AllHandsAstern

Wow 50 bucks, that's like almost a tank of gas 🤠🤠

I feel like thats the root of the problem, the vast majority of people don't want to commit to a plan so it's impossible to anticipate accordingly

These lines don't exist in a vacuum, lol

Viva had the worst hand washing / sanitizing I've ever seen, ever. Hope it's not like that on Crown!

When we were on Reflection last year we did pretty much every breakfast in the buffet, late night drunchies, sometimes lunch. Food was 7/10 and even when it was busy it wasn't overwhelming. When we did Viva in March this year we did the buffet once for breakfast and once for lunch and that was it, food was mid to bad, always felt way too crowded, not sure who decided the food area pathway should be exactly two people wide, but that was not a good move. All that to say not all buffets are created equal

This isn't 100% on topic but I feel like the "anytime dining" concept has really hamstrung cruise dining rooms. I've done banquets and restaurant service, and everything is may easier when you know what time everything has to happen.

We do MDR the first night if only so we don't have to think very hard about dinner. My wife and I book a fixed dining time in MDR for the whole cruise and then adjust as needed. if we're not going to make the reservation we'll let the host know ahead of time. I think the MDR gets a bad rap, but a lot of people forget it's just a restaurant. If you show up as the same time as 1000 other people you're gonna have a bad time. We try to avoid the buffet until day 2 or 3, once the novelty has started to wear off for some people

We had the all inclusive beverage package on both of our cruises as well, felt the wines were hit and miss. We live a whole hour from Napa and have the hook-up with a local importer, so we're a little spoiled when it comes to wines. In hindsight, I should have brought some bottles but there were logistical challenges with that.

The consensus in the before times was that Alaska cruises tended to be more formal, but it's a whole new world now

Thank you for recognizing your station 😉😉 I kid, obviously, my wife and I adore an opportunity to dress up. I'm using our cruise on crown as an opportunity to test out a couple different options for a wedding we're attending in june

Blended scotch is still scotch, relllaaaaxxx

We did do Onda, it was very good and the waiter was very helpful in getting us in and out for Beetlejuice. BUT! I didn't have a steak, so not really relevant.

I was pretty disappointed with the wine offerings by the glass on both Reflection last year and Viva in March. I find the wine lists as a whole really don't offer the breath or depth they used to.

I was on VIVA in late March, we had dinner at Cagney's and Los Lobos a couple nights apart. The flank steak at los lobos was slap your mother good. Had a porterhouse at Cagney's that was decidedly middling *AND* was not a porterhouse. Moral of the story is: the best steaks probably aren't at the steakhouse. (i bitched about the not-porterhouse for three days, it's not hard to tell if there's a big filet portion or not.)

Can I use a sundial or perhaps an hourglass?

I manually set my phone time to ship time to avoid this problem.

I expressed the same sentiment to my wife, seems like it could have been a fun time!

I feel that "how late can I be and get away with it" is the wrong attitude to have. Great way to have a romp across Africa tho!

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.