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34 minutes ago, Coral said:

90% of the cruises from Seattle spend less time in ports and usually only have 1 glacier day (one extra sea day of not viewing much) verses if you cruise from Vancouver one way North. I look at Seattle 7 night RT cruises and they just don't interest me. They are not in port very long. The only exception would be if you can find an 11 or 14 night RT Seattle cruise.

 

You can easily take a one way cruise and still spend time in Seattle. Many cruise lines will do a transfer from Seattle airport to Vancouver pier.

 

I have friends in Seattle who have done several Alaska cruises from Seattle. They don't go to Vancouver because Seattle is easy for them.

Thank you for this insight. 👍🏻

On 4/19/2024 at 7:14 AM, MtnSeaGirl said:

Green eyed jealous...I mean genuniely happy for you.  Talk about memory making!  Jusy looking at some of the DIY, I have become increasingly convinced this will not be a one and done trip for us (God willing).  I do admit, I also want to spend some time in the coming years on cruises in Greece, Italy, Spain,  Land trip to Ireland/Scotland.  Would love to see Austria as well.  I wish I had not spent the number of cruises in the Carib but they seemed good at the time...and still do...just wish I had been a little wiser.  Thinking about cancelling our 8 day in the Carib next March and utilizing that $ for one of my other bucket list trips.  

@MtnSeaGirl it seems like we have similar cruising sensibilities. 🥰

After so many cruises to the Caribbean we're now thinking like "you've seen one island, you've seen 'em all!" I mean how many monkeys or sloths can I hold, how many times do I want to hear "lady, lady-- let me braid your hair?!"  🤣  Don't get me wrong, cruising anywhere is still our vacay of choice, but we are now on the hunt for something different.

We have some Europe/Mediterranean under our cruising belts, but the bucket list seems to be growing longer. Have even been dreaming about a transpacific or Asian cruises.  While my husband is still working it's a little more challenging to plan any kind of travel and he doesn't have a job that allows for "summers off". 

We have some cruising buddies who live in Seattle, so they have done Alaska many times and we asked their opinions too. That's our other *kink* in the thought process of WHERE to cruise FROM since we've never been to Seattle either and we could potentially meet up with our friends there first.  OH, the decisions... 🤔

1 hour ago, MtnSeaGirl said:

So...you will do a nice post cruise trip report on Cruise Critic, and I will say THANK YOU in advance.  Are we blessed to have so many good tips on this board?  

My hubby is usually the one that likes to write reviews. I think we need to book one first! 🤣

On 4/17/2024 at 8:06 PM, libtrek said:

Well, we leave in about a week and a half. Because hubs has Alzheimer’s it makes our cruise different than most. I try to simplify everything. The itinerary the Jewell follows is great scenery most of the way, so if we don’t move around much, we still have something to look at. We too are Sapphire so enjoy the extra fancy dinners and free laundry. I can pack less which makes things easier. Any specific questions? Mary Lou

I don't know what to ask. My hubby is still working so it's trying to fit something into a certain time frame (for him to take PTO) to start, and then figuring out from where to cruise and whether or not to add a land tour first.  I've read a lot about how much time is spent on transport for the land tours so we're already reconsidering that. 

Obviously there is just too much in Alaska to do just one cruise.  We had been shying away from Alaska for many years because for our money and time, it's about equal going to Europe from where we live. I much prefer Europe, but my hubs wants to visit cousins in Colorado for a couple of days either going or coming, and attaching a cruise trip to that made Alaska a natural choice. 

I guess I would appreciate it if you could come back here after your cruise and give some thoughts and opinions about how it went. 😊

23 hours ago, libtrek said:

Good question. I would eliminate Carnival, we’ve outgrown them plus they go from Seattle. I would go with Princess or NCL. We tried Celebrity and meh. Lately we’ve done NCL Jewell. Smaller ship, good port times, does inside passage. I like their drink package (included). You do have to pay the tips but if you have a Bloody Mary in the morning, a few drinks during the day, wine with dinner, and a nightcap, you’re ahead. Staff is excellent and the ship was refurbished just pre Covid. Mary Lou

Mary Lou,

I would be interested to hear more about your upcoming NCL Jewel plans for the end of April and May. We just hit Sapphire for the Latitudes program and are open to any cruise line really that fits our time frame and itinerary, but have more CruiseNext deposits available.

On 4/16/2024 at 10:18 AM, MtnSeaGirl said:

Thank you, thank you!  We plan on 3 days precruise.  We will not have a car of our own as we plan to book the precruise portion thru the ship.....at least we think so as Alaska is new to us and for some reason seems to be intimidating; not sure why.  

