Dorhead1230

On Getaway in February, the MDR lunch menu was the same each day. I’m not aware of whether any of the ships have a changing lunch menu. I have not seen any reports on here of the Prima dinner menu rolling out to other ships yet, or of a timeline for that. I can’t decide how I feel about that. It looks like a decent menu, but, like you, I do like when they change. On the other hand, with a couple nights of SDP and a couple nights of Platinum meals, on weeklong cruises I guess it wouldn’t be a big deal to me if other ships ended up with the Prima menu.

Ooooo now that I see you guys saying this is so good, I’ll have to try it next time. I always go for the chocolate cake, but after my discovery on my last Getaway cruise that if we order room service, it’s the same cake as Cagney’s, I can afford to branch out. I am not a fan of NCL desserts generally speaking (I do bravely persevere to try to find ones I like lol), but I have always loved the lava cake! Nothing exciting or fancy but 🤤 so good! And the pleasant surprise last cruise was how much I enjoyed the banana caramel meringue tart from Moderno.

I guess I sliced mine a little thinner than theirs…so to be fair, only $45 worth of Cagney’s zucchini? 😜

Thank you, and thanks @cruiseny4life for your opinion, too! You’ve both made me happy to know that even if the cruise is crowded, this will be a nice place to kick back with a drink and a snack and relax. We’re not pool deck people, so this area really looks up our alley (and knowing there’s cocktail waiters is even better lol). DH was happy when we saw that Starbucks location in there on the deck plan, too.

I probably only made myself laugh with this one, but earlier this evening I was cooking dinner and I thought to myself “wow, this is like $75 worth of zucchini at Cagney’s.” Have a great start to the week, everyone!

My upcoming July Joy cruise is the first where I had to make decisions between Platinum and SDP meals. My main calculation was to use the SDP meals at the places where we would want to eat more (as it’s 4 courses vs. 3 with a Platinum meal). So, we’ll be using SDP meals at Cagney’s and La Cucina (if there was a Moderno there’s no way we’d be doing La Cucina, as we’re Italian American New Yorkers so it’s kind of a joke 🙊 lol, but it’s not terrible and the little man loves pizza so 🤷🏻‍♀️). We’re using a Platinum at Q, and then we’ll either use the other 2 Platinum coupons (we’ll have 4 total as we have 2 cabins) for 2 Food Republic meals or for one FR and one American Diner (probably a waste for most people but little man will get a kick out of the car booths). Here’s my take on one thing, though. My opinion, worthless as it is, is to use a Platinum meal for Teppanyaki if you plan to go since that’s a price fixed complete meal. I wouldn’t use a SDP meal that would get me 4 courses elsewhere at a price fixed place where a Platinum voucher would work.

Finally caught up! Thanks for the review and all the details. I’m glad to see that you guys had a great time, even if there were some hiccups (aren’t there always?). I feel like you would have written about this if you spent time there, and I’m thinking there may not be reason for Havenites to go there, but did you visit the observation lounge on 15 at all? DH and I are very excited for it as we’ve never been on a ship with it before, but I am worried it may just be too crowded all the time to get seats and enjoy. I have watched videos of it and looked at pictures and it looks like there’s a lot of seating, but I was curious what your take on it was if you guys checked it out.

That’s right! And they were actually Sabrett in the olden days, too!

💡aha! Uptown Grill! That’s what it was on Breakaway…can’t remember what the one on Getaway was called. That was driving me nuts lol.

If it was 2015, I think it was pre-Margaritaville, when it was still the fully free place. The only reason I think so is because I know I sailed Breakaway in 2015 and I did go once before the changeover to Margaritaville. But in all honesty it was probably the same food because I think that Margaritaville breakfast was just a little extension of the regular breakfast buffet, which is also what the breakfast there was when it was the free burger place (on Breakaway), anyway (I want to say that venue was Cuban-themed on Getaway). I wish I could remember the name of it…some other much more knowledgeable NCL historian on here will remember it.

