perditax
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Jan 8, 2015
- Messages
- 1,977
Backstory: cruise newbie aside from my NCL Getaway trip this past June. I have a TR for that here. Traveling with boyfriend. We are both semi-introverted tech workers with no kids. I booked this cruise a long while back, before I did more research on cruising in general and determined that we’d probably be better off with a more ‘adult’ line like Celebrity. That said, we were (and are) determined to make the best of it. It’s day two as I retroactively add this intro, and we are having a nice time.
Day One OMG.
Not quite sure how I’m going to structure this. In theory this is a “DCL For Skeptics” TR, but it’s hard not to throw in some NCL comparisons. Maybe I’ll just get those out of the way first and that’ll help? You can skip the following section if you don’t care.
BEGIN NCL COMPARISON
Here’s where the Norwegian Getaway beats Disney (so far):
—Bigger TVs in the rooms. That may be an aberration. The TV in my Cat V (concierge) is tinier than than the TV was in my 99sf studio room on the Getaway. That just seems weird. But I think other categories have bigger TVs, and the Cat Vs just got the short end.
—Better sanitizing. Also seems weird. DCL has a very good CDC/noro record. That said, NCL has WAY more hand sanitizing stations, and way more people encouraging you to wash/sanitize your hands (at every buffet entrance, for example), as well as sink stations at the main buffet entrance.
—Better elevators. Getaway seems to have twice as many elevators and each elevator cab is (not exaggerating) about 3-4 x as large.
—Better flow. Most of the Getaway ‘public’ decks have good flow-through without being broken up so often by inside/outside and random hallways or blockages. Need to run from forward to aft? Take a very fast elevator to decks 6/7/8 and you have a pretty straight shot. On Dream, things are much less straightforward, or so it seems to me.
—Better prime rib. Had the prime rib tonight at EG, and it was what I had been expecting on NCL: tough, preservative-laden, giving the impression of having been cooked before it was ever on board and then re-heated in individual servings. Getaway’s prime rib (at O’Sheehan’s, complimentary) was fresher-seeming, beefier, and more like something you would get at Outback. I could believe it had been cooked and carved on board.
—Better nightlife. Won’t come as a shock to anyone, so won’t belabor the point.
—Muster drill: better organized, no choke points to speak of, funnier. More later.
END NCL COMPARISON … FOR NOW
Day one chronological! Very long day. Expect a lot of text.
We stayed at the Holiday Inn Express. I know other hotels are more popular, but we didn’t need to park a car long term and I wanted to be near Publix. This turned out to be silly, because Publix closes at 9pm on Sundays. We did stop by in the morning for a few last minute needs. After some GPS hilarity, we found the place to drop off our National rental. It was a zoo, and I quickly realized that I wouldn’t be getting a shuttle from them to the port anytime soon, and I loaded up my shiny new Uber app and we uber’d for the first time. $30 free credit, and “Mike” showed up in his Chevy … Tahoe? something, in literally three minutes, just as the National guy rescued me from the line when he realized I was returning, not picking up. Mike tossed our bags into the back of his SUV, on top of a bulk bag of dog food (hey, whatever), and talked to us about what it’s like to be an Uber driver in Orlando and the port. (Good days: six ships in port.) He was very pleasant. We tipped him a lot since the ride was technically free. Dropped us right at the line to the terminal, it was probably just about 10:25. Line moved fast, initial check in point (passport and ID, I think tell them your room number), then real security/xray, moved more slowly because lots of toddlers (more on toddlers later), then concierge check in (super fast), then we were deposited in the circular concierge playpen. (It really is a circle.) I think by now it was about 11, and we didn’t wait long for boarding time. Because we were near the special concierge door, and because we opted to skip the boarding photo, we were among the first on board. Go us! We were perhaps the third or fourth table seated in concierge. I had a glass of champagne; BF had an espresso; a guest services gentleman who was helping out concierge went over our options and itinerary, and that was when I found out we could schedule our debark time to be escorted past the line, and we didn’t even need to do express walk-off/wrangle our luggage. We picked 7:20am. (Early flight.) And then our room was ready.
