DCThunder

You haven't mentioned any interest in physical activity but be sure to check out the fitness center. If you go to the gym at home, there's no reason you shouldn't get in a workout or two, especially on sea days. On a recent TA (6 sea days), I basically "walked" across the ocean by doing an hour on the treadmill every day in either the late morning or mid-afternoon. Looking out at the ocean and watching for sea life, other ships, or just enjoying the view of the vastness of the sea is a wonderful way to work off some of the cocktails and desserts. You can also do laps on the outside track. Folks play pickleball, shoot hoops, or play table tennis either up on the Sky Deck or on the Lido deck.

I am a huge Survivor fan (watched every season since the first one) and I love cruising, so maybe I'm the exception to that TAR boards opinion. But then I lost interest in TAR a few years ago when they went too heavy into the of stories of the contestants and the stunt casting of teams, but I still respect that show. As others have said, the Real Love Boat seems to be a rip-off of The Bachelor/Bachelorette & Love Island franchises, only set on a cruise ship instead of a castle in the south of France or a "tropical" island. I never watched any of those shows, so why would I want to watch this one? I know I'm not their demographic anyway.

I was just in Juneau last week on a HAL cruise and the sign outside Tracey's said "3 lbs King Crab Legs for $129". And there was a line out the door onto the boardwalk.

So a joke about mobility scooter races on the running track would be in poor taste? Asking for a friend... 😉

Another vote for Santorini on Deck 5. I called it the Hidden MDR because fewer people went to it. Shared a table with Ombud one evening on the recent TA. 🍷

I actually downloaded the app and bought the tix while standing in line to board the ferry. There were two lines, one to use the ticket machine to buy tix the other to board, but it was unclear which was which, so I got tin the boarding line and bought the tix on the app. The ferrys run roughly every 30 minutes and as said upthread, you have to be careful you get on the one heading NB towards Wall Street, not SB to Bay Ridge. And as someone else has said, it is the NYC Ferry app. Hornblower is the company that operates them.

Between 100 and 200 yards. Go out of the entry to the BCT building and turn left and follow the sidewalk around to the left.

The ferry ride is about 15 minutes but be sure you get the ferry Northbound and not Southbound (towards Bay Ridge). The cost is $4.00/person each way. You can download an app to buy the tickets (NYC Ferry) for either Apple or Android phones or buy a ticket at the ferry terminal. I'd actually recommend downloading the app and buying the tix that way. I did not stop at Johns Pizza, although I probably walked past it. One highlight of the walk I sort of stumbled onto was St. Paul's Chapel, a historic Episcopal church in the shadow of the Twin Towers that was not damaged in their collapse. It served as a relief center for recovery/rescue workers and its fence was where many memorials to those lost in the Towers and "Have You Seen Him/Her" posters of the missing were put up. St. Paul's Chapel - Wikipedia. A number of colonial era New Yorkers are also buried in the graveyard around the church and its interesting to walk around and look at tombstones from 250 years ago.

If you walk up Fulton Street (which is a couple of blocks down from the Ferry terminal), you go right to the Occulus which is adjacent to the Museum and the two Memorial pools. The entire walk is 20-30 minutes or so depending on how fast you walk and how much you want to look around. Buy your 9/11 Museum tickets on line ahead of time. DO NOT buy when you get there. The line is horrendous. There are a lot (15-20) food carts of all different types lined up outside the Occulus, so you can get some food if you wish. Inside the Occulus is standard upscale shopping, including an Apple store. The day I was there was when the new iPhone 14 was released so there were lots of youngin's lined up to get a new phone.

We arrived early Friday morning (9/16) and were docked by around 0700. Later that morning we had to process through US immigration and no one was allowed back onto the ship until everyone (including crew) had done the passport control procedure ashore. Passengers had the choice to wait to reboard or could go do shore things.. Some passengers were allowed to disembark but they were on their own as far as luggage removal was concerned. I took the ferry over to the Wall Street/South Street Seaport area and then walked over to the 9/11 Memorial/Museum area for most of the day. Others went to Times Square or anywhere else they wanted to go in the city. Once everyone did the immigration stuff, the ship was open for reboarding at any time and the buffet, MDRs, and specialty places were open as usual. Some bars were not open (NY liquor laws apparently required this) and the casino was closed, but otherwise it was essentially a sea day although the ship didn't move. You had to cash out at the casino on Thursday night. Luggage was collected Friday night as usual on the night before disembarkation and Saturday morning the chaos of the BCT began.

The ferry dock is about 100 yards from the entrance to the cruise terminal so its convenient, but you do still have to navigate the sidewalk which seemed pretty congested with people getting in/out of Ubers and taxis. There is also no supporting infrastructure (shops etc.) anywhere near the ferry dock or the cruise port, so if you've forgotten something, you're SOL. Good luck!

No, I don't. I'm not sure there was a centralized quarantine area. Perhaps others know.

I'll add that Spotlight Bar takes place in, a bar of all places. Characters simulate drinking alcohol and there's some adult themes, but nothing risque by any means. Check out the Hannah Howie link I posted above. She has some clips of her performance in the show. That might help you decide.

They make an announcement before each show that there are loud noises, flashing lights, and other effects. Children are told not to sit in the first three rows. However, nothing in the shows is more than PG-13 at worst. Rock Opera has a lot of songs from "Greatest Showman" so if your kids like that movie, then they'd probably like it. All that said, you know your kids best. And thanks for liking my review.

