eileeshb

Normally I’m not one for running risks with my flight planning but travelling between the west coast of Ireland and Seattle at a time when flight options are reducing is making me consider a noon flight departing Seattle. my cruise finishes Oct 21st, so I’m partly concerned that there could be potential for weather delays getting back to Seattle and then secondly the potential check-in/tsa effects at the airport as I’ll be an international traveller. right now the cheapest flight options involve Alaska Air which seems to have truly awful reviews, so when avoiding them the next cheapest is a noon flight from Seattle to Boston that will connect to the Irish flight. Otherwise it’s a red-eye near midnight and a 10hr wait in Boston before getting the flight back to Ireland. The other alternative is stay in Seattle overnight in the 21st and fly home on the 22nd. Btw none of the airlines that look viable are part of the port valet program, plus the FAQ for that program doesn’t include info for international travellers and I’ve only once been allowed to do curbside bag drop in over 20 visits to the USA which makes me doubt it will be available even if I did use one of the airlines participating in the program. anyone have any insights on potential delays?

slightly off topic but if you bring the boots to NZ make sure they're easily accessible when going through border control as they will want to take them for sanitizing in case you've any seeds or anything stuck in the tread.

I think there's at least one independent company that links the railway with a bike tour, i.e. go up on the train but bike back to Skagway. It's not offered by NCL but I'm not sure about other cruiselines. I found it on alaska shore tours... I'm considering it as I don't want to wind up doing too many excursions where I'll just be sitting/standing. Anyhow it would cover the MUST DO railway combined with a wee bit more action via a 15 mile downhill bike ride.

If it’s only a couple of cent/dollars it’s probably just an exchange rate rounding error. I’ve seen it pop up a couple of times on my bookings it usually disappears again.

I spent years looking at cruising and couldn’t persuade family or friends to do it, so eventually, I discovered NCLs studio cabins and solo coordinators and booked my first cruise with them. I enjoyed it so much I booked my second within a week of getting home. From the start of that first cruise I met other solos and there was always at least one other solo on every excursion I had booked, and that’s been the case ever since. On my first cruise post-covid I had just done 6xdays a week at work for the entire summer so I wasn’t looking to be super social. I booked an inside cabin so didn’t have access to the studio lounge and the restrictions that were still in place meant there were no solo meet-ups. Yet I still found another solo on my first excursion so if we happened to spot each other in the buffet thereafter we’d share a table. But I dined alone with my kindle for most of that cruise. I would say on the NCL breakaway, getaway and escape you can usually find a quiet spot somewhere on the ship even when it’s at max capacity. The waterfront on deck 8 is normally relatively quiet depending which section you go to. There are also outdoor tables for a couple of the specialty restaurants on that deck along with the outside tables at the buffet.

There’s quite a few people who had expiry dates extended due to the covid stoppages and those vouchers are all about to expire. They aim to get everyone to buy 4 or 8 vouchers depending on their preferred stateroom. E.g. I book studios or insides so I can’t apply more than 1 voucher to any booking but if I was inclined to book suites or haven cabins they’d be pushing me to buy 8 vouchers as I could use 2 per booking as long as they’re far enough out. I won’t be buying any on my next cruise as I still have 3 that will be expiring in 2025. I’m hoping to convert one of my friends to cruise holidays so I can give her a couple of vouchers to use.

If it’s paying for a night in San Juan you can get cheaper accommodation options outside the old city and the embarkation pier is not one of the old city piers either. I stayed at a BnB pre cruise and an Air BnB after my cruise, 5nights total cost about €500. Both were within walking distance of local eateries that were relatively cheap and I even got Uber eats delivered to the BnB. There’s plenty of Uber drivers around with varying sizes of vehicles.

The NCL support person I spoke to initially thought the voucher could only be used as a deposit but my experience to-date has been it could be used as a stage payment. Heck it’s what I usually do on my own bookings. When I said that to the support person she re-confirmed that the voucher can be used as a payment at any point.

Thank you .. it's in progress with NCL just hoping it comes through before the courtesy hold expires. I had to go ahead and make booking for my friend as it looked like the cabin class she wants was almost sold out. If the voucher transfer doesn't come though in time at least the deposit is only €80.

Mods: I am not here to sell a cruise next voucher I have a voucher that's about to expire so I want to transfer it to a friend who's thinking about taking her first cruise. Does anyone have any experience/insight on how to do this or do I just have to call NCL directly? I sent an e-mail to their cruise next team but got an auto-response saying they'd come back to me in 3 to 4 working days, do not send any further e-mail but your e-mail should contain a certain set of info, my original e-mail did not contain the info listed in their auto-response. Any tips ?

Well if you book a sailaway cabin that doesn’t include FAS then you could be buying the beverage package with the latitudes discount applied.

Just an example on the women’s footwear leniency… these are the sort of flip flops I wore in the evening on at least one cruise when dining in le bistro. These are definitely dressy flip flops as the insole gets ridiculously slick if it gets wet.