All the above pretty much ran like clockwork. However, BF was beginning to get that glazed look in his eyes. This was the point of near-catatonia I hit right about the same time on my first cruise. So I gently herded him to EG for the small, sedate buffet lunch. Lamb chops: tasty. chicken salad: tasty, sweet. Peel and eat shrimp: good, but too much work. Mozzarella sandwich: good. Hmm, I should admit at this point that I was a little buzzed and everything tasted good. Also some prosciutto wrapped salmon. Didn’t sound like it should work, but it did. Desserts were meh. Back to the room. I deposited BF so he could chill out. I went back to concierge: scored a mimosa. Scored two very nice desserts: a chocolate mousse parfait, and some kind of chocolate covered cookie on a stick. Back to room. BF still catatonic. Told him I was going to go walk around and scope some things out. Ran through Cabanas. Looked decent, not much different from EG, except the pizza station and perhaps some asian stations? And mac and cheese. Then I noticed that no one was in the quiet cove pool, really.
Back to room—BF was napping. This was for the best. Grabbed swimsuit, sunglasses, headed to pool. I love the deep part of the adult pool. I had it to myself for about an hour (once or twice people got in, decided it was too cold, got out. suckers). However “Quiet Cove” is a misnomer. At least on day one, it is a veritable thoroughfare. Kids, some screaming, families, just a constant stream in all directions. I floated, hung on the ladders like a sea monkey, let the cool mist from the misty thing coat my hair with mist. Really was there for an hour. Relaxing, even as I watched the crowds ebb and flow. Finally had to get out for muster. Dried off and changed. Muster in the Walt Disney Theater.
We shall refer to this as the “Cluster Drill”. This seems to be a toddler-heavy sailing. Many of them were very, very unhappy and made it known. It was hard to hear the instructions. I solemnly turned to BF and told him we had to do this each day. He pointed out that the gangways were still up and he could still leave the boat. The worst part, though, was when it ended. This is where Getaway’s heavy-duty elevator system shines. On Dream, we were fed right into the worst kind of bottleneck after the drill. Really, nowhere to go, no way to escape. We ended up walking up eight flights of stairs. That was literally the easiest thing to do, and lots of people were doing it. Ugh.
Back to the room. We decided to run a quick load of laundry. I won’t go into detail on the reasons, but between the two of us we can easily generate about half a load of laundry in 24 hours of travel. It’s a thing. I had planned for it, so it was fine. One thing I said was that I didn’t want to be in the laundry room when the ship started sailaway. So that was where we were when the ship started sailaway. We rushed back to our verandah, waved at lots of people all along the route out, watched the Sheriff (?) boat escorting us, checked out Enchantment of the Seas as we passed her (didn’t seem to be many people aboard), saw fishing boats, parasailers, birds, pier fishers, whatnot. I waved and waved. I missed this entirely on my GA trip.
BF at this point had hit the “ahhhh” phase of staring at the ocean. Oh, let me back up and say that when we asked our assistant steward for lounge-style chairs, we had them in less than 10 minutes (bump-out cat V; it can be done). Then there’s about an hour in here where things are a bit confused; I know we went back and forth to deck 9 laundry several times; we tried sweets at Cove Cafe; we had some cheese and crackers at Concierge (and more sweets); we spent a lot of time on our verandah which was lovely, especially when we passed through some kind of cold front that was legitimately chilly, and followed by a brief shower. We were both suddenly freezing, as was the room. I turned the a/c warmer, the went off alone (leaving BF to contemplate the ocean from his lounger) to get tea from concierge to warm up, and to do some more walking. Did a spin along the nightlifey area. There’s just no comparison to NCL here, sorry. Violinist was playing “When You Wish Upon a Star”. 70s trivia in 687. Charming British lad running it, though. Duo playing Ghostbusters theme song in Atrium. It was all pretty perfunctory. Nothing lost, though, because I’m not really a nightlifey person. But I liked the energy just walking around on Getaway better.
