OrcaGirl

I previously sailed the Mexican Riviera on the Bliss two or three Christmases ago, although very much not sold out as it was the first Christmas cruise of the restart and there were almost zero children onboard; that was a great cruise. 🤣

Whew, that was a long day. Or at least it felt like one. Once I met up with my mom and Red post-US Customs, we grabbed a bite to eat and some pre-cruise cocktails at the Canucks Bar & Grill. And almost immediately as soon as we sat down, I got a text message that our flight was delayed by about an hour. So we had a leisurely meal instead of a rushed one, and before too long it was time to board. I did grab some Tim Horton’s donuts before boarding as a mid-flight snack, knowing it would probably be late by the time we got to have dinner. The flight itself was uneventful. Had a not-so-brief 20 min of panic when my Find My Phone app showed my mom’s luggage AirTag as being at LAX but my luggage AirTag as still being in Vancouver. Fortunately it turned out to just be a looooong delay in updating… all luggage is presented and accounted for. Rather than try to wrangle Mom and Red and all of our bags onto the LAX-IT shuttle, I ordered a Lyft Black to pick us up at the terminal. Despite Google Maps saying it was a 45 minute ride to our hotel, it was a mere 18 minutes! The final bill with tip came out to $121USD. We were still pretty full from lunch + plane donuts, but having a balanced and healthy dinner seemed like the smart thing to do… so I ordered Shake Shack via Uber Eats. 🤣 We’re now all tucked into bed, watching Frozen, which neither Mom nor Red have ever seen! Tomorrow, we cruise! Random observations: The flight at the gate next to ours at YVR was headed to Vegas, and presumably everyone was in a Superb Owl party mood. 🦉 I saw one Broncos jersey and two Taylor Swift’s boyfriend’s team’s jerseys. Airplanes are LOUD. I just got noise-cancelling headphones for Christmas and I don’t know how I ever travelled without them.

Yikes! Hope the person with the medical emergency is okay. Thanks for the update, we will have a leisurely breakfast instead of rushing to the port in the morning. Hope you had a great cruise.

I’ll report back tomorrow but usually there’s been a separate security line for Haven whenever I’ve cruised out of LA.

Hola everyone! Currently sitting at Vancouver International Airport, waiting to meet up with my travel party and get this vacay started. We’ll be heading out on the Norwegian Bliss, for the 7-day cruise of the Mexican Riviera, with stops in Mazatlan, Puerto Vallarta, and Cabo san Lucas. The cruise was originally supposed to include a stop in Ensenada as well, but that port was removed and the itinerary rejigged several weeks ago due to “fuel efficiencies.” I will try to post 2-3 times each day with what we’re up to; my particular focus is usually cocktails, food, entertainment, and excursion adventures. (I’ll also be posting lots of photos over on Instagram Stories; look for erin_braincandy if you just want photos/videos without all of the commentary.) A little about the travel party I’m a frequent cruiser on NCL, and hit Platinum last summer thanks to a Latitude triple-points offer on an Alaska sailing of the Bliss. For this cruise, I’m travelling with Mom (mid-70s, has cruised twice before to Alaska on Princess, but this will be her first warm-weather cruise and first time on NCL) and Red (late 50s, first-time cruiser, my mom’s neighbour and my childhood friend - growing up, she was like the big sister I never had.) Also on this cruise will be the Fox (last seen on my most recent Alaska cruise) and her friend K (new to cruising). A couple of months back, the Fox asked for my recommendations for a good cruise to take a first-timer on, and lo and behold, the dates for this Bliss sailing worked perfectly. Yay! Today’s travel plan Mom and Red live up in the Great Frozen North 🥶, so they’re flying down to Vancouver this morning and then I’ll meet them in the airport and we’ll continue together through US Customs and Immigration. We’ve got a 3-hour flight to Los Angeles, and then we’ll be spending the night at a Best Western relatively near the port. Fingers crossed for a smooth travel day. 🤞 Past Semi-Live from CC threads… If you’re interested in some of my past “semi-live from…” threads: June 2023 | Alaska on the NCL Bliss with the Fox and her Cub: April 2023 | Alaska on the Discovery Princess with Mom: October 2022 | Mexican Riviera on the Celebrity Solstice with the Fox: December 2021 | Mexican Riviera on the Bliss with the husband:

