Stealthdog

Someone was sneaky today. While I attended the Cruise Critic Meet & Mingle by myself (thought he was going to the Spa), someone orchestrated the decorations of the room while I was gone.

There is this bright thing up in the sky…I don’t remember what it is called. And I didn’t know the sky ever turned blue!!! 😉 The sea is still a little rocky, but nothing like it had been the last few days.

Day 2 Daily. We might have gotten lucky yesterday leaving on time. A friend of mine just texted from the Encore. They haven’t even docked in Miami yet - just circling waiting to get approval. Anyone with flights are going to miss them. What a mess!!

After dinner at Moderno, we checked out the show in the Theater - Legends Live from the Other Guys (same group who does the Supper Club and West End/Broadway songs). They told us during the leaving and reboarding the ship process yesterday that they had a new show. Their act covers male and female legends over the years. It was fun and the audience was really into it. I preferred their Supper Club and 4 Sea Sons shows more, but the Legends Live is worth the trip to the theater. Given this was their first performance of a new act and they will probably make some changes over time.

For those following this review, @APDMOM is doing a review of the Escape this sailing as well. Will likely have different interests, focuses, and thoughts. You can follow along here 2 times the pictures, 2 times the critiques, 2 times the answers!

The sailaway party was moved to the atrium because of weather. We went to the Atrium for a Broadway Musicials trivia and got to watch the festivities. Wow….what a different a cruise makes. A lot more (what appears to be well behaved) children on board this sailing and the adults were just having a good time with the singing and dancing. We didn’t win the trivia 😔 but we did pick up the activities sheet for stamps/signatures. We will turn those activities sheets in on Friday to see what kind of prizes they give out.

There were four of us again yesterday in our area of the piers departing Canaveral. Different ships, but same order - Carnival first, Royal second, us third, and Disney last. We watched Carnival and Royal leave from the balcony - it was too wet and rainy on the outdoor decks.

Everything I said about the gym last week, forget. It is absolutely packed this morning! What a difference a cruise makes - completely different passengers from one cruise to the next with different focuses and interests. I’ll keep an eye to see what times are lighter, but mid morning on a sea day…..try a different time. I still found a bike, so have about 30 minutes to catch up from yesterday with typo filled posts while we rock from side to side.

What is better than one review? Two reviews!!!

Day 1 we went to Moderno. It was very good. We had tried Moderno on a previous NCL sailing and found it much worse than land based Brazilian steakhouses (Fogo de Chao, Texas de Brazil, etc). The version on Escape is significantly better. There are obvious space limitations on board, so we don’t expect a Brazilian steakhouse on a ship to be as extensive as a land one. The salad bar at the Escape was well done (and a huge upgrade over our last experience). It’s not as extensive as the land based restaurants, but there was a great variety of cheeses, meats, olives, vegetables and the Escape did a good job at mimicking the salad bar experience of the land based versions. The variety of meats on board are also fewer than what you find at land based restaurants. But, the exceptional, individualized service is elevated on the Escape. Because of that, we were able to get the temperatures we wanted almost immediately and weren’t constantly being served well done cuts of meat, which normally go immediately into a discard pile and is a waste of food. The quality of the meats used at Moderno were clearly good quality. One thing we particularly appreciated at Moderno was the salt was at a minimum. Often at the land based restaurants some of the cuts of meats are overwhelmed by salt. Just like land based restaurants, we really didn’t care for the chicken or pork offerings (we often find them dry), but that is partly personal preference. We liked Moderno enough that we may change our reservations on Friday from Food Republic to Moderno. I guess it will depend on whether we want to gorge on meat or gorge on other foods. 😂 If you do go to Moderno on the Escape, ask for Julius. He was awesome.

Day 1 MDR menus (lunch and dinner). I’ll try to get pics daily of the menus (at least dinner) so people can have a good idea on what meals are served in the MDR.

This will mostly close out the first half of the B2B. If I forgot anything, I’ll bring up at the end. Moving forward, the focus will be on the second leg.

The Ugly (Dec9-16) - Other passengers. I was really surprised by some of the behavior of other passengers on board. I don’t think I have ever seen it on any cruise we have been on. It wasn’t alot of people, just a small percentage. Their behavior was something you hear that happens on a certain other cruise line. Smoking marijuana on balconies and smoking cigarettes on balconies (is not permitted on cruise ships) is just rude behavior that impacts everyone else around you. The odor pollution was real several days during the cruise. We also saw some loud, obnoxious drunken yelling on occasion, which is not ok in public spaces where others are trying to enjoy. Fortunately, no physical fighting or brawls. - My typos. Eric was reading some of my posts yesterday and he was horrified at the number of typos in my posts. I tried to explain to him that it’s not easy to post on an iPhone while on the bike at the gym and that after a couple of minutes after a post, I can’t edit it anymore. He wasn’t having any of it and I will try to do better. Hopefully the second half of this review will have fewer typoos. 😉

The Bad (Dec9-16) - Weather. Nothing a cruise line can do about that, but between Great Stirrup Cay being canceled and the really rocky seas for much the sailing, really put a damper on the cruise. I love the private islands (Coco Cay is my favorite, followed by Castaway Cay) and was really looking forward experiencing Great Stirrup. The ship rocking didn’t really impact us, but it had an affect on others. We saw the hazmat man cleaning what we assumed to be vomit once - I’m sure it happened more times. I’m hoping for Great Stirrup this week! - The app. I just stopped trying to use the app. I know there are great features on it, like digital versions of the daily. I think NCL is behind some of the other lines with the ease of and a user friendly shipboard app. - The crowds at the pool. We aren’t pool people. We live in Florida and have a pool at home in year round great weather, so it’s really not a draw, unless there are fun or interesting activities going on. Every time we walked the pool deck, it was crazy packed - everything….the pool itself, hot tubs, loungers, and bars. Not sure if there just isn’t enough space for the amount of passengers on board. Spice H2O did look great every time we went there and we will probably check that out more this cruise.

They are iust as bad as our last two days. Hopefully they get better when we get out of Atlantic.

First drinks of the cruises. Cruise 1 in Osheehans, cruise 2 in MDR. My go to first drink is always a mimosa. I don’t remember what I said or did to upset Eric on the first cruise. 🙈

hahaha. He got these shirts just for cruises. Sometimes there are alot of grouches on a cruise ship and we wanted to have the ability to blend in with Oscar the grouch shirts. 😂

woohoo! Welcome! Enjoy lunch and see you onboard!

The OK (Dec9-16) - Internet. The internet service is ok and good enough for most of what you need. We got the unlimited service with streaming and it was good enough for us. We were able to log in to our regular game apps without problems and use video calling on apps with mostly no issues (on occasion we would lose connection). If you are trying to work from it, or stream a lot of content, it may not meet your needs. It isn’t then best internet we have had on a ship, but it was good enough for us. - Sanitation. There are regular hand sanitation spots around the ship. They could place more. Many of the stations regularly ran out of hand sanitizer. Particularly as we enter flu season and COVID is persistent, it’s something they should probably invest more in. - Communication. This is close to being in the bad bin, but I’ll put it here. Time changes were confusing and the time on the cabin tv wasn’t always accurate. The reminder in the daily for the time change back the night before getting back to Canaveral felt like it was small print on the daily. They should have made it more noticeable and could have done better job of making sure everyone was on the right time (alot of times you can’t hear ship announcements). The cancelled GSC and extended stay in Tortola after many people already left the ship in Tortola, so many didn’t even know until they got back to the ship. At that point it’s a little too late to go back out. The weather is not NCLs fault, but they could have made the call and communicated it before the ship was cleared and anyone left. We did get a $50 refundable OBC, but they wasn’t communicated either - it just showed up on the on board accounts.

The Good (Dec 9 - 16) Service was great. - Once we overcame the cabin communication issue, everything was great. We saw the cabin steward multiple times a day - it time out his birthday was a couple days ago, so I hope he gets some time to celebrate off ship. The deck steward was also very visible. Anything we needed or asked for, they took care of it. Really pleasant experience. - restaurant service was also outstanding. With the exception of slow service one of evening, everything was quick, food correct, and several checkins every meal. Very pleasant and eager severs, even though they undoubtedly had some challenging customers they always had a smile on their faces. - special shoutout to Aida, an assistant Maite D at one of the specialty restaurants. We saw her at Osheehans the first day and at another restaurant another. If you see her, have a chat and she will give you some ship recommendations. Specialty Restaurants. - Overall outstanding. Disappointment with Cagneys, but really enjoyed the rest. For pay restaurants, the ones on the Escape collectively better than most cruise ships we have been on. I think our favorite is still Oasis Class speciality restaurants on RCL, but I don’t hesitate to recommend several of the restaurants on board NCL. Entertainment. - we care more about the theater show type activities and they were good to awesome. - in the theater both the Four Sea Sons act and Choir of Man was outstanding. Highly recommend both of the those shows. We care more about the signing entertainment, so didn’t care there was no traditional production show with dancers. - the concept of the Supper club was great. We will skip the food in the future, but the shows are worth making reservations and checking out. - Howl at the Moon was always fun, and there always activities to be done in the Atrium for trivia. Lots of opportunity for karaoke as well. - We never participated in the pool deck activities or the Pour House, so really no comments about those activities. - Overall, there was never a shortage of things to do on board. You can pack your schedule as heavy or light you want. The NCL Escape is well run, which is a testament to the Cruise Director and outstanding entertainment team.

Time to avoid the madness at decks 6, 7, 8 with all the new cruisers boarding. It’s fun seeing the excitement of everyone as they are getting on board and checking out the ship. Off to gym I went (only one here). The next series of posts will be just for the first cruise and I’ll do them in 4 categories - Good, OK, Bad, and Ugly. I’ll do an overall roll up of the ship, restaurants, entertainment, etc at the end of the second cruise.

All reservations complete. It’s easier and quicker when you have a head start! There is a new supper club show this cruise. The Box Office wasnt open yet, so Cruise Director Jack took my sheet for the reservations. He suggested we see the new show (Rachel Dudt) in the Supper Club. For specialty dining, we are doing Bistro x2, Cucina x2, Moderno, Bayamo, and Food Republic. We signed up for the loyalty wine tasting event, but will skip the behind the scenes ship tour (which we did first cruise). Dec 16-23 Entertainment schedule attached (you can get it at the box office).

Day 1 Daily.

And we got back on board by 10. We just needed cabin card and passports. They brought us down to immigration where we were recleared to board back onto the ship. There are elevators for people with mobility issues. Two of the West End Guys were with us, so it was fun to chat with them. None of the reservation places are open until 1100. I picked up a daily for day 1, and we will head to the box office to get ready for Cruise #2!

At District Brewhouse waiting to be taken off and brought back on the ship.