chloe173

DH and I (39 and 41, no kids) are looking at booking the 2nd sailing of the Disney Treasure. I assume it will likely be a sold out ship, given the ship's newness and that it's over the holidays. We have never sailed DCL before, and will not be in a Concierge room if we do book. Would I have any shot at being able to get into Enchante and/or Haunted Mansion Bar as a party of 2 with no status? If it's unlikely, we're probably better off waiting a while for the popularity to die down...

Thanks for the tip! We did Celebrity Solstice to Alaska and liked it, but that was such a port/scenery intensive itinerary any line that got us to each stop on time probably would have been just fine 🙂

Yeah, sounds like we have a fairly similar view on it then. It's funny to me that I've got folks mad at me for stating anything at all negative, when the first 10 lines of my original post were all the good things that we liked. What is it you like better about Princess? I've never tried them.

You would think that, but surprisingly it only seemed to affect people at the very front. I guess maybe because that's where the coast guard ship docked alongside us? Since there are a lot of Haven cabins that are forwards, it was a very hot topic of conversation in the Haven bar the day after it happened — everyone sharing their "story of survival", lol. But others who we talked to, particularly those who were in the rear of the ship, said they were only awakened by the 2:30am in-cabin "stretcher team" announcement, but then were able to get back to sleep.

Just off Bliss in a Forward Facing Haven Balcony on 11 on Saturday. My review is floating around here if you want more details, but after that experience and it being a very full ship, we regret not having stayed in the Haven complex proper. Would have made several things easier, e.g.: Disembarkation (don't have to fight with the masses for an elevator to get your luggage up to the Haven in order to get priority disembark) Port Priority (same as above, without the challenge of hauling luggage) Easier to take advantage of pool/hot tubs/sun deck (not having to walk across the ship in your wet swimsuit when you're done) More access to your Butler (our butler on 11 said she had 10 rooms across 5 decks, which i assume means she has all the Haven forward suites that aren't on 17/18. She was constantly having to run between rooms and the Haven to service her guests. If you value Butler services, stay in the Haven proper.)

Omg, not sure I'd be brave enough for that move in a full elevator, lol. We got enough dirty looks for being escorted ahead of folks trying to get off in ports!

Oh, that's another fun issue from our sailing I forgot to even mention, lol. There was a fire in the Local one night. You can likely find the video going around about it if you search on that other site CC won't let us mention. Smoke pouring out of the kitchen, alarm going off for like 30 minutes. Yikes.

The challenge with that on this particular ship was really mostly around the elevators making it difficult to get anywhere. There isn't an elevator bank for guests in the front of the ship, just the ones at the mid and back, and so all the elevators were crammed all the time, and that made it difficult to get to the Haven to take advantage of our perks. So, for example, because we were Haven we could get priority walk-off disembarkation. But we had to get ourselves and our luggage up to the Haven to take advantage, and with the mid-ship elevators totally jam packed for disembarkation day, it took close to 20 minutes just to get an elevator to get us to the Haven. I suppose we could have lugged our bags up the 6 flights of stairs to get there that way, but that wasn't super appealing first thing in the morning either, lol.

I think that's exactly right, and it boils down to lack of experience. One of our favorite crew members this trip was Yuliya in the Cellars Wine Bar. She told us it was her 15th contract, she had met her husband on ships, etc. And she told us that a LOT of the more experienced folks like herself that have done numerous contracts didn't come back after the covid break, and so it seems like they're operating with a much higher percentage of rookie crew members, or crew who started right after covid and so had never seen a full ship before.

Yep, he's booked a dentist appt for next week. He says it'll feel totally fine most of the time, and then out of nowhere he'll get a twinge of pain in that same spot again, so clearly something's still up with it. Thanks for the recommendation!

Was just on and don't have a copy, but can tell you it's a pretty extensive list (maybe 20-25 pages or so?) that doesn't appear to have been updated in about 3 years. For example - they have Lizzo Good as Hell, but nothing more recent. I laughed to see that they had about 8 Billie Ray Cyrus songs - but zero Miley songs. If you're hoping to sing Elvis or Sinatra, though, you'll be in very good company, as that's most of what we heard when we stopped by karaoke one night.

Just wanting to add that American Diner (free for Haven guests on Embarkation day, otherwise an upcharge) also has lobster & shrimp "sliders" that are essentially mini-lobster rolls in their appetizer offerings. We added a lobster tail one night in Haven to our meal (free for Haven guests) and it was roughly the size of a deck of cards and pretty overcooked, so didn't order it again, lol. I can confirm it was available as an upcharge in both Cagneys and Le Bistro on our sailing as well.

Absolutely agree about this. I honestly sort of misunderstood the ship deck plans re: the courtyard suites - I mistakenly thought they overlooked the courtyard directly, rather than having a hallway between them and the courtyard. I thought being right on the courtyard could possibly be noisy. But now that I have seen the actual layout, I absolutely would have chosen the courtyard rooms instead. Hindsight is 20/20, but being in the Haven complex would have been a step up for sure.

Annnnnnd at least 6 people in the FB group for this cruise are now reporting testing positive for Covid. Great. Just super.

Yeah, wasn't saying that Virgin was the only line for me - someone asked a specific question about my experience there that I was responding to. I've actually cruised NCL more than any other line - this was my 4th NCL sailing, and the other three (all pre-covid) were all considerably better experiences. Ah, there you are, I knew as the ultimate NCL apologist you'd be here soon. 😄 I won't bother arguing with you except for this one, because the situation I explained that happened the first night wasn't "normal" front of ship movement. It literally sounded and felt like a helicopter was landing on top of our room - that's how much movement we're talking about. Glasses in the living room bar area falling out of their holder by the wall, the closet turning into a strobe light because of how much it was shaking. We literally called down to Guest Services to ask what was going on and if we needed to move to a Muster station - that's how much shaking we're talking about. It was like nothing I've ever experienced on any ship. Others who had rooms at the front of the ship had similar experiences - this was definitely NOT something to anticipate no matter where your cabin is.

Yep, same. Which is why it's a pretty big problem when 3 of your 4 planned ports don't happen. (Even with a consolation prize Bimini thrown in...)

Agreed. But also, we've been on crowded ships before and not had so many issues - it's how the ship is designed to handle high capacity and how the staff prepares for and responds for that capcity that matters. Design wise - on Bliss, they don't have enough elevators to handle a full ship's worth of passengers, because they only have the two elevator banks for passengers. And things like the race track, which can only handle 10 guests at a time, takes up a ton of space but isn't able to serve a ton of passengers. Staff wise - For on thing, it means you need more bartenders. Haven had a smaller amount of guests but always had 4 bartenders every night. That's in comparison to almost every other bar on the ship, that never had more than 2 bartenders EVER. Sea Day, packed Spice H2O? 2 bartenders. Atrium Bar, during a popular game show? 2 bartenders. Secondly, it means you need more entertainment or cruise director staff siphoning off people into the smaller venues. But they didn't have that until evenings - sea days both planned and unexpected bonus days, were just dead zones.

Well, for one thing Virgin includes all exercise classes in the cruise fare, so they have things like sunrise yoga, bungee aerobics (which i found i am TERRIBLE at, but i suppose you do burn calories from laughing at yourself, lol), and the "VHS" (Video-Hair Metal-Simmons) 80's themed aerobic workout, which people dress up in 80s gear for and is all set to the most cheesy 80s songs. Rather than boring ol' bingo - they have drag queen bingo, which was a hoot. They had upcharge classes to teach you bartending, or food photography, which we didn't do but we heard good things about. And they also would have members of their "Happenings Staff" as they call them just scheduled to hang out in certain areas at certain times....so like, "The Gamer" would be hanging in a bar with like 10 board games, and would organize people to play different things together. Another bar would have "The Charmer" (onboard magician) and would just hang out with whoever showed up and do up-close magic. So it felt a lot more social and active overall - a lot of variety.

Lol, yes, the tough questions! We did receive two cartons of water in our cabin on arrival. We also had premium plus and so got water in bars all over the ship - most places had the cartons rather than aqua panna. We did NOT pack ziplocs for food, but definitely saw others doing so. In fact, on Harvest Caye we sat by one woman who proceeded to have a ziploc feast on the beach with stuff she’d apparently taken from the buffet earlier lol. Also saw numerous people ask for a receive desserts to be packed up for takeaway from specialty restaurants.

I suppose that's a possibility, but there didn't seem to be many kids on the ship at all, actually. In Haven, I maybe saw a total of about 8 total across the whole cruise, all pretty well behaved. The kids splash pad pool area never seemed to have more than about 5 or 6 kids in it at a time. Not a big family vibe on the cruise at all - mainly just couples in their 60s and 70s I think. We did talk to a bunch of Canadians who were looking to get out of the cold, but again mainly couples not families. Hmm, I just did - Google says "For US colleges, Spring Break lasts one week and falls in March or April, with the peaking in the last two weeks of March. In 2023 the peak weeks will be Mar 4th and Mar 11th. In Canadian Spring Break falls between February and March. In 2023 it falls February 20th to March 17th." So I'm not sure our cruise, which was Feb 11th - 18th really fit in that window?

That's a good point, and you're absolutely right! I think it's more of an "active mindset" that matters, and there are certainly folks of all ages with it - and that's not who NCL is catering towards right now. Apologies if I offended at all, I'll be more careful with that sort of stereotype moving forward.

Hi All - I disembarked from the NCL Bliss yesterday, which was a 7-night Western Caribbean sailing. We were in Haven. Happy to take any questions, but the short version: it wasn't a very good cruise, despite the "niceness" of Haven. We fully expect it to be our last on NCL. Here are my thoughts: The Good: Overall, the Haven experience was good. The restaurant was always able to seat us right away, the bartenders were quick and always had plenty of everything we wanted. There was always room in the Hot Tubs when we visited. The Horizon Lounge was nice as well. Karina the Haven wine steward was particularly good and always greeted us by name and remembered what we had liked in the past. Our butler was friendly (if not particularly useful) and brought snacks daily and made sure we knew things about disembarkation procedures, etc. In other specialty restaurants outside of Haven, it seemed like we always got the best table. We were able to get the showtimes we wanted via the concierge staff. Six - great show! Super high energy and pretty good cast. Really enjoyed it. Laser Tag - I liked this more than I thought I would, actually. Fun little addition to a ship I haven't seen before. One thing to be aware of: they are ONLY doing laser tag at night now. I think in the past, it was open both day and night. But now times are limited, and that also made reservations harder to get. We didn't have trouble being Haven, but we did hear from some other guests who said they couldn't get the times they wanted. Food - We ate at Haven multiple times across breakfast lunch and dinner, and also ate at Le Bistro, Cagneys, Food Republic, Los Lobos, Ocean Blue and American Diner. Overall, the food was probably the best I've had on NCL, but it still ranks below the food we had on our last cruise on Virgin, and certainly below the standard of restaurants we regularly eat at on land. But I would say it met our expectations. Le Bistro and Ocean Blue were the top of the places we ate at. Cagney's was fine, but we felt like the meat was low quality, kind of tough. The sushi was good at Food Republic, but the Izakaya style dishes were a let-down. Los Lobos and American Diner are both bland, utterly skippable. But the absolute BEST food I found on the ship? Once again that prize goes to the Indian food on the buffet. It's Indian cooks preparing it, and it is always just delicious and one of the few things you can find on board that has a lot of flavor and heat. One other observation is that we felt the food across restaurants had noticeably less salt this cruise than we've experienced in the past, and we were pleased by that. Laundry Service - We took advantage of Day 1 50% off pressing services, and this was great. For $12 I didn't have to try to steam or iron any of hubby's shirts all trip - definitely worth it in my book. The District - it was our first time experiencing this bar on NCL, and we really liked it. They had some really nice beer options that we enjoyed trying. The Bad: Itinerary Changes - We were supposed to stop at Roatan, Harvest Caye, Costa Maya, and Cozumel. As soon as we got on board, we were notified they had cancelled Cozumel, and we'd be going to Bimini instead. No reason given. We had just been to Bimini last year and had never visited Cozumel, and had the shore excursion we were most looking forward to planned for there, so that was a bummer. But then, when we were supposed to arrive in Roatan, it was raining, and so we were informed that morning that our excursion was cancelled - we quickly scrambled to book another excursion through the Haven concierge, only to find that excursion was cancelled too. The only excursions that went forward were "beach day" outings that went to local hotels or the sloth/monkey excursion, which isn't our thing. All more "active" excursions like snorkeling, ATV, horseback riding, ziplining, kayaking; all got cancelled. We tried walking around the rainy port for a while, but there was nothing much to do there either, so just ended up getting back on the ship after about an hour. Then, when we got to Costa Maya, we're in our cabin getting ready, and the Captain comes on and announces that due to wind he doesn't think it's safe to dock, and so we'll be skipping that too. (2 other ships had already successfully docked that day that seemed to think it was fine...) So we ended up effectively with four sea days, on a 7-day itinerary. We have never felt so "trapped" on a ship in all the cruises we've ever taken. They did give us $100 per stateroom back as non-refundable onboard credit to "make up for it" but refused to refund anyone's port taxes, saying that you'd have to take that up with NCL corporate after the cruise. We were "lucky" in some regard, as I'd been lazy this cruise and just booked all the excursions through NCL...we heard from some on the ship who had arranged private tours at the skipped ports who were out hundreds of dollars and were very unhappy. Cabin Location - We were in 11106, a Haven forward facing Penthouse with balcony. This turned out not to be a good choice for us at all, due to movement/vibration/and lack of direct Haven access. First, re: the movement and vibration. On our first night after embarkation, we were awoken at 2:30am by an announcement in our cabin for "stretcher team to medical center" (why this needed to be announced in guest cabins, I'm not sure...) then, for the next 20-30 minutes we experienced some of the most intense shaking and vibration ever on a ship. The glassware in our living room fell over. The light in the closet flashed like a strobe because the motion made it lose contact with its sensor. It was intense. Later, talking to the captain at the haven reception, he said he'd had to turn on the reverse thrusters to try to bring the boat to a full stop so the coast guard could board us to take off the medical emergency. But even on our sea days, there was a lot of motion and movement in this location. There was a running joke among many on the ship that we kept "hitting whales" because of how rough it was. My hubby and I started yelling "cannonball away!" when we'd hear one of the loud booms from the rough seas in our cabin at night. Again, just surprisingly intense. I'd never experienced motion sickness on a ship outside of a single day on an Alaska cruise when we were in open ocean - never when just sailing the Caribbean. And then lastly, we really didn't think it was going to be a problem to be located outside the Haven proper, and that we could easily just pop up there whenever we wanted. We were wrong, though, and should have stayed inside the Haven proper because of the next issue: WAY TOO MANY PEOPLE - Everywhere outside the Haven was a friggin' nightmare. On the (many) sea days, every single lounger/chair around the pool, the sun deck, and Spice H20 was taken - not by towels holding chairs mind you, but by lots and lots and lots of people. Getting a drink at the pool bar was a 20-30 minute ordeal. Never saw a hot tub outside of Haven that had less than 5 people in it at anytime throughout the entire cruise - sea day or otherwise. We were constantly waiting for elevators, and just about every elevator ride you took was packed to the gills, covid be damned i guess. It was often difficult to find two slot machines next to each other for me and the hubby in the casino. And almost every venue - the atrium, the comedy club, the Cavern - they resorted to just cramming in cheap plastic folding chairs because there wasn't anywhere near enough seating. (Btw, if you wanted to see a Beatles show in the Cavern, even with the folding chairs, you needed to be there at least an hour in advance to guarantee a chair.) We've been on mostly full ships before, but this just felt different. The hubby thought it was not just too many people, but also a lack of staffing/too little crew to handle them. And part of the problem that created the situation was: Lack of Activities - Since we ended up with so many sea days, we would have expected the cruise director to assemble an arsenal of activities to try to disperse people to different things. But especially in the afternoons? There was just nothing. Outside of the dj at the pool deck, no musical acts started until the early evenings. There were no afternoon shows or comedians or anything. Your options were essentially try to find a place to lay out, drink, or eat. There were a handful of upcharge activities - alcohol classes, painting class, Deal or No Deal....but nothing included in the cruise fare. By our third sea day, we were honestly just tired of drinking. We ended up watching 3 different movies in our cabin (Princess & the Frog, Moana, and Uncharted), played Scrabble and Chinese Checkers a few times, and took lots of naps. Fine, overall, but all activities we could have done for free at home. Definitely not our version of a good cruise or a good vacation. The Irritating: The below alone don't make or break anything in my POV. We tend to let most things roll off our back. But when combined with a lot of outright bad, it does start to add up. Our Haven concierge was new this cruise, and seemed totally useless. I was rather annoyed when he assured us that our "new" Roatan excursion was going forward, only to trek all the way through the rain to find out it was also cancelled. And then upon reboarding the boat, and going to make sure it was refunded, he told us we'd needed to cancel it 48 hours ahead of time to get a refund - he said this because he'd completely forgotten he was the one to book this for us just an hour before. It ended up getting removed from our account, but I didn't feel like I should have needed to argue with him about it. We also asked him a question about Bimini to which he responded "i don't know, i've never been there". The proper response for a high end concierge would have been "i'm not sure, but i'll find out for you and get back to you" - he just wasn't good at his job. His assistant concierge, a woman, was more helpful but seemed to have a permanent scowl on her face. Lots of having to interact with guest services - laser tag got charged twice, and we had to stand in line to get that reversed. A $330 charge from La Cucina appeared when we never event went to La Cucina, and had to stand in line for that too. Because of all the cancelled excursions, we had to stand in line to get a refund the night before disembarkation, but the $50 Free at Sea excursion credit for the Bimini excursion we booked to replace Cozumel didn't post until after midnight on the last day, and so we had to stand in line the morning of disembarkation too. Just a bunch of clerical issues I'd prefer not to have had to deal with. Entertainment geared towards retirees, but little else. Let me tell you - I've never seen a bunch of 70 year olds come alive with joy and excitement the way they did while watching Jersey Boys, lol. But between that, the Beatles impersonators, the comedian who was in his 60s, the other onboard musical groups all playing oldies, and the DULL CD activities geared towards an older crowd (daily origami, napkin folding demos, shopping events, etc) it just felt like we (a couple in our late 30s/early 40s) were not the right target for this ship. Especially compared to our last cruise on Virgin which provided all manner of great activities for more active folks, we felt rather trapped on a floating nursing home. Superbowl on the ship was a real let down too. Because we knew the pool deck and the District were both likely to be packed to the gills, we planned to take advantage of the showing for Haven guests in the Horizon Lounge. They said they would be "setting up a screen". What really happened is they brought in one single tv, the same size as in guest cabins (I'm guessing maybe a 50" tv, at best?), and a whole bunch of those plastic folding chairs. There were probably about 30-40 people trying to all watch that tiny little screen, lol. Definitely not a "high end Haven experience". The hubby found a bone shard in his meat one night in the Haven, which stabbed him inbetween the tooth and the gums. He's still complaining about it 4 days later, unfortunately. When we pointed it out to the Haven staff, they were incredulous that it could have come from the meat at all, but he didn't stab himself in the mouth for fun, so where did it come from? Slot Tournament was a mess, again felt like they were brand new and didn't know how to host it. It took 25 minutes per round, for some reason, for a 2-minute game? And then there were 5 rounds to get through, so it took forever. Embarkation was about 2 hours late, apparently because there were issues getting customs clearance for the folks getting off before us. I'd posted about that before. In-person muster is not efficient at all. Couldn't even hear the people giving instructions, a video in our cabin would have actually been much more useful. Not much wine variety. We had the Premium Plus package, but even then you had basically one cheap and one nice wine available per package, e.g. one cheap Chardonnay, one nice Chardonnay. One cheap Sparkling, one nice Sparkling. One cheap Cabernet, one nice Cabernet. And that was true throughout the ship, and in Cellars too - everywhere had the same wines. Would have liked more options, like what we found in the District for beers. So, that's about it. Overall, we made the most of everything as best we could, but we do feel like we could have spent the same amount of money and time to go to a nice resort in the Caribbean and had a much better experience overall. NCL seems to have reduced activities/entertainment, focused in on older clientele, and lost most of their really good experienced staff during Covid. So we won't be back - we would try Virgin again, and maybe a smaller luxury line like Viking, but our days with NCL (and in fact, with all the "big" lines) are just at an end; it's not worth it to us, no matter how good of a deal you can find.

Must be. Haven let on just before noon. happy cruising!

After 11 and they’ve still got hundreds of people lined up trying to disembark. Not sure what’s causing the slowdown.

Such as? I don't care at all about what snacks I get.