OrcaGirl

Halloween was a blast and I’m so glad we decided to stay on the ship instead of going for the revised sunset catamaran. Not to be immodest, but I was especially happy with how my costume turned out. I didn’t manage to sneak onto the bridge but several crew addressed me as Captain and/or saluted. 🫡 So many people were dressed up, either in full costume mode or in something at least thematically on point. I can’t even narrow down my favourites. But the family of King Triton, Ursula, Sebastian and Flounder with little baby Ariel in the stroller was fantastic, and I loved the two Mrs. Ropers from Three’s Company. 🤣 And many of the crew were in full costumes, especially in the casino. I saw Chucky, the Joker, flappers, priests, escapes prisoners, and more. We did a few tours of various bars, drinking and people-watching. The casino opened around 9pm and was packed. We went to the haunted house in the Supper Club, and well… I loved it, I thought the crew did an amazing job and it was appropriately scary for all but the youngest kids. Except… I’m married to a very jumpy 54-year-old. (We went inside a haunted house on our second date, and he ended up throwing me into a wall. Reader, I still married him. 🤷‍♀️) The haunted house was A BIT TOO MUCH for him. At one point he stepped on a poor crew member (in fairness, he was already sprawled on the ground) and then near the end he got a jump scare just after another crew member said to watch his step, and he ended up tripping and banging up his knee and one toe pretty bad. 😫 So yeah, we declared a moratorium on all future haunted house visits. After that we hobbled around a bit longer and eventually made our way up to H20 for the costume contest. Unfortunately it was a bit too crowded for my liking, and the wind was really starting to pick up (I feared for the safety of my Captain’s hat, all $9.99 of it) so after failing to find a good perch for my Just Ken to rest his poor leg, we decided to bail. If anyone was there and knows who won, I’m dying to know!!! We did one final lap across the Atrium and then retired to our cabin for the evening. This Barbie needs her beauty sleep.

Day 3 Freestyle Daily: escape-day3.pdf

I’ll have to finish up Halloween shenanigans and post the Freestyle Daily in the morning; the wifi is 💩 right now.

(This is going to be a little out of order.) We got back to our cabin around 4:30pm, which made for a long day. The husband chose a disco nap over trying to rush to make the 5pm Thriller dance class. (He’s a former Thrill the World participant so he takes his Thriller dancing seriously. If you don’t know what that is, search for it on YouTube.) We had dinner in one of the main dining rooms. Taste? Savor? I don’t know. 🤷‍♀️ I had the roasted beet salad and he had the Caesar. Both good. For our mains, I had the pork loin after remembering how good it was on the Bliss, and he had the shrimp fettuccine Alfredo. Neither of us could finish our mains; my pork slices were huge and way too thick, and I could only finish one, and his pasta looked like a nicely sized portion but was deceptively large. Dessert was the lava cake for him and the tiramisu cake for me. Both excellent. Before heading to the MDR, we also perused the buffet. Much like Celebrity, it seems like NCL is scaling the dinner buffet waaaay back, and just over half of the buffet was open. But the highlights were the Halloween-themed desserts and displays. And later in the evening, we went back to the buffet so the husband could have another crepe.

Oh yeah, the husband and several others went for a swim. One dude was swimming really far out. Most of the others described the water temperature as ‘brisk until you got used to it’…

