nikkiw60

Please add your names if you are on this cruise and where you are from.

we are Nicola and Matt for South Yorkshire in the U.K. 

12 hours ago, nhgal2013 said:

Anyone on the  Breakaway sailing New Orleans to the western Caribbean…

 

could you please give me a quick rundown of the days and the times that the two main entertainment attractions are? SIX etc 

 

thank you in advance I have a little over 700 members in my group for the cruise critic meeting  and we’re all getting hungry. We sail on February 5.th!!

just checked and SIX is on at 7.30 and again at 10pm.

8 hours ago, like2cruise said:

I hope you are having a great cruise?  Could you please post any menus from the MDR.  Would also love to hear about the Muster Drill for your sailing...I have heard rumors they are going back to the pre-covid drills...please say it isn't so :)!

The muster drill was one big shambles! We were told to go to the muster station at 3pm, ours was the main atrium it was absolutely crowded, we stood there till about 3.30 they then did the muster which seemed to take forever but was about 15 minutes! It was so bad that at the end people cheered and gave a round of applause! I don’t have all the menus but will post what I have. Also the queue to embark at New Orleans took over an hour. The ship departed just over an hour late at 5pm.

Also if you have booked any private tours at any of the ports we were given a note At embarkation the we would now be arriving 

in Costa Maya at 1.30pm and Cozumel at 10.30am. I think this has happened a lot recently.

11 hours ago, nhgal2013 said:

Anyone on the  Breakaway sailing New Orleans to the western Caribbean…

 

could you please give me a quick rundown of the days and the times that the two main entertainment attractions are? SIX etc 

 

thank you in advance I have a little over 700 members in my group for the cruise critic meeting  and we’re all getting hungry. We sail on February 5.th!!

We did not get chance to see SIX as was only on the first 3 nights of the cruise. I will check the daily later and post this.

4 minutes ago, FLAHAM said:

Every time I have gone to the open MDR upon boarding it has been at least half empty and delightful.

We didn’t realise it was open.

Ok had coffee! 
to end yesterday’s info we had dinner in Taste at about 7.30 food was ok. I didn’t photo the menu but will do for the rest of the week. We are a group of 4 btw.

After dinner we sat and had cocktails and whiskey in the Whiskey bar.

I am going to do a lot of comparisons to MSC and so far MSC is far superior….

#controversial…

15 minutes ago, RocketMan275 said:

We're on Breakaway in seven weeks. 

Spent two hours waiting in lines last March on NOLA.

Trying to determine the best time to arrive at the port to minimize waiting time.

All reservations have been made so no need to board early to make those.

Questions:

When did you arrive at the port?

When were you able to board?

How long was the line to clear security before checking in?

 

I have answered this in another post! Take a bottle of water just in case and got to the restroom! 
The ship was an hour late In leaving, also we were given a note on check in about port time’s having changed for Costa Maya and Cozumel…think it’s 1.30 for Costa Maya and either 10 or 10.30 for Cozumel so be warned if you have any private trips booked.

We decided to walk to the port having no idea where it was this took about 20 minutes. 
When we arrived at the check in area OMG what a queue! Now in my cruising life so far we immediately got Diamond status with MSC , so does the rest of the world with status match… Which means priority boarding… and people on FB had all morning been saying what a breeze the check in was and were happily posting pictures of cocktails and food. 
Well, for the 12 nooners this was not to be! It was about 90 mins before we were on boards, we had to snake round the terminal!

And once on board the strangest thing! There were no tables to be found in the buffet all occupied but sun beds a plenty!

We did manage to find a glass of wine to have on sun beds and managed to eat later.

The safety drill was at 3 pm, omg what a shambles this was ! Our cabin had to go to the atrium near guest services, where hundreds of us gathered for nearly an hour! It was so bad people cheered and clapped at the end of it!

All I could think was welcome to the covid fest…

one positive so far cabins where ready and our cases had already arrived outside our cabins along with other random cases, which were still there at 7pm when we went to dinner… they were nowhere near the correct cabins.

Before dinner we had to join the queue At guest services to find out where our included 6 missing bottles of water where. Our friends found theirs in the door stool. They said we didn’t have any our package even though we had booked at the same time and we had paid more for our club cabin!

