Sailing12Away

For those of us who need fresh air and prefer the privacy of a balcony for it, I'll take any balcony over an oceanview any day. Vibe is nice, but an extra cost. And I can't just stumble out to Vibe in my PJs like I can with my own balcony.

Yes, the standard NCL app you already have. However, I personally have NEVER gotten it to work onboard. The menus I have saved in my NCL Menus folder on my desktop are ones I 'borrowed' from other people here on the boards posting them over the years. In theory, yes, you should be able to see the menu but like I said, I have never gotten it to work. The 'mobile' designation may just be from folks scanning the QR code on their trip and viewing the menu through their phone that way once onboard and in the restaurant. If you're fancy and in a Haven room... you can ask your butler nicely for a sneak peak view of the next day(s) menus coming up. We did that on our February trip and used that as a guide for when to use our specialty dining credit and when to eat at the MDR.

Again, just a sample of the MDR options. They vary from day-to-day. The section called Classic Entrees is always there, the rest will vary a smidge. There's talk though that it may start to stay the same from night-to-night... not sure when that goes into effect. But this gives you an idea of some of the options they've offered at one time from the 3 different meals. Fleet_MDR_Dinner_D2_Mobile-Menu.pdf Fleet_MDR_Lunch_Mobile-Menu_Day-3-V2.pdf MDR_Breakfast_Starbucks_Day-3_Mobile-Menu.pdf

This is the info for the upgraded drink package. Anything on this list is free with the upgraded package, or will have a small fee for the regular drink package. Regular drink package has a discount on bottles of wine (25%? 40%? I can never remember which) and the upgraded package has a list of bottles that are completely free, with a discount on the ones which are not. Maybe it's 25% with the regular and 40% off with the upgraded... premium-plus-beverage-package-2021v2.pdf

The free at sea deal is great, but there's some caveats to be aware of. The free specialty dining is not every day - the number of free meals is based on the length of your cruise. But there are tons of other free options to pick from that are fine to eat at, and you can purchase additional meals if you really want to try them all. Unlike RCC, with NCL you just have a free credit and can use it to book a reservation anywhere. With RCC when we sailed, I thought we had to specifically pick the restaurant ahead of time and buy the voucher for that one. So if we changed our minds between when we bought it and were hungry, we were SOL. Free drinks is 100x better on NCL than RCC. You pay for the gratuities ahead of time, so that "free" drink package costs about $250/person depending on the length of the cruise. But again, for comparison, our trip with RCC cost us over $600/person. Drinks up to $15 are included, anything above that you just pay the difference (usually only $1-3 per drink for most). You can upgrade to the better drink package if you're particular about what liquor goes in your drinks or if you like a bottle of wine with every meal. For some it's 100% worth it, for others its cheaper to pay as you go for those upgrades. Free internet is the biggest mis-advertisement of them all. You get an allotment of free minutes. Once they're gone, they're gone. And it's not super fast down/upload speeds, so forget about blogging, streaming movies, uploading tons of photos to FB or anything like that. It's good enough to check in back home and let friends and family know where you are in your adventure, check a few emails, look at a map for the upcoming port, check the weather.... things like that. Again, if those things are important to you then you can upgrade to the unlimited package. But just go in with the right expectations. Same thing with the 'free' excursions... you get $50 off the first passenger towards an NCL sponsored excursion. There are very few trips for <$50, so it's not free at all. Discounted, yes, but certainly not free. On a port intensive trip where NCL offers a bunch of things you want to see/do, it adds up to some good savings. But again, it's not free by any means. The rules on this one keep changing so it may be allowed to be used multiple times at each port, but I've never had the time or energy to try and do more than one trip in a day so I don't pay much attention to those changes.

Ironically, we actually did end up winning that upgrade bid to the villa. I've got a ton of more recent photos than the ones posted here, so if anyone wants to see anything specific about the 3 bedrooms or the enormous outdoor space, just let me know. We sailed around Spain & Portugal this May with only 2 of us in there. Spoiled rotten...

Our first cruise with NCL they had the 3rd & 4th free promo. The price for 2 of us in a mini suite (club balcony now) was $3100, to add on my MIL it was an extra $500 to cover taxes and fees and such. Our cruise earlier this year in February we were able to snag the garden villa at a steep discount. Was able to run and grab 2 extra friends to join us. Price to add each of them on was about the same, roughly $500 each to cover the taxes and fees. That's close enough to free for me.

