justhappy

Thanks for sharing, very useful information for newbies. I agree Beau Tahana is awesome, enjoyed his shows on the Encore last year.

Oh my yes, Memphis in the early 80’s was the same way. Lots of grocery stores even had coupon tables where you could leave ones you didn’t use and find ones you wanted. My mother and I would both end up with so many cheap or free items. And refunding was big then too.

I imagine we will make it work, it helps that our friends are in a cabin outside of the Haven proper so we can go visit them in their stateroom. It is totally my fault for getting them hooked on the Haven as years ago when you could call a few weeks out before sailing and get upgraded to an available Haven for about $500 per person, I paId to upgrade their balcony cabin to a Haven cabin along with our own. It was a birthday surprise for them.

I like the quote stating it’s not about the cost but the value. That holds true for many people, while others are all about the splurge, they work hard or are celebrating a special event and don’t care about the cost. So of my 15 cruises on NCL so far, 5 have been in the Haven. Most times I felt the value for what I was looking for was there. On my upcoming cruise, friends who asked us to go on this cruise with them originally booked Club Balcony suites as we did. However they feel this cruise is a bucket list one and one and done for them and decided to switch to a Haven suite. They wanted us to upgrade together so we could be together in the Haven but I felt the cost was not there for the price, especially considering how often we would be off the ship on excursions. At first I was perturbed that they chose to upgrade, and I know when they see the Encore’s Haven complex they will not want to leave it. And for what they paid they shouldn’t. They said they would hang with us but I told them they would be foolish to pay that much money and not use the Haven restaurant and amenities. We will be dining with them for 4 specialty dinners, as well as doing a few excursions together. My husband and I are retired and travel a lot, not only on cruises (this is our third cruise this year) and every month we are traveling on a trip somewhere from 3 days to 3 weeks so we try to make our vacation dollars stretch. I’d rather travel often than in style. We tell everyone who says going on a trip again?!, that we didn’t work all our life to sit home and rot in our old age. Plus you never know when life will happen and you become home bound. I’m sure again in the future we will choose a Haven suite but it will be a cruise that I can fully utilize the amenities to justify the cost. And I won’t be hiding my keycard from view or staring at my feet as I walk to the front of the line, I paid for the privilege. Not sorry. A story about our first Haven stay, we were celebrating our 40th anniversary and decided to celebrate by booking our first Haven suite. One day getting back on the ship from a port that had no special Haven escort, two women in back of us noticed our room keys were a different design. We had them out in our hands as we were about to board. They asked why our keycards were different and I told them we were staying in the Haven. The attitude was Oh aren’t you special. One of them said sarcastically, Oh that must be nice, and I replied yes it is very nice since we splurged to celebrate 40 years of marriage. They shut up and studied their feet.

I was hoping Hilary would give the area some rain 🙏

The Nitty Gritty of travel: We live on the gulf coast near Mobile Alabama, and have a choice of two nearby airports, Mobile (MOB), and Pensacola Florida (PNS) being the other. They take the same amount to time for us to travel to, but we find Pensacola to have better flights. Probably due to the Naval Station nearby. Neither airport has nonstop to Seattle. So assuming all goes to plan we have an early morning flight to DFW, then a layover of a few hours, hopefully long enough to get an early lunch. Our arrival time in to SEA is around 2:30 Pacific time. Our friends flying nonstop from ATL will arrive around 1:30 and probably be preparing their livers for the Unlimited drink package at an airport bar. We plan to get an UberXL to the hotel. We will be staying at a Marriott hotel in Pensacola the night before (yay reward points) and plan to visit McGuires Irish pub to kick off vacation with a cold brew and pub grub for dinner. https://www.mcguiresirishpub.com We will drop our sweet baby off at boarding that day on the way to Pensacola, and will not feel too guilty as she loves it there and the staff spoils her. My main goal between now and next Thursday is to hopefully get my sinus/ ear/ conjunctivitis infection totally taken care of. After 27 days, one shot of steroids and 15 days on antibiotics, only the conjunctivitis cleared up. After a referral to an ENT last Thursday he added oral Prednisone and antibiotic/cortisone ear drops to the plan, the sinus infection and pain is gone but still have hearing loss and pressure/ pain in my ear. After telling him I’m flying on Friday he is having me come back on Wednesday to do a pressure check and if not improved to his liking will put a tube in my ear. On most flights without any sinus problems I always wear earplanes to deal with the change in cabin pressure, so I’m all in on getting a tube inserted if needed.

@www3traveler I love the Panorama Cam especially the ability to go back to a different day or even earlier today. It looks pretty smoky I’m guessing from the wildfires in Canada? I hope they get some rain soon 😕 Heres a screenshot of the Encore from 6am this morning.

