kitkat343

Cunard is an extremely small line. I will be forever grateful to them that they took my 2 year old in daycare so I was able to see Norway, and that they accepted my day dress as formalwear while I was chasing after small children and let me eat in the MDR and visit all areas of the ship. As an extremely small line, they are very easy to avoid if you don't want to deal with their dress code or elegant onboard environment (I sail primarily for itinerary and am chasing small kids so I barely noticed the environment but can completely understand if others would prefer a different line).

Thanks - this is all very helpful to know since we haven't booked yet. Weird they've changed the later cruises and not the 1/7 one, which is the one I was looking at.

The Cunard dress code applied all over the ship when we sailed. I had two small children, and they were very tolerant of my obviously day black dress and allowed me into the main dining room. There were people in formal evening gowns, even in the buffet (formalwear is not required in the buffet but they chose to dress up and eat there) so it is a question of how comfortable you might be when others are much more formally dressed. Cunard is one of the few lines that allowed 2 year olds to go in the drop off daycare program, so that's how we wound up there. Norway was amazing, so if you are primarily sailing for itinerary you will be happy.

My 4 year old daughter is obsessed with monkeys, so we pulled our 3 children out of school to take a NCL cruise last January. After final payment, NCL cancelled the port in the Dominican Republic and the morning of Antigua "to help the environment". They continued to advertise the original itinerary , and wouldn't let us or anyone (even people who booked directly with them after the cancellations and weren't notified) to switch to an identical itinerary a few weeks later. I've found a similar cruise on Anthem of the Seas (it goes to the DR and Antigua - that was the morning that was cut, which was a problem for us since the excursion we wanted to do to visit an island that is a giant tortoise habitat but it is only offered in the morning so we couldn't go) but our cruise is on Anthem of the Seas, scheduled to leave on January 7th. Am I correct in my understanding that RC cannot sail this ship's itineraries this fall, and if so does anyone know what the plan is to fix it? My husband barely wants to go on vacation with our kids to begin with, so I'll be in a lot of trouble if the itinerary on this cruise is screwed up also (RC at least has a legitimate reason for changing these itineraries but that isn't going to make him or the kids happy). This is the forum on NCL's itinerary changes:

Geiranger has a sea walk, which means that one ship can avoid the tender, and the other ships tender. I'm a little confused by your last post - are you comparing these itineraries to the original one? Do you lose Geiranger, or was that always just a sail-bye? I've not been to Alesund, but it is much beloved on this forum.

That was actually the reason for our delay for getting off the ship in Geiranger on Cunard. Cunard wouldn't let us carry our two year old across the step test. After the people running the step test refused to issue a tender ticket, we went to the front desk and after a long debate they finally issued a ticket, but by the time we finally were able to use it it the crowds had died down and no one even checked that we had it. And then when we went to exit the ship, the Cunard crew did exactly what the Princess crew did - they picked up our 2 year old and handed him over to the sailers on the tender. I later wrote to Cunard which confirmed a parent should be able to take the step test carrying a 2 year old. So you might want to write to P&O to confirm their policy ahead of time, so you aren't delayed leaving the ship (if we'd had a group tour we might have had even more problems).

Hi we actually did a 7 day on Cunard with a. 2 and 6 year old. It was an amazing cruise, and Geiranger and Olden were two of our favorite ports. You are traveling in July so you should be able to reach the Geiranger Skywalk (we were there in late may and just missed the opening of the seasonal road.). We visited the rest of the scenic viewpoints in Geiranger, and it was very beautiful and enjoyable for both our kids. We had booked a private tour for just our family, which didn't work out as well as I had hoped, but we just happened to not get lucky with our driver (the ship delayed us from tendering on time, and although I called the company to notify them of the delay the driver was upset about having to wait and later lied about not being able to take us to one location we requested that the company had told us by email would be fine to visit). The company, Geiranger Fjordservice, has excellent reviews overall, so I'm sure you would enjoy one of their panoramic bus tours or if you hire a private driver you might get luckier than we did. You might want to bring some pills for motion because there is a lot of driving up winding roads. At the end of the tour, we decided to stop for lunch in Geiranger. We were a little scared to stop at Braserie Posten, since it is in a tourist trap location right near the cruise ship terminal, but the yelp reviews were positive and the food was excellent. There is seating with a beautiful view of the harbor in the back of the restaurant. We went through two bowls of fish soup, since the kids were so happy eating all of it. It is a very short walk from this restaurant to the dock, so this is a nice way to conclude your day in Geiranger. We were extremely fortunate to learn that the Loen Skylift opened three days prior to our arrival in Olden. I was a bit anxious about the logistics of visiting a brand new attraction with small children, and the owner of Olden Adventures was very patient and reassuring about the logistics of reaching the skylift. As it turned out, the weather was a bit rainy on the day we arrived, so there were very few crowds. It was still a very beautiful location, with a gorgeous viewing platform. On nice days, paragliders take off from the mountain (that happened the day before we arrived) and that must be spectacular to see if you are lucky enough to get good weather. The food in the restaurant was excellent, especially the sample platter of local meat. It’s unsurprisingly expensive, but the view is outstanding and the food delicious. You can see the view through the beautiful restaurant windows, plus there are beautiful platforms and places to walk around on top of the mountain. IT was very accessible for a 2 year old. The Loen Skylift is only a 6 km bus ride from Olden, so it isn’t very difficult to get there. Olden Adventures ( http://www.oldenadventure.com/ ) is running shuttles to the Loen Skylift, right next to their buses to the Biksdal Glacier so it would be very easy to travel to both attractions through Olden Adventures. The Briksdal Glacier has been hit hard by global warming, but the 40 minute bus ride there is quite scenic and lovely, as is the hike itself to the glacier so overall this excursion is a very good choice as long as you realize ahead of time that the most beautiful pictures online of the glacier showing lots of ice are not recent and don’t represent what you will see at the glacier. For travelers with young children or mobility issues, there are troll cars available for rent to reduce the length of your hike. These golf carts travel most of the way to the glacier, leaving you with a very pleasant and relatively flat 700 m walk. Since we didn’t expect my 2 year old to make it all the way to the glacier, my husband and 6 year old went ahead of us. To my surprise, my 2 year old slowly but steadily made the entire hike in the allocated time (they tell you what time to return to the platform to catch your return troll car. You might want to be smarter than me and ask them if it is possible to schedule more time for the short hike so you aren't racing back to the troll car. Or you can see if you can use a stroller or babywear- my stroller was hard for me to push but if you are stronger that might be an option for you. It's over unpaved ground so I personally had a hard time pushing the stroller but more fit families might have absolutely no problem with this). Reservations are required for troll cars in May and October, and recommended during the summer months (the troll car season runs from May-October). The only challenging thing is that they do request that you tell them what time you’d like to ride on the troll car, which is hard if you want to chose a time to do this excursion based upon the weather forecast (although it is completely understandable they ask you to pick a time, since otherwise there might be a lot of people trying to get on a troll car at one time and this would cause really long delays). I don’t know if the troll car operators are always flexible about the time of your reservation, but we changed our minds about what time to visit the glacier on the day we traveled since we wanted to visit the Loen skylift in the afternoon when the weather was scheduled to be better. I emailed the troll car operators at 9 am as soon as we got on the bus towards the glacier, and they had already switched my reservation by the time we arrived at the troll car office. We traveled in May, when things are less crowded so I don’t know if they will be able to accommodate a change in reservation time during the busy summer months. The troll car website where you can make your advance reservation is available at: http://www.oldedalenskysslag.com . or I believe Olden Adventures may now be able to make troll car reservations for you directly. Near where you pick up the troll car is a small café off the souvenir shop; they have excellent waffles. They are best freshly made, so if you have time keep an eye on the plate where they store the waffles and order them when everyone else bought up the older waffles. My family started off by ordering 4, and ended up eating 12 (the kids really loved them and since they’d just finished hiking to a glacier without a single complaint I wasn’t going to say no), so we were able to get a lot of fresh waffles. Stavanger - the highlight is Pulpit Rock, but that wasn't an option for our family because we couldn't baby wear on a hike. You might be able to and can consider it. We visited the petroleum museum, which was fine but not outstanding, and took a cruise with Rodne, which was good. Just one thing to note - Norway doesn't allow taxis to transport children without car seats, so please be mindful of that when trying to arrange tours. We sailed from Southampton, and flew into London. In London, when it would get rainy and the kids were tired and hungry we could just hop in a cab, take them for food and cheer them back up (once in London it started to rain and I hailed a cab to travel such a short distance the driver told me "um..I don't want to rip you off. You can walk there" and I explained I knew we were taking a crazy short ride, but my 2 year old was done walking and we just needed to get him some pizza before he melted down. You cannot take a cab in Norway without car seats, and most locations are too small to have much public transportation (we also took a Baltic cruise with a 3 year old and didn't have any transportation issues there) . So that part was frustrating because we didn't know about it and didn't plan in advance. Taxi companies are required to provide car seats if you book them in advance, so please just make sure you have backup transportation planned. As a general rule, private tours are best for families of young children but its a little hard to predict whether or not it will be worth it in Norway - on a cloudy day it would be hard to appreciate the beautiful scenic viewpoints in Geiranger (we really couldn't see much in Bergen due to very poor weather) but on a clear day a private tour or a visit to the expensive Loen Skylit is absolutely worth it, but its hard to know ahead of time. Hopefully you will get some clear weather but it's a bit of a risk.

