Norwegian Gem - 2013 Trip Report

[Dicenator]

NORWEGIAN GEM - 2013 - TRIP REPORT

This cruise was for 9 nights departing on March 22nd from New York. The itinerary was 2 at-sea days, San Juan, St. Martin, St. Thomas, Samana Dominican Republic and then 2 at-sea days returning to New York. There were 7 of us on this cruise, me, my wife, my daughter and son-in-law and the 3 friends of my wife who are teachers where she taught. These girls I refer to as sparkle bunnies because they wear sparkle dresses for dinner every evening. The passenger capacity of the ship is 2350 but on this cruise it was 3000 due to parents with kids in their staterooms because of Easter break. I'm seriously thinking that this will be my last Spring break cruise. The kids particularly the teenagers are crude, rude and obnoxious. They try to get onto the elevators before the passengers who are exiting can get out of the elevator. They congregate in groups in stairwells and hallways totally blocking others from getting by. They run up and down the hallways all over the ship. It is really annoying.

The crew that I was with were annoying in another way. For example we would make plans to meet at the entrance to the main dining room for dinner at 6 PM. My wife and I were there every time right at 6. My daughter and her husband would be 10 minutes late and the sparkles would be 15 to 20 minutes late. Well we would get a table for 7 but we weren't able to start ordering dinner until everybody was there. Most nights it would get to 7:30 and we didn't even have our dessert menus yet so I would leave without dessert so that I could get to the craps table in time to get a decent shooting position. I won't even talk about the booze they consumed. I had one beer for the whole trip and half a glass of wine one evening.

Back to the cruise. The trip to San Juan was actually 2 days and 23 hours. We arrived at 3 PM on Monday and the ship was departing at 9 PM. We wandered around Old San Juan for an hour and none of the others wanted to go to El Morro or the cathedral or anywhere but some shops. Then it was Senor Frogs. I did have the one beer while we were there.

Next day was St. Martin from 8 AM until 5 PM. We all took a $6 cab ride to Orient Beach and spent the day there until 3 PM. Unfortunately I screwed up without knowing that I screwed up. I used sunblock, SPF 15. However I was in the water for about 2 hours. When on the beach I was under the umbrella the whole time. Well the 2 hours in the sun in the water gave me a sunburn on my face, back of my neck, shoulders and upper arms. That night I had sunburn chills followed by sunburn pain the next day. Needless to say this most definitely affected me for the next two days.

On to St. Thomas where the others were planning a trip to Magens bay beach. No sun for me so I wandered around the shops, Havensight mall, near the cruise dock. After an hour and a half I was back on the ship just trying to relax. For 3 days now the weather was beautiful, blue skies, warm water and the temperatures were in the low 80's.

Last stop was Samana on the north coast of the Dominican Republic. We had planned to go to Caya Levantado for a beach day. Well when we got up that morning it was cloudy, foggy and raining. I cancelled the trip for myself, my wife and daughter cancelled also. The other 4 went and spent the day in a bar drinking while it rained the whole time we were there.

On Norwegian ships they have what is called freestyle dining. There were probably10 or 11 different restaurants on the ship with the larger ones being free but the specialty restaurants charge anywhere from $10 to $30 each for dinner.

Most of our dinners were in the Grand Pacific main dining room but we also did Cagneys steakhouse one night, the Brazilian churasscaria and El Bistro the French restaurant. The food was great in every one of them.

The casino was pretty much the same as my trip on this ship in November, 2011. My wife was upset the first night because she wanted to play Pai Gow Poker. They had 1 table with a $25 minimum bet sign. This is OK for her. In the evening when she went to play it now had a $100 minimum bet sign. She went to the casino manager to find out what happened. He told her that there was a high roller who wanted the table limit raised. Well screw everybody else. This guy was playing by himself the whole week. This same guy was at the craps table near the end of the cruise and lost $17,000 in maybe an hour. This guy was obnoxious and arrogant and everybody was happy when he lost and left the table. He was the type who would make comments whenever anybody 7ed out except when he 7ed out. It ended up that Pai Gow on the ship did not have the bonus bet so she wouldn't have played even if it was only $25.

The craps table was 12 feet long with green micro fiber and was bouncier than I remember. The odds were 3X 4X 5X with no hopping prop bets. They had hard ways, horn craps yo and the other high low etc bets. The table was open on the at sea days in the afternoon around 2:15 when the dealers who were dealing for the poker tournament were freed as the poker tournament whittled down to the final table. In the evening the table would open around 8 PM with only a stickman and 1 dealer. At 9 PM the other dealer would show up and the whole table was available. There were a lot of craps players on this cruise and many times the table would be full. The only times that I was able to get in a few quick hands was when the table would first open if I was there. I might get in 3 hands before other players would come out of the woodwork. Most of the players were chicken feeders but a few of them would set the dice and try to throw every throw the same way sometimes with some decent success but most times not.

There was one player whose name was Greg who was throwing a GTC overhand throw. His throws looked nice but during the week he only had 2 really good hands in the 25 to 30 throw range. Most of his hands were probably in the 7 to 11 throw range along with some PSO's, although you could count on him to make a few 6's and or 8s in most hands.

I was not satisfied with my throwing performance. For the week prior to the cruise I was removing a laminate floor from my kitchen and then removing the underlying vinyl floor. For anyone who has never done this it involves a lot of scraping which is hard physical work and requires your hands to be gripping the scrapper very hard. I think I lost some of the sensitivity in my hands and I found it hard to get a good grip on the dice. Plus there was the sunburn issue I discussed earlier. This affected my throwing on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings.