The 2 hours rule is for embarkation and disembarkation at the itinerary's homeport; it doesn't apply to port stops. But as noted, Cabo has the complicating factor of being a tender port; I've had to wait 40+ min in a queue just to board the tender boat off the ship to shore to make an independent excursion. So you'll need to factor that in. And then you'll have to wait for a tender boat back to the ship; they will have a posted time for the last tender back to the ship.

You'll find that a few words in Indonesian, Tagalog/Filipino and Indian will come in handy.

Squeeeeee, I asked Santa for four Captain's Club points for Christmas, and he sent me FIVE!

I'm so glad to hear that it's not just me thinking this is weird. I was looking at a cruise on the Edge in May 2024; the price for two people in an inside cabin guarantee, with taxes and port fees but without the 'all included' extras, is $2,006CAD total for two people. Really great price for Alaska. But I was planning to go solo so I adjusted the occupancy down to one person. And now the price is $2,974CAD for one person. Again, without the all-inclusive extras. Perhaps the difference is that for booking solo an inside guarantee was no longer available, so it required picking a specific inside cabin, but it's still incredibly frustrating and confusing. If it was a matter of paying the double-occupancy $2,006CDN for one person, I'd take it. But paying an extra thousand dollars? Nope.

Was on her in May and the laundry rooms were open, with free laundry soap and dryer sheets, although that part may have changed since then.

Does anyone know if we get back any Ensenada port fees as OBC?

In fairness to OP, perhaps they are more familiar with Celebrity Cruise Lines, where you can earn a few loyalty program points without actually taking a cruise. But on Norwegian, nope.

Are there any opportunities for actual scuba diving while on this itinerary?

There were supposedly 88 steps down to the floating platform; the husband didn't think it was that many. The guide actually commented that the brief ramp section is usually harder than the stairs themselves on the way up. There was at least one woman on our tour with a cane, and she seemed to manage them pretty well.

Hilarious typos aside, did you happen to keep digital copies of the Freestyle Dailies? I'd love to see them.

We ordered four things to share between us, which you should be able to match up to the photos in my thread: Mixto de Quesos & Charcuterie - this was large, definitely good for sharing, a couple of cheeses, a couple of meats, sliced apples, and some caramel-but-not-really-type dip, the waiter didn't explain what was what Patatas Bravas - five small pieces of potatoes, very good, the husband could have finished that dish on his own and easily ordered another Panceta - one piece of pork belly on a piece of bread, sooooooo good, a little hard to split, would have gladly ordered two or more of these Gambas al Ajillo - garlic shrimp in butter, with a few pieces of toasted baguette, this was very good and easy to share between two people, didn't feel I needed to order another

I'd previously eaten at Food Republic on the Encore and Bliss (including this summer), and yes, the menu was quite a bit smaller this trip than in the past. I immediately noticed that the Tijuana street fries were no longer on the menu, same for one of the sushi rolls I had in the summer.

It was two shows each on two nights, same as it was on the Encore when we sailed her. It's a great show, well worth attending.

A-ha, there it is… Belatedly, here’s the Freestyle Daily for Day 7: escape-day7.pdf

Oops, looks like I missed one in all of the last day shenanigans. I’ll see if it saved to my Dropbox correctly.