I may be totally off on where you’re thinking of, but back in the day when Breakaway and Getaway first launched, they both had an area on the pool deck that was a free dining venue. I can’t recall the name of it on Breakaway, which was the ship I sailed during that period. They served custom burgers and salads at lunchtime. In addition, they used to put a small breakfast buffet out there. I know that Getaway had a similar venue (themed a little different, though, I think). Over the years, as NCL decided to try to monetize as much space as possible, they first transformed those spaces into Margaritaville, for which you paid extra. Then, I guess that partnership ended and they made those spaces American Diner (also a pay venue). It’s the only area I can think of that fits what you’re describing, but it doesn’t exist as what it used to be anymore. The buffet usually has out some sort of cinnamon or sticky rolls at breakfast, I believe. They also have out items for smoked salmon and bagels, but the MDR definitely does a nicer job with that (visually at least; I don’t like lox and I’m from Long Island so I’ve never attempted NCL bagels as I suspect I wouldn’t approve lol).

Aw, thanks! It has been so crazy I haven’t been able to keep up on here enough. LM was sick one time after another (double ear infections a couple weeks ago 🤦🏻‍♀️), still trying to organize the house, the quarter just ended at school before Easter, AP Exam is a couple weeks after our break, etc. etc. I did try to follow some of your live, but I need to go back and look more carefully now that I know we’re definitely sailing on the Joy! I plan to do another semi-live. Hopefully the Internet speed will be better for posting than it was on Getaway! I wasn’t really myself on that cruise; it was too soon after we moved, I was too stressed out, it was too crowded (not that the Joy will be sparse, but it won’t be as bad as that one was), and then we were sick the last couple days of the cruise. I should be in much better form this summer, plus I’ll be going back to my beloved Bermuda so that in itself is amazing. I hope you and your husband had a wonderful time on your last cruise!

Thank you all so much for the great info! It’s good to know they might frown on us having 3 adults on one Platinum voucher. Eight dishes at Food Republic is a lot of food and more than enough for DH, DM and me, and LM will almost certainly order from the kids’ menu. But if we need to order one or two extra dishes for DM, we will!

Thank you! Definitely no suites for us haha. I never saw that sticky (I usually just scroll past 🙈). I’m going to take a look now!

Is LATDBLX a code for double points? We just booked Joy to Bermuda in July today and I was looking at the codes on the reservation and that one struck me as possibly double points.

Ok so let me preface this by saying yes I can read (kind of what I do for a living lol) and I do know this has been discussed, but just due to our specific situation of having 2 cabins, explain it to me like I’m a toddler. We just booked the July 9 Joy to Bermuda! 🎉 With only 88 days to go, obviously I hung up with the CAS booking rep and got straight to figuring out dining reservations (wasn’t as slim pickings as I thought—only Cagney’s a bit tricky as usual). This is DH and my first Platinum cruise. Little man and my mom are also sailing with us again. To take advantage of DH’s comped cabin and my (sad little) discount, one cabin belongs to him and the other to me. That, as I understand, means that we will each receive two vouchers for Platinum specialty meals for 2, correct? That, in effect, gives us two additional specialty meals for all 4 of us beyond the 2 SDP promo meals. We only want to do Cagney’s, La Cucina, and Q (respect to all of your food opinions, but those are the menus we like and what will work best for the whole fam, so not looking for input on these choices). We are using the SDP meals for Cagney’s and La Cucina because those are the places where we’d order 4 courses. Ok so here’s where I want to make sure I have everything correct: DH and I plan to each use one of our Platinum vouchers for a meal for the four of us at Q (remember, we each have a cabin, so we should be getting 4 vouchers total, correct?). That leaves us with one more each. Each of those vouchers for 2 gets 8 items at Food Republic, right? Four items each for 2 people? Eight items is plenty for all of us, especially if we go for lunch. So, we could actually go to FR two times, each using one of our platinum vouchers, correct? Also, Food Republic but not Platinum-related…can LM order something from the kids’ menu at FR? He’s not a terrible eater, but his palate is hardly sophisticated and, while he does try things when we offer, it usually ends in a gagging noise and a declaration that “that’s disgusting.” I don’t think the FR menu will appeal to him. Is that really putting the crew members out if he orders a kids’ meal? I don’t want to be the a-holes who are like you’ll bring my kid a cheeseburger and you’ll like it even if you have to haul halfway across the ship. Thanks for responding to my meandering nonsense!

Bon voyage! I hope you guys have an amazing time! And happy belated birthday 🎂

Heehee nah that won’t quite do it ☺️. We haven’t called to book anything for the summer yet, so we’ll see what we’re offered, but to give you an idea, in a week, DH will make around 5-6K points and I’ll make about 2K. We play slots, so each point is $5 run through a machine. Now, we are not bringing anywhere CLOSE to this amount on a cruise because it would be insane and we’re not rich lol, but it works out to us combined cycling about $35-40K through the machines in a week. So a combination of our gambling budget we bring and mostly (hopefully) cycling through as much of the casino’s money as possible. Obviously DH is the bulk of that so he gets better offers than I do, because even my level of play is small potatoes compared to a lot of other people. If we were able to sail more than 1-2 times per year (limited by our work schedules), then cruising might be our primary gambling location rather than land casinos, and we’d probably get comped even better. But as it stands it’s a piece of our gambling pie and we end up playing more at Caesars AC and Mohegan Sun because we can easily get there for a day or two here and there. And this was off-topic for this thread so I’ll stop here 😬. It’s nice of you to be so considerate of the steward! I find that we try very hard on cruises to keep our cabin as neat and orderly as possible to make their job as easy as possible. But it does stink that NCL is putting you in a position to be paying the big bucks to sail Haven and then feel guilty about having the cabin steward service your cabin as often as they’re assigned to 😕.

Casino. We are casino guests when we sail. So, we do still pay in other ways lol, but our cabin fares are generally comped or deeply discounted (depending on what they offer as a comp, we have sometimes paid to upgrade to balcony/aft-facing balcony). We do still pay all port fees and taxes, the CAS admin fee, insurance, and DSC and gratuities on FAS. But it still works out to a good deal. For example on that Getaway cruise we did last month, our cost per person all-in for balcony cabins worked out to about what just the fare without taxes and fees was for inside cabins. I’m in the camp that’s fine with once a day service (as long as we’re left extra towels when that happens), but still thinks it’s a really bad look for NCL to cut service while simultaneously raising the DSC.

The Captain announced it onboard. I want to say it was on Tuesday, because it was definitely before GSC. He announced that they were in communication with the port authorities in Bermuda and it wouldn’t be safe yada yada and that we would be spending a few extra hours at GSC on Wednesday (until 6 PM) and then heading to Miami on Thursday. Then we also got the letter in the stateroom which stated that they were giving $100 OBC per cabin. Have a wonderful cruise!

Yes, I felt awful that someone else saw fit to chide another person on my thread for posting while I was off of it with lousy internet access. By the time I got back on to say it was fine, I think my fellow passenger had already been scared off by the thread police 🤦🏻‍♀️ And yes, Bermuda is our absolute favorite destination! You and your husband should try to get back there on a cruise that’s just to Bermuda so you get a couple days there!

I’m so glad you’re going to report on the Joy, because we’re thinking about it for this summer to Bermuda. Congratulations to your husband on his impending citizenship! 🎉

I couldn’t believe it. We were already ordering room service so it’s not like it cost extra, but I was preparing myself for a let-down when some icky subpar buffet version of the cake showed up. I shed one silent tear of joy when I saw it was THE cake (not really, but I was pretty psyched 😜).

We were in there twice last week on the later side and at the stroke of 9:30 all the ropes go up and they pull everything. We had to walk through the seating areas just to make it to the exit with everything roped off lol. So, after that, the only options are O’Sheehan’s or room service. (And all they put out at the rear of the casino late-night now is some plates of cookies…not sure why they bother lol.)

Thank you! Yes, I do notice looking at the tier benefits that once you get beyond regular Platinum, it’s only a little thing here or there until you make it up to Ambassador. I do look forward to the additional specialty dinners, wine tasting, and the ship tour on our next sailing, though! The priority boarding isn’t a big thing for us; we always sail through CAS and have priority boarding with them, too. After this last Getaway sailing, though, I’m definitely sold on arriving a little later. Not late enough to miss MDR lunch again, but I think 11:30 will be my perfect time going forward. A lot of people cleared out of the terminal already, and then head straight onboard and to lunch and then generally right to the cabin after that.