Even in the circumstances where ncl will make arrangements for you to catch the ship at a port of call there’s no guarantee it will be the first port. A cruise I did early this year there were about 20 folks delayed badly enough that the ship didn’t wait, and they couldn’t get flights to the first port so they wound up getting flown to our second port of call. They got a couple of nights in a hotel on that island while they were waiting for the ship to arrive so it wasn’t all bad even missing the first 2 days on the ship (first day was a sea day).

I always bring a supply with me, heck I had to provide some to a fellow cruiser on my very first cruise. Better to have it and not need it than Need it and not have it. I even get my doc to do prescriptions for some of the stuff I can get OTC in Ireland but not in USA so I don’t have trouble in the airport. But I also plan to stock up on certain otc meds in USA that I can get in bulk there like acetaminophen, fexofenadine, clarityn, ibuprofen. I can get a whole year’s supply over there whereas here you’re doing well to get a 24pack. It is funny to see the differences in what’s considered OTC in different countries. when I was in Costa Rica the pharmacist let me in to his storeroom to try and find a heat rash treatment I’d forgotten to bring, he didn’t have it in the end but gave me magical tablets that knocked my heat rash dead. In the uk you can get ibuprofen+lysine but not in Ireland, fexofendine only just became OTC here, while solpadine (contains codine) is OTC in Ireland but not USA.

Ohh no… I cruised out of San Juan at the end of February and the roll call for that cruise had folks scurrying to get alternate flights as a big storm was coming in the days they were due to fly. There were folks who rented u-haul trucks to drive to their connecting airports as their original origin airport was going to be shutdown. I was travelling trans-Atlantic so I flew in a couple of days early and even then a few flights after my connection in jfk got cancelled. at least one batch of folks who had booked their air through NCL missed the ship and couldn’t catch-up to the cruise until our 2nd port due to lack of flight availability to the first port. another flight group were lucky they decided to hold ship for them as they were only a couple of hours delayed.

I’ve booked the Belltown inn which according to google maps is a 9 minute walk from pier66 and I think it’s pretty much downhill all the way from the hotel.

GSC tendering is a mess on tr breakaway /+ ships. I had booked a ticket for the first tender after the vips and excursion folks and it was 1.30pm before I made it to the island. A bunch of people that were supposed to be on morning excursions missed them because of the tender management fiasco. The crew don’t manage the queuing system at all well. A lot of people start queuing up before their ticket group is called which leaves people with called tickets buried way down the queue because they don’t realise how many of their fellow cruisers are impatient idiots. I will never ever book a cruise with GSC on the itinerary again.

honestly in this day and age I’m waiting to see some guy challenge the sexism in the dress code, if dressy flip flops and a knee length skirt or dress along with a sleeveless top are acceptable for women why not the same for the guys? There was a case in Northern Europe a few years ago where male employees had to wear uniform trousers even when the weather was scorching hot while their female colleagues could go for shorter uniform skirts, the men decided to get the skirts since they weren’t allowed to wear shorts so their employer had to cave and add shorts to the uniform options. now if someone tries to inflict closed toe shoes on me on a warm weather cruise they’ll hear the air turn blue pretty rapidly as my feet swell too badly to fit shoes easily in those conditions.

When I was on a trip with the Irish surf team in South Africa the catering at the team hotel was Indian and the lads all unsuspecting ladled what they thought were green beans onto their plates. Once they bit into them they discovered they were very hot peppers, they all gaspingly requested glasses of milk, and one of the team who lived in the Canary Islands told them all to take a spoonful of sugar. Either approach would be far more effective than water.

On my last eastern Caribbean cruise there was a massive delay departing Tortola. I’d gone an excursion organised by another cruiser who then went wandering off at our last tour stop so we only just made it back to port for 1.20pm and the all aboard time was 1.30pm. One of the NCL excursions had some complications so there were lots of people late getting back to the pier, the queue for the gangway was half the length of the ship. I later heard the complications and delay were due to a guest having a bad fall on an excursion. That guest then died onboard in her sleep on the final night despite having been cleared by the medical personnel on the island.

On one of my cruises there were 2 deaths on the final night, one of whom had hit her head on an excursion. That same cruise there were also 2 people taken off in cuffs so disembarkation was quite delayed.

This is why you should travel with a passport! If you wind up with a medical condition that can’t be handled onboard you’ll be offloaded to the nearest port if they have the necessary facilities. The coastguard airlift will only happen if US is the closest hospital and the medical issue is urgent enough.

I’ve seen it for a some of the excursion providers I’ve been looking up, one example is the whale and glacier photo safari provider in Juneau says to book via the cruiseline on their website. Of course I’ve the added complication of sailing in October and most excursion companies only list up to September so right now it looks like it’s through the cruiseline or wander around without a guide.

Wow… that Sitka runway sounds like a couple in Ireland, the Inishmor island runway can only take teeny tiny planes where one of the passengers is effectively sitting where a copilot should be. The one in Sligo ends in the sea and the odd plane has wound up there if the wind gusts from the wrong direction but it can handle slightly larger planes.

Does anyone know if it’s offered for folks flying internationally? I’m not sure yet if I’ll fly home the day the cruise ends or not.