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Time2CruiseAgain

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    Safety level on Roatan?

    in Roatan

    Posted

    We love touring with Victor Bodden! We have toured with him 5 times and each time a great experience! We usually have George as our driver, but this last time we had Victor's brother! Plus Victor had made so many upgrades to his property, including sloths! Highly recommend!

     

    Sent from my SM-N920V using Forums mobile app

    Norwegian Escape - Miami - Sept 02 - 09 Hurricane Irma

    in Norwegian Cruise Line

    Posted

    We were on the Escape and as we live in the Gulf Coast of Florida, we got off to take care of things and be with our children. NCL did it right! To add to ocdb8tr, they added The Weather Channel to the tv channel line up, so we were able to keep up to date. Also, as soon as the decision was made, NCL gave everyone 15 free internet minutes to touch base with family. This was our first NCL cruise and they did it right. We will sail on them again! Soon!

     

    Sent from my SM-N920V using Forums mobile app

    Sailing the Es-cap-ay (Escape)- Western Caribbean Review June 24, 2017

    in Norwegian Cruise Line

    Posted

    35728413262_2a60e25fbb_h.jpg

     

     

     

    Travel Apps

     

     

     

    i-concierge

     

    I was looking for NCL apps so I downloaded the i-concierge app before the cruise and was very disappointed to see that it didn’t do anything until we got on the ship. Once on the boat though, this app showed us the daily schedule, ship activities and let you book events like the comedy show.

     

     

     

    NEWBIE NCL CRUISE TIP- Download this app before you get on the ship or before you embark so that you don’t have to use ship’s internet to get it.

     

     

     

    TripRider

     

    Another app that I love is called TripRider. This is a travel app setup to handle my packing list, schedule and travel documents! I can schedule things on the calendar day by day and mark some “must do”s like “try the gelato shop on the Waterfront” so that I don’t miss anything that I meant to check out! It also stores pdf documents like excursion receipts, plan expenses, saves maps, has a place to enter people that we meet and their contact info, and my favorite part is that is has a password protected area to save things like photos of our passports, medical insurance cards, etc. You can access everything without internet so it worked for my off-the-grid plan too. It also had a diary section where I took notes of what we did every day- which I used for this review! It even makes a "trip book" with any details you select, so I used that to print our packing list and send our itinerary to our family before we left so they’d know our travel dates, hotels, and when we fly, flight numbers. Here’s a few screenshots of the packing list and schedule.

     

     

     

    35772200771_c5c52eef53_h.jpg

     

     

     

    My Standard Pre-cruise checklist includes:

     


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    • Call credit card companies, which apparently you don’t need to anymore because both companies said they didn’t need that information
       
    • Get cash for tips and excursions. NEWBIE CRUISE TIP- I’ve found that $50 in ones, $50 in fives, $100 in tens, several $20s more than covers most of what we need. For the large bills ($20), I figured what I needed to spend on excursions and tips (with some thick padding for just in case situations) and take about that much.
       
    • Print luggage tags and documents- Thanks to AAA for covering this one for me
       
    • Print excursion confirmations (NCL and independent) because you never know when you’ll need proof that you paid for something.
       
    • Pay bills due while on vacation
       

    After all that and asking the neighbors to grab the mail for us, we were all set!

     

     

     

     

     

    Is TripRider an Apple app?

    NCL Escapees from Reality LIVE!

    in Norwegian Cruise Line

    Posted

    Had a hard time replying above! Anyway!! What an AWESOME review!! We are sailing in September, aft balcony!! Can't wait! First time on NCL, other cruises Carnival and Disney! Thanks so much for the M&M TIPS - I'm organizing ours and appreciate the tips! I've organized one on Carnival and we did a shot glass exchange, which was a lot of fun! Love the idea for the kids table! Thanks again!

    NCL Escapees from Reality LIVE!

    in Norwegian Cruise Line

    Posted

    Hello Everyone:

     

     

     

    Sorry for the delay in replying to the M&M, so here are my thoughts and ideas that we did to get things rolling:

     

     

     


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    • First, someone from your roll call needs to volunteer. Keep it to just one person who communicates as it can get very confusing if there are multiple people sending messages and making arrangements. However, it may be a good idea to coordinate with someone for assistance in setting up.
       
    • About 3-4 weeks before saling reach out to NCL to make arrangements for the M&M. Email address to use is: GroupEvent<ship name>@ncl.com. Simply replace <ship name> with your ship (Dawn, Gem, Jewel, etc). So for our sailing it was: groupeventescape@ncl.com
       
    • Get everyone excited about coming to the M&M. Some ideas are:
       

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      • Raffle some items off (I did chocolates, wine and champagne but I'm a little crazy :) )
         
      • Get a gift exchange going. People can bring one item from their home town/state and do an exchange. Not everyone usually signs up for this.
         
      • Stress the importance to the roll call of how important it is for Cruise Critic peeps to show for the M&M as it lets NCL know we are a vital part of cruising info.
         

       

      [*]I did a spreadsheet with everyone's CC name, # of people, names of everyone, and cabin number (hometown too if you want to list it)

       

      [*]I kept people notified of how many had signed up about once a week

       

      [*]I set up a separate email address that people could email me (yahoo, gmail, etc) so you don't get it mixed in with personal stuff.

       

      [*]I kept NCL aware of the number of people as once it went over 50 they moved the group to a larger venue.

       

      [*]Fortunately I have an assistant so she helped with:

       


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      • Printing and designing name tags (NCL will supply blank ones for you if desired)
         
      • Invitations with room number (these you can hand off to the event coordinator on board on your first day and they will deliver them to the room)
         

       

      [*]If they change the venue, make sure you let everyone know many times prior. You can also put a sign on the original location, but NCL did not allow me to do that when it moved from 5 O'Clock to The District.

       

      [*]Encourage children to come along with the parents. I had set up some kids only tables with candy and gifts for the kids (yoyos, bouny balls, bracelets, etc). It allowed some of the kids to meet new friends especially if they weren't into the kids clubs.

       

      [*]During the Event:

       


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      • Try and mingle with everyone. You really want this to be a fun event not just a sit and listen to the officers speak
         
      • I brought some nice chocolates as a gift for the officers that came to the event
         
      • After the officers left, almost everyone stayed and chatted and had a good time.
         

       

      [*]Have FUN!!!!! I had a great time putting the event together and meeting everyone from our Roll Call. We had some great people and it was fun seeing them everyone on the ship afterward.

       

    Would I be the coordinator again? Definitely! We had someone that did a slot pull right after the M&M and that was fun as well. It was hard work for the person doing that part as well, so I do recommend having another person coordinate the slot pull if that was going to happen.

     

     

     

     

     

    Overall, the experience was great. The officers on the NCL Escape were friendly and remembered us whenever we ran into them on the ship.

     

     

     

     

     

    If anyone has any more questions, please let me know.

     

     

    Your

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