gemsm

Gemsm,

 

Welcome to the board. Congratulations on your upcoming 40th birthdays (and of course..your cruise!) The Western Caribbean is always fun. Like shan9700, we've never been on a NCL cruise.

What do you like best about freestyle cruising?

What do you see (if anything) as the disadvantages?

How would you compare them to your RCCL cruises?

We saw the Pride of Aloha while we were in Hawaii this year and she looked a bit dated from the outside. Not many balcony cabins at all.

Anxious to hear your opinions and experiences.

Don't Judge NCL by NCLA (Hawaiian Ships) as they are older ships in the fleet.

The absolute best thing about freestyle cruising is getting to eat when you want instead of on someone elses schedule. You aren't constrained by the 6:00 or 8:00 seating to eat in the dining room. On other lines (RCCL, Carnival) if you didn't want to eat at your assigned seating time you have no choice but the buffet. The disadvantage is that the service is not quite as good as RCCL in the dining rooms and you actually have to think on the cruise as to what you want to eat and when etc....

I also love the resort casual attire. I don't have to dress up at all if I don't want to and if I do want to that is AOK too. I personally have found RCCL a bit more "stuffy" than NCL IMHO but it is just that -- My opinion.

You should try it and see if you like it. Freestyle is not for everyone but I very much enjoy it over traditional cruises.

By the way -- Thanks for the board welcome from all of you guys.

Ah -- I was last on NCL in 2003 and no problems. It is a shame they seem

to be changing their attitude towards G&L cruisers because that is my preferred line.

Didn't take it as "Snobbish" Hobie...I actually took it as the joke you meant it to be. I just didn't know if people realized that not all food on a cruise is

<GASP> "free" (Hence the cover charges in some cruise lines restaurants).

As for Princess -- It sounds really wonderful. We are planning our "big Alaskan cruise" to hopefully be on Princess :)

Considering for most "party" type events that are not hosted by the ship you have to "pay" for the food (i.e. there is a catering charge) I just assumed that other than the captains/latitudes party where they give out the nice hors'd'eourves that they normally don't do that for gatherings.

I do know if you ever decide to have a cruise conference or private party (we had a reunion) and you want food provided for a private get-together prepare to pay.

I would love to try Princess but they are pretty much out of my price budget for vacations.

From our experience, Princess was the most open with their FoDs and the meeting being hosted. NCL posted FoD parties but didn't host, which lead to utter failure of the meetings (plus the purser's desk refused to tell anyone what an FoD meeting was.)

Just curious when you last cruised NCL? We not only had a posted FOD party on the Wind but the assistant cruise director hosted it and they provided free food.

Hi -- Haven't been on the boards in a while and then I find this awesome thread.

My partner and I are both 39 and we love cruising.

We are from Annapolis, MD and we prefer NCL because of the "Freestyle"

concept.

We are getting ready to book our next cruise on the Norwegian Sun to

the Western Carribean in February 2008 to celebrate our 40th birthdays.

 

We are on NCL in October and wanted to ask what people's experience has been on this cruise line? Haven't heard too much about Norwegian.

I was on NCL with a large party of people on a Mormon Retreat. They had an FOD party for us and with a pretty good contingent of gay crew members we found them very gay friendly. As a matter of fact the assistant cruise director took time to seek out my family whenever he could at various events because he knew we liked to have fun and that was seriously missing from a lot of the passengers on this particular cruise.

 

We are on NCL in October and wanted to ask what people's experience has been on this cruise line? Haven't heard too much about Norwegian.

Hi...Have sailed on Norwegian twice now with my partner and so far I have found them to be the most gay-friendly line of the ones I have sailed on.

No problems getting tables for 2, a lot of the staff (including the cruise director Ray on our last cruise) are "family" and we had no problems. FOD party scheduled without anyone asking.

This while sailing on a ship with a group of about 1,000 mormons on a religious retreat says something about the line :)