14ersco

Palma Friday June 14. The ocean cruise dock was empty all day, NCL put us out where semis unload . NCL was charging $15 p/p for their shuttle, but didn't reserve enough buses. Stranded a few hundred people in town and had to delay sailaway by half hour.

The starboard aft area of the casino , by Shanghi, was enclosed, but the rest of the casino area was not cleaned or carpet replaced. Deck 7 is still an ashtray.

The new USB ports in the bedside lamp appear to be affected by pulling your card when leaving the room. So you need to leave a card in the slot by the door to charge. Also the lamp USB outlets are high enough above the bedside table a short charging cable could have your phone dangling to charge.

On the current Getaway cruise we have a note that the party will be the second sea day at noon.

I will need to look for USB in our cabin. There are still broken things in our cabin and in the restrooms. Soap in public restrooms is in short supply. Enclosed areas of the casino are by Shanghai Noodle (aft / starboard corner) and port / forward corner. Slight background smoke smell other casino areas, at least I am no longer gaging crossing deck 7. Entertainment is like decades ago cruise ships, small localish acts. Europhia singing duo from Liverpool and violinist David Kovacs from Hungary are performing many nights. MDQ nights are pushed back to a couple nights towards the end of the cruise. Spineless NCL Miami HQ made more port changes about 48 hours before departure, but decided not to publicly announce the changes. Instead they had the Southampton port workers hand out a letter as everyone checked-in. Poor lady who checked us in late in the afternoon, her first words were: "don't shoot the messenger ". We had chatted NCL predeparture and known about these changes, so now we are on the train out of the port town of A Coruna.

I chatted NCL on Tuesday. Confirmed changes: 7 Sea Day, 8 A Cortuna, 9 Vigo. Both port times now 7 to 18. No additional OBC for these changes. No email notice, and no edoc changes. Currently the Getaway is in the English Channel. Planned Southampton arrival 2 am Thursday.

This dry dock has never been acknowledged by Miami. Up until late last year there were cruises listed on the NCL web site during this time period. Then the cruises just disappeared. CC folks found out about the dry dock by talking to Getaway staff during cruises over this past winter and reported on CC.

Also supposed to be removing the hardwood flooring in Tropicana, main dining room, due to the removal of the production show Burn the Floor. No replacement production show.

This is the next Getaway sailing on June 6. NCL emailed these changes on May 23, two weeks before sailing. NCL continued to sell on their website the original itinerary until May 28. I mock booked a Haven suite for 13K that evening.

As of Monday evening you can still book a Haven cabin with the old itinerary.

There is still a chance that the Getaway will not get out of dry dock in time and that there will be further changes to the itinerary. I'm down to treating this cruise as a European version of a Caribbean cruise. All of the major highlight destinations are now gone, not enough time in port to get to Santiago de Compostela, not enough time in port to get to Seville, Gibraltar a float by in the night, and Alhambra tickets sold out. So just dock in each port and do the ABC's (Another Bloody Church/Cathedral/Castle).

I cannot give a comparison between land and sea, but our land trip last year covered so much more of Japan than we would have visited during port shore excursions. We actually were able to live among the Japanese people. One of our highlights was a Buddhist temple stay on Mt Koya, the central HQ and resting place of a branch of Buddhism founded by Koba Dashi. For a couple days we lived with the monks and attended their services. Also the cemetery path that leads up to Koba Dashi's resting place is over 2km long lined with the grave sites of many of the powerful families and shogun's of Japan's history, lit at night with lanterns. We were originally booked on the Princess cruise ship for a circle tour of Japan, that was to occur a few months after it was locked down with Covid in Tokyo Bay. After Japan lifted their restrictions we booked with Inside Japan Tours: https://www.insidejapantours.com/us/ They do offer fully guided tours, but we chose one of their independent tours. Inside Japan Tours booked all of our lodging and transportation (mostly train passes). For Tokyo and Kyoto they booked a private guide for us for one our entire days in each city (we were in each of those cities for 3 days). Inside Japan Tours provided us digital guidebooks for each city we visited listing suggested places to see. They also provided an overall guidebook with suggested times to be at certain places and trains to take. Prior to our trip I bookmarked all of the suggested sites, train stations, and hotels they booked into Google maps and used that to move around Japan. English signs are almost everywhere and the Japanese citizens will politely help you. Inside Japan tours is a British company, but they have an office in Japan, so if you have an issue there is help in country.

What NCL has done with only two weeks until sailing is change the original cruise into an entirely different cruise. Only the start and end ports, plus the now first sea day, are the only parts of the original cruise left standing. All ports that we were supposed to visit have either been eliminated, shuffled to another day, and/or had their times in port changed drastically. The time in Cadiz is now so short the chances of going to Seville are slim and there are now no tickets for the Alhambra on the new port date. Besides that, NCL has removed the productions show and is only offering 3 show times (over 10 days) for Million Dollar Quartet. I expect NCL will for our enjoyment and privilege now charge us tax for our drinks in all of these Spain ports. I'm glad our next cruise is on Celebrity!

If the OP is looking at the first cruise for the Getaway after dry dock (June 6) there has been a limited number of shore excursions over many months for the entire cruise. I've been following for about 7 months and there has been no embarkation tours in Southampton and disembarkation tours in Barcelona just appeared last month. There has been no tours listed for Malaga, Ibiza, and Palma. For the entire 10 day cruise NCL is now only offering 26 shore excursions. Not much use for the FAS $50 discount.

Found hash browns and cookies, on our current AMA Waterways cruise! With our June Getaway cruise coming soon, was wondering if anyone knows what NCL is doing with the Getaway between May 22 and June 6. There are no cruises to book on their website or CC roll calls for this time period.

notamermaid, Thanks for the Danube water levels web site. Will be cruising Budapest to Bucharest this spring and those gauges will be helpful in knowing about potential flooding. In regards to the New York City water system it was actually a large environmental project that has kept their water so pristine. Back in the 1800's the city started buying vast tracts of land to preserve undeveloped and within those land tracts they built reservoirs and aqueducts that feed into the city. The land is still undeveloped and the water still does not need filtered. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK566285/ https://dec.ny.gov/nature/waterbodies/lakes-rivers/new-york-city-water-supply

For the Ama app you will need to wait until 45 days or closer to your cruise before it will allow you enter your booking number and last name to see your cruise and shore excursion options. That is what the app posted to me yesterday. You do your online checkin on the Ama web page after final payment.

Followed up with your border info, Andorra not EU or Schengen, that border crossing may take some. This will be our first trip in a couple years where we are not on the eastern fringes of Europe. Thanks for all the information, and we will plan time for Zaragoza.

Thanks for all of the great information. We already have our super fares (no changes) with Renfe, so no visiting Zaragoza this trip. Going to Andorra is part of our plan to visit all of the countries of Europe where will not be entering a war zone or taken hostage. For Andorra we will be hiking the UNESCO World Heritage valley, so the Caldea is good to know about for after the hikes. Based on your suggestions about mobile data I rechecked our phones plan and our data/texts are unlimited in Andorra. We do plan to give our ourselves an extra hour to return into Spain.

For renting a car in Barcelona is it better to use Sants train station or the airport? Background, we already have visited Barcelona for a few days before another cruise and at that time traffic in town was somewhat heavy due to the Metro being on strike. This time we are planning to go to Andorra after our cruise, followed by taking the train from Barcelona to Madrid out of Sants. So, we need to get back to Sants after Andorra anyway.

We have not yet taken our 20-something on an Ama Waterways cruise, but plan on in the future (need to plan a cruise when university is not in session). On our previous Ama cruise there was onboard a fitness director. He led daily before breakfast stretching classes and post dinner walks (beyond the announced shore excursions). If the ship was staying late in a town he would lead whoever showed up on a somewhat spontaneous walk around town. One evening it was just him and I walking along the banks of the Danube. If the ship was on the move after dinner he would lead the group on walking around the perimeter of the top deck.

We just did what you are considering, had a cruise around Japan cancelled due to the pandemic and then we booked a land tour this past summer. For our land tour we used Inside Japan Tours https://www.insidejapantours.com/us/ to arrange our land trip around Japan; Tokyo, Kyoto, Koya-san, Himeji, Hiroshima, Kanazawa, Tokyo. Inside Japan Tours does offer guided tours, but we used a variation of one of their Self-Guided Adventures. They booked lodging and most transportation, plus a few city tour guides. We just had to use their detailed personalized guidebook to get from point to point and with English most everywhere it was fairly straightforward. Our best decision ever, no rushing back to a ship, so we could linger over the long days and into the night.

OP, thanks for the info on staffing and room issues on the Dawn. We will packing extra antiseptic cleaning towels before we board the Dawn later this year. Ignore the cheerleaders, there are plenty around here.

If you are arriving early enough in the day I would recommend not staying in Mestre, just an industrial port. From Mestre you can take the train to Bologna (gastronomic capital of Italy) for your overnight and in the morning take the train into Ravenna. Actually, if you have the option, flying into Bologna is better for Ravenna, if you don't plan to visit Venice. Bologna has a monorail directly from their airport to the central station. You can check the time schedule and reserve Italian trains on the German train site bahn.com

There are a couple ways to avoid being fined for tolls in Slovenia. We had done a land tour in Slovenia last summer, after our cruise ship was redeployed. The pass for tolls can be purchased at gas stations. Until finding a gas station stick to the local highways and avoid the expressways (the majority require the toll pass). The Rick Steves guidebook goes into more details on purchasing the toll pass. Great places to visit in Slovenia from Trieste that don't require using the expressways are Skojan Caves: https://www.park-skocjanske-jame.si/en and the Kolovrat Outdoor Museum (WWI battlefield): https://www.kobariski-muzej.si/en/exhibitions/guided-tours/guided-tours/201803271701139202/the-kolovrat-outdoor-museum/