The Traveling Man

If you choose to dine in one of the specialty restaurants, then reservations are recommended. In the main dining rooms (MDRs), it really is not necessary. You may encounter a brief delay to be seated at peak times, but otherwise you usually will be seated within a few minutes of the time you arrive at the restaurant. Whereas many cruise lines feature mostly tables for six, eight, or more guests in their restaurants. NCL restaurants are dominated by two top and four top tables. The overwhelming majority of passengers on NCL prefer to dine as couples or perhaps in groups of four. There are a few larger tables, but frequently they go unused. You may request a particular table or to be served by a certain member of the wait staff, but doing so likely will result in a delay. Usually they will seat you at the next available table, regardless of which waiter's area that may be.

We have sailed in the Eastern Mediterranean several times. On many more occasions we looked into cruises there before deciding to travel somewhere else. There have been many times when Kusadasi and/or Istanbul have been removed from the itinerary on short notice. There could be any of a wide variety of reasons. The time that we were on a cruise for which they were removed, there had been some political unrest in Turkey just prior to our cruise. We assumed that the itinerary change was for passenger safety. Roughly half of the 40 or so cruises we have taken with NCL have undergone some itinerary change, rarely prior to final payment, frequently after final payment but weeks before sailing, and sometimes after embarkation. As someone else on this board has said, ship happens. NCL probably could do a better job in promoting transparency in their communication on matters such as this, but the bottom line is that the cruise contract gives them great latitude to make changes without requiring them to offer any explanation. Unfortunately, that's just part of cruising.

As I understand it, all the tenders aboard NCL ships are also rated for use as lifeboats, but not all lifeboats are rated for use as tenders. If you take a look at photos of most NCL ships you may notice that there appear to be two different sizes and/or shapes of boats hanging from davits on the side of the ship. On the Pr1ma and V!va, all of the boats seem to be of the same size. They are rated as lifeboats but not as tenders.

Sure, @chengkp75. He retired a few years ago after a career as a Chief Engineer for NCL. He has mentioned it a couple of times on Cruise Critic boards.

No, the ship does have the required number of lifeboats, but they are not rated for service as tenders.

While it's true that the Pr1ma's lifeboats are not suitable for use as tenders, there are several ports that have their own tenders. Some ports even insist that ships use the local boats instead of the ship's tenders. It's possible, then, that the Pr1ma could visit a tender port if they use the local port's tender boats.

@sboston06 I agree with Popeye on this one. Alaska is an excellent choice. Your flights would be shorter, you could arrive a day prior to embarkation to reduce the possibility of missing your embarkation time, and you should have no problem booking a return flight on the Sunday when you disembark the cruise. Save Hawai'i and the Mediterranean for times when you can take an extra day or two to truly enjoy the experience.

NCL may issue some credit like that, but the times in the past when we have received a percentage credit rather than a fixed dollar amount, the percentage was calculated off the fare of the cruise to which the FCC is applied. On one occasion we booked a cruise that cost several thousand dollars more than the one for which we received the credit and we received the full percentage value off that more expensive cruise.

@Nikita4 stated that they did not intend to cruise with NCL again, thus the 20% FCC would be of no value to them. Their only other compensation was the $200 OBC. If they did choose to use the FCC on a future cruise, however, then your math would be correct, assuming that the 20% applied to the amount they paid for this cruise. Frequently, though, when NCL issues FCC of this type, the percentage refers to the cost of the next cruise to which the credit is applied. Thus, if the cost of their next cruise totaled $20,000, for example, the value of the FCC would be $4000. Conversely, if they applied the FCC to a relatively inexpensive cruise, say $3000, then the value of the FCC would only be $600.

Isn't "Azipod" a registered trade name for a particular brand of directional propeller? I seem to recall from a presentation on the PoA several years ago being told that PoA had a different brand of propulsion system. Perhaps "azipod" had become a generic name for that type of propulsion system the same way as aspirin, refrigerator, etc.

Glad to hear that NCL, and especially Katty Byrd, were able to help you.

Unfortunately I do not have access to plans from a time prior to the renovation for comparison, so my question stands.

Thank you for the great photos of the food. We found it quite comfortable to sit at the bar. You get a bird's eye view of the chef as he prepares your meal, then he simply hands it across the bar to you. Nothing could be simpler.

Did I understand correctly that they reduced the size of the observation lounge to make room for some additional staterooms? Also that they eliminated the Galaxy Pavilion in favor of an expanded spa?

I would bet that @chengkp75 does.

I learned it as "In all thy sons command" and that's the way I still sing it...mostly at Dallas Stars ice hockey games!

Just to follow up, were you able to disembark in Le Havre? In the past Le Havre was not a regular port of embarkation for NCL, which might have been a factor in whether you could get off there or not. Recently, however, NCL has begun using Le Havre as a home port for some sailings, so I wonder if that helped you accomplish your goal.

I found a sample menu on the Norwegian App, but I'm not tech savvy enough to be able to display it here. They offer nine different Sushi rolls, plus six Nigiri, and three Sashimi. These include a typical variety of tuna, salmon, eel, California rolls, etc. Most items are priced between $10 and $20. Each Sushi roll is cut into eight pieces. Two or three items are plenty for two people to share for a delightfully light lunch. If you are going for a full dinner, you may want to share four items for two guests. The Sushi bar on the Sky is the most welcoming and inviting of any ship we have sailed. The chefs are talented and eager to please. When we sailed on the Sky last year, we stopped in there for lunch on each day at sea. They also were open for lunch one day when our ship arrived in port after noon. We asked the chef to knock himself out - to use his imagination and make us the best bite of food imaginable. He succeeded brilliantly! I don't know what he made for us, I didn't care. It was fabulous. The waiter didn't know how to ring it up, so he just picked one of the more expensive items on the menu and called it that. I'm sure it cost NCL a lot more than we were billed, because the chef used all the best ingredients. Let's hope you can experience the same nirvana that we did on the Sky.

I'll echo what @schmoopie17 has said. @OrcaGirl is also on the Epic right now and has written very favorably about the cruise. She has contributed frequently to Cruise Critic over the years and her reviews seem to be well balanced and favorably received. Yes, there sometimes are shortcomings on cruises, and those deficiencies do seem to be more noticeable since the restart of cruising following the COVID shutdown. It really seems, however, that your case may be a one-off. I hope things get better for you as the cruise continues.

Have you considered simply paying an extra amount in advance? We have several recurring bills for which we have a good idea of how much we will owe in each of the next several months. Instead of giving the vendor access to our account, we just write them a check that we figure will cover us until we get back. Sometimes we need to communicate with the vendor via email when that next bill comes due, to remind them that they already have had our payment in hand for a month or so, and to get them to apply our credit balance to the amount currently due, but it works for us.

@OrcaGirl The one bright spot of having propulsion issues that slowed the ship and made you miss your port stop in Gibraltar is that you passed through the strait during daylight. Every time we've sailed there it has been the wee hours of the night when it was too dark to see anything. Thanks for the photos.

Knowing that you're from Vancouver, this may be a sacrilege to ask, but have you ever tried Eggs Benedict with smoked salmon in place of the Canadian bacon? YUMM!

Plus two more that you will visit twice. There's lots to see and do in many of these ports. Do you have your tour plans in place, or are you looking for suggestions?

We also stayed there on a one day layover. We chose it because it's next to an entrance to the port, so we figured that we could walk to the cruise terminal with our luggage in tow. Unfortunately, for security reasons the port authority had closed access at that gate, so we had to take a taxi on a two mile roundabout journey to the gate at the other end of the port. Let's hope that they have reopened the gate next to the Holiday Inn by the time you travel. Looking forward to hearing all about your adventure. Bon voyage!

We have sailed to Alaska on four different NCL ships including the Encore. As I recall, the meeting place for most tours was either in the auditorium or on the pier just outside the ship. I think the farthest we had to go for any of them was once in Skagway when we walked about a quarter-mile along the pier, from the Joy past the Bliss, to board the WP&Y Railroad. In Juneau the meeting spot sometimes is in town at the base of the tramway. There usually is a shuttle bus to take you from the ship to that meeting point. In Ketchikan, since NCL shifted their docking location to Ward's Cove, the meeting point for some tours is inside the converted warehouse which NCL uses as a cruise terminal. It's a five minute walk from the ship to your meeting point, then a 15 to 20 minute bus ride into the city center. In Icy Strait, there is a tramway to take you from the pier into the main area of interest. It's about 100 yards or so along the pier from the ship to the cable car station.