Please note that the Intrepid is right next to Manhattan's port, so that would be an easy excursion to DIY for a little time (check with them to see if they can hold your luggage or have any ideas - you can't be the first people to visit there after a cruise). Gotham Market is also really close, so you might just want to go to a good food hall. The museum of natural history is also on the west side of Manhattan, so if traffic is light (obviously a big if) that's a 10 minute cab (they used to have a cloakroom but you'd need to check to see if they can store luggage). If you are doing car service, you'd pass the Empire State Building on the way from the intrepid to JFK, so maybe see if your driver could wait for you while you stop there. Or see if there's anything else you want to do close to the route from the port to JFK and make one stop. The Queens Chinatown in Flushing is very authentic (although I've never combined it with the airport and don't know if its exactly on the way from Manhattan).

We really liked our RC cruise last year, and had a very bad experience on NCL where they cancelled one port and the morning of another to help the environment after final payment. NCL continued to advertise the original itinerary, and people who called NCL to book directly even after the changes were not notified by the phone reps nor were they allowed to cancel. This seems to be an ongoing issue with NCL: I'm reading confusing things about RC about Nassau/Orlando being dropped everywhere and people saying RC is doing this all over the place. Is that only happening on Antham as a result of the propeller issues (which sucks but I know this is what all cruise lines do when a ship has mechanical issues) or is this a fleetwide issue? We are trying to avoid NCL in the future and needed to know if this is also a general RC problem or is this just one ship?

Geiranger and Flam, along with Olden (not affected) were my three favorite ports on my 7 day cruise. I'd highly recommend a cruise that does those three if you can find one that works for your family before it is no longer an option.

If it truly costs nothing more to put your grandchild in the suite (check daily gratuity fees too, which are often higher in a suite) then I'd recommend putting them there, since there are often suite perks like additional loyalty points and priority disembarkation that your grandchild can take advantage of. They can switch the room key cards on the ship if they will spend most of their time in the parents' room, but its better to get the extra loyalty points if you can.

It's a gigantic hurricane. All reasonable passengers would understand the need to adjust the itinerary; all NCL needed to do was send an email (which they are quite capable of doing when it comes to viewing the safety drill) explaining the situation when they cancelled the stop in Bar Harbor. Instead, NCL has created a bunch of frustrated an angry customers because they find out about this on cruise critic.

I also believe you should have time for both in Flam, but it would be best to email the private tour operators that run these tours to get their opinion so you know how much time you'll have. We did the railway in the morning, and had time for another full tour in the afternoon (we visited a charming village and went to goat farms and ate a local meal with our kids). Geirangerfjordservice runs the panoramic buses that go to the major highlights. In Flam you can contact whoever is running the cruise and ask them about the timing for the railway because I'm sure lots of people combine the two. You just want to ensure you have enough time to get to the train station without being rushed (it's an incredibly close walk, but you want to get there. a little early so you get good seats on the railway.)

Sorry - it is quite possible you won't find out until you are at the pier. That's not NCL's fault - they need maximum flexibility to see if it is possible to give you as close to a cruise as you originally booked. But with the hurricane, people need to be flexible and bring a lot of different clothing (some people booked Bermuda cruises or Bahamas cruises that went to New England/canada instead that they found out about on the pier. ). Join your roll call - one port and the morning of another was cancelled on my last NCL cruise and only half the passengers received the email notification so they found out on our cruise critic roll call (there was massive confusion because calling the NCL call center they were told the original itinerary was still in place so there were lots of pointless debates on our roll call about where we were going) so the roll call is your best shot since if anyone gets an official notification they will post there. Good luck.

um..the call centers are generally not the strongest aspect of any of the cruise lines, NCL included. Occasionally you will find a good employee but generally you want to double check everything they tell you with the website or on CC (that's not a slam of NCL, it's advice we give for all the cruise lines). A few threads above you is a pretty typical example of they kind of miscommunication that happens when you rely on the phone operators:

only if you want Paxlovid and didn't bring it on the ship with you. The OP mentioned she is 60; she may have felt it was necessary for her since she noted wanting to bring it herself next time. Also, you'd need to pay for room service if you don't have covid, so that might be a factor for some people, but it will be outweighed by the significant expected cost of the medical visit (unless you have insurance, which you can't use without a doctor documenting you have covid). I do agree she could have easily self isolated and simply told rher steward to just leave towels outside her room and not service the room. IF you aren't in a balcony room, perhaps they would move you to one if it is empty if you are stuck in quarantine. But I do agree that self-isolating and masking upon disembarkation seems like a reasonable choice for most people with mild symptoms.

You mentioned having trip insurance. Since you went to medical and have documentation of your positive covid case, and your airport transfer was cancelled due to covid I wonder if insurance will cover the cost of your new transfer (especially the increase in price in going from a ship transfer to a cab) and the cost of the hotel. It's probably worth trying to submit a claim. So sorry you got sick and hope you are doing better now.

This reminded me of a tour I took years ago. I was on a cruise to Guatemala, and the government of Guatemala charges very high taxes and fees to cruise ships, so there are very few cruise ships that stop there even though it is incredibly beautiful. I was looking for a private tour since we had a 3 year old, and found Go with Gus. Normally I would have completely discounted them due to this review: but since there were so few options, we decided to take the chance (we booked a private tour for just our family so I knew they would return to the ship whenever I requested and that I could keep a close eye on the time). According to that review, the captain of the HAL ships' wife and children took a tour with Go With Gus, and the operator returned their tour group back after sailaway time and the captain apparently announced to the entire ship he would wait for a little while for his wife and children but eventually they would need to leave. Thankfully, we had a wonderful tour and were returned exactly when we requested but I always wondered what that poor captain would have done if his wife and children had returned much later! We were on a HAL ship, so we could have left our son behind in the kids club but would never have chanced it on that excursion!

I sailed NCL on a Baltic cruise when my youngest was 3, which was 10 years ago. Back then the kids clubs were open during port days and parents could leave the children behind. This was our backup plan for our Baltic cruise, since we weren't sure how our 3 year old would handle St. Petersburg. Thankfully, he loved it and we've never needed to leave a child behind in the kids club. But the kids clubs were quite full when we returned to the ship and dropped him off. Unfortunately, currently the NCL website states that each ship sets its own kids club hours so hours are not currently guaranteed. I have no idea if the kids club will be reopened during port hours by next summer (the kids club was closed for port days last January when we sailed on NCL). I've taken a 2 year old to the Panama Canal, a 3 year old to the Baltics, and a 2 and 7 year old to Norway, and my greatest recommendation for traveling with kids is to book independent excursions so you can control the itinerary. But with NCL you need to be especially careful about checking those providers cancellation policies because NCL has sometimes changed itineraries after final payment. On our cruise they cancelled one port and the morning of another to help the environment, continued to advertise the original itinerary and didn't notify customers who booked directly with them after the cancellation of the changes. Those customers who booked after the cancellations directly with NCL consultants over the phone and weren't notified of the changes weren't allowed to cancel or reschedule. Since you are traveling with small kids, it is extremely important that you research each port carefully to identify tours of what your children might like. On NCL, that also includes researching the backup ports in case they change your itinerary - on my cruise they'd had lots of problems with the DR, so I also had to research Nassau and GSK so I was prepared in case they didn't make the changes until after we sailed (they did give us a month's notice, with a sea day instead of a replacement port but Nassau and GSK were sometimes the backup port for the DR last year) . Your best bet to see if they are likely to keep your itinerary or if there is anything else you should research is to go to the most recent reviews of your ship on cruise critic and see if that ship has been able to make its itinerary recently and if not where the ship tends to go instead. Start at the most recent review and then scan backwards through the previous reviews (this is the star but you should be able to easily search for the ship you are booked for). https://www.cruisecritic.com/memberreviews/memberreview.cfm?EntryID=704939 Also, I have no idea if this is possible but both the Baltics and Norway are wonderful cruises with small children; I'd check to see if you can switch to one of those cruises for your family without incurring a huge penalty. They wouldn't let us switch our cruise (we pulled 3 kids out of school for the itinerary and wanted to switch to the same cruise a few weeks later), but maybe you'd get lucky with your NCL rep if you can find an alternative cruise that works for your family.

We had a bit of an issue in Antigua so we weren't actually able to complete our plan for our kids. NCL cancelled the port in the DR and the morning in Antigua after final payment to help the environment and wouldn't let us switch to an identical sailing a few weeks later so I can't personally vouch for Antigua. But what we planned to do was visit the giant tortoises at Laiscount Island. But the tours to Laiscount Island only run in the mornings, and I'm not sure they run every day so please email them to check availability before factoring that into your decision. http://www.stingraycityantigua.com/contact.html. . Stingray city does a nice job of letting you visit the stingrays. Unfortunately, our port day was cut in half by NCL so we didn't get to do the other things we'd planned (the toirteses and Devil's Bridge). In St. Kitts we visited a nice rainforest, and the outside of a sugar plantation (very photogenic) and people are there with baby monkeys you can hold for pictures. We then visited a monkey beach, which isn't the most scenic beach but has monkeys that visit most afternoons and an excellent restaurant. My 4 year old is obsessed with monkeys and told the TSA officer who stopped her at the end of the cruise that her name was monkey and we had booked this cruise because our cancelled stop in the DR would let us get to a monkey reserve, so we were very grateful to have any monkey experience in St. Kitts. Given the fact that we weren't able to complete our itinerary (and had rearranged our plans for St. Kitts to prioritize monkeys, which normally isn't necessarily the best choice) I'm not sure I can yet advise you as to which port to choose, but felt this post might help you to get a sense of some of your options. Best of luck to you.

Geiranger, Olden and Flam were my favorite ports in Norway.

Glad it all worked out. Have fun in Atlantic City. Give her some time and maybe eventually she'll be ready to vacation with you. But if you aren't comfortable with the sacrifices dating a single mom entails, you might want to break up with her now. Or stay with her but be more flexible in the future. Good luck whatever you choose and happy birthday.

I agree that's a flaw, but I think you might be able to print out a copy of all the excursions now so you have a copy of the options and then call the cruise line to ask hem to check and see what the availability is. I'm not sure because I almost always book independent excursions, but I think that might be a good plan since I know cruise ship excursions sell out and you can cancel within 48 hours.

Look honestly as a parent I need to tell you that at 4.5 months you are normally barely ready to introduce a new boyfriend to your kid, let alone take them on a cruise. I love cruises, but it's too much to combine one with a new relationship and a kid. The mom isn't wrong for not going. But that doesn't mean you have to break up with her - it just means you go alone (like you did last year) or with a friend/family member and continue to slowly move your relationship forward. You shouldn't cancel your trip or break up with her unless you actually want to break up with her. She's being a good parent here by not putting too much pressure on her kid by taking them on a cruise with a new boyfriend. And if you can't handle that, then I guess you should break up with her because it isn't easy to date a single mom. If she really loves you, she'll want you to go alone by yourself and have a good time. I hope everything works out however it needs to and have a great birthday.

As a general rule, we've found the mainstream lines to be more similar than different. Having sailed HAL twice in my 30s, it was a very solid line that is similar to other lines and if you were happy there, you will be happy on the other lines, especially Princess that has a more relaxed feel to it. We found Princess to be the most similar to HAL but with a younger crowd. RC is also very good, and we were happy on Cunard, but we felt a bit out of place there like we did on HAL due to age. The one thing to be careful about is that NCL seems to have issues with changing itineraries. On my cruise last January on the Getaway, one port and the morning of another was cancelled after final payment to help the environment. When I called NCL to ask them to let me reschedule to an identical sailing a few weeks later because I was. pulling 3 kids out of school for the ports, they refused because they cancelled the ports after final payment. NCL continued to advertise the original itinerary for the next month, and didn't notify new passengers who booked with them them directly over the phone of the cancellations, nor did they let them cancel or reschedule. I'd recommend checking the passenger reviews on this year's sailings for the ship/itinerary you are looking at next summer to see if they've been able to make their itineraries. You can start with their most recent review of the ship you are thinking about sailing and go backwards to see what recent sailings have been like. This is the star but you you can easily find the dawn too. https://www.cruisecritic.com/memberreviews/memberreview.cfm?EntryID=704939 Please check the cancellation policies of any private tours you schedule prior to booking.