mkkao924

555 Steak is really good.

Our port stops are LA -> 2 sea days -> PV -> Mazatlan -> Cabo San Lucas -> Sea Day -> LA

We will be on Panorama to Mexico in March 2023. I am wondering if the ship time zone matches the local time on port day, especially at Puerto Vallarta? I asked the same question in Mexico board as well, and it seems that Carnival may or may not follow local time. Our current port time for Puerto Vallarta is 9am to 9pm (based on Carnival website, not sure if it’s local time), and our excursion is 11am at Adventuras Park, roughly a 15 minutes Uber ride. Should I try to reschedule it to a later time?

Thank you both!

We will be on Carnival Panorama March next year, and we will visit Cabo San Lucas, Puerto Vallarta, and Mazatlan. I am wondering if the ship time matches the local time? For example, our Puerto Vallarta port day is 9am to 9pm, and we have our excursion booked at 11am at Aquaventuras Park. Will we have enough time to get there? Looks like it will take 15 minutes or so for Uber to go from cruise port (I understand we need to walk out of the terminal to take Uber) to the park. How about Cabo San Lucas? I know Cabo will be a tender port so we need to reserve more time.

I think I ordered twice e-card in the past. Trying to get it this time and it's physical card only. In general how often do they replenish the e-card inventory? Or I should just try my luck to check everyday?

There is hope!

Just won $15 Target e-gift card via the scratch game. Probably the most I have ever won...

If the cruise is cancelled, will the cruise cash be refunded? What’s if we cancel it? I am thinking booking a specialty restaurant to secure discount then cancel it and refund to a gift card / cruise cash later on, will that work?

Thank you! I will for sure read your post. For whale watching, we took Alaska cruise this past summer and did the whale watching. We were fortunate to see a pod of humpbacks (7+) doing bubble net feeding. That's some experience...

How to book massage there? Is there a website or phone number?

Our cruise next March will stop at Cabo, PV, and Mazatlan, and I am trying to pick at least one port that has unique local feel (so Cabo is pretty much out I guess) that we can walk around. Any suggestions? We have two kids, 11 and 6, and what we want to do includes - Beach day for one port (Looking at Cabo/Medano Beach, PV/Stone Island, or other?) - Resort day pass for one port (no clues right now) - Local walk / tour - Spa if it fits the schedule - [optional] Dolphin excursion in PV, because they also have a water park there. Question: can we plan to stay there the entire day or we will get bored quickly?

Thank you! Based on your comment, I realize it's user mistake from my end. I have two very similar email address and I use the secondary one for Allstate reward (because I screwed up when I register the reward account, and Allstate reward does not allow me to change the email address)...

Is it really only taking minutes to get the e-gift card? I placed an order an hour ago and still no emails...

Planning Like I mentioned earlier, this trip was designed to fill the one week gap between kids' summer school and fall semester, and I really wanted to see Glacier Bay (we stopped at Tracy Arm last time), and that left us only a handful of options. Knowing Encore is still pretty new, this itinerary became our final choice, and I am also excited to try NCL out for the first time. At the time when we booked the cruise, the price between balcony and club balcony was minimal, so we opted for the club balcony for its larger bathroom. We chose the sail away (category MA) tier, but eventually was assigned deck 10 mid-ship (category M4). We also bid on upgrade for Haven AFT, but it seemed that all Haven suites were sold out before sail, so we didn't get it. Got denial email early morning on the day of the sail. We also booked two excursions: - Harv and Marv Whale Watching in Juneau - Chikoot Charters for bus tour in Skagway (the port was eventually cancelled due to landslide, more on that later) We chose to use eMed to do our rapid covid test, and I strongly suggest you to do it on mobile phone. Originally I did it on my computer, and my webcam cannot tilt down enough for the proctor to see the covid test lying on the table (my desk is not big enough to do that anyway), so three advice if you want to use eMed or any other proctored covid test, 1) find a big flat surface, 2) use your mobile phone to do the test, and 3) have a cell phone holder or something heavy and provide support to hold cell phone at certain angle so the front camera can see both the table top right in front of you and yourself. It's a lengthy process, more like 20 minutes per person, so for 4 of us, it took us more than an hour to complete everything, but we got it done. Now we are ready to sail!

We just got back from Encore, and I would like to give my perspective about our vacation. A little bit about us. We are family of 4, with two kids DD (10) and DS (5) from Southern California. The timing of this cruise fits perfectly to our schedule since this is the week that we don't have summer school / day care before fall semester starts, so the kids don't need to skip school, and we don't need to find nanny to watch them. Wife and I have been to Alaska once over 10 years ago, and this is the first time for the kids. This is our first NCL cruise, but we have been on other lines before. Our plan was to arrive Seattle the day before (Saturday 8/6/2022, Day 0), and fly back to SoCal the day of the debarkation (Sunday 8/14/2022, Day 8). Overall, I consider ourselves extremely lucky. Up until days before our departure, the weather forecasts show "Showers" for all Alaskan port we stop. We ended up getting zero drop of rain. On the contrary, we got plenty of sun instead. Also the for the entire cruise, the sea was extremely calm. I remember our previous Alaska cruise I had to pop in motion sickness pill on the last day of the cruise due to rough sea, but not this time.

We just came back to Seattle today, and would like to provide some of our experience. We had a full day there, from 8am to 11pm (the original Skagway schedule), but we didn’t book anything. We have a young kid in the group so zip line is not really an option. The mini donut shop is still open, we did not try it. The tribal dance has two shows (free), 3:30pm and 5:30 pm. We ordered a Dungeness crab to try it out, it was good, but we liked Tracy’s (king crab) better. It is truly a beautiful and peaceful place.

Our cruise (Encore departing today) also switched from Skagway to Icy Straight. If we are already doing whale watching in Juneau, what else should we do in Icy Straight? Given the short notice, not sure what our options are…

I am trying to fill out the ArriveCAN information, and if we plan to enter Canadian border in Skagway, and our official entry port is Victoria (Seattle RT). In this case, should I use Skagway or Victoria as port of entry? I don't even think Skagway is one of the options.

Sorry if this question has been asked many times. I tried to search but didn’t find exact answer. if my cruise is Friday 5pm embarkation, when is the earliest time I can do the test? NCL website says 2 days before for Antigen test and 3 days before for PCR. Does that mean I can only do Antigen test after Wednesday 5pm? Or anytime on Wednesday is acceptable?

I beg to differ. The scenario you describe is for business to provide FREE WIFI. When people like OP is being charged for $500, he has every right to expect a premium service, like the package name suggests. If airline WiFi goes down, they refund. Why can't cruise line do that? I remember one time I was on JetBlue flight, the FREE WiFi went down. Even though it was a short flight and I didn't even use the internet, JetBlue offer all passengers travel voucher as compensation.

I am still a little bit confused about the port arrival time. The boarding time is 12pm, so if your port arrive time is 9:30, do you just wait in terminal building until 12?

Thanks for the explanation! I just got AirTag last month and will use it to track luggage for our upcoming cruise. I guess I will use the old fashioned kids backpack with leash then (kidding!)

I know Apple does not recommend to use AirTag to track kids, and I don't intend to rely on using this solely to track kids, but I am wondering if this even works onboard (at sea) as supplemental method of tracking? For example, when they are in kids club, I might be able to use it to track if they still stay in kids club or they ran out.

Oh that's nice to know that I can use the app. Question though, if I don't have WiFi service, will I still be able to use the app? I imagine they won't offer free WiFi like Starbucks on land, right? 😄