Fincherson

They haven't cut back. They have adapted their menus to meet the tastes of the contemporary cruiser. Snails swimming in butter and shrimps are menus from the 70's and 80's. Even Le Bistro has "skinny down" the recipe for their snails.

I do keto so give me allll the butter.

I think you meant profitable.

Now we're talkin'.

Rates have not been declining but have you noticed the price of meat and fish, particularly shell fish? :rolleyes: And if you can honestly say you have seen the price of shell fish going down, you must live on some planet the rest of us do not live on. All I have seen and I am educated shopper is the size of packaging getting smaller. Of course when certain products are in season there is a slight drop. That might even be the case with seafood if you live on one of the coasts or the planet you live on. Here we do not see the prices going down.

Did you even read the original post?? :rolleyes::rolleyes:

Yeah, me either. I also haven't noticed food prices at my supermarket declining.

Really? I actually have, funny enough.

To make the cruise fare more affordable....

Odd. I haven't noticed fares declining.

About a million tourists go to Belize every year and there are something like 30,000 expats living in the country so the place is perfectly safe.

 

By the way Belize is not an island it's actually on the mainland

Just because there are expats means it's safe. That's some strange logic.

You will have to spend your cruising time finding something else to enjoy: I don't think either are available in the MDRs anymore. In fact a lot of cruise lines are cutting back on shrimp. You can get Escargot at Le Bistro. I don't know about Cagney's.

What's their reasoning for cutting back?

All I can say is you will not regret booking NCL.

Is lurking on the NCL board your full-time occupation? Breathe deep, relax, move on.

 

 

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It appears so.

And I believe that there may be a table for 10 on the Getaway.

 

As I Said "On lships with a larger Teppenyaki room, from memory, most tables seat 8, but there are some that seat 10."

 

I will admit, however, that I wasn't thinking specifically about the Getaway, as I read the initial post, rather than the thread title.

The title is a little distracting to me personally. :D

There are certainly Teppenyaki tables that take 10.

 

For example, on the Spirit (and similar) there is room for 10. On lships with a larger Teppenyaki room, from memory, most tables seat 8, but there are some that seat 10.

But they're asking about Getaway.

There isn’t a bar inside the spa for good reason. It’s supposed to be a quiet place to relax and detox. If they put in a bar it would become just like the pool deck loud and rowdy. We had folks laughing loud and carrying on in the spa pool last time we got a pass. It’s not a party room. Ruined the whole atmosphere. They have water and hot tea set up for you to drink.

 

As to your questions.

1) Yes it is a pain to come and go. You turn ur key card into someone at the desk while you are in the spa.

 

2)Depends on the ship.

 

The heat from the hot tub, sauna or salt room (again depends on the ship) doesn’t mix well with alcohol. I suggest you refrain from drinking in the spa for your safety.

The ship is the Getaway, per the title.

I know, but it's similar. Get's the point across.

It gets a false point across.

I just got back from a cruise on the NCL Getaway this past Sunday, and while it was still an enjoyable cruise, I'm still leaning towards RCL over NCL.

 

The ship was fine, it ticked off all of the boxes of what you'd expect from a cruise ship, but I was kind of disappointed in some things in comparison to what I've experienced on RCL.

 

Embarkation: It took a little while to get on the ship, longer than I expected. I didn't realize that once you got through check-in, you'd be taken to another room in the back where you'd have to wait for your group number to be called in order to get on board. The room was already so full at that point that there was nowhere to sit in the general boarding area, so I ended up standing around for the most part until our group was called. And then once you got on the ship, you still had to wait for the staterooms to open up at approximately 1:30pm. I'm more accustomed to how they do it on RCL which is basically you get on board, you get to your room and then you can do whatever you please. Or you can do it the other way around if you like, it's your cruise! (Although the last RCL cruise I was on, our staterooms were delayed a bit only because they had a mandatory inspection beforehand which slowed them down. But it was fine because it was on the HOTS so there was plenty to do while waiting.) If I had known that I was going to be waiting around for a while to get on, I would have stayed at my hotel for an extra hour.

