basicprincess24

excited to read these answers! 😆 we'll be the Jewel in September

11 hours ago, YVRteacher said:

Just got off a B2B on the Jewel.  Food was the best we have ever had on NCL.

 

You won’t need to make reservations for the main dining rooms.  Last week the Jewel was at less than 50% capacity and they closed Azura for the week and just used Palace.

 

As of today, passenger counts for the Jewel are between 1400-1600 for the summer so I wouldn’t expect a September cruise to be full.  If you want to do Teppanyaki book that in advance because it is a smaller venue and fills up quickly.

 

Enjoy your cruise: the Jewel is a special ship with an extraordinary crew.

This is amazing to hear, thank you! We've got our reservations for Teppanyaki and Cagney's all squared away. 😋 

Also good to hear that we might get lucky and not sail with a full ship, it would make for such a relaxing trip. 

We'll be a group of 4 on the NCL Jewel to Alaska in September. Are reservations generally recommended for the MDR on a smaller ship?

We haven't been on a smaller NCL ship since our first cruise on the Pearl in 2017, and at that time MDR reservations weren't even offered pre-cruise. On the larger ships I've always made them just in case, but I'm hoping that on a smaller ship with a small group that we'll be able to be more flexible. 

Cruising on Oasis OTS in a few weeks and considering the coffee card. When using the card, are you limited to only coffee drinks from the cafes? Or can the punches be used toward the specialty tea drinks, such as chai lattes or tazo hot teas? Thanks!

Is there a way to pre-pay gratuities online? We always like to pre-pay just to have it taken care of in advance, but I'm not finding the option in the planner. 

I'm leaving on a 4-nt to Ensenada from San Francisco in just a few days, so I'm wondering what they'll do for us. Our group wasn't planning to do much in Ensenada, maybe just get some tacos, so the port itself isn't really a big deal. 

I assume they wouldn't cancel the cruise completely? Should we be expecting a cruise to nowhere? I'm not sure where else they would send us so close to our cruise date.

Oh I'm glad I asked! 😂 Those sugar straws were so bad. I guess I'll see about bringing some on board.

Wondering what kinds of straws are currently available onboard? It's been 3 years since our last Carnival cruise, and at that time both paper and sugar straws were offered, with the sugar straws primarily for frozen drinks. Is this still the case? Not a big deal by any means, but I remember really disliking the sugar straws in particular since they got sticky over time. 

Following along! We'll be on board the Miracle in a couple weeks for a quick cruise down to Ensenada, so I'm looking forward to hearing about your experience on the ship. 😄

29 minutes ago, csm5986142 said:

Yes, they will ask you about the missing person booked in your cabin and you can just let them know they are delayed.

Perfect, thank you! 

20 minutes ago, SCBarker said:

Of course. How else are you supposed to your room's two bottles of wine on, and then your roommate also get your room's two bottles of wine on 5 minutes later?

 

I kid, I kid...

Haha, thankfully we all have CHEERS! this time!

We’re sailing with a group, and we aren’t sure whether everyone will be able to arrive at the port at the same time due to traffic and other issues. Our current plan is to wait and all check in at the port together, but if some are delayed significantly, are we able to check in separately from others in the same cabin? 

Thank you! I was able to find it on the app. I did see my request on our booking invoice but since we booked through a third party I was looking for something official from Royal directly. 

We booked our first ever Royal Caribbean cruise today! 🎉

When booking, we were giving the option to choose between my time dining and traditional dining at 5:30 PM, and we chose traditional. I can't seem to find this info anywhere in my cruise planner to confirm this - does anyone know where this info is displayed? 

Thanks! 

4 hours ago, nyold said:

My trick is on day 1 (embarkation day) to start loading up on canned water (not bottled water, it reduces plastic!) as the day nears the end. Also on port days when you tend to consume less. That way on sea days you can use your 15 drinks for actual fun drinks, and you drink the canned water that you got previously.

This is a great tip! I was thinking about sea days and that was concerning me, but "stocking up" on water on port days would probably take care of any issue. Thanks!

How strict is the 15-drink limit for the beverage package? I'm more familiar with the beverage packages on Carnival and Princess which also have the 15-drink limit, but on those lines it only applies to alcoholic beverages, and non-alcoholic beverages are unlimited. I don't think I could hit 15 alcoholic drinks in a day so that limit wouldn't bother me, but between specialty coffees, bottled water, sparkling water, and soda in addition to wine and cocktails, I think I might get close! In practice, are guests cut off due to non-alcoholic beverage orders?

We are sailing with a group of 9, across 4 cabins. We are all linked, and I can see the others in my "Cruise Companions" on my Booking Details page, and everyone has selected Early Dining. Do we need to do anything else to ensure we'll all be dining together?

On 4/19/2022 at 5:33 PM, chicopaige said:

Just used parking garage 80 Francisco shown above.

It was great, easy and secure. Cost for week long cruise was $160.

Did you use this garage since the change in ownership to ABM Parking? Did you reserve using the google form? The lack of a formal website for reservations is making me second guess this option but it doesn't seem like there are any good alternatives, so I'm hoping to hear a bit more about your experience to give me some peace of mind. Thanks!

On 4/8/2022 at 10:00 PM, scottca075 said:

For quick and easy, there is an Ensenada Craft Beer tour where you visit three locations. The first two are legit micro breweries, the last stop is Hussong's. For a longer trip there is a Valle de Guadalupe winery tour. Both these are from Surf Ensenada. I go to Ensenada pretty often so last time my cruise stopped there I just did a walking "taco tour" to some of my favorite places.

Do you have some favorite taco places that you'd recommend? We have a group going in August and none of the shore excursions are jumping out to us, but tacos sound great!

Following along! We'll be joining you on the 19th for the Mexican Riviera. Can't wait to hear all about your cruise! Enjoy!

We are looking into hiking up to El Faro lighthouse in Mazatlan. It sounds like taxis and/or pulmonias should be easily available to get us to the lighthouse entrance at the bottom of the hill, but would we have any issues getting a pulmonia back to the ship? Are they easily available around El Faro once we've made it back down the hill? 

I'll be interested to see what Princess implements to be compliant for port calls in Canada. We're on a 10 night out of SF in May with a quick stop in Victoria (6am - 12pm) on Day 9 of the cruise. This seems like quite a lot to implement for such a short time in port. 

Sent in an email request Monday evening for our last-minute cruise, OBC appeared on our account this afternoon. Pleasantly surprised with how quickly it showed up! 

We have a SD credit (that isn't appearing to use via the app) as well as some OBC we'd like to use, so we're going to wait until we're on board to book our specialty dining for our upcoming Majestic cruise. What is the best way to make reservations on embarkation day? Is the app recommended, or is there a particular place on board we should go? Could we even make them via the app from the terminal while waiting to board? I've occasionally had my app start showing "on ship" mode from the terminal while waiting to board on NCL, not sure if Princess would be similar. 

Following along! We'll be on Majestic in about a month so I'm looking forward to hearing about your experience this week. Wishing you a wonderful cruise!

Amazing, thank you all for your help!