AllHandsAstern

I was shooketh (sorry, shocked) by how small all the venues were. I get that not everyone is going to want to go to karaoke or the show or whatever, but "not everyone" shouldn't translate to a single digit percentage of your capacity. To me, the design of the prima class slaps of an overly corporate design process. Everyone had to get their thing in so everything shrank more and more. SEPARATELY: I thought it was weird that the beer themed syd Norman's pour house, with *this* sign out front had *four beers on tap* like someone explain that to me

That was the sailing I was on, it was I think 15$ a person for the shared track and 30$(!!!) if you did the hot lap sessions by your self. Mini golf was 10$ for 9 holes, darts was 5$ for I think 45 or 50 minutes. Insane! Indulge food was generally really good but I'm not sold on the concept. The bar inside/outside indulge runs a cut down menu for some reason? But somehow has the broadest beer selection on the ship. Go figure. Really wish we had more time in San Juan, but alas.

The only eateries that were open were Local and Seaside Grill which is basically a hamburger hotdog station in the back of the buffet. Both of these options were slammed. (Aside: it would seem that they should have put the grill closer to the pool deck instead of having everyone come through the entire rest of the buffet to get to it.) I want to say everything reopened at 5 for dinner, and dinner service was always trouble free. We had to sprint through dinner at Onda to get to Beetlejuice, and our waiter was very accommodating on that. I'm remembering now that the observation lounge has small bites available until maybe 3:30? But this space would easily get overwhelmed and you'd have nowhere to sit. This could have been another space that's adults only but alas. generally there were lots of larger groups on board and that made dining anywhere somewhat challenging. The venues are sized a certain way so they had a hard enough time accommodating the pairs and 4-packs, throw a few larger groups into these spaces and 20% of the seating is gone from the jump. edit: my biggest gripe during the cruise was the dearth of options during this inter-meal period, the fact that I was hangry didn't help!

Correct, the premium plus package includes Starbucks and big water bottles. Worked great for us, since we were doing something rum related every day. The ship would set up a little beverage table just before the gangway area at port stops so my wife and I would get 2, 1L bottles each and that was generally sufficient for the 7 in our group.

Just got off Viva a week ago. I was fortunate enough to go on several cruises pre-shutdown and haven't cruised much since. Did a week on Celebrity Reflection for my honeymoon in Feb'23. Part of this post is to sanity check my own opinions, part review. Would love some feedback on this.Overall really enjoyed the experience. So I don't want this to seem like a gripe fest. 1) Free-At-Sea plus seems like a great deal. NCL loves the upsell and I thought the FAS+ package took a lot of that away with wifi included, practically every beverage included, Starbucks included, plenty of speciality dining. Really enjoyed it. 2) the open hours of eateries seemed silly in the context of our port stop and messed with what few places were actually open. All aboard time was around 3:30 generally, but the powers that be only had the seaside grill and the local open after 2:30. The net effect was that both options seemed overwhelmed. The local had a wait for tables but then service took forever too. Between waiting for the table and waiting for the waiter and waiting for the food it took an hour to get fed, which seems like a long time for what the venue is marketed as, 24 hour quick bites. I would think that shuffling opening hours isn't so hard, but I don't know. 3) having to pay for an adult only area is ridiculous. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if there was more pool space but there's like 5000 people on this ship and like 1000 square feet of pool area. Seems like they could make the infinity pools on deck 8 (9?) adult only and let people enjoy themselves. Coincidentally we went over spring break, so it could be there were just more kids. Ymmv. 4) the food was generally great! The MDR on viva was better than anything on reflection. Probably not a fair comparison but so be it. There were some duds, the buffet was generally bad, all of the sushi was not good, but overall very solid. Los Lobos was excellent. I live in California so I can't walk to work without tripping over great Mexican food, los lobos was legit. 5) the speedway is a waste of space. Between the straight up vandalized shooting gallery, the never-open speedway bar, and the sheer *slowness* of the carts and the layout, the whole affair gave abandoned mall vibes. There were supposed to be 12 or 15 blasters but there were only 3 and oh by the way the scoring system didn't work at all, so I'm sure NCL is writing off that asset. That's it! let me know if I'm right or wrong! Overall viva is a weird ship and we didn't really like it in the moment but in retrospect I think that's just what they're doing for big ships now. We're booked on Ascent in April '25 and Prima in Feb '25, looking forward to both!

I haven't seen Mr black on this sailing, probably for the best cause I'll get it as a night cap then wonder why I'm so awake!

That's not correct, but I will clarify. In food Republic everyone got 4 plates per credit, we used 2 so it was 8 plates. In onda, each credit got 2 apps, 1 main (either a pasta or a protein), 2 sides, and 1 dessert. Further, if you wanted a pizza you could get that as either an app or a main, roughly 10", we got one and shared it amongst the 7 of us. So last night, all of 16 hours ago, I used one dining credit, got hamachi crudo, a burrata caprese dish, filet mignon, a side of mushrooms, and a side of spinach. We skipped dessert because we had to dash to see Beetlejuice. The math isn't the same for every restaurant, for example Cagney's was 1 starter, 1 main, 2 sides, and a dessert. Los Lobos was also 1 starter, 1 main, 2 sides, and a dessert. I'm sure the policies are subject to change, I'm simply sharing my experience from the past week.

Im on Viva right now, we've been able to use the dining package at any venue. At venues that charge a la carte vs a cover, you get to pick a number of dishes and that then gets comped to 0 on your bill. For example, we ate at food Republic one night, we both used a dining package so we got to pick any 8 dishes we wanted. Last night we ate at onda, we got to pick 2 apps, a main, 2 sides, and a dessert. The dining packages have been an absurd amount of food and they haven't seemed to care about sharing at all, even on the drinks plus package

There were/are 7 people in my group so having half a bottle to take hasn't been an option 🤪. On cruises past if we didn't finish a bottle they basically cork it, stick your name on it and hold it in the back. I will say that upgrading to P+ for us has been really good value for us. We did free-at-sea plus so between the drinks and the wifi it's been great.

I think the real question is how did you end up with 1250$ in OBC and what else could you possibly spend that all on??

I don't know where you're coming from but if you can take brightline into Miami I would recommend that, my wife and I went from Miami to Ft Lauderdale first class and we had a blast, it was like hanging out at a wine bar

I have a hypothesis: there is a direct correlation to how much junk someone puts on the door, and how insufferable that someone is as a table mate in the dining room. I don't want to know about your nephew's baby mama! Or your skin condition! Or how you didn't like your last table mates cause they asked for a different table!

There's 7 of us so it's been a little awkward getting a rez so far. NCL wouldn't book that many seats prior to embarkation.

How difficult/easy was it to get dinner reservations?

My wife and I will pile our stuff into one lounger, out of the way, when we go to the pool. If there were lockers we could use we would use that instead of a lounger. Separate issue from chair hogs, but keel hauling customers wouldn't go over well with corporate 🤠