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Notes:
Had wrong boarding time: 9:30 AM to 10:00 AM instead of 10:00 AM to 10:30 AM
Check-In was well organized. It went very fast. The ID cards issued by NCL do not come with a hole punched in them unlike Carnival which issues Sail & Sign Cards with a prepunched hole convenient for using with lanyards. We brought our own lanyards with us, but they did not have a clear pocket in which to place our ID cards. Right at the NCL boarding waiting area they had several huge displays of lanyards for sale. We mentioned to the gal at the desk that we were looking for new lanyards since we don't have them with the pockets. Rather than trying to sell us more lanyards she asked if we already had our own lanyards. She said it would be no problem for her to punch holes in our NCL ID cards for us so we could use our existing lanyards. She had a special card punch right at her sales desk designed to punch a slot in the NCL ID cards. She was nice enough to do that for us for free so that we could use our existing lanyards and didn't have to buy new ones with clear pockets!
Because all the ship passengers are boarding over a very short time interval and are not allowed into their rooms until about 1:30 PM, all the public areas get extremely crowded and embarkation. This is especially true of the buffet and the open bar and lounges. I can imagine this could be a very bad impression for a first time cruiser. If I thought the entire cruise was going to be this crowded and chaotic, I'd have a very dim view of cruising. But naturally this is only true for the first day during embarkation when passengers can't go to their rooms and are instead crowded into just a few open venues.
Lunch was excellent but the staff seemed a bit harried. I had a chicken nachos appetizer and a tuna salad sandwhich served with crispy fries. My wife had a salad, meatloaf with bacon, and a twice backed potato. We split and shared each others meals so that we could try everything. My wife also got a fruit plate for desert. Unfortunately the only free beverages served with meals is coffee, tea, ice tea, lemonade, and water.
In our room beds were arranged as two single beds instead of one king bed.
We found a "Welcome Back" note for "Latitudes Rewards Bronze" in our room. It said "Please enjoy the bottle of sparkling wine in your stateroom with our compliments." But there was no bottle of sparklink wine in our room. There were also no wine glases. We would have used water glasses but there was only one water glass in the bathroom. There are 4 holders for water glasses, but just one water glass in them.
There is a coffee maker in the room with both regular and decaffinated coffee packets and sweetner, but no coffee cups or coffee creamer.
Though we purchased the Unlimited Premium Internet package, it was not working when we arrived. When we tried to log in it said that no record of our account could be found. I suspected they had not yet set up the internet for the cruise passengers just boarding. I was right. At about 1 PM we were able to log into our accounts and they worked fine. Logging into the NCL App it interestingly showed all our usage from our prior NCL cruise to Iceland back in September 2018.
Unlike Carnival, NCL does not offer the purchase of cases of small bottles of water for your stateroom. They only offer various quantities of 1 liter bottles. Unlike Carnival, NCL also does not offer the purchase of 6-packs of cans of soda for your room. I assume this is to encourage people to purchase the unlimited soda package. My wife and I rarely drink soda so we didn't think the unlimited soda would be a good option for us. On our prior Carnival cruise it took us 14 days to go through a total of 12 cans of soda. That averaged to less than 1/2 can of soda per day for each of us.
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