parties and such, but our teens went to the white party with the teen group. It was fine.

We called and they aren't even sure they can get the hotel because of the SuperBowl. Haha...this may end up being a drive down and park at the port kind of trip.

Thanks! We will put a call into NCL tonight to see if we can get some of these questions answered.

Hey! So we booked a 7 night on the Encore last night with all 6 bonus offers sailing out Feb. 2 from Miami. I woke up this morning and discovered it's Superbowl weekend in Miami that weekend. So we want to get a head start on booking our hotel for the night of Feb. 1. A couple of questions:

1) Will we be able to choose to fly in the day before with our discounted airfare?

2) I'm aware that we are required to use NCL shuttles, I think? Is this correct? Will we be required to also use NCL partner hotels?

3) Will the NCL shuttle pick us up at any hotel we book for the Sunday boarding? How does this all work? Last time we cruised out of Miami, we had our whole family so we just drove to the port and parked on site. The time before that we arranged our own shuttle from Ft Lauderdale airport and just took a taxi to the port the next day.

We like to arrive the day before since we're coming from unpredictable cold weather from Ontario.

Thanks!

We were on the 4-day Sky November 16-19/15. We had booked a shore excursion for the first day which was cancelled due to possible thunderstorms. In Nassau, we went to the Ardastra Zoo and quite enjoyed the short tour we had before arriving to the zoo and the zoo itself. We didn't want all day excursions, so the 2 1/2 hours was perfect. At GSC, we booked the Stingrays. That was incredible. So much fun!

Headed out on the Sky on Monday, November 16! First time cruisers here so we picked a short one. Celebrating our 15th wedding anniversary!