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I’ve booked to sail on the Bliss next October, the itinerary is a bit limited with quite short stops at Ketchikan(ward cove) and Victoria. But it’s the best option for me due to work commitments. I picked Bliss rather than Encore because I’m not happy about NCL lessening the free areas on the ship, bliss has the karting track but encore has also ripped out spice in favour of a laser tag course. (Yes I know spice is likely to be unused in October, it’s the principle of the thing). As I’m travelling solo bliss was also the cheapest round-trip option.

I did the med in October last year, the time in port is mostly quite long so you’re off the ship a lot of the time. I did go for a spa pass on that cruise for the pool & jets to ease my muscles after all the walking in port. As it was October I wasn’t so concerned with cooling off so I also made use of the heated loungers and sauna. On the cruise I did we did have a sea day to do covid testing on everyone that was finishing their cruise in Barcelona and returning to countries that required a negative test to fly. having the spa pass for that day was very handy.

usually on the cruises I’ve done I’m fairly social but the first one after covid I was just chilling out after having had 2 insane summers of 6 days a week at work (covid caused outdoor sports to explode in Ireland, particularly watersports). I still met other solos on excursions to partner with on the tours even though there was no solos program at the time due to restrictions still in place in Europe. Basically you can be as social or not as you want.

Seafood night is when you’ll get the grilled (broiled) prawns and they are super yummy, top tip get an extra cup of water to use as a finger bowl after all the peeling. I am so happy it’s back to self service, the crew just didn’t understand my wanting multiple slices of baguette and butter portions to make up sandwiches, chip butties or bacon butties. I need my carbs! be careful of the pasta station on Epic, I got half cooked spaghetti there one day and avoided it thereafter, Al dente does not mean it shouldn’t bend!!! for desert avoid the NAS chocolate cake, it’s terrible. however the sorbets at the ice-cream counter are yummy, it’s not just soft serve ice cream in the buffet, there’s also a counter to get scoops of ice cream, sherbet or sorbet. (Note I’ve only been on Epic, escape and the aways)

From memory when the pay-for BTS tours were running back in 2019 I think I paid about $60 for it and that included a mounted photo in a presentation folder that had the ships itinerary map , ship or captain’s photo on the opposite page to the photo taken of me posing in the galley. The photos weren’t mentioned in the excursion blurb at the time but they did them on both the BTS tours I did pre-covid.

Ooohhh… that’s a nice change on the shore excursion discounts. Certainly handy for ports where there’s a local tram or shuttle bus that you can use at any time of the day in addition to a specific excursion. I just had another look at the t&cs cos I’m in Europe and there’s always a slight variation. we had to pay €99 for the free at sea package but the service charges for the drinks and meals was built in, I see that charge has now gone up to €149 for 7-day cruises and the specialty meals has gone down to just 1 if you’re in a studio/inside/ocean view along with the WiFi minutes dropping to 150mins . I booked my next cruise back in early January because I’d seen the heads up about increases in some of the charges and reductions in benefit, so thankfully I still have 2 specialty meals and 250mins of WiFi. However usually when they improve an element of the package that doesn’t percolate to bookings made before the change but it looks like the 6lt of water cartons is going to be given to everyone with any version of FaS come the new year. btw for once they actually have a decently clear information page on the 2 generations of Free at Sea … I see there’s now an upsell for Free at Sea PLUS, presumable that’s why they slashed some of the benefits from the original FAS. https://www.ncl.com/sites/default/files/FreeatSeaPlus_0.pdf

Every cruise I’ve done was as a solo, and every time the solos at the meet-ups varied across the age range. There was a trio of golden oldies from Florida on one of my cruises, they had all booked last minute and were platinum level in the loyalty program. One of them was a lady in her 90s who had worked in the nuclear submarine program, imagine her surprise when I told her the inventor of the submarine was from my home village (pop 300ish) back in Ireland. That trio used their complimentary specialty dinner vouchers to bring others from the solos meet-ups to meals so they’d have different folks to talk to. The night I was invited the other invitee was a professor from Quebec, on that same cruise another solo was starting up his own travel agency and was invited by one of the chef’s to test out potential vegan dishes at Le Bistro, I was the chosen guest again … the benefit of being Irish, we can talk to anyone ! Oh and on each cruise the other solos were keeping their eyes & ears peeled for other Irish aboard, so far it’s ranged from a single staff member in the spa, to a few dozen in a sparsely populated cruise just after covid. The most stereotypical one was a cruise where I’d seen/heard no other Irish for the entire week and on the last night I hear the accent on the other side of the staircase, he was a priest working in California and he was the uncle of a surfer I knew from working at contests.

