After exploring our cabin and dropping off our carry on bags, we wandered around to kill time before muster drill. NCL's pattern for finding your muster station was interesting. Each cruise card is marked with a letter and number combination (ours was J6). In the Freestyle Daily (it's a wonderful problem to have when you find yourself having to think twice about whether to say "Patter" or "Compass" or "Fun Times" or "Today" when referring to the daily schedule because you've been fortunate to cruise on many lines), there is a key explaining what venue on board correlates to each letter on your cruise card. All of the J group was to report to the Hollywood Theater on Deck 5, Fwd. Always so nice when you score a muster drill location not only inside but somewhere you can sit down!
In my research about NCL, I was really looking forward to trying the two buffet items I often heard raved about. The pizza and the pretzel rolls! You know you've been on a lot of big ships when you are wandering around and it takes a while to realize you'd walked into the sole buffet. I did like that they have similar drink dispensers to RCL that offer water and a flavored Crystal Light style strawberry drink that was refreshing. On the pizza front, based more on my impression later in the cruise when it was a saving grace after a bad restaurant experience (Dad thinks he attracts bad service in restaurants) it was pretty good. Soft crust without being doughy and routinely fresh. The pretzel rolls however - I read someone online recently post about wanting to bring their microwave on board. As ridiculous as that sounds, I wish I'd had one each and every time I tried the pretzel rolls. They were as expected as far as softness and flavor but they were always cold! Like just pulled from the fridge cold! This day I thought it might be because we were walking through in the late afternoon with only slim pickings left from lunch but it was every time I tried one! I even made a point of seeking out a pretzel roll when we stopped at the buffet just as the lunch service was starting and still cold.
While part of me envisioned spending all this time with Adam and Amy, from the start it was like when I was a kid and you'd scatter who knows where all day and it was fine as long as you were back for dinner. We hadn't seen them since we decided to head to our cabin. We reported to the theater for muster and they had many crew members with signs directing people to the few rows they'd reserved for their number group. We ended up with the last two seats in a row and 2 more rows filled up before they arrived. In case anyone is wondering, you do not need to bring your life jackets to the muster drill. I think Princess was one of the last lines to still make you do that and if I recall correctly, they'd finally stopped that when I sailed on them last year. While the actual muster drill spiel was done over the intercom ship wide, we had a funny young lady who stood on stage modeling the life jacket and cracking jokes. She repeatedly announced with glee that she's "from Minnesota where currently it's snowing and I'm here!" She pretended to be a runway model when the description of how to put on your life vest was read. It really made this necessary step a lot more lighthearted while still being informative. Pretty much everyone stayed in their seats after the spiel because they were so enthralled to the point that she had to tell them to get out. I must say it was also the first time I've ever reached the end of a drill and not been made to wait for ages to be officially dismissed.
A little tip for any new cruiser - the release from muster drill and returning at peak times from touring a port becomes crowd central as everyone follows the masses and well "crowds" the first elevator they come across. Take the time to move through the crowd further down the ship or even go up a deck if you can handle stairs and then call for the elevator. No having to wait for 5 visits of the elevator until there's finally enough space for you and 10 of your now closest friends.
We've been on cruises where the elevators get so full you start considering crowd surfing to get out. This however was the first cruise where we got into an elevator with only about 4 other people and when a family of 3 tried to force in, the elevator's overweight alarm went off! Those poor 3 people were not pleased at being voted off the elevator. For the rest of the trip we avoided any elevator that had more than a few people in it.
Back to the cabin to get ready for our first of the 3 specialty dinners at Teppanyaki. We finally got to meet our butler, Spencer Ellison. He took the time to show us around the suite pointing out the little features. He offered to open the connecting door but we said no thanks. He told us about being able to drink the sodas in the fridge and we asked that it be swapped out for Diet Pepsi. We had a canape tray dropped off while we were out wandering. I actually saw a cart of those trays left sitting in the hallway one day. Seeing instances like that combined with the concern that you don't know when they left that tray with shrimp, salmon, and cheese based items in your cabin if you've been out in port all day, really turns me off trying any of it. I'd read reports from other cruisers that their butlers kept them well stocked in snacks and treats like candy and nuts so I was hopeful when Spencer told us that he'd be alternating the treats we get delivered so that tomorrow would be something sweet. He explained how to use the hot tub and assured us that the steward would notice it had been used and know to clean it the next day. Spencer confirmed that we'd gotten our pre-arranged bottle of distilled water and offered an extension cord for Dad's CPAP machine.
Already knowing which nights we planned to use our specialty dining package (3 nights included in the cruise booking), we asked Spencer for the menus to the main dining room for the remaining nights. He was able to print them off and rush them over to us. He advised us to call him when we were ready to make reservations for those other nights and to reach out to him for any room service. The room service fee is waived for suites. There were a couple times we reached out to him only a couple hours before we wanted to have dinner and he finessed us a reservation. One of those days he called right in front of us to take care of it and you could tell from his side of the conversation that he was starting to get turned down. He used his pull to speak to someone higher up and moments later we were all set. Adam and Amy were off enjoying some pre-dinner drinks so they weren't able to meet Spencer the first night.
One of the interesting things we had happen was that because we'd used the same credit card for both cabins' worth of onboard charges, any charges any of the four of us made only displayed on our cabin TV under Dad's account. Adam and Amy were concerned when they didn't see charges showing up on their accounts making it hard to keep an eye on whether everything was ringing up correctly. On the flip side, it became like a game for me because I'd check our account each day and it felt like my own version of Where's Waldo. My own cruise version of a nanny cam - oh Adam and Amy are back from their tour - here's a charge from the bar in their name. It was like tuning in to a new episode of "Where has the family been today?" on TV each night.
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