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That is some industrial strength itemization.

Enjoy. You are welcome to celebrate the 20th anniversary of my wife and myself on February 16 in the unlikely event that you have nothing better to do. We will celebrate belatedly aboard the Escape in the first week of May. Thanks in advance for your offer to post dailies. I'm obsessed.

So was there a mutiny?

I tend to give an extra tip to show appreciation if I have made a mess that I would like the steward/housekeeper/attendant to clean up, and especially if our kids are staying in the room with us, which makes the mess that much bigger. With regard to addressing guests by name, I suspect this is a job requirement on certain cruise lines; I have mostly cruised on Carnival in the past and I think I recall that just about every attendant on their ships has called me by my name at nearly every interaction. That doesn't mean it shouldn't be appreciated, because it is a skill that requires practice. In any case, I don't feel the need for the S/H/A to learn my name and in fact I get a little weirded out by it when they use it every time they address me over the course of the week. However I very much appreciate them keeping to themselves my dirty little secrets that they may discover in the course of providing service to me in my private space over the course of a week, and not making fun of me when I am at my Ugly American worst.

I keep telling people to order steak by temperature, not some subjective and variable label where people can disagree. A neurosurgeon wouldn't describe a lesion as "small", he or she would say it is 3 millimeters across or whatever. Cooked to center temperature of 125F / 52C is medium rare by the time it gets to the table. Cooked to center temperature 135F / 57C should be medium by the it arrives. Learn what temperature you like your steak cooked to. And make this a thing, people. Then you will be happy with your steak and you won't have to send it back, and maybe, just maybe, someday our upcharges wouldn't have to cover the costs of so many steaks that ended up in the trash.

I know I can be pretty dense sometimes. Especially in the comments sections.

Waitaminute. Rereading this. What exactly is "one lap around the edge"? I am not accusing anyone of anything, but if this term of art happens to refer to your finger taking a lap around the edge of the gravy container at the buffet, or lapping the gravy like a cat, I withdraw my earlier thanks.

If you want to stick magnets on a door, the door would just have to contain iron (or steel, of which iron is a component) for a magnet to adhere to it. The door itself need not be magnetic. My understanding is that this is pretty standard for contemporary cruise ships.

If you are going to Puerto Rico or St Thomas, they are territories of the United States and thus use USA dollars natively. But in any case, even if you are in DR or elsewhere, if you are only going to be in a port town for the duration of the port stay or on an organized excursion, it's unlikely you will be anywhere that would require or even expect payment in local currency. Tips in USD are welcomed. Maybe not coins though. Bring bills. You might want local currency, say, if traveling around a country away from a cruise port by yourself for a few days. But if you are doing that, you probably didn't arrive on a cruise ship.

Well that's a relief. Hard to tell sometimes. I've seen all kinds.

On behalf of everyone else on planet earth, thank you for resisting the temptation to stick your finger in the gravy. This has happened to me before. My hack in such a situation is to ask for some sour cream, or borrow some from my baked potato if I already have one, and mix it with the horseradish. The reality of cruise ship dining, particularly in main dining rooms, is that food is mass-produced to serve hundreds or thousands of people within a reasonable amount of time and a budget, and at the proper temperature, which is a real feat of engineering if you think about it. In my experience, the food has been pretty good as long as my expectations have been realistic. In particular, customization is not usually realistic, or it is not what I had in mind, so I am happy to ask for whatever I need on the side to make my food taste the way I like it, and I have found that the wait staff is usually very accommodating in that regard. One other suggestion to combat the anti-flavor epidemic is that a squeeze of lemon often helps many kinds of foods. And get the chimichurri with the steak. And while we're on the subject of steak, particularly in the steakhouse where you steak should be cooked to order, in order to combat the overcooking epidemic, why not order your steak by center temperature; e.g. 125 F / 52 C before resting, which is more objective than "rare to medium rare".

As a very unimportant status-free cruiser, I booked some dining reservations on T minus 120 days and the steakhouse and French restaurant were wide open. Your mileage may vary, natch.

Would be nice if the system had checks to prevent double booking. Given the testimonials (rumors?) of both problems and bona fide bugs in NCL technology flying around lately, I do not trust it to prevent anything.

If I understand correctly what you are trying to do, I think you run a big risk booking a duplicate reservation and hoping you can get a refund on one of them later. I doubt this approach is offered in any of the contracts you implicitly entered into when booking.

I saw a YouTube vlog from someone staying in a room very close to this one but unfortunately I can't find it. I haven't seen any others from that vlogger. However I have a cabin booked nearby in early May. If you nudge me after that, I can report.

My travel agency has a customer service department that can resolve problems and I have found them to be very helpful. If yours does, it may be worth calling customer service to see if they can help resolve this. It will require more explaining on your part, but I suggest that as a first attempt at resolution. The travel agency presumably wants a shot at keeping your business and also wants to know if one of its agents is not quoting prices correctly.

Epic review. The details are very much appreciated. Thanks for posting!

I was thinking the job is being outsourced to a temp company, since US based NCL employees were probably OOO yesterday. This would also fit with the trend of cost cutting that we have been seeing.

Interesting that you received the response on a holiday. I don't think I ever received the email, I just saw the credit in my summary page.

No, but reading that such a tour exists is breaks this native Angeleno's heart. I would be hard pressed to plan a less authentic Los Angeles experience than viewing Rodeo Drive out the window of a bus. How much time do you have and what is your budget and how much luggage will you have with you? Maybe we can crowdsource some better ideas for you.

Unless all you ate was bananas foster, this is an (lowercase e) epic tease.

Update: As of today, 1/12/2023, I see my $100 onboard credit in my vacation summary. I had submitted the request on on 1/2/2023. Good luck everyone.

To get them interested, you could send them links to YouTube videos of the teen center, water parks, etc which are easy to find. And/or just tell them that you and your spouse will occasionally be getting busy in your 200 square foot room. No teen will ever want to be present for that. This is not my idea btw; I have seen it before in this forum, maybe in the section for another cruise line.

I would really love some foie gras as an appetizer (since I would rather order duck or lamb) but I don't see it on the Bistro menu. Would a premium restaurant serve something like that upon request? I am aware of its expense and would be willing to pay an upcharge if necessary.

I did receive an auto-reply email message with a case number. If nothing develops in the next month or two, I'll check back with that case number to see what is going on.