8:15: second seating at EG. I did like our server team. We told them very very politely that we had short attention spans. They kept things moving. We got a few magic tricks. BF was told he looked like Hugh Grant in Notting Hill. I think he looks like a young Christopher Walken. Ronald and Allen were our team. We weren't chided for not eating more; nor asked to fill out comment cards or whatever. BF was very happy with the magic tricks. We never did get bread, though, but we didn’t mention it because we found it more enjoyable to stare at the empty bread platter and make jokes about whether the bread would appear if we just believed. Our team never, ever noticed it was empty, so it just became a running joke for the two of us. The food was ‘decent’. Lobster ravioli was good. That tuna avocado tower I’ve seen a thousand pictures of tastes just like it looks. Avocado was ripe and flavorful, tuna was too chilled to taste. Prime rib as described above (in a word: processed). Twice-baked potato pretty flavorless (I added more butter). Desserts were better: sticky date pudding, apple cinnamon sundae. We even liked both the mini desserts—they taste better than they look. BF had his first adult beverage of the trip, one of those things that’s basically a milkshake with vodka in it.
Off note of dinner: Two ‘round’ tables, right across from us, let their small children, collectively, play with the central fountain and scream, run back and forth, scream, fall down in the middle of the floor (where waiters and patrons were trying to walk) over and over and over, and they allowed them to do this for a solid half an hour (conservatively!). This was while we were trying to enjoy our entrees. No other kids in the room were misbehaving. Their parents grinned and watched them scream, and lay down flat on the ground in the path of the waiters, the whole time. BF took it stoically. I stewed and considered switching to early seating. (It was ten feet from us.) I got over it. Dessert helped. It goes in the ‘possibly DCL is not the line for us’ column. There is nothing DCL staff can do. One (unrelated) mother tried to intervene with the loudest girl, pointing out that she was waking her baby, but the girl did not speak english and went back to screaming and lying on the floor. Grrargh.
That said, there are many things DCL does right, and I will write them up tomorrow, at it has been a very very very long day.
—
New day! I ended writing last night intending to list some good stuff, so: service is definitely very personable, especially in concierge. People from the concierge lounge are always finding us in other places on the ship and stopping to chat. This includes both the concierge hosts (Ashley in particular I believe may have clones—he found us in the shopping district today) as well as the bartenders (one spotted us in Vista cafe this morning). Everyone definitely wants to bend over backwards for us. It does mean more small talk than we’re used to, but it’s usually not long enough to be tiring. (Note: I know many people would love this level of service and personal attention.)
We’ve had an ongoing plumbing issue since last night—I took a bath, and when I drained the tub the water began backing up from the grates in both bathroom halves. We called concierge, this is probably around 10pm last night, and maintenance was there within about five minutes. They spent a long time snaking/draining, then left. Then Ashley, or one of his clones—or maybe he just never sleeps—called us back to ask if someone could come sanitize, which was fine with us. Today they came back again and asked if they could do more work / snaking, etc. To be specific: I’m not complaining about the plumbing issue. I know the systems on these ships are touchy (as soon as I realized what was happening I stopped the tub draining). I’m telling this story to illustrate how much they have been on top of this maintenance issue, including following up on it.
The concierge lounge has been pretty fantastic. The espresso machine rivals the one on the Getaway. I’m on my second latte of the day and I’m not a coffee drinker. *vibrate* Between this and the Studio lounge on GA, I don't think I can cruise within a nearby beverage/snack lounge.
I really believe those folks would swim to shore and get us anything we requested.
The ship is very clean, aside from the previously mentioned lack of hand sanitizing or washing stations.
We love our veranda, especially since we got the loungers. I believe BF has napped out there a bit. We either use the straight back chairs for sightseeing (storms, other ships, birds and fish, etc), or the loungers to lounge.
Breakfast today was partially in concierge lounge, partially in Cabanas. The croissants at Cabanas were very good, warm and flaky. BF had some small blueberry pancakes which he described as ‘crunchy’, which seems non-ideal. I saw biscuits and gravy, sausages that looked really good, fried potatoes, lots of pastries, the expected Krispy Kreme rack, the make-your-own-granola station (looked very nice), lots of other stuff. I’d say Cabanas wins over Getaway’s breakfast buffet.
