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my 2c I have managed to permanently disable the on-camera flash on my mirrorless system and I never use it on my dSLRs either. Those dinky flashes are next to worthless and the reflections they trigger just make things more complicated. If your camera can handle an external flash you can get a diffuser for that if using it for portrait pictures.

Doing action shoots of male athletes in Ireland can be sketchy, I’ve twice wound up with pictures of genitalia flying free. Irish lads don’t believe in jock straps for leisure sport.

Ohh.. that’s fun! I had to do two 50year anniversary slideshows of photos and videos that wound up being hours long. The first was Irish Surfing’s 50th anniversary and then my local surf club. It was some fun converting old TV news footage into something that would play on a random laptop and integrate with scanned photos as well as digital images of varied quality. I spent about a week scanning all the old print images, thankfully I was able to reuse a lot of the scans for both anniversaries. Thankfully I didn’t have to do any colour corrections since the print images were loans from old school pro photographers who had kept them stored perfectly. The most time consuming activity was the format conversion on the videos dating back to 1972 and making sure everything fit onto an external drive for the National anniversary.

actually another question on Juneau for the folks that were there on the early sailings this year, did the shops stay open past 6pm if the ship was an afternoon arrival until 8/9pm ? The whale watching excursion I've booked is supposed to end by 6pm but I won't have much time before that excursion to get to some of the more interesting stores downtown.

You may enjoy a more port intensive itinerary like in the Caribbean or Europe where there's a new port every day with plenty of activities to pick through either the cruiseline or independent providers. The big shows usually have 2 stagings, one about 7/7.30pm and the other at 9.30pm but to make the early show you have to have dinner early. Personally I can't hack a "traditional" (for irish folks) sun holiday where you spend 8 hours a day on a sun lounger, I get bored out of my mind within an hour. But cruising suits me perfectly. There are definitely cruisers for whom the ship is the main criteria and others for whom the ports are the main factor, I fall into the latter category.

Some excursions aren’t offered later in the season or are only offered with an earlier arrival in port. I know my first choice for Juneau isn’t being offered in October due to shorter hours of daylight. I managed to figure out the excursion provider for that one so I contacted them directly to find out if it was full or not offered. if you search out reviews on things to do on trip advisor you may figure out the provider for the excursions you are interested in and find out from them directly what the situation is.

Remember there’s also that $50 excursion credit from the Free at Sea promo to reduce the NCL price for the first person in the cabin. I booked the show specifically due to the whole ward cove thing, the last shuttle from town to ward cove is apparently quite early so I figured the later lumberjack show time would probably have a later shuttle possibly after the free shuttle. I’m not sailing until October so I’ve plenty of time to cancel it if I see any reviews that make my theory void, but I don’t cancel before embarkation it will be my first question to the shore excursion staff on the ship.

I’ve done photo books for various collections of images over the years. It’s the handiest way to turn all those digital images into something tangible. The first year I had a dSLR the rugby team I support won the European cup so the very first photo book I did was pictures from that season and a smaller one of just the final. I got the opportunity to get the squad and management of the team to sign that book of the final which makes it a unique and special keepsake for me. I’ve done a few for friends weddings and I wasn’t their official photographer but the brides loved them as I got shots of far more people and longer into the night than the wedding photographer would. back in the print days I used to order doubles of prints from rolls of film I used at weddings or sports so I always had duplicates to share.

If you are flying to the embarkation port you may want to check regulations on the batteries. I travel from Europe so the rules I deal with might be different. AFAIK you can only bring 2 li-ion batteries outside of the device and they must be stored with the contacts covered and again have to have them in your carry-on. This is all thanks to those dodgy Samsung batteries a few years back. The regulations may have changed again but better to be safe than sorry. If you have an external charger for the batteries bring it ! Don’t just rely on charging them in the camera. But similarly if the camera can be charged using a usb connection you can use the battery pack you use for phones too.

I was at St Lucia last year on Norwegian Epic and we docked but it was definitely a tight docking manoeuvre to make it. I’d suspect if there was another large ship there at the time it would have been marginal at best.

I’ve been looking at recent dailies for Bliss and they were using Q as a drop off location for carry-on baggage and an area adjacent to Q for bags that went via the porters but lost their tags.

Ahh what they mean is that you don’t have to login to the ships WiFi to use iMessage which is specific to iPhone/iPads. If you want to use wifi based messaging on any other app/device you need to actually login to the WiFi. iPhones can use traditional SMS, iMessage, WhatsApp, messenger, viber… etc. to send messages but only iMessage will work on the ship without any costs and iMessage doesn’t communicate with Androids. it’s a quirk of how the wifi is configured on the NCL ships, they don’t block the specific port used by iMessage as they use it internally themselves for other reasons. if you have the unlimited wifi package from NCL you can send messages via any app you choose and only SMS/MMS will attract charges for mobile roaming while on the ship.

I did Venice in January years ago, I was in Treviso supporting my local rugby team and the day after the match you couldn’t turn a corner in Venice without spotting someone in team colours. The city was practically empty of all other tourists. Meanwhile our lot were checking pubs to see if any of them were showing another rugby match but no dice so we all did the tourist thing. I even managed to get that trip partly subsidised by my employer at the time, I visited a partner company outside Milan before flying back to Ireland.

On my very first cruise another solo got stopped when going back to the ship at St Thomas, I had my passport with me and after her giving me her keycard and instructions to find her ID the security guy decided to let her through without the ID. So always bring some sort of photo ID if you have it, you never know when a port will have heightened security. And keep any other travel-critical documents & medication in your room safe so if you miss the ship the crew can find it and leave it with their port agent.