I had a lot of wild bounce backs, bouncing left into the corner and wild splatters. The table games on at sea days would start to open around 9 AM.

Here are my throwing results for the week:

DAY #1 - 3/22

Throw Hand # Throws # Points # CO Wins

UH LEFT 8

PARR RIGHT 8 1

PARR RIGHT 13 1 1

PARR RIGHT 12 2 2

When I arrived at the table only the left side was open with a husband and wife located at SL1 & 2. I had to wait and when I returned the whole table was open but all I could get was SL1. That's why I was using a Parr throw.

DAY #2 - 3/23

Throw Hand # Throws # Points # CO Wins

UH RIGHT 3

UH RIGHT 13 3 1

PARR LEFT 14

PARR LEFT 10 2

UH RIGHT 7

PARR LEFT 5

DAY #3 - 3/24

Throw Hand # Throws # Points # CO Wins

UH RIGHT 9 1 4

UH RIGHT 7 1 2

PARR LEFT 5 1

UH RIGHT 25 3 1

UH RIGHT 7 1 1

UH RIGHT 19 3 1

UH RIGHT 22 1 3

UH RIGHT 6 1

UH RIGHT 7 1

UH RIGHT 4

UH RIGHT 13

UH RIGHT 9 1 3

UH RIGHT 13 2 1

UH RIGHT 7 3

UH RIGHT 6 1

DAY #4 - 3/25

Throw Hand # Throws # Points # CO Wins

UH RIGHT 5

UH RIGHT 11 2 4

UH RIGHT 16 1

UH RIGHT 8 1 1

UH RIGHT 22 2 1

UH RIGHT 14 1 1

DAY #5 - 3/26

Throw Hand # Throws # Points # CO Wins

UH RIGHT 11 1

UH RIGHT 15 1 1

I stopped playing due to the sunburn chills. I was shivering at the table.

DAY #6 - 3/27

Throw Hand # Throws # Points # CO Wins

UH RIGHT 6 1

UH RIGHT 7 1 1

UH RIGHT 9 3

UH RIGHT 13 2 3

PARR LEFT 6

UH RIGHT 7

UH RIGHT 8 1

UH RIGHT 8 1

UH RIGHT 6

UH RIGHT 8 2

PARR RIGHT 6

UH LEFT 21 3

UH LEFT 14 1 1

UH LEFT 6

UH RIGHT 9

UH RIGHT 7 1 2

This whole evening I was fighting through the sunburn pain and was very uncomfortable.

DAY #7 - 3/28

Throw Hand # Throws # Points # CO Wins

PARR LEFT 14

UH RIGHT 9 1

UH RIGHT 8 1 1

UH RIGHT 7

UH RIGHT 16 1

UH RIGHT 12 1

UH RIGHT 14 1 3

UH RIGHT 12

PARR LEFT 18 1 1

UH RIGHT 21 2 2

DAY #8 - 3/29

Throw Hand # Throws # Points # CO Wins

UH RIGHT 11

UH RIGHT 13 1 4

UH RIGHT 9 1 1

UH RIGHT 10

UH RIGHT 9 1 1

UH RIGHT 10 2 2

UH RIGHT 21 2 2

UH RIGHT 12 1

UH RIGHT 13 1

UH RIGHT 7 1

DAY #9 -3/30

Throw Hand # Throws # Points # CO Wins

UH RIGHT 9 1

UH RIGHT 16 1 2

UH RIGHT 7

UH LEFT 7 2

UH RIGHT 14 1 5

UH RIGHT 25 5 2

UH RIGHT 14 3

The sunburn factor really affected me on day 5 and day 6. Most of the time it was really hard to get into a throwing rhythm due to the number of players at the table. Probably 80% of the time I was playing there were typically 7 to 8 players. I didn't win on the cruise but my loss was pretty minimal being around $150. I was betting on 4 other players some of the time with the GTC thrower being the only one that I bet on all the time. This resulted in losses most days.

I was toking the crew pretty much every day particularly on my longer hands. I probably generated close to $200 for them in the 9 days. Some of the other players were also taking care of the crew also which pleased me. The crew were all competent and friendly and gave no heat at all to anybody. One guy had some issues with his throwing where he could hardly get the dice past the stickman on 4 or 5 consecutive throws. What they did was "no rolls" on those throws and then the shooter got straightened out. There were no dealers or pit bosses or anybody that were on this ship the last time I was on it in November of 2011.

My wife played very little craps probably no more than 10 hands for the whole cruise. Most of the time she played Texas Hold em and Ultimate Texas Hold em. During the cruise she lost her whole bankroll which was OK since she gave back her win from the cruise last month. This is 2 cruises now where she has been playing a lot at the poker table and she has yet to win. I hope this is sinking in, but as most of you know you can't say this to your spouse.

I would cruise on this ship again in the future since it sails out of New York but not during spring break time. While my wife was teaching we could only go during spring break or in the Summer but now that she is retired we can go anytime.

Dicenator

[tompeter]

Thanks for the report.

[Nightengale212]

I too am doing this cruise the end of March 2014. Have never had the opportunity to really explore San Juan, and never been to Samana so looking forward to something new. Always do Orient Beach and Magens Bay Beach as these are my two favorite Carib beaches :) Love the two sea days down and back, plus the New York departure as we can drive to the port.

 

Thanks for sharing.