Ditto for us Florida folks MtnSeaGirl!  We are experienced cruisers, but first time considering Alaska, so are having trouble trying to figure out what will work best for us.  We're planning for summer 2025 and want to maximize our travel there.

On 4/15/2024 at 7:10 PM, oaktreerb said:

How many days do you have for precruise?  Do you want to do a cruise tour or plan your own land tour?  If you look at Holland America offerings for 2025, the itineraries will probably be the same for 2026.  You will want 2-3 nights in Denali, Fairbanks is optional but included in some tours.  Alyeska would be a nice place to stay if you do your own tour and have a car.  You want to cruise on a ship that sails through the inside passage to Vancouver.  Glacier Bay is amazing and a national park, Skagway is Gold Rush history with national park exhibits.  Sitka is beautiful with Russian history and is very scenic.  Most ships stop at Ketchikan and Juneau.  

 

Hope that helps you get started on your research!

Thank you for this info oaktreerb.  We're in the talking stages of our first-ever Alaska cruise and possible land tour for summer 2025, so will be following these forums as well.

11 hours ago, Mark_T said:

If you do try MSC don't forget to do a status match, Sapphire should get you Gold on MSC...

Yup. That's why we've been considering. 👍🏻

1 hour ago, JamieLogical said:

 

Oh! I also should have mentioned that I think NCL's specialty dining is generally better and there is more selection of specialty dining in their ships.

Thank you. 👍🏻 We just turned Sapphire on Latitude rewards and had been contemplating a future sailing on MSC.

1 hour ago, JamieLogical said:

Made it home safe and on time! See you all again when I start my 10/25 Live Blog!

Jamie, so I am curious and would like your honest opinion.  With regards to food and drink how does MSC stack up (or not) vs. NCL?

We're in Quebec City waiting to board the Pearl on Friday. 

5 hours ago, broberts said:

 

I have an older version of Word, so I thought a picture might help. Right click in a new Word doc to produce this popup. The center button under Pate Options is the paste merge.

 

It produced a couple of pages, the first of which looked like

 

 

 

@broberts

Thank you SO much!  Once you told me about format merging, I was able to recreate my document and save it as a PDF. I would not have ever learned that little trick without your assistance! 👍🏻

On 9/11/2023 at 4:00 PM, JamieLogical said:

 

The price for this sailing was really good. It may be a bit cool by late September, but I am hoping we will still get to see a lot of beautiful fall foliage. My last CA & NE cruise was last fall and it was over Halloween, so much later in the season and we still enjoyed nice weather in ports, though not many leaves left on the trees by then. It's definitely a different experience from a Caribbean cruise. I am not a pool deck sort of person, so it doesn't bother me if it's too cold to lay out by the pool. I will say my first CA & NE cruise was the first week of June back in 2018 and it actually snowed on deck. That one was so cold that it really did force everyone indoors and made the ship feel much more crowded than it otherwise would have.

Hi @JamieLogical

We actually met you on the Breakaway two years ago to Bermuda, and right after that cruise DH and I booked a NE cruise on the Pearl which we're FINALLY taking next week! WOO-HOO!  Of course, we've been on several cruises since then, but going to the Caribbean now sort of feels like you've seen one island you've seen 'em all to us.

So, we Floridians (who are also not pool deck sort of people) wanted to try a different adventure.  This one goes from Quebec City and ends up in Boston.  We are so excited as we've not been to any of these ports before.

I look forward to reading more of your posts about the Canada/New England area.

43 minutes ago, broberts said:

 

You should be able to get no lines with a Paste Merge Formatting in a New Word doc. All the color is lost, but the graphics and layout are preserved.

I'm not at a computer right now. Would you be kind enough to tell me under which menu I would find the Paste Merge Formatting?

6 hours ago, broberts said:

 

An interesting problem. One can get close using paste merge formatting, but it seems to lose all the color. 

 

I did find that highlighting a section and using Chrome to print to a pdf file produced reasonable results, but it's finicky and I didn't have time to see if the entire post can be done in one operation to two pages.

Yes, @broberts

Thanks for trying. If you can even get it to a point where it's a word doc with regular font and no lines, I can go back in and redo font color, type, and size.

I've even tried just snipping in parts as jpgs and pasting to word, but the snips are too big to fit on the page. If all else fails, I may have to end up typing all from scratch, but I'm hoping to avoid that.

5 minutes ago, broberts said:

You could paste without formatting. Of course you will have to add back the formatting.

 

If you provide a link to the post you are trying to copy, (copy and paste the post #) I can check for other options.

Thanks @broberts!

If I knew how to paste without formatting, I certainly would try that.

Here's the link to the post I would like to copy and paste to WORD, then edit and upload as a PDF.  (That, I know how to do.)

Post #159
https://boards.cruisecritic.com/topic/2816315-ncl-pearl-october-6-2023-quebec-to-boston/page/7/#comment-66074073

Hello.
This might be a long shot, but it doesn't hurt to ask...

I'm hosting a Meet & Greet on an upcoming cruise and have already nicely posted information to our roll call forum about it. BUT, I wanted to cut and paste what I wrote on the roll call to a WORD document and be able to save it as a PDF version so folks can print out if they want.  The issue is that when I copy and paste from the CC forum, every single time it makes lines around the wording sort of like frames or cells.  Does anyone know how to remove whatever these frames are in my draft WORD document?
 
I'm attaching a <snip> from the WORD doc, so you can see the "frames" I'm talking about. (see blue arrows pointing to frames)  I've tried choosing "NONE" for borders under DESIGN, and "NONE" under DRAW-- FORMAT BACKGROUND-- RULE LINES, and even NO BORDERS under TABLE DESIGN to no avail.

Any help someone can give me to eliminate these lines would be very much appreciated. Next time I'll know to create the WORD doc first.  😝

We decided to bite the bullet and go for something nicer, price be damned-- 
1) because this will be my birthday vacay, and 2) we don't want to be "hauling" anything anywhere! 😅

We decided to go with however, booked on a little less expensive travel site than direct.

Harborside Inn Of Boston
185 State St, Boston, MA, 02109 
https://www.harborsideinnboston.com/

The visuals of a full-size mattress by a college student does not surprise me since we live in a college town, but it's too much for this retired person to even consider. 🤪
 

Hello again, 
GOOD NEWS!

I just wanted to let you all know that with some encouragement here and a special shout-out to @casofilia, I finally got through to the right special events person who was "surprised" that when I asked again, that the original M&G request had "disappeared". 

I suspect the hijacker slunk away quietly and will most likely still be at the Meet and Greet.  

Because of that, I have since done my due diligence for our future cruises.  Yes, it seems crazy to have to do this, and I won't likely get answers from Special Events on the future cruises yet, but at least I have made my requests known.

Thank you all for your guidance. 

On 9/1/2023 at 7:19 AM, FrostyJoe said:

Is this true?  Can we order food from outside seating at indulge?

 

There are more seats outside, too, with additional tablets that allow guests to order dishes from all of the Indulge Food Hall venues both indoors and outside

Hi FrostyJoe.

DH and I went on the Prima in early December 2022.  We ate outside of Indulge several times during our 5-day (too short) cruise-- that's how yummy it was. 😋 Back then we could just order like regular from waitstaff.  I personally had no desire to use the tablets anyway, and the service was very quick.  Highly recommend the bacon-wrapped dates!

3 hours ago, joyy7403 said:

There are many people who post on a thread that don’t read the entire post. I’ve done several M&Gs over the years. Yes, I got priority boarding, meals in the Haven, & other privileges. I’ve left it to others for several years now. I love going to them though!

@joyy7403
Joyce, unfortunately, so true. 

There's also many people who don't understand how these forums work and are disappointed that the forums aren't quite as instant or user-friendly as some other social media sites which shall-not-be-named.

We've also hosted a few M&G's over the years and only once got surprised later into the cruise getting any kind of perks like those, and that's when we booked a suite. More often we've gotten nothing else and go in without expectations of getting any "perks" for hosting.  That being said, my husband and I have been discussing this ad nauseum since the *hijacking* and he thinks it may actually depend on what ship you're on.  I really don't know.  

What I do know, is this person (whoever they are) is a coward. I've offered them a chance to communicate with me and since I'm trying to be as understanding as I can about this, I'm going to give them until Monday to make contact. If I don't get contacted, I'll be calling NCL again and letting them know this person has been non-communicative to the entire roll call and is unfit to host a Meet and Greet.  

23 minutes ago, MrsTocko said:

Absolutely - Communication…I think for mine, the other person may have cancelled, and then never told NCL.  So assuming that ncl investigated a little or contacted the other person and confirmed it.

 

I usually start with a guesstimate of 25 then confirm a real number later.

 

If someone else beats me to the punch so to speak, fine, it’s just knowing it, I do a few other things for the ones that I organize, that includes a little thank you to those attending, and for any of the officers/staff that interact with. I’m also happy to share any of the organizing with other people (gift exchange, poker crawl, slot pull…whatever). I scaled back, what I was willing to do, because I wasn’t enjoying it as much as I wanted to.

 

glad you had a place to vent, and sometimes that is all we need to do.  I’m hoping that it gets corrected for you. 

Gail, I think that's the best advice I can take today is to use the number 25 as a start and not wait to make the request. Another piece of advice I received today was to ask people to email me (for sure) of their interest in attending or "committing" to a M&G, and therefore, I would at least have their emails instead of just asking them to reply in the roll call.

You are a superwoman. I don't want to be responsible for all things, and in fact usually someone will step in and volunteer for other of those type events. I once hosted a M&G and a cabin crawl on the same cruise, and it was just too much for me.  I applaud you for knowing your limitations and scaling back. 👏🏼

Like you, if someone else requests first I have no problem, but then it's their responsibility to connect with others on the roll call, which isn't what's been happening.  Thank you again for allowing me to be here.  Truth is my darling hubby was upset for me, and HE found you all here.  😊 I'm hoping we get everything straightened out too. 🙏🏼

47 minutes ago, ljrfrm said:

Just to add also, when I did schedule M&G, I always did so as soon as we had 25 people - so often it was pretty far out. I just found having the information to begin sharing with everyone sooner than later helped with planning for all.

Well see that's sort of the issue too.  I am like-minded, and we JUST reached 30, so I felt it was a good time to make the request.  I think because the itinerary is from Canada and during school season, there are less people on board.

44 minutes ago, ljrfrm said:

I'm happy to explain what happened in my situation.  I had volunteered to organized the Meet & Greet and we had a whole Roll Call here on CC planning for it.  When I reached out to Special Events, they told me that someone had already arranged it.  It didn't appear to be anyone from CC, and my guess is it was from the group talking on the other social media platform. I explained to Special Events that we had a CC group planning to meet and can we still arrange it.  She told me they would only host one event. In my situation, she reached out to the person who already scheduled the M&G and ended up canceling their request and scheduling ours - prioritizing CC. She did tell me that the free M&G are for CC and not any other sites, and they would prioritize that. On my end, it wasn't so much that I wanted to organize it but more that we had a Roll Call planning to meet (with lots of people not on that other site) so wanted the venue to do so. For us, all worked out fine and we had a great time with the M&G scheduled through CC.

@ljrfrm

Thank you for your reply. I am so happy to hear yours worked out well.  That's very similar to my roll call and what happened to me this week. Unfortunately, if you read my other replies here you'll see that is not the case in my situation, as there is no other social media page in existence.

The best that could happen would be that this hijacker responds somehow and we go forward from there. 

The NCL folks I spoke to thus far were not as helpful and actually told me that they could give me no other information and I would have to find out on my own who the other requester is!!!  I'm going to call NCL again and see if I get someone different and ask if they can reach out to that person.

8 minutes ago, cruiseny4life said:

Also, consider the person that set it up might not even be on Cruise Critic. That has happened to me on previous sailings. It was well advertised somewhere else by the organizer who didn't even know about Cruise Critic. I helped advertise the Cruise Critic meet and greet, that was set up by a non Cruise Critic person, here on Cruise Critic. I didn't attend, so not sure how it went or the kind of turnout the other group had.

 

I did look at that other place for your sailing - there is no meet and greet being advertised there so my theory is probably null and void. But, tis a theory. Good luck, good person!

@cruiseny4life

Someone else mentioned that here about that OTHER social media site, which in our case does not exist. I was told specifically by NCL Special Events that it was indeed for a CC M&G.  I even asked them are you SURE it wasn't for another group, because anyone out there can make a request for a special event, but we all know here that a CC M&G is a bit different.

Thank you for your good luch wishes.  Fingers crossed that someone comes forward.

1 hour ago, MrsTocko said:

I do several different types.  I will have the unofficial at the sail away. People inevitably get busy and forget the official one.  I will also do the pub crawl. Just a couple extra opportunities to meet up.  I don’t care if you drink or not.

 

with regard to the specific situation that prompted my thread.  I talked to the coordinator that day, and while she couldn’t tell me, she knew who it was. A few days after I posted, I got a call from her that I was the new leader.  She recommended to send the request in as soon as you book.  Especially if you are an early booker. 
 

Each special events person handles multiple ships.  Jackie took care of me.  And when I was waiting to confirm for my cruise this April, (we had time and location shift due to itinerary change) I spoke with Jackie again, and she looked at all my cruises, and told me which ones I hadn’t even sent the request in on yet.  So I sent the request in, went to a different coordinator, and too early to request.  
 

@MrsTocko
Gail, thank you for posting this original thread and allowing me to vent. 🙏🏼 
I think the most aggravating thing about all of this is the utter lack of communication by whomever decided to hijack.

I have learned a tough lesson, and will no longer wait to make a request-- even if it's two years in advance!!!  I wouldn't dare send in a request though, unless I made it known on a roll call, whether I was the roll call starter or not. And since plans and itineraries do sometimes change, it is beholden of the requester to keep people informed. I've seen people who have "handed off" the M&G when they've decided not to book.

Anyway, I think COMMUNICATION is everything! EVERYTHING