njhorseman

NCLH was providing financial responsibility letters to its passengers (NCL, Oceania and Regent Seven Seas) that Brazil agreed to accept in lieu of bank statements. There's documentation of that, including a link the letter provided to its passengers on the lengthy "Brazil VISA" thread that's a couple of lines further down the board. Here's a link to what was provided: https://www.rssc.com/sites/default/files/2023-12/cruise-line-declaration.pdf Perhaps other cruise lines were doing the same, or will be next year.

In theory that's a good suggestion, but in reality not for cruise passengers. It's not uncommon, particularly in the Caribbean, for countries to have less stringent passport requirements for cruise passengers, especially US citizens, than for those arriving by air. Cruise passengers arriving and departing the same day are often considered to be "in transit" and not subject to the same requirements as other arrivals. Unfortunately the Department of State's website all too often does not reflect these differences, which results in misinforming cruise passengers of passport requirements. It's common for the cruise lines' own websites, particularly the mass market lines' websites to be a more accurate source of this information than the Department of State website.

Many countries only require your passport to be valid for the duration of your stay.

"Strongly suggest" is not the same as "required". None of the countries you'll be visiting require passports to have 6 months validity. As long as the passports are valid for the duration of the cruise you'll be fine. However you should be aware of the possibility that Royal Caribbean's requirements are stricter than the legal requirements. That is rarely the case on mass market lines but you should check.

My apologies...obviously I totally misread the change in effective date for the visa from April 10 2024 to April 10 2025. Thought you were talking about the change from January to April 2024. Obviously this development is new. My bad.

Nothing new here. Look a few lines down the page on this board and you'll see a thread titled "Brazil VISA" with over 300 posts. The visa requirement has been a hot topic of discussion since early October. The postponement of the starting date to April 10 was announced months ago.

Carnival and Royal Caribbean are the only cruise lines sailing from those ports. If you go to each of their websites you can search for cruises by departure port. Or, you can contact a travel agency near your home and ask them to do some research. Or, as @mskaufman said you use an internet-based travel agency website.

The NCL ferry times aren't published anywhere. You'll be informed of the schedule while you're on the ship. If your itinerary is the same as an earlier NCL cruise if you check on the Roll Call for that cruise or just ask the question on the NCL board.

A cruise from Vancouver to Seattle can be a revenue cruise without violating the PVSA. The passengers would be embarking in Canada and disembarking in the USA, which makes it a perfectly legal voyage. The PVSA only comes into play if passengers were being carried from one US port to a different US port without making a call at a distant foreign port. That having been said there likely would be little or no demand for a one night Vancouver to Seattle cruise and the people who were seen boarding in Seattle were likely crew coming aboard for the start of their contract.

LGA is a few miles closer to the cruise terminal than JFK so in theory the travel time should be shorter, but you can never tell what the traffic situation will be on any particular day

I doubt we'll see the Bermudian any time soon, if ever again. When they announced the plans for two new builds you would think they might have said when the Bermudian would be back in service, but all we've heard were crickets since the Bermudian left for the US 18 months ago.

Lifeguards don't start at Horseshoe until May 1. This happened to be on today's Royal Gazette: https://www.royalgazette.com/opinion-writer/opinion/article/20240408/urgent-action-needed-to-extend-lifeguard-season/

I'd like to remind you that "fresh and local" generally isn't a possibility on a cruise ship. Public health laws require that almost all proteins must be stored frozen on ships. There's no herb and vegetable garden or farmer's market on board for the executive chef to select the finest and freshest produce from for the day's offerings. The executive chef has some leeway and I've seen the executive chef buy freshly caught fish in some ports and serve it that night, but the overall menus are devised by the corporate office, not by the ship's culinary staff. An Oceania ship will be serving 600 to 1200 dinners per night. A fine restaurant on land will be serving a tiny fraction of those numbers. All that having been said I've never had to eat a hamburger on an Oceania ship for lack of anything else being available. In fact I've never had to eat a hamburger on any ship, including the most basic mass market line ships for lack of anything else being available. Where you're getting the idea that you'll somehow be limited to hamburgers and fries is beyond me. One of you did use the qualifier "when the other restaurants are closed." Please tell me what would you expect to be available at a time when the restaurants are closed? Caviar? Foie Gras?

Actually...ALL Prestige Cruise Holdings (Oceania and Regent Seven Seas). Oh yes. You see NCL used have its ships built by Meyer Werft . Solid German engineering and craftsmanship...noise not a problem. Built like the proverbial brick $*%#house. Then Prestige Cruise Holdings was merged into NCLH and not long thereafter PCH's executives...Frank Del Rio and his minions...were put in charge of NCLH. The PCH guys apparently prefer their ships to be built by Fincantieri in Italy. Their ships are prettier...who knows, maybe cheaper too, but maybe not nearly so good on engineering and reliability fronts. So, NCL's newest ships as well and Oceania's and Regent's are all built by Fincantieri, and all have these problems.

1,400 passenger ships are hardly large. Divide the GT (which is a measure of the ship's enclosed volume, not its weight) of the new ships by their double occupancy capacity and compare that to the same calculation for Vista and Allura and you'll see that the space per passenger is higher on the new builds. In other words, for the new ships, 86,000/1,400 = 61.43, while for Vista and Allura, 67,000/1,200 = 55.83 .

They should be able to sail from NY. Royal Caribbean has the 5500 passenger (double occupancy), 228,000 GT Symphony of the Seas homeporting in Cape Liberty. It depends on the air draft of the ship of course.

This article details the new ship orders for NCL as well as new ships for corporate siblings Oceania and Regent Seven Seas. For each of the three cruise lines the new ships will be larger than any ship currently in the cruise line's fleet. Also a two berth pier for Great Stirrup Cay is expected to be completed by late 2025. https://www.seatrade-cruise.com/shipbuilding-equipment/nclh-orders-8-cruise-ships-3-brands-all-new-classes-and-bigger?utm_campaign=SC_News_Seatrade Cruise Breaking Headlines_NL_04082024&utm_emailname=SC_News_Seatrade Cruise Breaking Headlines_NL_04082024&utm_medium=email&utm_source=eloqua&utm_MDMContactID=c8c117dd-7af6-4db7-8ea1-42696b12bc8f&utm_campaigntype=Newsletter&eM=ecf536797064e298bd322735a0d9b82ff629116b3acbccb77ccd7d08c9672359&eventSeriesCode=ES_SEATRDCRSCTNT&eventEditionCode=MTM00SCC&sessionCode=S_STRDCRSNEWS&sp_eh=ecf536797064e298bd322735a0d9b82ff629116b3acbccb77ccd7d08c9672359&fbclid=IwAR05MxU-EzXRfUnE_Fyn_OLU1Cv4N9nUUTRM0zBh99_y3PYpe4jPwrdAaV4_aem_AdLlFNiJSjMcWAOep1KcKiomTkMrnGymaBxOy_eGnUecJvOkTZnCQeDX2I1lPFK6Us1YRos5wIPxjFBJvBvfH8yW

That's because it just has to be valid through the day you're disembarking the ship upon its return to Boston.

As long your the passport is valid through the time you disembark at the end of your cruise you're fine. As a US citizen you don't even need a passport to take a closed loop cruise Boston to Bermuda to Boston. You can use an official birth certificate and a government-issued photo ID such as a drivers license.

Thanks for the compliment. In addition to the #2 train already mentioned by @navybankerteacher, the #3 train to the Wall St. Station also works. Take whichever comes first.

OK. I should have realized that you just wanted to be sure you didn't have any leftover Bermuda currency when you returned .

Assuming your ship is docking at a typical early morning hour (not at 11 am for example) you should have no problem making a 12:50 flight. FYI your bags have to go through an additional agricultural inspection by APHIS before you can check them, so look for the APHIS inspection line as soon as you enter the airline terminal.

For a cruise excursion the cruise line can expedite your passing through CBP inspection and disembarkation by allowing you to be at the front of the line in order to make sure the excursion leaves as close as possible to the scheduled time. For a private excursion the cruise line could care less whether you're on time.

Since Portland is your first US port after you've been in Canada everyone on the ship will have to undergo immigration screening by USCBP, so even if your ship does arrive a bit early it's very unlikely that you'll be able to make an 11 am excursion.

We've been going to Bermuda for more than 35 years. I'm curious why you needed US dollars while in Bermuda since both US and Bermuda currency are accepted everywhere. And it wasn't amazing that you got US coins in exchange for US bills. You can get change in either currency anywhere as long as your preferred currency is available. Just ask for it.