 

Our room: As we made the way to our room, I noticed that the hallways were a lot narrower than on RCL ships. If you ran into someone going the other way, you basically had to play chicken to see who could pass first. (Not really, but that's what it felt like.) My husband and I booked a junior suite, but in hindsight we could have just stuck with a regular balcony room. The bigger bathroom was nice, with a glass-door shower that had a rainfall shower head and extra jets, along with a large sink with double faucets, but the balcony was so small, and it was the same size as a basic balcony room.It basically had room for two small chairs chairs and a tiny table and that was it. The last time I had a junior suite was on the RCL Freedom of the Seas and it felt like it was a junior suite. The balcony had room for two lounger chairs, two regular chairs and a table. I was really disappointed in the balcony, which is where I like to spend a lot of time on my cruise. And I didn't even get to spend as much time out there as I wanted, because even though smoking is prohibited on the balconies, there were enough people breaking that rule to chase me back into the room because of cigarette smoke. We've been on five RCL cruises and I've been lucky enough to not run into that problem on any of them yet. Sure we had a little extra space where the sofa was, and a longer hallway from door to bed, but I really don't think the extra money we spent for the junior suite was worth it. But we did have liquid soap in the bathroom which was was a plus. I dislike the bars of soap you typically get on a cruise, and I wash my hands a lot, so liquid soap was nice. (I'm maybe even a bit OCD about how much I wash my hands, haha.)

 

Food/Drinks: I found that the complimentary food on the ship was just okay. We usually had breakfast at O'Sheehan's just because we usually didn't get up early enough for the MDR breakfast. The omelettes there are pretty good, same with the french toast. Lunch was also usually O'Sheehan's or MDR, and dinner was either MDR or specialty dining. I found that the MDR fare was better on RCL than NCL. Some of the appetizers in the MDR on the Getaway were confusing. Like there was one where they put shrimp, watermelon, cheese and some sort of vinaigrette together and the flavors just didn't work. It felt like they were just trying to use up certain ingredients in any way possible and threw it on the menu. I didn't try the buffet at all because my parents (and several other people on the cruise that I had asked about it) had said that the buffet wasn't worth it. So I took their word for it. We did Shanghai's one night (free noodle bar) and it was all right. The egg rolls were really tasty and crispy, but everything else was kind of meh. I will say that the specialty dining on NCL has an edge over RCL though. We went to Teppenyaki one night, and the food and service was fantastic. Compared to RCL's Izumi, it's way better. The food was better and the entertainment was better. We also went to La Cucina another night and the food and service was absolutely fantastic. I also heard that Cagney's (steakhouse) and La Bistro (French food) are great, but we didn't book in time to get to either of those, so they were already full by the time we thought about booking places. We also went to Margaritaville for lunch on our last day, and found that their margaritas are pretty good, and the food was good too. I had a really good cheeseburger and husband had a delicious shrimp and Caesar salad. And the giant nachos I saw the waiters/waitresses carrying around looked really good. One other thing that did kind of bug me was that there weren't really any places to get much for snacks on the ship, other than the Market Cafe, but that was only from 3pm-5pm. You could get gelato (for a charge during certain hours) or cupcakes and macarons (for a charge during certain hours) but there really wasn't anyplace on the Getaway that I saw that compared to Park Cafe or Sorrento's or Cafe Promenade on RCL.

 

Drinks though, I found were a little lacking. They weren't as strong as I've had them on RCL, the glasses were smaller, and in so many places they used plastic cups instead of glasses or reusable plastic cups. Why so much plastic, it's so wasteful. That didn't stop people from getting blazing drunk though, as I saw a couple of times. But they had Pepsi on board, which was a plus for my husband. And having the UDP, I thought it was kind of lame that they didn't offer bottled water like they do on RCL with the UDP, and instead pushed you to buy a water bottle package instead. Not that I'm usually tossing back water bottles, but it's nice to grab a couple before going onto shore. If I do choose to book another NCL cruise, I'll make sure to bring an empty water bottle with me.

 

Service: Overall, service wasn't bad, most crew members were friendly or would say hello to you in the hall. But there were times where I'd catch a bartender looking visibly frustrated because the bar was busy, and even our stateroom attendant you could tell was frustrated because he was busy. (He even told us so a couple of times that he was 'too busy.') The room was sometimes not cleaned on a regular schedule (I'm assuming because of how busy he was) and we'd often find ourselves having to go find something to do in order to give our attendant time to clean it. And I'm talking where we'd put on the 'Make Up Room' light, we'd be gone for at least a couple of hours, and the room still wasn't cleaned. It's not like we ever left our room to where it looked like a hurricane hit it, but it seemed like the indicator to make up the room was pretty useless. But I'd put this on NCL themselves, it seems like maybe they're not providing enough workers for the work that needs to be done and causing them to feel overworked. But when we had an issue where a low battery indicator came up on our safe, the attendant made sure that it was taken care of quickly. So service was good, I just feel that some of the workers were overworked. One other little thing that bothered me, was that when we were in the ship's gift shop, there was a huge display in the middle of the floor near the cash register. You could barely walk around it, and it got in the way of any register lines. it was a really bad place for it. You had to basically keep an eye out for anyone coming through and get around when the coast was clear. Really bad placement. I get that they want to sell stuff, but falling over a display isn't going to get me to buy more. I did buy an NCL thermos/travel bottle though. But mostly because I love the color blue that's on it.