Sorry for the delay on my final summary. We got home late Sunday night, fell right into bed... and then woke up sick the next morning. COVID tests are showing negative thus far, but we're both miserable with coughs and sore throats and so... much... mucus. One weird tidbit: on Monday when I started to unpack, I noticed that my AirTag was no longer on my luggage. I checked Find My Phone... and it showed as being at a house on Long Island. I checked again just now, and it's at a McDonald's restaurant in Stamford, Connecticut. Not sure why someone would steal an AirTag, but it also seems very unlikely that it felt out of its holder and into the possession of someone else. So anyway... Top three highlights of this cruise for me: 1. Spending lots of time in the thermal spa, which was clean and in great condition 2. Visiting the caves in Bermuda, very cool 3. The specialty restaurants, but especially the pork belly dishes at Pinchos and Food Republic and the petite filet at Cagney's The three things I'd change if granted magical powers: 1. The heated stone lounger chair hogs in the thermal spa 2. The lack of variety in the Garden Cafe buffet (and the lack of hash browns!) 3. The lack of interesting evening entertainment (Choir of Man was great, everything else was pretty blah) Funnily enough, I got an email from NCL today "welcoming" me to Latitudes Platinum and telling me all about the great benefits I can now enjoy... despite enjoying many of them on the Escape. 😂 Next cruise for me is the Bliss to the Mexican Riviera in February 2024, and I'll be watching for other threads from the Bliss in the meantime to help with my own planning.

We never bring ducks to hide ourselves, but once I explained it to the husband that evening, he had fun spotting them and thinking up places that he would hide one. And then I'd point out why his picks were too hard or not in the spirit of the game. 🤣

That was the free Platinum behind the scenes tour; a paid tour was also available to book. The husband's name can be figured out on my Instagram Stories, but I don't tend to use real names here.

That was it!

Good morning from New York. Another 💩 night of sleep. According to CruiseMapper we were supposed to enter the New York harbour around 3am, but with the time change, I had no idea if that was true, and although I poked my head out onto the balcony occasionally through the night, I didn’t catch the Statue of Liberty. When I did finally get up, I still had no idea what time it was. The NCL App was no help. (My phone did adjust for the time change; the app was two hours off). I grabbed coffee, and thought about stopping in at the onboard credit deck to have someone explain some confusing shore excursion charges and refunds, but the line was too long and I just didn’t care enough to wait. I spent a few minutes drinking coffee out on the balcony until it was time to wake up the husband. We threw a few final things into bags, and then headed down to Savor for breakfast. We enjoyed a leisurely breakfast. We then hung out in the Atrium while waiting for our ‘Light Blue’ disembarkation call. The call came a bit early, around 9:35am, and we were heading down the gangway and off the ship by 9:41am. Baggage collection and immigration was easy (facial recognition for the win), and before we knew it we were crossing the street away from the Escape. We walked up one block back to the Ink48 hotel, thinking it’d be easier to get a Lyft there. It may have been less chaotic, but it still took a really long time for our ride to show up due to traffic congestion. We used the app Bounce to book a luggage storage location near Penn Station; like AirBnb but for your luggage. It was $25USD to hold three bags for five hours. After freeing ourselves of our luggage, we walked down Broadway all the way to the lower east side. Our destination: Crif Dog, which we’ve been returning to since our first trip together to New York more than 15 years ago. And I was delighted to find they still have Ms. Pac-Man. After downing a tsunami dog and a chihuahua dog and a frozen cranberry martini, we rented a couple of CitiBikes and rode down to the tip of Manhattan and back up the waterfront. Such a beautiful day, and it was neat seeing some of the NYC Marathon finishers biking or limping home. We picked up our luggage and took the train from Penn Station to Newark Airport. In retrospect, with three bags, we should have just taken a Lyft. Our flight has been delayed 90 minutes, but we’re happily enjoying that lounge life with cocktails and snacks. And we might grab Shake Shack to take on board. 🤣 Spoiler: we ordered and ate Shake Shack, and then ordered more Shake Shack to bring on board. Random observations: Seemed like a lot more people that usual opted for self-assist disembarkation, but the elevators were packed and so lots of people were trying to carry multiple very large/heavy suitcases down the stairs with varying degrees of success. The cruise wrap-up video playing in the Atrium didn’t include any footage from Halloween, just the usual pool shenanigans, Glow party, etc. 😔 We didn’t attend either the Mr. Sexy Legs or Perfect Couple games, but the videos of them have major Carnival vibes. I could not have picked the captain out of a lineup or even recall hearing his name before this final morning. (For comparison, I’ll never forget Captain Tasos on Celebrity who was so visible and personable.)