I’ll be on the Encore at the same time but following along with your adventures. Thank you so much for mentioning Matanuska Glacier, 20 years ago my husband and I did a 9 day driving trip around some of interior Alaska and we stopped along a highway to hike on a glacier and I had forgotten the name. It’s the same one as we drove up to it on the way from Glennallen back toward Anchorage. 20 years ago we paid an entrance fee and just explored on our own. This is a photo of us in our sneakers and hiking boots on Matanuska. 😂

No problem, I’m glad @www3traveler is giving us such great advice.

Yes, that area is gorgeous, we visited Portland Oregon a few years later and drove along the Columbia river to Hood River, then stayed at Mt Hood in the Timberline Lodge (we love the historic park lodges) and at some point along the drive crossed the river just to see the scenery from the Washington side. You aren’t kidding about the vineyards and orchards! So many fresh produce stands. That’s where I fell in love with Rainer Cherries❤️

We’ve done an Argosy tour of Elliott Bay in the past. I’d love to do the Locks tour. I’m giving our friends a list of things to do that they can choose and an Argosy tour is on the list! This is my fifth time to Seattle, and we also went on week long driving tour of Washington State a few years ago. Drove from Seattle to the Olympic Peninsula drove the 101 along the coast and through Olympic National Forest and visited Port Angeles, drove over Snoqualmie Pass and stayed at the lodge at Mt Rainer. Then we stayed in Leavenworth a few days. On to Chelan then down to Wenatchee and back to Seattle. We loved the whole state❤️

I promised you, so you’re the inspiration for this report! I’ll try to get my friends, (they were the ones with us on the Getaway in April) to take a few pics of the Haven for you. I got to tour the Haven on the Encore in November 2019 when I was a travel agent and got to do a 3 night working cruise for travel and media folks. You’re going to love it❤️

The Plan: As we did last year, we will arrive in Seattle two days early to do a little sightseeing. Our friends have not been to Seattle so we will suggest places we think they might enjoy. I already have reservations for Ivars for Friday night, we ate there last year and loved the food and the view. We will again be staying at the Seattle Marriott Waterfront using our Marriott points as will our friends. We love the location and convenience of walking across the street to board the ship. If the time change doesn’t hit me to hard I’ll try to get up and go across the street to get a glimpse of the Bliss arriving at port on Saturday morning. On Sunday morning I’ll be too excited to sleep in🥳 Our friends love the Haven and after originally booking a Club balcony suite next to ours decided to cough up the money and will be in a forward facing penthouse suite. We didn’t think the going price for the Haven to be worth it. We are using some of that 5K we didn’t spend to upgrade to the Haven on the Free at Sea Plus package which will give us a total of 6 speciality dinners, the upgraded drink package, unlimited internet and the $50 off shore excursions for both of us. We always upgrade to get unlimited internet, and by the time I added in the savings on the shore excursions for the second guest it made the free at sea plus a no brainer. Add in the discounts on excursions we get for being Sapphire and the excursions are fairly reasonable. It made several cost less than booking directly with the companies. Plus my Starbucks loving husband will be getting his daily Starbucks fix several times a day $$$$$. I plan to get a massage or two while on the cruise, but since we bought a lot of souvenirs last year, other than some small gifts and lunch in Skagway I don’t plan to spend as much. I know my husband will want some Deadliest Catch Swag though. We will be a few floors above our friends and like last year we loved the club balcony suites just down the hall from the observation lounge. It makes it so easy to pop in for a coffee or snack as well as the bar for a drink. And a nice plus is that if someone is hogging the bathroom there are some in the observation lounge for emergencies! The forward elevators and stairs are nearby too. The buffet is only one floor up as well. This is my 4th cruise on the Encore so at least I know my way around. My plan is to spend a lot of time on deck 8 enjoying the scenery and watching for wildlife. Last years cruise was often rainy and foggy so I’m hoping for a bit of better weather this year but I won’t be disappointed if it’s typical Alaska weather. We will meet up with our friend for dinner 4 nights, and we expect them to eat breakfast and lunch in the Haven plus the 3 nights we will be In specialty dining or off the ship. While they will have fine dining at breakfast and lunch we will be slumming it in the Local ( Ruebens❤️) or the buffet (Indian cuisine ❤️) 😉 if you’ve read through this long winded prologue, bless you! Go get a snack, you deserve it.