I did sorrento & pompeii via NCL in October ‘21 so it was just after the resumption. We still had a full bus though and one couple had forgotten their vaccine certs which complicated matters at Pompeii. Back then Italy still had heaps of covid restrictions including no access to Pompeii without a vaccine cert. In sorrento we only had one guide but that was basically him escorting us into town from the bus, bringing us to a wood crafter place with a New Yorker explaining the craft and we then had about an hour free before getting on the bus to Pompeii. At Pompeii there was a second guide along with our original so one of them could answer specific questions while the other gave the talks. I will say I’d advise anyone doing tours in Italy to bring their own headphones to plug into the little walkies as the ones provided are neither comfortable nor reliable.

I dunno about the North American site but the European site processed my latitudes discount in addition to the excursion credit on excursions no problems. Of course I’m dealing with prices being ever varied thanks to the €/$ exchange rates but for this booking I’m also managing the excursion bookings for a friend on her first cruise so she has no latitudes discount at all. Comparing the prices I’ve paid for each they appear to be in line with what they should be, of course we are in 2 separate cabins as we have each booked a studio hence the fact we’re both getting the $50 credit. One of the perks on FAS+ is that guest #2 also gets the excursion credit. I also checked the excursion prices for booking independently and the excursion credit does make them cheaper, not massively so but enough that the assurance of the cruiseline coordination is a plus factor. I will say my upcoming cruise is Alaska in October so a lot of the usual excursion providers don’t even take bookings that late in the season which left independent options thin on the ground. But I could do a straight compare for the white pass railway in Skagway and the NCL price worked out cheaper.

I’ve tried a few TAs with mixed results. The first I tried priced a cruise with a flight out of Dublin (3 hours away) rather than Shannon (15 minutes away) so I immediately ditched them. What is the point in using a local travel agent if they’re going to default to not picking the local airport ? another local TA, too slow in responding.. then tried a national one and they got me a great deal from my preferred airport but when I tried their helpline when my airline had an IT meltdown the day I was flying home the response I got was, just queue for the airline desk. Sooo… I’m sticking to DIY. I actually got a call from a PCC this week, I think I triggered by looking after a friend’s booking but he hadn’t spotted that I had my own reservation too. This one was from the states, I had spoken to a European one a few years back before covid and when I tried to contact her post-covid her contact info no longer worked. I am hoping to do a Hawaii cruise in a couple of years but I think I will need to use either a TA or PCC for that as it’s likely to involve at least 3 flights each way, plus a TA might be able to get a decent pre/post hotel deal in combination with the flights.

So right .. I'd been looking into cruising for years before finally going on my first after my dad passed. I once brought mum on a holiday to Australia after I won flights from a local radio station, within 3 days of our departure my Dad decided he couldn't cope being at home on his own for 2 weeks so booked flights to join us for the second half of the trip. He and mum were on a sailing holiday in Greece when he died from an aneurysm almost 10 years ago. Our extended family lost a bunch of his generation over the space of 18 months. I decided to leave my corporate tech industry job cos it just wasn't worth the heartburn, and came back to the family shop. While I may not be earning what I got back then at least I'm not dealing with that stress anymore and I've changed my holiday habits drastically. Back in the corporate days my holidays were volunteering at various sporting events, yep that's how skewed I was, working for free was more enjoyable than the day job! These days while the months I can take holidays are restricted those holidays are now actual holidays, 1 cruise a year.

The crocs range goes way beyond the clogs that everyone is familiar with. This is a promo image we got from Crocs, I work in a shop that sells them. These are their version of "chelsea boots".

you can also get repellent wrist/ankle-bands if you're allergic to deet.

Are you sure about the not a uk law ? I seem to remember any time I got a ferry between Ireland and the UK the bars onboard didn't open until we were a few of miles off shore.

Definitely on my list. I’m just not sure how far in advance to book it.

Glow night is what used to be the “white hot” party, it’s basically a night club with UV lights so everyone wears white or fluorescent colours . On a warm weather cruise on the big ships it takes place in Spice H2O if the weather allows. The first few hours are open to the kids but it switches to adults only at 11pm I think. I’m not a fan of the night club music played at the 2 I’ve experienced.

That is the deal everyone can get any day on the ship. I do hate that they pitch it as OBC because it’s actually a discount on the price. That sales pitch is designed to confuse folks and convince them they’ll have more money to spend on the ship but the “obc” is immediately eaten up by the purchase of the cruise next vouchers.

I usually book a studio cabin so generally can only ever use 1 cruise next credit but occasionally the kind folks on this forum post notifications about double Up or very very rarely Triple Up promos that then allow you to add another credit to an existing reservation that meets the criteria of that promo. e.g. I booked my October 2023 cruise in January 2022, at that time I could only use 1 credit, but last month I was able to apply a second one to that reservation because of a double up promo specific to Alaskan cruises. You can also find people selling cruise next credits on other websites, I gifted one to a friend for her first cruise as it was going to expire before I could use it thanks to the various covid cancellations after I originally purchased it. For the cruise next credits there are now 3 levels - light, regular and haven. In general you can always apply 2 credits for a sailing with a balcony cabin at least 4 months out. I haven't looked at the cruise next light credits at all as they weren't offered on my last sailing so I'm not sure what t&cs apply to those.