Our excursion today was the “Caves and Waves” tour. We got checked in and placed on a tour bus. The ride to the caves was about 45 minutes, and the driver pointed out various sites and sights along the way. The caves themselves were awesome. It was high tide so the floating boardwalk was up and even regular height people had to duck frequently… the poor 6’5” husband and the other actually tall people had to really get low to avoid bonking their heads. (Many more photos will be posted on my Instagram Stories.) After emerging back to the above-ground world, I had just enough time to run to the washroom (but not the gift shop 😢) before being herded back onto the bus. Another short bus ride took us to the Clearwater Beach, where we spent two hours. Our first stop was the beach bar, for two incredibly strong pina coladas and two hot dogs…. Alas, the fish sandwiches weren’t available. The only food available were hot dogs, hamburgers, and fries. Guess I’ll have to go out in search of fish sandwiches tomorrow. After lunch, we headed down to the beach. We didn’t bother renting chairs, just laying down our NCL towels and popping a squat on the sand. I dipped my toes in the water, but didn’t swim. The temperature was lovely, at least by Canadian terms. It was around this time that my phone decided it needed a vacation too, and overheated and shut down. 🤷‍♀️ Our tour left the beach at 2:15pm for the drive to St. George’s for the NCL ferry back to the Escape. We got to St. George’s with about 30 min to wait for the ferry. The line was already long so we just found a bench on the waterfront until we could see the ferry approaching. We boarded, grabbed seats on the upper, outer deck and settled in for the ride back to Dockyard. Random observations: Check your tour numbers. Four people were removed from our bus since they were on a different tour. Our (white) guide really wasn’t comfortable answering a Black guest’s question about when the African population was brought to Bermuda. The verbal gymnastics he performed to avoid saying slavery or enslaved peoples was actually pretty impressive. (The answer is 1617, I looked it up once back on the ship.) Also maybe don’t tell your passengers about how you lost your ambulance driver license for speeding (twice) before we even leave the dock. Free wifi provided by the tourism association was available at the bar and near the ferry stop in St. George’s. At least one dude from the Escape didn’t realize the ship had changed to Bermuda time last night, and didn’t understand why everyone was lining up at 1:45 for a 3:15 ferry. ⏰ (It was 2:45…)

Good morning from Bermuda! I completely forgot to change the time on my phone before bed last night, so I woke up at 8:20am when I really meant to be up at 7:30am. I made a quick run to the Atrium cafe for Starbucks, woke the husband up, and ventured to the buffet for a quick breakfast as the ship approached the pier in Bermuda. First almost-inedible eggs benny I’ve ever had on a cruise ship. Still no hash browns in the buffet. Sad face. “Country potatoes” are just not the same. We fast-walked back to our cabin and quickly threw together a laundry bag and grabbed what we needed for our excursion. We watched some pumpkin carving in the Atrium while waiting for ship clearance (a tiny bit later than planned) and then headed off the ship to find our excursion meeting point at the end of the pier.

Double post as the wifi reconnected.

After dinner we hustled over to the theatre for Choir of Man. We’d seen it previously on the Encore and loved it just as much the second time. I may be misremembering, but I swear last time there was one character who was explicitly gay, which wasn’t a part of this production. I sincerely hope that wasn’t excised due to any anti-LGBTQ2A sentiment. After the show, we headed back to the thermal spa for an hour before bed. It was much quieter after 8:30pm, only 3-4 other people were inside when we got there, until a couple of ladies ended up having a very loud conversation. (I hope her friend has a good NYC marathon on Sunday, since I now know all about his training went.)

Catching up on last night while we wait for the ship to be cleared for Bermuda. Dinner last night was in Bayamo, and we were seated on the Waterfront with beautiful sunset views. The food was amazing, although service was a teeny bit slow. With a 5:15pm reservation, I didn’t expect to be hustling to make the 7pm show. But the food… we had the blazing shrimp and scallops with pork belly as our appetizers. Both were amazing. I had the black sea bass and the husband had the fish and chips, again both were perfectly prepared. As part of my Platinum dinner, I picked a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc but would have preferred a Riesling. It was fine, but despite being WSET Level 1 certified, I’m just not a big wine person. For dessert, I had the key lime meringue tart while the husband claimed he didn’t have room for dessert and just ordered an espresso. The spoon somehow appeared in his hand when my tart arrived and we shared it. We both busted out our inner Great British Bake-off judges, declaring the bottom crust to be a tad too hard, the lime curd to be flavourful, and the best part was the toasted meringue topping and the elegant yet restrained presentation. Random observations: One lady behind us admonished her husband: “You don’t order chicken at a seafood restaurant.” A sentiment I’ve echoed many a time to my husband. Along the same lines, I really had to hold back from laughing at the other woman who came to a seafood restaurant and ordered the filet mignon well done. Honey, no…

Like shof515 said, I think it would depend on the number of people who signed up. They had to call in for an extra security guard, we had so many Platinum and above people show up. Once I knew that the tour started at 7:50am, I didn’t even bother asking if the lowly-silver husband could join or be on a waitlist, since he wouldn’t be rolling out of bed until 11am at the earliest.

A few general notes and thoughts on the thermal spa while I waited for the husband to get changed for dinner. Check-in procedures: we got a sticker for our keycard on the first day, and when you go to the thermal spa you drop off your keycard with the staff before entering. No wristband or getting buzzed in or anything. Escape’s thermal spa is large and in great condition for its age (especially compared to my last sailing on the Bliss), but I do find the layout a bit weird. I love the inclusion of so many double loungers, but miss the curved padded loungers like on the Bliss. And the plastic material may be easier to clean for staff but it feels icky on the skin when having a not-nap. The steam room is fantastic and big enough for lots of people, but some folks kept leaving the door open a crack by accident and the steam dissipates quickly. I actually felt a bit cold in there today. Speaking of the cold, the snow room doesn’t feel quite as cold as on the Bliss, but that might be a positive for some people. 🥶 One guy on a tour asked me about how it felt in there and I laughed that I was Canadian, it’s like a balmy April day inside. And then I made a snowman. In the main pool, the “washing machine” section (if you know the proper term for that part, let me know!) has AMAZING jets, very strong and bubbly. But… the jet cycle is really short, like maybe 2-3 minutes, and every time someone presses the button to turn it back on, the other jets along the side of the main pool lose their oomph for a minute. And the only other downside of the thermal spa… other people. Despite the many, many signs about the spa being a Quiet Area, a lot of people didn’t get the memo. I know, it’s natural for people to get chatty in a hot tub, but that’s what the pool deck hot tubs are for. And some people’s voices are, shall we say, piercing. Apparently a staff member did come in and ask some folks to tone it down a bit, but it didn’t seem to work.

Our official itinerary change: I assume this is going to mess up the plans for the roll call’s Halloween not-a-pub-crawl that was originally gonna happen tomorrow.

I sat out on the balcony for a bit until the wind got a bit too gusty for comfort. I retreated inside, and since the husband was still asleep, I took what was left of my mimosa to the Atrium to see what was going on. They were just starting a wine Q&A with an apparently famous wine marker from Kendall-Jackson so I listened to that for a while. Free samples of their Chardonnay were being handed out to the audience. But I had to laugh at the line in the promo video about “creating a wine exclusively for everyone”…. If it’s for everyone, it’s not exclusive. 🤣 I actually ended up skipping the Latitudes wines of the world tasting, since sampling a lot of wine on an mostly-empty stomach didn’t seem like a good idea. Once the wine Q&A seminar was over, I headed back to the cabin to rouse the husband and drag him to lunch. After lunch, we swung by the Shore Excursion desk to make some changes to our revised plans. Our planned Thursday morning Caves and Waves tour was moved to Tuesday morning, which is fine, but our planned Wednesday evening sunset catamaran tour (my birthday present to myself) was moved to Tuesday night and that’s Halloween and so no, needed to change that. We could have switched to the Wednesday night “White Hot Catamaran Sunset Sail” instead, but the forecast for Wednesday evening is thunderstorms so we’ll just stay on the ship. Popped back up to the pool deck to grab a BBC. The temperature was lovely and the pool space was pretty crowded. Changed into my swimsuit and took my book, my BBC and my bebe to the thermal spa for the rest of the afternoon. Random observations: I say this every time, but learning a few pleasantries in Indonesian and Tagalog goes a long way with the crew. I finally checked my email; the message saying my upgrade bid wasn’t accepted came in at 7pm last night. 🤣

Day 2 Freestyle Daily escape-day2.pdf Random observations: I haven’t seen this personalized itinerary map before… is it new? Having Downton Abbey as the 11pm movie seems a bit… odd. Like the demographic that would enjoy that movie would already be asleep by then. We set our clocks forward one hour tonight. Time is a construct etc.

Captain just announced our itinerary change, much like last week’s cruise, going to arrive in Bermuda one day earlier and then leave one day early.

Well that was cool. We were split into three groups for the tour; our guide Marcus was delightful and funny. We were taken first to the theatre’s backstage area and main dressing room. No photos allowed but we got to see the costumes for Choir of Man and all of the rubber ducks the cast had acquired. Apparently this cast is on board until early December and then they switch out with a new cast. No hints dropped about NCL’s future shows or planned replacements for the big Broadway numbers, though there was a lot of agreement that Six is amazing and it’s bad that it’s being dropped. We visited the crew gym and crew lounge, and got a peek inside the crew mess (but couldn’t go in because it was being cleaned). Visiting the laundry was cool (although actually pretty hot and humid 🥵). So many towels!! I wish my lowly-silver husband had been able to join the tour, he would have loved seeing that and probably offered to jump in and help with the folding. I’ve been on galley tours before on other cruiselines, but it’s always a neat thing to see it in operation. (Although I’m genuinely surprised we were allowed in a food service area without masks in the COVID era.) We got a sneak peak at some of the chocolate creations for Halloween tomorrow. And there was soooooo much bacon. Yum. Unfortunately we were going a bit overtime and were hustled past the galley board so I didn’t get a chance to take close-ups of each day. The tour ended right outside the Savor and Taste dining rooms for those who wanted breakfast. Instead, I grabbed an Americano for Sleeping Silver Beauty and a mimosa for me and headed back to the cabin. Random observations: The instructions for the tour didn’t say no beverages, but they weren’t allowed, so I had to chug the last of my iced Americano before we set out. Yesterday the husband was insistent that the Escape wasn’t as long as the Bliss or Encore, but Marcus told us it’s actually the longest in the NCL fleet from end to end. Just guessing based on appearances, but I think I was maybe the second- or third-youngest Platinum guest on the tour, at least in our group. Yay for those triple-Latitude cruises last year.

Good morning from… somewhere in the Saragossa Sea, I guess. I haven’t seen one on the navigational screens like they have on the Bliss/Encore yet, and Google Maps thinks we’re off the west coast of Africa, so I’m relying on marinetraffic for our location. I slept pretty well, with a bit of rocking and rolling of the seas to rock me to sleep. We’ll see how the husband fared in a few hours. I woke up around 7am, ahead of my alarm, and headed down to the Atrium for some “Starbucks.” I know, I know, it’s the same product, but if I can’t earn stars or use my Starbucks app, it’s not a real Starbucks. I’m now caffeinating while waiting for the Latitudes behind the scenes tour to start. Random observations: The barf bags are out in the stairwells but it doesn’t seem that bad (yet?). I’ve definitely had worse on cruises to Alaska. I’m sad that the baked goods and treats at the Atrium cafe aren’t included and are too fancy for breakfast. I loved the free selection of baked goods at the coffee bar on the Celebrity ships. If it was a ‘real’ Starbucks, I’d understand but I don’t want to schlep up from deck 5 to deck 16 for a croissant to go with my coffee. There’s been no mention of any itinerary deviations due to the storm, I guess we’ll find out if/when it happens.

For dinner we went to the Pincho tapas bar. We asked the hostess if we could use just one of our dining credits (we’re not big eaters at the best of times and we’d already had nachos) and she said usually that wouldn’t be allowed but she’d call her supervisor and ask. And a couple of minutes later we were seated. They were out of the white wine sangria and since I can’t stomach red wine, I got the matador. I’m not usually a bourbon fan but this was delightful. We ordered four dishes, and they were all delicious but the pork belly was our favourite. If we’d had to use both dining credits, I think we could have managed to eat another four of those between the two of us. After dinner, we headed to the thermal spa for an hour or so. Ahhhh…. I was getting sleepy and wanted to head to bed, but the husband was craving pizza, so he headed straight to the buffet before it closed to grab a slice… and then he ‘got lost’ in the buffet and ended up at a crepe station. Funny how that happens.

When the husband got back from his haircut (he deemed it okay) he took yet another nap while I finished unpacking. Around 4:40 we headed back up to the spa to enter the spa draw. Alas we were not lucky, but we were getting peckish… to O’Sheenans we went. We shared the nachos which were the perfect little snack size. The sailaway party did in fact move inside to the Atrium due to the rain. We headed back to our cabin to grab our jackets, watching a bit of the sailaway from our balcony and then heading down to the Waterfront to catch a glimpse of the Statue of Liberty. A few rather tipsy people were singing snippets of any patriotic song they could think of… I tried to get a round of the “she’s beauty and she’s grace, she’s Miss United States” song from Miss Congeniality going, but nah… After Lady Liberty was in the rear view mirror, we went back to the cabin to doff our jackets, only to discover we were approaching the Verrazano Bridge. So we stuck around to watch the ship sail under. (Not quite as cool as sailing under the Lion’s Gate Bridge or Golden Gate Bridge, but still neat.) Random observations: My chocolate-covered strawberries arrived in our cabin at some point. Yum. I can’t believe I even have to say this in 2023, but men: DO NOT TOUCH WOMEN THAT YOU DON’T KNOW. Some random chatty dude at the spa draw put his arm around me after talking for like 30 seconds and seemed taken aback when I moved away from him and said “no, don’t touch me.” So yeah, don’t do that.

When we arrived at the pier around 11am there was an ambulance and at least three fire trucks with lights flashing. So yeah, guessing some people on the last cruise were also having some bad luck too.

I woke up Snoring Beauty from his nap at 3:15pm so he could make his haircut in the barbershop at 3:30pm. While he was getting all purtied up, I unpacked my carry-on and one of my two checked bags which had arrived during naptime. I also enjoyed one of my Schmackary’s cookies, which was delicious. During this time, I also got three phantom voicemails with no message, and one actual voicemail from the casino with details on my arcade package purchase… which, you guessed it, I didn’t purchase. My arcade tastes run more to Ms Pac-Man so unless they have that, I’m not spending any time in the arcade. (But if they do have it, I will destroy all challengers.) No erroneous arcade charges appear on my account, though, so I won’t sweat it. Maybe that message was for Nicole and Ian? Someone tried to open my cabin door, and a porter also left a suitcase outside our door that was meant for two doors down. Hope my second bag actually shows up eventually. (Spoiler: it did, like 20 minutes later.) Random observations: There’s a lot of loud voices and yelling in the hallway. Inside voices, people! 🤫 I should have packed a longer USB cord.

Day 1 Freestyle Daily escape-day1.pdf

Around 2:20pm they announced that cabins were ready on a few decks, including ours. By the time we headed to the elevators, realized we were at the wrong end of the ship, backtracked, got impatient waiting for a non-full elevator and decided just to climb the stairs, they were announcing that all cabins were now ready. Got to our cabin and immediately collapsed on the bed for a nap. The husband likes his naps. While laying here (I don’t actually nap), there’s been one in-room PA announcement with a reminder to visit your muster station, and a couple of announcements out in the hall that I couldn’t quite catch but I did hear them saying code Alpha so I assume that was for crew. Our cabin is a typical NCL cabin, but we’ve got one of the angled balconies which is nice. If the sun comes back out at some point, I hope to spend some time out there…

We headed to the buffet for lunch, which was fairly busy but empty tables were available at the far aft section. I still prefer the buffet area on the Bliss and Encore; this one feels cramped and the layout isn’t intuitive. Just as we tucked into desserts, the husband realized that he left his carry-on shoulder bag in the Atrium so I scarfed down my bread pudding (really good) and we hustled back downstairs to find it. Success! It was still sitting right where he left it. After that excitement, we decided to head up to the thermal spa to ensure that our names were on the list (after the Vibe pass confusion early I was a little worried). But my worries were unfounded, and we got the check-in procedures spiel and went on a little DIY tour. I’m very excited about the double loungers, which I don’t recall from the Bliss or Encore. Rooms are expected to be ready around 3pm so we headed back down to Sugarcane on deck 8 and are happily sipping on mojitos and people-watching. Random observations: Haven’t heard anything yet about whether the tropical storm / hurricane will affect our sailing, as it has so many other ships and sailings. But it’s definitely getting rainier out already. I don’t think the sailaway pool party will be well attended. There’s some D&D event happening on board. If anyone knows the name of the organizing group, can you let me know?