Yes. They want everyone off the ship by 9:30am so they can clean and turn it around for the next sailing. So I don't think you'll have a hard time catching the 10am train. Just try to get the earliest walk off time you can.

Some menus... not sure if there are newer versions out there but this is what I've got saved. We had a few bad experiences at Cagneys (slow service, like, 2+ hrs slow for only 2 people dining), but yet we still always go back there when we have a lot of free meals. Even though you're simple folk, consider Le Bistro. The filet there has always been one of my favorites. Don't be afraid to ask for minor revisions to the menu too if it's too fancy for you. I'm a simple gal, but last cruise they were able to give me the roasted veal chop meal, but swap out the veal with a basic filet instead without issue. I don't eat mushrooms or foie gras, so it was easier to ask for the veal chop meal but swap out the protein (I don't eat baby cows). I'm a big PITA when it comes to food, and I've always found the staff very accommodating with my small requests to leave something off or swap it for something else already on the menu. Cagneys_Dinner-Menu_ver02-10-22.pdf La_Cucina_Mobile-Menu_ver01-12-22.pdf Le_Bistro_Dinner Dessert-Mobile-Menu_Version4_0.pdf LosLobos_Dinner-Deserts_Mobile-Menu.pdf Teppanyaki_Mobile-Menu_v011122.pdf

Depends on your cabin and the wall you're trying to stick it to. But yes, we used magnetic hooks on our trip a few years back in a large balcony room.

We sailed in an aft Haven room on the Encore last August around Alaska. Encore is a sister ship to your Bliss, so very similar. The room was huge, balcony was one of the best we've had... but... we feel we didn't get a great Haven experience. Yes we had snacks in the room, access to the lounge, and extra personalized attention when they saw our room card. But the walk to that exclusive Haven area is far. For some, they like the walk as a way to force them to burn off some cruise calories. For us... we didn't take advantage of the lounge or bar nearly as much as we would have if we were in a closer room. 10K is a LOT for not a whole lot of extra stuff. My recommendation would be to keep your aft balcony and bid specifically only on the Haven aft balcony in the upgrades and put that 10K towards a max bid. You'll still come out ahead of your 10K upgrade cost (your max bid will probably be around 5K total instead of the 10K to upgrade outright) and if it was meant to be, it will happen. We're doing a Panama canal trip on the Joy in February. We opted for an HI room which is outside of the courtyard area, but not as far away as the aft was. Trying to see if this is a happy compromise between our wallet and our access to the Haven amenities.

Which website are you referring to? Because again, depending on which one you read, it is easy for folks to be misinformed or to misinterpret what is said. Call me silly, but a cruise ship means water travel to me... Regardless, we're all getting pre-tested and are fully vaxxed, just pointing out the confusion and how easy it is for folks to be mislead. https://travel.gc.ca/travel-covid/travel-restrictions/covid-vaccinated-travellers-entering-canada

The requirements and rules are changing very quickly. There's NCL corporate policy, then there's rules/laws/requirements for each specific country you're visiting, plus the country you're actually leaving from and returning to. So lots of moving parts, and with them all changing monthly/weekly/daily - it's hard to keep up. Unless you're sailing in the next week, stop worrying. When it gets closer to sail date, check the country websites, check the NCL website, and if worse comes to worse, no harm in getting a test 2-3 days before sailing to have in your back pocket as insurance. We're sailing from NY to Canada in ~22 days. Rules keep changing every week. No test. Yes, test. No test if vaccinated. I'm telling my parents to get a test regardless. If they don't need it, the only harm done is 10 minutes out of their day and a nasal jab. They're retired, they have nothing better to do. Again, better to be safe than sorry and have it and not need it than to need it and not have it.

Resemble, or resent? 😆

The future is never guaranteed my friend.... you can't take it with you, so better put it to good use while you still can. I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Some folks need a better hobby than coming on these boards and snooping/spying/critiquing what other people do or say. If you're just going on cursory checks of one-off comments, I assure you... you are misinterpreting what is being said. @ChiefMateJRK has a bit of sass and sarcasm that is clearly lost when you take what is said out of context, like you've clearly done. If that's the case, you're doing something wrong. I'm not saying bargains on Haven are plentiful, but unless you're trying to compare an inside room to an owners suite, that's not a fair comparison that Haven category will ever win. For anyone interested in giving Haven a try... Getaway out of NY next month has some unheard of deals to be found. For 2 passengers with the full free at sea promo, this is the current price for a 9 day cruise: That's $263/pp/day.... if I wasn't already sailing on the Joy a few days later I would snag this in a heartbeat.