I was also on this TA and will add a couple of additional comments: Marcus (the CD) and Dan (the ED) seemed to go out of their way to come up with some new "events" beyond the usual Trivia. Game Shows, and Bingo. For instance, they did a "crew talent show" in the Piazza, where 5 different crew members (from behind the scenes departments), performed for the passengers. They also did a "lip sync" contest, including dressing up in costumes. It was a nice change of pace from the usual stuff. They had a tango dancing couple who performed frequently in the Piazza as well. They were excellent. the performers in the Piazza were generally good. All three of the production shows (Five Skies, Rock Opera, and the new Spotlight Bar) were performed. I've seen both Five Skies and Rock Opera before, but Spotlight Bar was a debut. It's very good, but the songs are all fairly recent and not too familiar to me. It seems like part of the move to attract a younger cruise clientele. The shows seemed to be well attended and the productions were first rate. Show times were 7:30 and 9:30p. There were at least two matinee performances, one by Hannah Howie (Singer | Hannah Howie) the other by the Barricade Boys. I also enjoyed the performance by the Irish Tenors. In general, I think the entertainment in the main theatre was very good. I didn't see the comedians and jugglers, so other can comment on them. The downside of the performances in the Piazza is a lack of seating and unless you can snag a place at the balcony rail, it's hard to see whats going on. I heard some complaints that the shore destination presentations were somewhat boring, but the couple I attended seemed informative, if a bit pedantic. There were some enrichment presentations on how the cruise industry developed beginning in around 1900, the early history of Princess and the importance of The Love Boat, the Cunard Queens (Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth, QE2, Queen Mary 2), and sailboat racing with Ted Turner, which were interesting if you are into that sort of thing. The casino never seemed too busy and the smell of smoke coming out of it was much less than when I was on Enchanted in April/May. In the 8:30-9:30 pm time period, many of the table games had the dealers standing around talking to themselves and most slot machines were vacant. I'm no a poker player, but I never saw anyone sitting at the Texas Hold'em table. Perhaps that was for later in the evening. But Bingo in Princess Live! was SRO most of the times I walked past it. They finally added a channel on the stateroom TVs where you could get NFL games, but otherwise it was Aussie football, rugby, Premier League, or Champions League, with a little US Open tennis sprinkled in. While they did put college football and MLB scores on the ribbon behind the bar in the casino, live coverage of those sports was non-existent. The Ocean Sports Book also didn't offer any action on CFB, only the NFL, MLB, and soccer. Anyway, those are some random thought beyond what others have said. I enjoyed the cruise, although disembarkation in Brooklyn was a mess, but that's a different thread. 😉

Hey, dis is Brooklyn, fugghedaboudit....

Perhaps my disembarkation experience was an outlier yesterday, but I wanted to pass along a word of warning about airport transfers from BCT. I was leaving Enchanted Princess (after a TA) at the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal and heading for JFK airport to fly home, along with roughly 2000 fellow passengers. We arrived in New York a day early (skipping Boston, due to reasons related to bad weather in the North Atlantic) so cleared immigration and customs the day before, so all that had to be done was collect luggage, board a bus, and get to the airport. E-Z, P-Z, right? Well not so much. The scenes outside around the coaches was chaotic to say the least. There were no well defined lines or guides telling passengers where to go to board their bus. Lines formed, but it was word of mouth as to which line was which. Lines got tangled up and newcomers to the lines cut in front, without meaning to, which almost led to a couple of ugly confrontations. People on mobility scooters, towing huge suitcases took the right of way regardless of those on foot. The day workers were not at all helpful in trying to establish some semblance of order. The lines crossed lanes of traffic in the parking lot, so the Ubers just nosed through the lines. Then when you got to a bus for JFK, it took forever to load luggage, (by the various terminals service different airlines) and board. My departure group was supposed to meet on board at 0800. I got to the lounge at 0730, and the group finally left the ship at around 0835 to collect luggage. Then it was into the maelstrom described above. My bus finally pulled out of the parking lot at around 0925, and arrived at JFK at about 1015, but by the time it came to Terminal 7, it was now close to 1100. JFK wasn't crowded, so I breezed through checking my luggage and getting through TSA (PreChek is great!), and had no futher issues. But if you debark at BCT and have a flight earlier than noontime, be werry werry careful of booking a Princess airport transfer. As always YMMV, but the above was my experience yesterday.

Roger that. I leave on Sept. 2 on a TA from Southampton so I am very familiar to the rules related to departure in the short term.

Not until after Sept. 6. Prior to that, only self-attestation of a negative test.

One difference is that the HAL cruise on Oosterdam goes through the Canal and ends in FLL while the Sapphire goes to LA. I had booked the Princess cruise ending in LA, but canceled it as well as a LA-FLL through the Canal, in favor of the single HAL cruise. The Princess Canal cruise was on the Emerald and it couldn't go through the old locks which I think, Oosterdam can. I wanted to get a bit more bang for my buck, and thought the HAL was better. YMMV, however.

Yes, they showed The Masters in April and some NBA playoff games when the Premier/Champions League matches were done.

Given that Sky Sports is the provider of the live sports coverage, I'd say you will get your Premier League fix. I'm more interested if they'll show the Opening Week NFL games on 9/11 as well as a couple of big College Football (American style) games in the opening weeks.

It will change in the middle of a B2B, however, if it's the first cruise that puts you over the threshold. Guest services will give you an appropriate colored Medallion.

If you get disappointed by Princess, you get: