Sparkygirl

We set up cash accounts for each person. DH and I at the $300 amount per person, SS will have a $175. He can then Purchase soda package if he wants and will have $16 a day left over. We will be on getaway so we upped budget from our dawn budget to include cookies or cake snack from carlo's, gelato, non alcoholic frozen drink, bowling or darts at osheehan's in addition to the arcade.

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DH had a medical emergency the first morning (day 2) of the 3-day stay in Bermuda, while on a cruise on the Dawn.

 

We called the emergency number, and when we answered that yes, he could walk (we also described the symptoms), they asked us to come to the Med Center immediately.

 

I grabbed some money, credit cards, the passports, and some critical meds we use from the safe and we raced down.

 

The medical team kicked into gear quickly, and pretty soon, they had him hooked up to IV lines and some other medical equipment.

Because things were NOT improving, I was about to ask that they call an ambulance (we were docked, after all) when the doctor announced that HE was calling an ambulance.

I of course said, Yes!

 

The drivers in Bermuda are slow, but the ambulance? It was constantly being *passed* by civilian cars. I was going nuts, but on the other hand, I could see and hear that he was apparently quite stable.

 

We were rushed into the ER and seen immediately.

 

The ER docs said that what the NCL medical staff had done was exactly what they would do, and we should now all wait...

They agreed that it was a good choice to call the ambulance in case things didn't go well.

I already had agreed with what the NCL med staff had done (I am familiar with what happened, but there had *never* been anything this severe), and I agreed with the ER docs.

 

The symptoms subsided, and we returned to the ship.

We then had about 24 more hours to decide whether to stay on the ship and sail back, or to get off and fly home.

(That decision was not easy.)

 

We waited until the next morning to see if any symptoms remained, and he continued to take some new meds... continuation of what the NCL docs had started.

 

We stayed on board, and the sail back was uneventful.

 

Bottom line:

Our at home specialist also agreed that everything NCL had done was *exactly* what she would have done in our big city ER.

 

We were impressed with how the NCL team handled things, although we were, of course, sorry that there was any occasion for us to need to observe it.

We had a very similar experience with NCL when our 3 year old daughter fell and hurt her head on the palm tree slide of the Breakaway. She was able to walk to us immediately after she hit her head and as we were checking on her she collapsed, was unable to move any extremities and lost consciousness briefly. It did feel like it took forever for the medical team to arrive, it included a nurse and another person with a stretcher and pediatric immobilization equipment. I am an ER nurse and my husband is an EMT and former phlebotomist. We did immobilize our own daughter, not because of the lack of training on the part of the staff on site with us rather than we had already assumed stabilization of our daughter and rather than risk transferring that to another individual and then immobilizing her NCL medical staff and us agreed on this course of action.

She was brought into the Medical Center and the physician we met was amazing. He is a Family Practice/ER physician at his home in the US, He clearly set the stage that we were a team, him as her doctor and us as her parents. He works 10 days onboard the cruise ship every 3 to 6 months. There were limitations in what he could do onboard (only imaging was a portable x-ray) which doesn't provide a clear view on a small child's neck no CT or MRI to look at her brain. Due to her loss of consciousness and continued paralysis she did not receive pain medication and remained fully immobilized out of an abundance of caution and the knowledge that she would most likely be moved/transferred a few more times before we reached a hospital or two.

The Doctor, Security Representative, a ships officer and us as her parents together reviewed the medical evacuation options for her ultimately deciding that she was stable to wait until we reached port in Florida. We arrived in port earlier than anticipated, we were transferred to an ambulance, and then to a local hospital.

The decision to be overly cautious was the absolutely right decision as more detailed imaging at the local hospital showed she had a brain bleed. We ended up being moved again as her needs were even more than the local US hospital could provide.

Everything that was done onboard for her was exactly what should have been done. The shipboard physician emailed our family for the next two weeks (even after his tour ended) while we remained in Florida at a children's hospital serving in the capacity of a family physician checking on his patient until we returned home to our own physician. We're remained in touch with him and several staff members. The crew had experience the loss of a child by drowning two weeks prior to my daughter's injury that for her to make a full recovery and us to communicate back with them on her status we have been told by the crew members touched them greatly.

Every member of the crew was amazing and touched us in their care and support during my daughter's injury and the 4 hours we spent reaching our next port. I realized I hadn't eaten and it would probably be a while before I could leave my daughter's side once we were transferred to the hospital. While my husband remained at her side, My parents were at lunch with my grandmother in one of the main dinning rooms when I walked in and explained to the maitre D that I would like to eat before my daughter was transferred and I would sit with my parents. He took my request and at that moment a waiter walked by, he stopped him, asked what meals he had one of which was my requested chicken. He took the chicken, sent the waiter back to the kitchen for another for his table and escorted me to my parents and set my meal before me.

An outsider may have seen a Maitre D steal another customers meal not knowing the full story of the situation. An outsider may have seen parents immobilizing their own child and assumed it was negligence or lack of training on the part of the medical staff rather than it was the safest and least risk of causing further harm to an already severely injured young child.

Day 1

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! I greatly appreciate these and that it includes the front page with where each day, I miss that from the old daily file format that it would tell you the day and location on the activities schedule page.

Planning what? Activities on the ship? I consider myself a planner, and have shore excursions planned, and two shows booked -other than that we want to relax, and see what appeals to us. But maybe this is because it's our first cruise? Are most people wanting to plan when to go to activities and/or events? If so, do these not change from one cruise to another? I feel I am missing something......

Things like the water slide, getaway bounce, spider slide, ropes course have limited hours. I keep track of those and the hours remain pretty consistent from sailing to sailing.

I just placed an order for 9 Norwegian Getaway lanyards and key card holders, shipped the same day I ordered. I paid for 3 day shipping as the site said 7-10 business days for processing. So the order placed on Monday arrived today.

Does anyone know if the connecting cabin doors are magnetic? We are booked in a connecting cabin stateroom with family members in the connecting cabin. We are planning to keep the connecting cabin door closed/locked most of the time but wanted to be able to leave notes on a dry erase type board on the connecting cabin door that way the occupants of both rooms would be able to leave notes for each other.

We had this experience on the Dawn last year and our room steward was not available the first day to being on quarantine for illness. They sent a very inexperienced assistant steward and after that we just closed the sofa ourselves the next morning.

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I have not seen the commercial yet but, we discuss what we want to do and where we want to go and then I do the planning for all our vacations, cruise, RV, land, etc. We make a final decision and I do all the bookings, etc. DH shows up when I tell him and has a great time...this system works great for our household and has for the past 23 years! :)

This is my husband and I! I am the planner, he is go with the flow

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kbset, if you are comfortable with it consider bringing along bead necklaces or make a face sticker sheets for your daughter to give out to the staff onboard the cruise ship. We have sailed with my special needs daughter (life-threatening latex allergy to airborne, contact and indirect contact exposure and latex fruit syndrome). We firmly believe she can't live her life in a bubble even though that would be safest course of action for her. NCL has been amazing in accommodating my daughter's needs and we find that the staff onboard are often missing their own children, nieces and nephews that she often makes friends by engaging them by giving away a drawing she made or a sticker face or bead necklace.

Does this work while in airplane mode connected to wifi? I'm considering if this is a good idea or not for our teens.

Call them and ask if a third can be added, that person will need to pay in full at the time of them being added to the reservation.

Both parents have to go with the child in order to get the passport (for under 16).

It is possible to get a passport with only one parent and the child present, there is a notarized form that the parent obtaining the passport for the child must present at the passport acceptance facility. I obtained my daughter's passport without my DH. DH had to take his passport, make a copy and of the info page and sign the form int he presence of a notary. I then gave the notarized form and the copy of his passport to the acceptance person. He had three forms notarized at the same time one for each of his children, I had the one for our daughter and his ex was then able to schedule the appointments for the older kids based on her availability rather than trying to get 3 kids and 3 parents all at the post office at the same time.

Where is Chengkp75 when we need him?

: )

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We are also sailing on Easter, I bought these small Easter Chair backs several years ago for my now teenage stepkids and just found one on ebay for my 5 year old.

I'm going to coordinate with the room steward with when they will be turning down the beds so that I can head back to the room and place these on each child's bed as well as packing the Wonka Hard2Find egg hunt kits that I can hide in the cabin.

I'd love to hear other ideas that folks have for cruising during Easter, we are boarding on Easter morning.

I am sailing in 7 weeks on Getaway, if you don't get them before then I'll post them upon our return! My kids are in the same groups.

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I bought mine on the Dawn they came out the last sea day. There was a 12x12 album and a scrapbook paper set with embellishments.

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Contact the pre-cruise concierge desk and ask this question of them. In our case we requested limited perks be extended to family that was not booked in our cabin which was granted for embarkation day only which was our request for my step children's mom and stepdad. My minor stepdaughter was booked in a non suite with her mom and stepdad, she was allowed to join us for breakfast etc on the days the kids were with us versus with their mom.

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They will do well on the little one. It's really low to the ground so you can walk next to them.

It's located right under the stairs to the adult" course. There is usually no line to that one either so they can continental riding the zip line. ;)

 

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I'll never get my monkey off of it! Thanks for the heads up!

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Wow, what a terrible ordeal you went through! I did file an incident report onboard at the doctor's suggestion. Security came and interviewed me and took pictures of the bath tub.

 

 

 

I have a claim number and have been using it in my documentation. I'm not looking for much from them, but I do want a response.

 

 

 

I hope your daughter is okay now, that must have been a terrifying experience.

Yes, she is doing great, having a little PTSD over going on getaway and that daddy and I have already told her that we will make her go on the palm tree slide again. I'm hoping no one is mean to her as we hold a 5 year old's hand going down a 2 foot slide!

Definitely follow up with a snail mail letter. The responses I received never acknowledge the incident that occurred which in our case was a freak accident that the cruise line was in no way responsible for...looking back I actually find it comical that as an ER nurse and EMT it took me forever to write the incident report because I was trying to document everything specifically because her dad and I immobilized her not the cruise ship staff and we needed it to be very clear that we accepted the responsibility for her care at that point as well as our assessment and observations of her from the moment of her injury until she was in the medical center.

I hope you receive a response in the near future!

I attempted to reach them at guestrelations@ncl.com which is where their responses were sent and received the following message:

"You have reached a mailbox that is not monitored, please call 1-866-625-1164 for assistance"

Hope that may help.

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I am sorry that this happened to you, I do not believe that you will receive the response you are asking for from the claims department. They are unable to comment on any claims regarding the incident that occurred, cause or corrective action without legal action.

Did you complete an incident report onboard the ship? It was explained to me that the onboard incident report is the tracking method for contact with the claims department. I was requested to email the claims department with the incident number from the form throughout my daughters hospitalization until we were back home. I fully expected a bill from the cruise line and medical providers onboard that never arrived, all of her other bills did which thankfully our insurance covered.

We received a response from the claims department within a week of arriving home after my daughters discharge and additional week near the hospital we were medically evacuated to with the right level of care after exceeding the capabilities of the first hospital.

The email offered a small credit that we were not expecting and were grateful to receive.. We were also never charged the passenger vessel service act fines despite being told by the coast guard investigator that unfortunately yes the ship was fined.

9 weeks does seem excessive for a response although the first message appears to address that they did apologize that the incident occurred. Unfortunately that may be the best answer you will get, if the medical treatment onboard was covered by the cruise line that can be considered compensation for the incident.

It was a little over a year that we were in communication between claims desk and ourselves making sure that all paperwork etc complete. Including documentation that we could not continue on the cruise due to my daughters injury. I was told that was for the ship to appeal the PVSA fines although when I followed up with the coast guard they said there was no appeal and that the cruise line had the option to pass the fines along to the passenger. Her claims file was not closed until 9 months post injury when she was released from the care of her neurosurgeon and neurologist.

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This is very exciting!!! IF Getaway does the 14 day Fjords and Iceland which Star does every fall, count me in! Hope I will be able to do Getaway and Jade in 2017.

 

 

 

This is a very smart move NCL, and I'm sure a lot of Europeans and Scandinavians will be interested.

 

 

 

FINALLY, the depolyment I've been dreaming of for years! :D:D

More than just Europeans! This American has been dreaming of this, with a family of 5, a family ocean view is hopefully in our budget to allow us to take the kids and tour Europe! The 2 bedroom suites and other configurations have been cost prohibitive for this adventure.

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Re-upping this oldish thread. I don't think I ever got an answer (or I forgot) to whether it's possible to check-in, leave the terminal, and come back before boarding or if, once you're in, you're in. We're checking in early and I'm curious if one of us can run out and grab breakfast for our group and bring it back to eat while waiting to board.

 

Thanks

I wouldn't recommend it, pick up breakfast on the way to the terminal to eat while waiting. DH had to leave terminal as stepson arrived with his mom after we were inside, DH had to meet stepson as his name wasn't on his moms reservation. It is nearly impossible to get out from the boarding area.

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Right, on all counts. I don't need the booze, but it still confuses my why the DOS, which is almost double the space of a 2 br family suite AND comes with included minibar and 3 bottles alcohol, is less expensive.

 

 

 

As geezer couple pointed out :).

We found this to be the case when we sailed in 12500. We considered it our hidden gem, more room, better perks. We didn't drink the alcohol...it made great Christmas gifts!

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Thank you very much!!

 

So no assigned seats and no table mates? I can go to a dining room and ask for a table for 2 no problem? That sounds heavenly!

As an example of how easy and no problem freestyle dinning is...cruisers include myself and my husband, our daughter, my two stepchildren, their mom and her husband.

Night 1 we make a reservation for 7 people at restaurant of our choice.

Night 2 stepkids are with mom, she makes reservation for 4, we make reservation for 3

Night 3 step kids are with us, we make reservation for 5, she makes reservation for 2

Night 4, all kids eat in buffet and each couple makes reservations for 2

We meet up each evening and decide on plans for the next day and then kids mom and I decide on which restaurants to give each other space when we are not doing joint meals. We then book the reservations either that evening or the next morning.

The only reservations we book ahead of time is our two joint meals for our upcoming cruise it's illusionarium and teppanyaki.

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Yes

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