Our problem was nothing though compared to the people who still couldn’t get into their cabins due to key cards not working…

Will post more later as my thumbs are going numb and I need to drink my coffee which costs $4.95 to have delay to cabin! This I am not used to as it is free on MSC…

First day musings and sorry but they are not on the positive side so far, but I will enjoy this cruise I will!!!

we started with a couple of lovely days in New Orleans. Got 2 rooms using IHG points at the Indigo on the edge of the city area with the street car stop right outside. We ate at New Orleans Cookery restaurant the Friday night had a delicious seafood boil. Then Saturday morning took the street car to explore, this is the best $3 spent!

in the afternoon did a seafood walking tour and guess where one of the 3 stops was!

Tries a hurricane or 2 and discovered the deliciousness of the chargrilled oyster.

Then yesterday after spending a couple of hours doing more exploring and having the daft idea of going to cafe du monde for beignets- didn’t do as queue too long set off for the cruise terminal at 11.30 ish for our 12 noon to 12.30 check in!

I posted the following on another thread a couple of weeks ago, we are now on board so instead of typing all this again the following shows how we ended up here!

Finally 2 weeks from today (15th January) we will be boarding the Breakaway out of New Orleans!
Background story!
We started cruising in 2016 ( we are from U.K.) on MSC Divina since then we ( or should I say I?) have become hooked!
We did a status match to the top tier which was then Black from a hotel status so I started my research on Cruise Critic and went on board as a seasoned cruiser! 
Since then we have been on 8 MSC cruises and have further 3 booked…

Now let’s get on to how we discovered NCL and how the cruise in 2 weeks time got booked!

if you are not bored yet… if you are stop reading now!
With friends we had booked a Californian road trip and just by chance we saw a 5 night reposition cruise on NCL Bliss which we thought would be a good start to a road trip, Flight to Seattle stayed over night got train to Vancouver stayed overnight then Bliss back down to Los Angeles, with stops in Victoria and San Francisco. Then car back to San Francisco via Solvang, Monterey, and Paso Robles.
Whilst on board we purchased some future cruise vouchers…. 2 plus 2 free…

So we were booked for April 2020 for a milestone birthday on MSC Bellissima in Asia.. which was then cancelled in January due to a big virus in China… so determined to still be away for my birthday we quickly used 2 of our vouchers and booked either the Getaway or Breakaway for the same week out of New Orleans and prepaid the entire trip…

You can guess the rest of this chapter…

Anyway as previously stated we are finally ( hopefully) boarding in a couple of weeks time.

And back to the heading of my topic, usually on MSC I do a Live From, I will have the WiFi package and plan on boring anyone who can be bothered to read my thread with my morning musings, menus, food photos, dailies etc.

I will answer any questions live or as live as I can whilst on board..

6 minutes ago, wolft927 said:

Wife and I have cruises out of New Orleans many times. Stayed at Hampton inn parked at Fulton garage and walked to the terminal. Lines in New Orleans get out of control pretty quick, once past security it goes pretty quick as long as no boarding delays like crew immigration inspection 

We had forgotten about the mall! Also four research was from 2020!

1 hour ago, MyAuntFanny said:

Howdy! We'll be on same cruise, but we're  newbies.  Hope to see you there! If you're interested in a pub crawl on the 1st at sea day there's a group meeting up at O'Sheehans at 10am.

We are in the FB group for this cruise. We will see what our friends who are travelling with us want to do! 

One thing not to expect is anything about trivia stuff or the games.

I detest these with a passion!

Finally 2 weeks from today (15th January) we will be boarding the Breakaway out of New Orleans!
Background story!
We started cruising in 2016 ( we are from U.K.) on MSC Divina since then we ( or should I say I?) have become hooked!
We did a status match to the top tier which was then Black from a hotel status so I started my research on Cruise Critic and went on board as a seasoned cruiser! 
Since then we have been on 8 MSC cruises and have further 3 booked…

Now let’s get on to how we discovered NCL and how the cruise in 2 weeks time got booked!

if you are not bored yet… if you are stop reading now!
With friends we had booked a Californian road trip and just by chance we saw a 5 night reposition cruise on NCL Bliss which we thought would be a good start to a road trip, Flight to Seattle stayed over night got train to Vancouver stayed overnight then Bliss back down to Los Angeles, with stops in Victoria and San Francisco. Then car back to San Francisco via Solvang, Monterey, and Paso Robles.
Whilst on board we purchased some future cruise vouchers…. 2 plus 2 free…

So we were booked for April 2020 for a milestone birthday on MSC Bellissima in Asia.. which was then cancelled in January due to a big virus in China… so determined to still be away for my birthday we quickly used 2 of our vouchers and booked either the Getaway or Breakaway for the same week out of New Orleans and prepaid the entire trip…

You can guess the rest of this chapter…

Anyway as previously stated we are finally ( hopefully) boarding in a couple of weeks time.

And back to the heading of my topic, usually on MSC I do a Live From, I will have the WiFi package and plan on boring anyone who can be bothered to read my thread with my morning musings, menus, food photos, dailies etc.

I will answer any questions live or as live as I can whilst on board..

Hopefully some of you will enjoy our journey with us!
And I will start posting soon.
 

On 11/11/2022 at 11:46 PM, morpheusofthesea said:

University Level Look at Tipping as a Social Norm

Tipping has several different forms, : reward-tipping, price tipping, tipping-in advance, bribery-tipping, holiday-tipping and gift-tipping. The common feature of all forms of tipping is the voluntary and discretionary nature of the tip: the consumer is free to choose how much to tip, if at all. This definition excludes service charges [aka discretionary service charges] that are sometimes added to the bill (for example in many European countries), imposed gratuities (US restaurants often impose a 15-18 percent gratuity for large parties – usually six diners or more), [cruise ship imposed gratuities]and imposed tips (for example some tour packages include a certain amount that the consumer has to pay for tips). Indeed, these cases have little in common with voluntary tipping.

Tipping is a social norm that is economic in nature, in many cases the social norm of tipping has economic justification, as it solves some inefficiency and increases welfare. In particular, it can promote good service where other mechanisms fail to do so. “Norms of social behavior [eg. tipping] including ethical and moral codes. I (Arrow) suggest that they are reactions of society to compensate for market failures.”

P.S.https://www.researchgate.net/publication/23748777_The_Social_Norm_of_Tipping_A_Review

Sorry what?
 

It didn’t work for me initially but did when I added my first and middle name.

I have seen these posted recently.

I actually don’t agree with this. The crew are on board for 6 months plus at a time, they need to stay healthy for theirs and their families sake. If they are taken il. With Covid they can miss a lot of extra money by way of tips. Covid is still out there. 800 people on A Princess ship (Majestic?) tested positive for Covid last week. People wanting crew not to wear masks are just being selfish in my opinion.

We have just received an email cancelling our Asia Cruise for next January. The cruise is fully paid re having been moved twice or is it 3 times due to Covid. We also only last week booked our flights with BA again using a voucher yet again Covid… 

Due to all these vouchers and also having a dog sitter booked for those dates we have been looking at other options and at the moment Pride of America is front runner.

My question is that as at the moment for the week we can go in January the price pp for a balcony is £2292, would this price usually drop nearer the time? On U.K. bookings we don’t get any price adjustments once we have booked! What you see is what you pay and tough!
Thoughts???

20 hours ago, sidari said:

So the Macaroons have replaced the Strawberries then.

We got macarons on out last 2 Virtuosa sailings instead of strawberries.

Ok, so just in the USA no Spumante?

Just seen the new Diamond benefits! No more chocolate ship and no Prosecco and chocolate dipped strawberries or macarons.!
Does anyone think the oft mentioned new upper tier May finally happen? 

We were booked on Grandiosa for September the 4th out of Copenhagen, yesterday I decided to move our deposit etc to the Virtuosa to Norway out of Southampton for the same dates. Praying the world will be back to Normal next year and we can rebook for the Baltics then. 

Sorry if this has already been posted.

it expires 9th March. We have on both of our cards so plan on splitting it. 

If you have an American Express card check your cash back offers. We have just seen on ours an offer of £100 cash back on a £500 spend on NCL. We have a balance to pay so this is a nice surprise to find.