 

Pools/Hot Tubs: This is probably my major beef with NCL and it may affect you as well. But they don't have an area similar to the Solarium on the RCL ships. There is an area in the back called Spice H2O which is an adults-only area, but it pales in comparison to all of the Solariums we've experienced. It has two hot tubs, a bar, and a waterfall/pool area and that's it. There's barely any shade, neither of the hot tubs have shade over it, and it just feels like a place for you to go out and fry yourself. Which is great if you're a real sun worshiper. But I'm super pale and I will burn quickly in direct sunlight. (Which is why I coat myself in 50 SPF sunscreen before going out for the day.) So how about the regular sun/pool deck? Well, on a sea day, good luck getting a spot in the shade or even getting a chair, without claiming your place early. The sun/pool deck is packed to the gills on sea days, and basically whenever the ship has set sail again. Your best chance is on port days when people have left the ship to go do other things. What about the Vibe Beach Club? First, you have to buy passes to get access to it, but the passes sell out really quickly on embarkment day. Basically you have to be the first to board the ship in order to even get a chance to get to those passes. So if you board the ship at 10:00am and then you get the passes? Great. But then you're on the ship with no stateroom available for a few hours. After being so accustomed to having the Solarium, I think the whole Vibe Beach Club thing with having to pay and rush on board to get tickets is a load of garbage.

 

Shows: We didn't book as many shows as we usually do on other cruises, but the shows we saw were pretty good. We caught two of the comedy shows, which were decent. At least the Headliners venue is bigger than the comedy clubs on OOTS and AOTS. And then we saw the Cirque Dreams and Steam show which was pretty good too. The dinner that came with the Cirque show was okay, but I think it was pretty much of the same quality that you could get from the MDR. You may want to eat something before or after. My one complaint is that we were in the Banquette area and that there was a giant beam/pole that sometimes blocked the view of what was going on stage. Pay the extra to get the better seating if you can. I've heard that some of the other shows are pretty good too, but we didn't check them out. Although we did see some of the dancers from Burn the Floor one night in the Tropicana dining room, and they were entertaining.

 

Disembarkment: It was kind of a mess. Our stateroom attendant didn't bring us our tags, we had to go down to guest services and pick them up. But the attendant for my parents' room did give them their tags. So I'm not sure what the usual routine is for that. We were set to disembark at 8:30am, although I would have liked to leave a little later. But seeing as I have a foreign passport with a green card, that was the time I was given to go. Going through the disembarkment process, it seemed like it really didn't matter though. Our color was called a little earlier, but we got in line at 8:30am like we planned. And what a line it was. It went through O'Sheehans into the casino and wrapped around to double back. So it took a while to get off of the ship. Which I understand when some 4200 people or so are getting off the ship, but I've disembarked from all of those Oasis class ships without having to stand in a line that long. Once we got off of the ship, it was kind of confusion and a free-for all when grabbing your bags. Even though our color was green, we didn't see our bags anywhere. After asking one of the port employees, we were led a long way around to the other side of the terminal to get our bags, which weren't even properly marked. Other sets of luggage had signs (Red, Brown, etc.) but ours was kind of set off to the wayside along with some other bags and no indicator as to what group they were part of. (At least we got our bags I guess.) Once we got our luggage, we headed towards the line for customs, but then we were cut off by port employees and directed to walk back where we came throughout the maze that was the port, to another customs line. It was kind of a cluster****. Which I realize isn't NCL's fault, but it is their port and terminal. Eventually we got through customs, and that part was super quick. On the ship they said that I'd be subject to an 'intense' screening, but the officer basically asked where we were going, if we were going there that day and gave us our passports/my green card back. So the whole 'separating disembarkation' by foreign passports' thing wasn't... really a thing at all.

 

Overall for me, it was a cruise. I enjoyed myself, got some sun and drinks and food, saw a couple of ports I hadn't seen before, but I'm thankful that my next cruise booked is going to be a RCL cruise.

 

As for your questions:

 

 

 

 

• Does the world run on your Seas Pass card (or equivalent) ?
  

Yes, it's pretty much exactly as you're accustomed to on RCL. Your 'Sea Card' or 'Freestyle Card' does everything you'd expect it to.