The background: My husband and I took this cruise last year on the Encore during the same week August 28-Sept 4 2022. We traveled with friends that knew we had already booked the cruise and wanted to join us as we have been cruising together since 2013, after having met on a cruise and hitting it off. We usually cruise with them in January to the Caribbean every year. We really didn’t plan to do another Alaska cruise again so soon, but another set of friends we cruise with fairly often wanted to go after hearing about our trip. We decided to go ahead since we knew we wanted to come back because the one port I knew my husband would love was Skagway, but due to the landslide at the port Skagway was substituted by Icy Strait Point. We also didn’t do any excursions last year as our friends didn’t want to do any and we felt we needed to hang with them. I had previously cruised on the Pearl with my father and two sisters in 2015 so I had been to all the ports, although my father picked what excursions he wanted to do and paid for them so that year we toured Mendenhall Glacier, the Mount Robert’s tram, Saxman Village and Totem pole park in Ketchikan as well as the Scenic White Pass bus ride in Skagway. On this cruise we are booked on several excursions, including the Mendenhall Glacier and evening whale watch in Juneau, as well as The Mount Robert’s tram, if we have time. In Skagway we are booked on the White Pass Railway and also the Scenic bus ride later that afternoon. My husband is a big fan of the show Deadliest Catch , so the Bering Sea fisherman’s tour is the one excursion he really wanted. Because of the short time in Ketchikan that will be the only excursion there. In Victoria we are doing the guided walking tour from the port to downtown. Last year we walked to downtown on our own, and this year I’d like to hear a little local history this time. Since we had been to Victoria years previously, taking the ferry from Vancouver Canada and spending the day there we have already seen much of Victoria (even got to tour the beautiful Parliament Building). Being the last night of the cruise and knowing that the next morning we get the bums rush off the ship, the 2 hour tour with a shuttle ride back to port sounded just about right. And since we upgraded to the Free at Sea Plus package the tour was no cost to us. 20 years ago we took a 9 day driving trip around Alaska, from Anchorage to Denali Nation park where we took a sightseeing flight around the mountain, taking off from Taltkeetna . And although we were supposed to land on the glacier conditions did not allow landing so we had an extra long breathtaking flight when the clouds broke up and the mountain “came out”. After two days in Denali where we took the day trip shuttle bus into the park, and visiting a sled dog camp, we headed up to Fairbanks for a day then onward east on Highway 2 through North Pole to Delta Junction and through Tok on to Highway 1 to Glennallen down to Copper River outside of Wrangell St Elias Nation Park. I lucked out on researching places to stay and discovered that at Denali and Copper River Princess Cruise line had beautiful lodges they built to accommodate passengers on the land portion of their cruises. On days they did not have passengers arriving the rates were super low. We then headed down to Seward Alaska after taking a side trip to Whittier. We hiked a glacier that we passed on the way for a few hours . In Seward we visited the Sealife Center and took the all day boat tour of Kenai Fjords National Park. I added all this to say we have seen interior Alaska and highly recommend if you are considering a land/sea tour to do it. It was all breathtakingly beautiful. A much younger us 20 years ago!

I pre booked last year and had no issues, so I’m pre booked again this year.

Thank you for the live trip report, I enjoyed following along, and really enjoyed the food pics!

I’m really enjoying your live review and I’m so sorry about the food situation. I’m really shocked that NCL is serving food like that! When you return home you might want to check out Cecilia Blomdahl, if you haven’t already. She has a YouTube page and a TikTok account and lives in Svalbard near the town of Longyearbyen. She posts beautiful videos of her life there and her dog Grim is a beautiful bonus! Her TikTok account is @sejsejlija

You are right! I said Escape in a previous comment and meant the Getaway. 😞

On the Escape when it first launched it was a free venue that offered Cuban food in keeping with the ships Miami theming. It was so good! And it also offered a morning buffet of hot and cold items that was a nice place to eat a quiet Al fresco breakfast.

Last August I signed up for Port Valet service on the website in advance, and once on the ship inquired at guest services if I was indeed on their list. I was told they don’t get the information on the ship till a day or two before debarkation and if I didn’t receive any information in our stateroom the last day to check back in at guest services. Luckily the luggge tags and boarding passes showed up!

We had to divert to Icy Strait due to the rockslide in Skagway last year. We walked the road into Hoonah Alaska and glad we did. The walk along the water is so beautiful and whales are often seen here. It is a town of mostly native Tlingit people and a rich history of its own if you strike up a conversation with a local. Dont rule it out even if you don’t book an excursion for us it was still worth it. Added some photos of the walk to Hoonah.

I second Ivars! https://www.ivars.com/acres

Last August my husband and I sailed the Encore to Alaska, we missed Skagway due to the rockslide. So my only visit to Skagway was in 2015 with my Dad and sisters on the Pearl. We are going back on the Encore next month and hopefully my husband will finally get to visit Skagway too. it reminds me so much of a mining town in Colorado we love that also has a well known train ride, Silverton Colorado. I promised you a trip report and I still plan on delivering!

Port- Skagway Ship - Encore Stateroom - aft Haven suite preferably deck 9

Love me some Trash Pandas ❤️ I saw them play the Shuckers in Biloxi a month or so ago.