I’m aware, I live in Ireland, only a couple of degrees further south. We’ve reached the point of the year where we have to leave the last light on while setting the alarm at work, next week we’ll be using torches to find our way out safely after setting the alarm at 5pm.

Before anyone responds with “don’t go in October” I can’t, my family’s business is busiest April to September so October is my only option for Alaska. I know Norwegian had a few ships sailing Alaskan Itineraries this year in October so I’m hoping a few folks that sailed then would have some insight on what to expect at the ports. a At the moment my itinerary is Juneau (1:30pm - 11pm), Skagway (7am-8.15pm), Glacier Bay, Ketchikan (7am-1.15pm likely docking at ward cove), Victoria (8pm+). Right now I’m thinking Ketchikan will have to be an NCL excursion as the shuttle bus times they had this year finished stupidly early (11am for last bus back to the ship) but I’m not sure about the others. I do have the shore excursion credit and a latitudes discount, since I travel solo the credit is actually impactful. My online research on excursions so far suggests a lot of the independent options aren’t offering bookings for October so I’m curious as to what recent cruisers experienced.

I always pre pay the DSC during booking, given the way NCL increases the DSC charges the price at booking is always going to be cheaper unless you’re booking last minute. The OBC would be more for incidentals in my case.

On that cruise on the epic is was due to European covid restrictions at the time, there were less than 2,000 guests aboard. But I was on Epic again in March on a Caribbean itinerary and the solos program was back to normal on that one. AFAIK NCL run the solo meet-ups on all their ships but there are a lot more solos on the ships with studio cabins. I don’t know about any other cruise lines.

I’m starting to think about pre-purchasing OBC as well but in the meantime I’m using a “vault” on my revolut account to save up money. Using revolut will also help me on the currency change as I’m in Ireland on euros and revolut is my best option for reducing exchange rate fees. I definitely would not be buying US$ right now anyway , I’m just hoping the euro will have strengthened before my next cruise.

It’s cruise only or cruise+flights, cruise next is something else entirely. Cruise next are vouchers for future cruise deposits you buy during your cruise.

I’m based in Ireland and have cruised out of Miami 3 times, each time flew over via Heathrow arriving at least 2 days before the cruise. For the first one I booked via a travel agent as it was my very first cruise and I booked it within 30days of departure so they got me a deal including a hotel on the seafront. on that first cruise I met an Irish guy also on his first cruise, his flight from Ireland got delayed and he wound up arriving into New York in the wee hours, staying over night then flying down to Miami just in time for embarkation. at the end of that cruise British Airways had their IT meltdown so my flight home was cancelled, thankfully I’d spotted the news and went to the airport early enough that they got me a seat on the Virgin Atlantic flight which made my connection back to Ireland. on the second cruise Ireland and the UK got hit by a major snowstorm and lots of flights got grounded, thankfully it hit after I was in Miami and had cleared in time for my return flight. I don’t think there was any airline drama for the third one out of Miami. But my most recent cruise was out of Puerto Rico and there was a major snowstorm hitting the northwestern & mid western US states so a lot of my fellow cruise guests had to do major scrambling to get to an airport that was open, there were hertz vans being rented in some cases! And 2 sets of NCL cruise+flight guests were impacted, one lot arrived late but the ship waited for them, however the second lot didn’t make it in time for embarkation and the cruiseline couldn’t get them on flights to meet us at the first port so they were flown to the second island and had to stay there a couple of nights until the ship arrived. so even booking your flight via NCL is not a guarantee of making it to the ship in time for the whole cruise. basically if you’re booking long haul save yourself some stress by flying in a couple of days early, and perhaps make sure you know what the alternative flights might be. The day of the BA IT meltdown people in the queue were telling the desk staff what the viable alternatives would be for their particular routing. The local news crew arrived at the airport to do interviews with people in the queue cos it too *hours* to process new bookings for everyone.

from the reports of people on the ship it seems there was a major tidal effect. Initially the tide was too low for the normal deck 4 gangways so they used the deck 6 attachment, but as the tide rose the angle on the deck 6 gangway increased and they were able to connect the normal deck 4 gangway. It seems the mistake was leaving the deck 6 gangway in place after deck 4 became usable. I live on the Atlantic coast of Ireland so I see major tidal extremes regularly. The local port we get tide tables for can have a high of 5.8m to a low of -0.2 (this is the most extreme case) or as little as 3.5m high and 2.2m low. A 6m swing in tide height is easily a full deck in difference on a ship and enough to muck up gangway structures.

