Encore quick review

[WITraveler37]

My family of 4 got off a week long Caribbean cruise on Encore this morning so I thought I'd write a quick review. All in all we had a good trip. I don't think I'll book a cruise during spring break again as there were just too many people. We were never able to get chairs by the pool or on the sundeck so we spent most of our downtime on the Waterfront or in the Observation lounge. Food was generally good. Le Bistro was great. I never saw a cookie, but there were plenty of other good desserts to be had. Encore was a good ship, we enjoyed the gocarts and the laser tag. We tried to do the escape room but it wasn't working right so we ended up getting refunded for that. The guy running it said it doesn't work properly half the time and they're getting rid of it and most of the galaxy pavilion and laser tag in November. We enjoyed Choir of Man but we enjoyed the Beatles Invasion even more and saw them three times since their show is different each time. We got kicked out of The District because it is apparently 18+ and my daughter is 15. This is not posted anywhere but the bar tender kicked us out. As we are a family of 4 we were all in one balcony room. We did that on our cruise in 2022 and it worked great. However, the fact that they no longer put the extra beds away during the day was really annoying, we all hit our heads hard on the Pullman multiple times trying to get into the closet. We were on tender 13 going to Great Stirrup Cay and didn't get on the island until after noon. We enjoyed ourselves there but there were a lot of people upset because they didn't get there til much later and the food was closed by 2:30. NCL should do a better job of communicating to people exactly what time the food and bars on the island close down. I didn't enjoy the time the tendering took so I will probably avoid cruises with tender ports in the future. This was our 2nd NCL cruise, and it was a good cruise, the staff were very friendly and the service was good. Our first cruise was in March of 2022 when they were sailing at half capacity so we were spoiled. This cruise was at maximum capacity so it's not really fair to compare. I guess that's all I have to share. If anyone has any questions I'd be happy to try and answer them.

[wncretired]

Going on this ship in 7 days for a 21 day Panama Canal cruise. Shouldn’t be too many spring breakers on this one as it is 21 days long! But if there are, there are! We’ll deal with it. 😊

[IAcruising]

6 hours ago, WITraveler37 said:

We tried to do the escape room but it wasn't working right so we ended up getting refunded for that. The guy running it said it doesn't work properly half the time and they're getting rid of it and most of the galaxy pavilion and laser tag in November.

 

Is this new? Is Encore dry-docking in November for a major refurb? I guess I missed it.

 

[BirdTravels]

1 minute ago, wncretired said:

Going on this ship in 7 days for a 21 day Panama Canal cruise. Shouldn’t be too many spring breakers on this one as it is 21 days long! But if there are, there are! We’ll deal with it. 😊

The crossing was sold out for a while, but now has some rooms available. 
 

This week, the Encore is sailing with >4900 passengers (capacity is 3998) with >1400 kids. 

[BirdTravels]

1 minute ago, IAcruising said:

 

Is this new? Is Encore dry-docking in November for a major refurb? I guess I missed it.

 

Yes. After her Alaskan season, she sails to Europe for a dry dock. 

[IAcruising]

5 minutes ago, BirdTravels said:

Yes. After her Alaskan season, she sails to Europe for a dry dock. 

 

Ok. They can do whatever they want with Galaxy Pavilion and Laser tag, but if they try to pull a Joy OL change, that will get some sand in my privates. Don't believe the infrastructure exists on the Encore for that though.

[PATRLR]

4 hours ago, IAcruising said:

but if they try to pull a Joy OL change,

That would be so sad.

[WITraveler37]

16 hours ago, BirdTravels said:

This week, the Encore is sailing with >4900 passengers (capacity is 3998) with >1400 kids.

I wish I knew the numbers from last week. My guess is they would have been pretty similar.