 

 

• When and should you make show reservations ? (is the a cost for the Cirque show?)
  

You should make them when the window is open, which is what, 90 days away I think? The sooner the better. But there are some shows that don't require reservations. And yes, there is a cost for the Cirque Show, it varies on where you want to sit. Like I said earlier, foot for the more expensive seating, that way you'll have a good view.

 

 

• Your thoughts on what specialty dining is the best.
  

I only did Teppenyaki, La Cucina and Margaritaville, but I enjoyed them all. It's hard to choose between Teppenyaki and La Cucina, they were both great dining experiences.

 

 

• Nooks and crannies on the ship to get away ?
  

Not so much on the Getaway. My husband said it best I think, when he noted that the Getaway seems to value more stateroom space rather than space for groups of people to hang out. But on the Waterfront where there are the comfy chairs, those are some good little nooks and crannies to get away. Granted if they're not all filled up already by the time you get there. I also found that sometimes going through places like the Atrium or O'Sheehans when they had events going on in the Atrium could be challenging. There were some major crowds to navigate.

 

 

• What is the NCL equivalent of the RCL Solarium? (We aren't pool people per se, just quiet sunshine places).
  

There's really not one. But Spice H2O is probably the closest you'll get to it. Honestly from what I've seen, the best thing to do is probably to book a room in The Haven. But I can't (and probably not my husband either) really justify spending that much money just on a room on a cruise. Eventually I'd like to book a suite or something close to it on a future sailing. But for now I'll just enjoy my balcony rooms and the occasional junior suite.

 

I realize that my opinions are exactly what they are: opinions. And everything is subjective. But I hope that I helped out somewhat. :)

This post is enough to drive me to drink. :p:p

If I was a server on a Cruise ship, I would not want to touch something that someone had pulled out of their underwear. But thats just me.

Agreed. Yuck!

Looks like things have only gotten worse

.. ....

What color does Getaway get?!

If there is a wait for the elevator, we take the stairs. Up and down. We're healthy and able, and frankly we need to walk off the calories!

As Canadians we tend to line up in an orderly fashion, on a "first come first served" basis. I have been to numerous other countries where this is not the case, but have tried to maintain my sense of humour and refuse to let myself get riled up about it.

As an American, I'll be strictly taking the stairs. This is just my choice and preference.

I agree with keeping a sense of humor and personally would have rather seen OP say "When someone would ask if there was room on the elevator we let them on and all had a good laugh about being squeezed in like sardines." But, some people insist on being self-righteous and always looking for someone to keep in line.

Can you just stop....while its clear you have no filters, can you just try to get some help? My God, its sacriledge what you post.

Boy, you've really got it bad for him don't you?

Why do people need straws to drink a drink? It's just more plastic waste to be dumped into the oceans. Drink from the cup. People are so selfish.

Why do you need to go on a cruise that wastes literal tons of food and burns fossil fuels? Talk about selfish. Kinda makes me sick.

Okay , can someone please start a new thread on Straw smuggling , its only a matter of time . The Do's and Dont's ...

Oh the horror

I sail in August and have already purchased 200 straws.

Just keep making more stuff up, you are good at it.

 

 

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Sadly none of it is made up.

Sure you did. Next you will be trying to sell us a bridge in Brooklyn. If that is the case why did you say 2-3 floors and not just 2. Still my question remains why does this even bother you if you do not use the elevator in the first place and please tell us the minimum number of floors one can go and use the elevator so we do not violate your rules going forward. Oh and is this all pertaining just to Americans? Are there different minimums based on nationality or maybe time of day?

Next time I'm on an elevator I'm going to ask to see ID. Apparently I'm not as skilled as some at telling who is who. I mean, wow, Sam is incredibly observant. He knows people's nationalities, able-bodiedness, and how many floors they're going. I must be spending too much time enjoying myself rather than picking apart everything people do. :)

So if you have never been on an elevator how do you know how many floors someone rode the elevator? Your entire post was based on "apparently able bodied" people to "ride up or down just two or three decks". So you (1) assume someone is able bodied and (2) assume they are riding less than some mythical minimum number of decks you think is acceptable for elevator travel. Why does what you THINK others MIGHT be doing that in no way impact you anyway, since you do not use an elevator, bother you so much? Spend as much time enjoying your cruise as you do looking for reasons to worry about others and you will be a lot happier!

Don't forget, he also attributed this to the "high number of Americans on board." You know, since we're all fat, lazy slobs. :rolleyes: