Turtles06

Welcome to Cruise Critic! Since it sounds like you haven’t done an eastbound TA before, I just want to suggest that you not underestimate the effect that losing an hour a day for seven days during your crossing will have on you. Don’t overschedule yourself, especially in the morning. Have a great trip!

Thank you @princeton123211 and @Milhouse for taking the time to provide such helpful information. We’ll certainly have some good choices for our one dinner. Anyone have any suggestions for a good place for a poutine lunch? We stumbled across one in the Lower Town on our first visit and I really enjoyed it. (I can’t recall the name of the place; it was quite casual.) BeaverTails is on our “must have” list. 😊

Unless something has changed recently, what it gives you is your domestic plan internationally. So if your domestic planning plan is unlimited voice and data, that is what you will get in most countries outside the U.S. And the $10/day is limited to a $100 charge per billing cycle, which works especially well if you are going to be traveling for more than ten days.

A really good place to ask these questions is over in the Florida Departures forum.

We'll be overnighting in Quebec City this fall. Do folks have additional recommendations for a restaurant for dinner, or more thoughts about those that have been recommended? Thanks!

@RWK1952 Depending on the specific port, we do a mix of DIY days, private shorex, and cruise line shorex. Typically, if the destination is quite far from the port, and/or the next port is pretty hard to reach (e.g., the other side of the pond on a transatlantic), we would be more inclined to do a cruise line tour. The typical problem with cruise line tours is that you are generally on a big bus with about 50 of your new friends. And the quality of the guides varies. I think that private tour operators are less likely to keep a guide who is just not very good. It terms of picking private tour operators, of course it's critical to do advance research -- e.g., reading up on Trip Advisor and elsewhere, and reading up and asking questions here on CC in the specific port of call forums for your cruise. Some comments about several of the ports you will be visiting: Vigo, Spain -- we found the city itself not very interesting; I think the best thing to do here is to leave town and visit Santiago de Compostela, the old town of which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Cathedral is a centuries-old famous destination of Catholic pilgrims, who come on foot and by many other modes of transportation. (See the happy bicyclists in my photo below.) Probably a good opportunity for an NCL tour. Palma de Mallorca is do-able on your own -- take a shuttle (if one is running) or a cab into the heart of the city, and you can tour the magnificent Cathedral and surrounding area on your own schedule. In Le Havre, I would strongly recommend taking a private tour of the D-Day sites with the highly regarded Overlord Tours. They were fabulous (and if you head over to the France port of call forum you can get more feedback). They book up quickly. (Paris is a very long way from Le Havre.) I hope this was helpful. Enjoy your cruise!

Indeed (and as I know you know), my wife and I did these as B2B cruises in January/February 2023. The first cruise began in NY on the NCL Gem and ended in Fuerte Amador (having transited the Canal southbound). The second cruise began in Fuerte Amador, transited the Canal northbound, and wound up back in NY. It was a fabulous trip, a total of 23 days.

If you take a partial transit from the East Coast, you will have the option after going through the Gatun Locks on the Atlantic side of the Canal to take an excursion in a ferry-sized vessel that will go through the Pacific locks and a big part of the Canal that you would otherwise have missed. And then you'll rejoin your cruise ship back in Colon on the Atlantic side of the Canal. The best place to look into all of this is over in the Panama Canal Ports of Call forum.

I hadn't seen it either. It's a good move!

I absolutely agree with you. The open air museum is not to be missed.

Of course, you won't get "the best of Iceland" in a single day, but that tour will include some major highlights and it will be an interesting and good way to spend that day; it's what I would do if I were in port for just that day. (The South Coast tour from Reykjavik is awesome and stunningly beautiful, but I don't think you really have time for that.) Check these folks out for private tours: https://geoiceland.is/ https://sagatravel.is/ (read reviews here on CC as well as Trip Advisor. Pay attention to post-pandemic reviews, as these terrific companies I believe reorganized during/after the pandemic.)

That was the biggest plus for us. There hadn’t been anything listed before for Rockland, sold out or otherwise.

