Bridge - Organized or Casual on Crossing

[Hblanton]

This last spring my wife and I had the pleasure of doing our first Atlantic crossing. We lucked into a deal on Regent and did a 2 week trip in a Penthouse Suite for all of $4,000 (Thank you Travelocity for honoring your mistake!!!)

 

We greatly enjoyed the crossing - it ws one of the most relaxing experiences we have had. We are lookng at doing 2 more, both on NCL (One in December on the new Gem back from Barcelona, and one a 15 day trip to London on the Jewel next April as the kick-off to a european vacation.)

 

It is really going to be interesting to compare the two lines. IMO, the whole 5/6 star notion is just silly. We had a great cabin on Regents Voyager, and service was very good. All the food was fine, but the truth of the matter is that all cruise food is catering food, and again IMO, none of it comes close to high-quality resturant food. We don't care. We enjoy it all the same. What we do care about is the "Freestyle" approach, as we take a very casual approach to life onboard. So while Regent had open dining, there was an annoyinglyl specific dress code that kept us in our cabin a few nights.

 

We'll be paying about $90 a night, balcony on the NCL trips, and the "real" price for our Regent trip was over $400 per night. It will be interesting to see what you really get for you rmoney. I expect the experiences to be much more similar than different.

 

 

As a married couple in our mid 40s, we were clearly in the bottom 5% agewise, but it was fine. The passengers were quite pleasant.

 

One big advantage aboutt he passenger profile, is that as is typical with an older crowd, there were a lot of bridge players onboard adn we had a nice ongoing duplicate tourney.

 

Does anyone know if, given the older demographic of the crossing, NCL does a decent job to support bridge play? Is there an instructor? Are there classes? Is there time set aside every sea day for duplicate? How about arranging casual contract play?

 

Thanks for the help. I take these trips to read, relax, exercise, and play some bridge. I hope this last one is part of the program on NCL's crossings.

[electricron]

Does anyone know if, given the older demographic of the crossing, NCL does a decent job to support bridge play? Is there an instructor? Are there classes? Is there time set aside every sea day for duplicate? How about arranging casual contract play?

Thanks for the help. I take these trips to read, relax, exercise, and play some bridge. I hope this last one is part of the program on NCL's crossings.

 

Most NCL ships have a game/card room where you can organize your own rubbers of bridge. I don't ever recall seeing a bridge call in the Freestyle Daily, but it could if you asked the Cruise Director for one and were willing to help organize a tournament. No guarantees that anyone would actually show up.