Pretty much back to normality in Ireland, covid finally caught me last month but thankfully the vaccine and booster kept it relatively constrained. I had to re-up my relieving inhaler and am using it day to day as my lungs continue their recovery , thankfully my tests came back negative after 2 weeks. As a country we’re seeing continuing shortages of staff in hospitality ever since covid because they were the last sector to re-open and people just left the industry. we’ve our highest employment rates ever, major shortages in long term rental accommodation and housing so the government is doing a lot of juggling to find places for the Ukrainian refugees.

I definitely missed it when I cruised on Epic in October last year, the solo meet-ups and the hosting were still suspended due to covid restrictions back then. All the other cruises I’ve done had the host and a very varied collections of solos.

I did teppanyaki twice on epic, both time the chef was *very* heavy handed with the soy sauce on the rice even when on the second time 2 of us at the table said we wanted low sodium. Got really nice Singapore noodles at Shanghai (free venue). on the first cruise it was a western med itinerary so very port intensive and I mostly just ate at the garden cafe and great outdoors for convenience. The second one was southern Caribbean so similarly port intensive but more limited hours in port. That one I was in a studio cabin so joined with the other solos for dinner in MDR most nights. I would say compared to the breakaway/getaway/escape the Epic is a little weird I kept going the wrong direction for the buffet v spice. The cabins outside of haven are also a wee bit worn and in need of a refresh. I highly recommend the matador whiskey cocktail from maltings and the music on board was good in any venue I came across it.

The level of smoke drift varies depending on the itinerary and guests. I’ve been on escape, breakaway, getaway and epic and am not fond of the smell of smoke, heck I discovered it was the stale smoke smell in my dad’s car was the actual cause of my “travel sickness” as a kid. the level of infiltration around 678 ocean place and atrium definitely varied from cruise to cruise depending on the number of smoking gamblers. I also found the main pool deck on getaway and breakaway had to be approached from the correct side as there’s a poorly designed smoking area up there too. Not to mention the smokers abounding around the spice h2o bar and the leakage from the cigar lounge. getaway was the worst of the bunch because the cruise I did on that one had us queueing through the casino a couple of times and the stale smoke smell there was horrendous.

I was on Epic twice in the past year, the first was October last year in an inside cabin, and the second was March of this year in a studio cabin. Both cabins had cosmetic issues, a handle missing from one of the wardrobes in the studio and the veneer lifting on the desk in the inside cabin. In general it seemed like a lot of small stuff that arises from standard wear and tear, I’d hoped the cruise lines would have taken advantage of the lengthy shutdown to do deep refurbs on the ships but obviously the lack of cash flow during that time would have limited that. Now that they’re back in operation they could opt to shut down sections of cabins to do that sort of work on an ongoing basis but that just doesn’t seem to enter their mindset.

Excursion tickets are not a guarantee if your fellow cruisers are largely idiots. A bunch of people missed their excursions at great stirrup cay because of idiots queuing up before their tender slot was announced. I got a ticket for the first tender after excursions, haven and top latitudes and still didn’t make the island until lunchtime. Crew were having to walk along the queue and pull folks forward who had tickets that had been called. So if you have a ticket for a tender group that’s been called ignore the queue and walk to the location announced. also depending on your itinerary some “tender ports” are not always tender ports so look at the details for your specific itinerary, some only become a tender port if there’s too many ships calling on the same day and there’s not enough pier capacity whereas others are always a tender port for larger ships but smaller ones can dock. Also if a pier is damaged it can change the port to become a tender port, e.g. harvest cay just before covid when the pier got smashed up.

Not so true… on my cruise out of San Juan earlier this year they held the ship departure time by an extra hour or so for one flight that was delayed and then another flight was even later so they arranged for those guests to meet up with the ship mid-cruise. They couldn’t get them to the first port of call in time to meet the ship so they flew them to the second port and put them up for a couple of nights while waiting for the ship to arrive. but always ensure you have good travel insurance so you can get compensation if you do miss part/all of the cruise due to flight issues, or anything else.

Depending on your location, when you booked, and which category of cabin you booked the cancellation deadline and final payment date varies. I’m in Ireland and I don’t get free cancellation at all, I’m always going to forfeit my deposit unless the agent I’m dealing with lets me switch it to a new booking. The flip side is that the final payment due date is later than it is for USA customers. When I first booked a cruise the final payment date was 30days and the deposit was 10%, then it went to 60 and then 90days with a 20% deposit but it has dropped back down to 30days though still 20% deposit.

It’s on deck 11, just a staircase access from deck 12.