They are both Hilton properties, both under the Hilton Honors program. Just pick one hotel name or the other to book; the rooms and amenities are different (and, on quick glance, so are the prices). 🙂

I will just echo that the advice in comments 3 and 4 above is spot on.

Yes, that would be okay. And I do believe some cruise lines have itineraries like that, making for nice B2Bs.

I'm only just seeing this thread, and wanted to say that I hope your recovery goes well and that, with the help of PT, you are back to being 100% of where you were before your injury. As someone who also had to cancel a long-planned, expensive, land trip (Amsterdam) and cruise (Norwegian fjords) at the very last minute last summer because of a very serious and sudden medical problem, I can totally sympathize with what you are feeling. I spent the entire summer bedridden (talk about being bored!) and in great pain; my spouse had to do everything for me. I had complex and major surgery from which I am still rehabbing. I offer the following perspective. I am grateful (as I am sure you are too) for my loving spouse who has taken amazing care of me throughout this horrible ordeal. I am grateful for the medical care to which I have access, and for having health insurance that covers it. I am grateful that we had travel insurance (we always do) that reimbursed us for all of our non-refundable expenses, the biggest part of which was our five-figure cruise fare. Until I read this thread, it never even occurred to me that the cruise line should have given us loyalty points because they kept 100% of our cruise fare, given the last minute cancellation. I'm not even thinking about that now. I understand your perspective, and I am not posting to dispute it. I just wanted to give my perspective as to what I think is important in my own life, having had a devastating medical problem that also caused us to cancel a major cruise at the very last minute. Again, I wish you a full and speedy recovery, and happy travels in the future.

A little nit. Not the Jones Act, which applies to cargo, but the Passenger Vessel Services Act. 😊 To summarize—calling at a “distant foreign port” is required only when a non-U.S. flagged carrier is transporting passengers from one U.S. port to a different U.S.port. Any foreign port will do on a RT cruise out of a U.S. port. And the PVSA doesn’t apply at all if the cruise starts or ends outside the U.S.

The Cruise Planner for our fall New England/Canada cruise is showing flash sales on some shore excursions and specialty dining packages. So check your Cruise Planner, you never know what you might find. Good luck!

We sailed the Canada/NE route on the Summit out of Bayonne in 2019, up to Quebec City and back. It was a terrific cruise. I agree with those who wish Celebrity would resume those cruises out of Bayonne, rather than use Boston as the starting point. We are going to sail Canada/NE on the Eclipse out of Boston this fall, but it’s definitely less desirable. The cruise is shorter, for one thing, and doesn’t have that nice first sea day after embarkation that you get out of Bayonne. And of course you don’t have the beautiful sail away out of NY Harbor.

I think that’s a wise decision. Booking under noisy or potentially noisy public spaces is a crapshoot. Who wants to spend the pre-cruise time worrying about these things.

Hopefully not. It would be a bad precedent. I love Girl Scout cookies, but would hate to see the ships turned into a marketplace for guests hawking their wares.

Fool me once . . . 😂

We've stayed at that Embassy Suites a couple of times. It's nicer than the typical Embassy Suites because the rooms have exterior windows, they don't face onto an atrium/hallway. And, as you've learned, the hotel has a shuttle to the port. (We've always driven, so we've never used the shuttle.) Decent IHOP (or at least it was, pre-pandemic). Has that Ruby Tuesday actually re-opened? It was far and away one of the worst restaurants we've ever been to, and we even gave it a second try on a later trip -- same experience. Simply dreadful service and food.

Indeed! 😊 While you’re waiting, here are a couple of photos from the mirror image suite, 10500, on the Gem.

Yes, non-leading actors in musicals often have be able to perform several roles (or “tracks” as they say in the industry). Very interesting about the accents. On land in the U.S. and Canada, the Queens speak and sing in North American accents (which I find jarring for this show, though it’s still great). That was not the case several years ago on the Breakaway; the Queens had various U.K. accents. (And back then, I think the actors were not Americans.) When we saw SIX in London, of course the accents were U.K. As much fun as this show is, it was even more fun in London. (And SO much less expensive than theatre in the U.S.)