Since a picture is worth a thousand words... I'll just leave these up here... These were from our balcony room. So for folks saying there was nothing to see from your balcony, you guys need a new eye exam.

If you're just looking for a nice ship that has great shows and entertainment, tons of things to do on board, high excitement things for kids, tweens, and those young at heart... you can't go wrong with any of those ships. If you look through these NCL boards for trip reviews, you'll see people posting the "dailies" which list out all of the activities on board every day/night. Go based on the itinerary that interests you most. Once you narrow it down from there, go by price. That's just my 2 cents.

Free bag of laundry if you reach a certain status in your Lattitudes account. Free bag if you're in a club balcony suite. Otherwise $29 for as much as you can stuff into the bag. Even though you don't pay for it itemized, you still need to fill out the card to itemize it so they know how many pairs of socks and undies you squished in there to make sure they all go back to you.

That's funny to me, because my least favorite part of being in the Haven is the restaurant. There's not enough food options for me being a picky eater to want to eat there more than once. Our first Haven experience wasn't good and we were definitely in the camp of 'I can certainly go back to non-Haven, it's not worth it." Then we found some deals on cabins and got to try it again with completely different experiences. We're certainly not in the 'Haven-or-bust" camp, but always start our price checking there. If it's on par with our expectations for that ship class, we book it. If it's not and we're dead set on the itinerary - we book a balcony or higher and price watch and bid for an upgrade.

I don't think I have a photo close up enough to tell. I can let you know in about 20 days...

What specifically is it that you like about the Oasis class ships? If it's truly just size, then yeah... what folks said above is true. But if it's amenities/activities, there's some slightly different things to be found among the different ships. Prima is the newest. Breakaway Plus is the largest. Breakaway still has a bunch of options for fun-stuff that are a bit different from what is on most Breakaway+. Look at the deck plans for the Prima, Breakaway Plus, and Breakaway class of ships. Focus on the top few decks as that's where the 'fun' stuff will be found and you can compare which ships have race carts, laser tag, water slides, ropes courses, etc etc. https://cruisedeckplans.com/DP/deckplans/cruiseline.php?line=Norwegian

We had a large balcony on the port side and loved it. So relaxing to sit out there with some cocktails during the sail by and listen to the narrative in the privacy of our own balcony. It is a floating hotel, but there is still beautiful scenery to look at. "Worth it" is hard to say as I don't know your budget and what's important to you. To us - it was worth it and we wouldn't ever sail in anything less than a balcony. But that's us, our priorities, our needs (claustrophobic hubby so the balcony helps him not feel trapped), and our wallet.

I'm right there next to you... we try to avoid times when schools are closed as prices are more reasonable and there's less young'ens around. 7 NCL trips under our belt, with another 3 booked. 8/10 are on ships that have a Haven category (Star & POA don't count in my book, although we won an upgrade bid on the Star for the garden villa... so that was ironic and an awesome surprise) Of the 8 trips that had a Haven area, we sailed in a Haven room on 7 of those. The only one we didn't was our very first NCL trip and that was with 3 people in a mini suite (club balcony). We had bids in for our second time sailing on the Epic, but when the prices kept dropping it was cheaper to just outright upgrade and move into a 2 br Haven than to bid - so that's what we did. For the rest, we outright booked into the Haven room. I have good luck in finding amazing deals, so outside of our upcoming Prima trip (which we won't talk about the price of) we have been able to sail in a Haven room for less than $500/person/night on average. Best deals I've snagged were the garden villa on the Pearl for <$300 (assuming we had put 6 in the villa) and that last minute upgrade on the Epic in the 2br Haven room with just the 2 of us for about $320/pp/day. If we had enough time to put 6 people in that Star garden villa, that would have worked itself out to a price of only $240/pp/day (no Haven on that ship, but by golly that villa was insane). So there's deals to be found for outright booking Haven - and some that are better than those upgrade bids people are putting in.

Our last trip was out of Barcelona. The night before we flew to Spain I got notified about our winning bid. I don't know how I would feel about getting notified any later than that... too stressful for me to have to worry about where I'm going to be and such.

Simple fix for that... tell them you're headed to the bar for a frozen cocktail dessert and that you'd prefer to drink your calories than eat them. 5 pages of replies related to gambling since the last time I checked in has now led me to the definitive conclusion that I do not like having a casino on the ship at all, or people who want to spend 5+ pages of forum posts debating it on board with me either.