The Traveling Man

And yet on a different sailing, probably on a different NCL ship, I saw a man seated in Le Bistro while wearing scruffy looking shorts, sandals, and a T-shirt. YMMV.

Since you're staying at the Marriott, Anthony's is just across the street from your hotel. It may not quite measure up to Ivar's, but it's very good and a lot more convenient.

Melbourne, Australia Bliss Garden Villa on the Dawn or Star Yes, I know that these three are mutually exclusive, although the Star did visit Melbourne in February 2017. The Bliss has never been to Australia and the Garden Villa stateroom isn't the same on any other ships.

The video mentioned Miami as the ship's home base. I wonder if it ever has Tampa on it's schedule.

Ivar's. At pier 54.

all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by

Please, not another Cruise Critic discussion thread about dress codes. The policy is that certain venues prohibit shorts, sandals, or shirts without a collar. The current terms are spelled out on NCL's website. In practice, however, shorts generally are allowed. It seems to be up to the discretion of the individual crew members on board. It is reasonable to assume that most crew would rather let a passenger slide by while wearing something outside of the stated policy rather than challenge the customer and possibly cause a confrontation. There have been many reports on Cruise Critic of examples of each course of action, yea or nay. YMMV but you know you can't go wrong by fully complying with NCL's published policy.

My wife and I did something like this on the Getaway in May 2022. Your circumstances are somewhat different than ours, since you simply want to exit the ship at the scheduled port of departure, only a day earlier than planned. In our case, we exited several days early in a different city. The key is to obtain permission well in advance. Contact NCL Senior Vice President for Guest Services Katty Byrd kbyrd@ncl.com. The ship's manifest needs to reflect your intended travel plans so the passenger count checks out. They also need to arrange to have passport control officers on duty on the day you plan to exit your cruise. It should be possible for you to do this without any penalty, but contact NCL in advance and don't try to spring it on the crew at the last minute.

That sounds like an intriguing idea. I wonder if there actually is a way for them to do something like that. Airlines do it already. They have a service crew that comes on board the plane after it lands, sometimes even before the last passenger has exited. They pick up the trash, clean the seating areas (or at least make an attempt), replenish any needed supplies, then exit, usually before the cabin attendants for the next flight have even made it on board. Of course, the airlines have dozens or even hundreds of flights each day arriving at most of the airports they serve. Cruise lines might have only one or two ships making a turnaround at any given port, and then perhaps only one or two days a week. Still, it's an interesting suggestion.

I only have read through the first couple of pages of this thread, so please forgive me if this already has been addressed by others. My wife and I have reduced our annual average number of cruises significantly since the post-COVID resumption of sailing. Many of the few cruises which we have taken recently have featured some of the same minor irritants which have been mentioned by others on this forum. That includes rooms not thoroughly cleaned or not made up until late in the afternoon, slow service at restaurants and bars, reduced entertainment options or a general decline in the quality of the entertainment, less bang for the buck, etc. It seems to us that cruising simply is not as much fun as it was a few years ago. That's just our perception, YMMV. We used to always try to arrive early for check-in, hoping our Latitudes status would help us be among the first on board. That way we could make any last minute reservations before the majority of other passengers got on board. It also let us be among the first to be seated for lunch on embarkation day. We try to minimize the size of our carry-on luggage, but we still preferred to drop off our backpacks in our room before heading to lunch. We likely will amend our standard practice in light of the recent changes. In future we probably will not worry about getting on board in time for lunch. Instead, we will wait until about noon to check out of our pre-cruise hotel, then have lunch near our hotel before catching a ride to the port. Arriving at the terminal later in the afternoon should mean we will avoid the long lines at check-in. We'll need to be sure to book our specialty dining reservations well in advance, of course, and we may miss out on preferred reservation times for some entertainment options, but at least our rooms will be more likely to be ready when we arrive on board. Yes, we'll have to pay extra for lunch on that first day, and we won't be able to start using our beverage package quite as early as we otherwise could, but avoiding the hassle may be worth it. We will try to maintain an even keel while setting our expectations a bit lower than we would prefer. If these changes in our usual plans still leave us feeling that NCL has come up short in the area of service, we still have the option of asking that our DSC be reduced in proportion to the level of disappointment we encounter. Anyway, that's our plan for our B2B cruise on the Dawn this October. I'll let you know how it works out.

Well, that certainly worked out well for them, didn't it?

When everybody is special, nobody is special!

Our personal best for latest booking was about 36 hours prior to boarding. That was in May 2019 on the Holland America Nieuw Statendam, sailing from Amsterdam.

The Epic, launched in 2010, was the first NCL ship to feature individual cabins for most (if not all) crew members. Crew members on the Epic may share a jack-and-jill bathroom with another crew member, but they each have a private bedroom. I have been told by several crew members on some of NCL's newer ships that the crew berthing on the new ships follows the same design. NCL still operates ten ships which were built before the Epic and seven (soon to be eight) which have been built after the Epic. I would be interested in knowing which of NCL's ships still berth more than two crew members per room. And yes, I do know that even on the Epic NCL usually assigns two crew members to a single stateroom if they are married or in an intimate relationship.

That does sound like a lot of fun, and it probably wouldn't cost much more than a week sailing on the POA. You would need to be able to travel for about a month straight, though. The appeal of the POA for many people, of course, is the ability to squeeze in travel to many of the most desirable sites in Hawai'i in just one week. Many passengers are unable to take off from work more than a week at a time.

I'm sorry to hear that you have had difficulty receiving the benefits which your loyalty to NCL has earned. We have been more fortunate. We missed out on promised benefits shortly after the return to cruising following the pandemic, of course, because NCL cancelled many of them out of concern for spreading disease. The only other time we missed out was on a recent cruise when a Cruise Next staff member gave us the wrong date and location for a beverage tasting event. I hope your experience with Latitudes benefits are better in the future.

I always enjoy your posts on CC. You certainly have a wealth of information, and you are able to articulate that knowledge in an easy to understand manner. I may have taken a shortcut or two in attempting to make my point. The monopoly which NCL holds with POA compared to every other major cruise line is on week long cruises. If someone only has a week of vacation, plus the weekend prior and the weekend after their days off, then they only have nine consecutive days for travel. That could stretch to ten days if they are able to take their vacation during the week before a Monday holiday. If their goal is to see as much of Hawai'i as possible by taking a cruise, then POA is their only viable choice. Cruises from or to the west coast either would require far more than a week or would leave only a few days in the islands. Crews on ships registered outside of the US frequently work 60 hours per week. I'm not familiar with the rules governing their rate of pay, so perhaps they do earn more after passing the 40 hour mark. On the POA, as you mention, all crew must be paid at a higher rate for overtime hours beyond 40 per week. That means that the overall cost to NCL to provide and compensate a crew is greater on the POA than on other ships. Either they need more employees to get the work done or they have to pay higher wage rates (overtime pay) to compensate fewer employees to work longer hours to perform the required tasks. I may not have stated my message as eloquently as you did, but the basic underlying points are the same. No other cruise line can provide a similar Hawai'i cruise experience to that of the POA and the labor costs per unit of work performed are higher on the POA as they are on other ships.

I'll take the day before the cruise sails. Let's see who comes closer!

@kmeeker Thanks for such a positive review. Really glad that NCL was able to take care of you when you encountered delays on United. There have been so many negative reports on CC about NCL dropping the ball, not following through when there were flight delays, and essentially telling passengers that they were on their own when delays occur. Thanks for the tips on staying in touch with NCL when you encountered delays.

The flight might be scheduled to arrive in plenty of time, but there have been lots of reports on CC of late flights resulting in either rushing to get to the ship or even "missing the boat."

They very easily might book you on a red eye flight. They otherwise might book you on a morning flight that is scheduled to arrive at the airport near your cruise terminal just an hour or so before the cutoff for check in. Either way, unless you ask for a diversion to arrive a day early, you could find yourself with either very little time to make it to the cruise terminal or bleary-eyed from an overnight flight.

@PACD_JG I just noticed your hometown listing. My MIL grew up there. Do you know any of the Kramers?

There have been many reports on this website of folks doing exactly what you suggest, despite the fact that the terms and conditions specified on the NCL website indicate that you must have an adult in each room. It's possible that the shipboard staff can amend the rules only in the case of connecting rooms. I'm not sure about that, but we have heard of families changing their sleeping arrangements when they have booked multiple rooms. The folks at the Guest Services desk can issue additional and/or replacement key cards that should allow you to book one adult in each room but then shift to having adults in one room and children in another. I can't make any guarantees, but I have heard of it happening in the past.

Deep down in my soul, I wish I didn't have to consider that to be a valid possibility. Unfortunately, though, you are right. If they contorted the facts to support their assertion about why they weren't serving drinks, they just might be pulling a similar stunt here.

NCL changed 100% of the intermediate ports of call. That seems pretty radical to me. I'm not exactly sure where to draw the line between a minor change and a radical change, but 100% does seem radical.