DCGuy64

I could be a smarty pants and ask you to Google it, but there's a thread in this forum already that I'll find and post here. It is very much true. And my wife and I just paid for our 5-figure cruise for April 2023 to Japan, so I *do* have skin in the game. 😉

What I would say is that society changes. Whether the changes are good or bad is very much in the eye of the beholder. Change doesn't = improvement. Some things you mentioned above I would agree are better than they used to be. But other things you haven't mentioned, aren't. For example, now that marijuana has been legalized, you can't walk down the street in DC or NYC (where my wife and I spent last weekend after our cruise) without smelling weed EVERYWHERE. Even my wife, who is the most non-judgemental person I know, couldn't stop complaining about it. I think people are ruder and snarkier online than they ever were before the internet and social media. So no, I don't agree that we're in a better era, just a different one. But you may have a different POV and that's fine.

Japan is open to cruisers now.

Yeah, I only brought one suit with me and two ties and dress shirts, my wife just the one dress. We didn't get gussied up every night, but I always wore trousers and a collared shirt with closed toe shoes. Doesn't seem like much of an effort, even on vacation. That's how I dress most of the time, anyway.

I honestly found myself not wanting to drink as much this cruise, that's all. I drank almost no wine and stuck to cocktails, water, and soft drinks. I've written about this before, but paying for an upgraded beverage package was just an enticement to overdo it and I was sick of being sick. I got everything I wanted without paying anything extra (except for a couple of things), and I'm fine with that.

I thought you had to wait until 120 days, if it's 121 then you should be OK by tomorrow. I think you'll like the ship, we certainly did.

Just came back Sunday from our trip, sailed the Epic from Dec 7 to 16. I'm glad I didn't opt for the Premium + package. It would have been a huge waste of money. I actually ended up drinking very lightly apart from one day. Everything I ordered was covered under the regular UBP, apart from a glass of Veuve Clicquot and a Chandon. I paid an extra $20 for the Veuve and $5 for the Chandon. So I was out $25 + tax vs an extra $20 pppd for the upgrade. Oh and I did get a Starbucks espresso one day, so that was another $2. I saved a lot by not upgrading and I'm glad I didn't. YMMV, as always.

There's a good post about this from a couple of weeks ago. Didn't end well for the OP. I'll see if I can find it. The gist of it is that NCL will fly you to the first available port, but that might not be the very next day (in the case of the thread I mentioned, the first day was a sea day, so he would have had to miss not 1, but 2 days of the cruise).

I think this is why @SeaSharkhas been on your case. You appear to believe in a "live and let live" approach when it comes to cruise attire, but comments like the one I just posted indicate that you VERY MUCH have an opinion about dress codes. You see them as linked to an "older, darker time." It would appear that, inasmuch as you claim not to care what others wear, you in fact are dressing as casually as possible in order to "stick it to" the rulemakers. That belies a different intent than the "live and let live" attitude you espouse. Confusing, to say the least.

That depends on your definition of "better."

Good for you. Isn't it nice that we can have different views and still get along?

For some reason, I find this topic fascinating and irresistible. So here's my take: People who say "HEY, IT'S MY VACATION, I PAID A LOT OF MONEY AND I SHOULD BE ABLE TO DO WHATEVER I WANT." That sounds like nothing so much as a bratty 5 year old pouting, with arms crossed saying "I DON'T WANNA GO TO SCHOOL!" Surely we are all adults on this forum and surely we should understand that EVEN BEING ON VACATION doesn't mean "it's all about me." I have witnessed firsthand, or seen others write about it here: 1. People loudly farting at dinner 2. Women wearing thong bikinis in the dining room (or attempting to) 3. People clipping their toenails at adjacent loungers right by the pool (eewww!) 4. Someone grabbing the last 5 pieces of bacon right in front of me 5. Thermal spa running out of robes because people take the ones in the dressing room and walk back to their cabins with them on. 6. People leaving their things on loungers and never coming back for them You get the idea. It's always easy to say "well it's freestyle, people should just be able to do/wear whatever they want." Trouble is, "whatever they want" means ANYTHING GOES, no matter how gross or tacky or entitled, selfish or rude. And whether or not you have to wear a "penguin suit," as you call it (Do you really have to wear a tuxedo all the time? Because that's what a penguin suit is, given that it's a black and white outfit.), there are standards of behavior that cruise lines can and do enforce. And I'm fine with them. Be careful what you wish for, because your definition of crossing the line may be VERY different from others'.

True story: the last night of our recent cruise (NCL Epic Dec 7-16), we ate dinner in Le Bistro and my wife and I got all fancied up (suit and tie for me, glamourous dress for her). A gentleman at a nearby table paused before leaving and said "It's nice to see people making the effort to dress up." I'm not gonna lie, I felt a bit proud of myself.

Thanks, I credit you for having alerted them to things which they addressed in the meantime. 😀

We returned to the US on Friday and spent the weekend in NYC, came home last night. The ship was in fine shape, as far as we were concerned. We had a mini suite and there wasn't much to complain about. One of the vanity drawers had a cover (I forget what the correct furniture term is, maybe faceplate) that came off but was fixed. And our balcony door handle was loose. But everything worked fine and we had more storage space than we knew what to do with. Saw very little evidence of rust and the shop was pretty much spotless.

You and I agree on a great deal, including this. Sometimes, users of a particular forum develop the sense that they represent the vast majority of people who own a particular product or use a particular service. I have seen this a lot on social media. The vast majority of people I have talked with on cruises have never even heard of Cruise Critic, therefore even if it's true that there's some sort of consensus over NCL Air on here, that applies to only the tiny fraction of all people who cruise. I suspect if I conducted a poll on board about people's satisfaction with this service, the results would be eye-opening.

This one seems legit: https://www.laguiole-imports.com/

LOL, talk to the mods, they axed the DM's some time ago. Probably for obvious reasons!

You are SO right about that. (Like every time I hear people say education and health care are "free" in Europe). No such thing. But I digress... That said, I was just looking at the difference in price on our cruise for a sail away balcony vs a balcony with FAS. The cabin price was only $99 different but the beverage package, if purchased onboard, would wipe those savings out in a hurry. I still think you save, but you are absolutely correct that "free" doesn't exist.

That's what YOU think! I hear @Sthrngary is going to restart this thread once he comes back from his cruise. And I'll be reporting about my exploits come next week when I'm on the Epic. 🤣😂 But yeah, maybe we can cool it on the bickering-for now. 😉🤐

LOL

No, I don't have to do anything. I'm kinda tired of dealing with you. So this is goodbye. My wife and I are flying this afternoon and I have more important things to do now. Take care.

We used NCL air last year and once we got our tickets, we DID "own" the reservation. From that point forward, we worked with American and had no problems. To the OP: My understanding is that if you're late and miss embarkation, NCL will pay to fly you to the first port of call. (In the example cited above, there were 2 days at sea first, so the author of that post would have had to wait 3 days to get there.)

Following, since we're on this very cruise next week.

Sorry, don't have time to look that up, but I think if you re-read some of your posts from yesterday, you'll see what I mean. 😉 (Hint: something about "what is the line between not really wrong and wrong, you must answer this, etc"...)