Onboard internet: Okay, so on the Getaway I just bought an unlimited internet package. There is no unlimited internet package here. I bought the biggest one (1GB/$90 or something). It has been a very very long time since I had to deal with metered internet, and it is HARROWING. I’m technically savvy and I’ve turned off EVERYTHING, and that meter still keeps ticking over, megabyte after megabyte. Load your gmail inbox without clicking any actual messages? 6MB gone. The DCL internet portal shows more usage than my own network monitoring reports. This is not really a big deal—BF hasn’t even gotten online, he’s taken to the ‘unplugged’ life much better than I have—but I am skeptical of their motives in not offering an unlimited package, and skeptical of the bandwith usage monitoring/billing. That said, I don’t NEED to do anything online. (So far I haven’t done any real writing on this trip, and not sure I’m going to yet, so I don’t need wikipedia/dropbox/etc access.) Mostly I’ve just been checking email for updates from our pet sitters (the cat separation anxiety is real). Just reporting it for info’s sake, and particularly for people who do need to get online (for school, work, social, ill relatives, whatever). That free 50mb is going to be gone in a BLINK even if you do everything right.
Today is a sea day, weird itinerary, and we’re basically just chilling out for now.
More later! I’m also taking pics but no way am I going to try to upload them till I’m back on a normal internet connection.
Day One OMG.
Not quite sure how I’m going to structure this. In theory this is a “DCL For Skeptics” TR, but it’s hard not to throw in some NCL comparisons. Maybe I’ll just get those out of the way first and that’ll help? You can skip the following section if you don’t care.
BEGIN NCL COMPARISON
Here’s where the Norwegian Getaway beats Disney (so far):
—Bigger TVs in the rooms. That may be an aberration. The TV in my Cat V (concierge) is tinier than than the TV was in my 99sf studio room on the Getaway. That just seems weird. But I think other categories have bigger TVs, and the Cat Vs just got the short end.
—Better sanitizing. Also seems weird. DCL has a very good CDC/noro record. That said, NCL has WAY more hand sanitizing stations, and way more people encouraging you to wash/sanitize your hands (at every buffet entrance, for example), as well as sink stations at the main buffet entrance.
—Better elevators. Getaway seems to have twice as many elevators and each elevator cab is (not exaggerating) about 3-4 x as large.
—Better flow. Most of the Getaway ‘public’ decks have good flow-through without being broken up so often by inside/outside and random hallways or blockages. Need to run from forward to aft? Take a very fast elevator to decks 6/7/8 and you have a pretty straight shot. On Dream, things are much less straightforward, or so it seems to me.
—Better prime rib. Had the prime rib tonight at EG, and it was what I had been expecting on NCL: tough, preservative-laden, giving the impression of having been cooked before it was ever on board and then re-heated in individual servings. Getaway’s prime rib (at O’Sheehan’s, complimentary) was fresher-seeming, beefier, and more like something you would get at Outback. I could believe it had been cooked and carved on board.
—Better nightlife. Won’t come as a shock to anyone, so won’t belabor the point.
—Muster drill: better organized, no choke points to speak of, funnier. More later.
END NCL COMPARISON … FOR NOW
Day one chronological! Very long day. Expect a lot of text.
We stayed at the Holiday Inn Express. I know other hotels are more popular, but we didn’t need to park a car long term and I wanted to be near Publix. This turned out to be silly, because Publix closes at 9pm on Sundays. We did stop by in the morning for a few last minute needs. After some GPS hilarity, we found the place to drop off our National rental. It was a zoo, and I quickly realized that I wouldn’t be getting a shuttle from them to the port anytime soon, and I loaded up my shiny new Uber app and we uber’d for the first time. $30 free credit, and “Mike” showed up in his Chevy … Tahoe? something, in literally three minutes, just as the National guy rescued me from the line when he realized I was returning, not picking up. Mike tossed our bags into the back of his SUV, on top of a bulk bag of dog food (hey, whatever), and talked to us about what it’s like to be an Uber driver in Orlando and the port. (Good days: six ships in port.) He was very pleasant. We tipped him a lot since the ride was technically free. Dropped us right at the line to the terminal, it was probably just about 10:25. Line moved fast, initial check in point (passport and ID, I think tell them your room number), then real security/xray, moved more slowly because lots of toddlers (more on toddlers later), then concierge check in (super fast), then we were deposited in the circular concierge playpen. (It really is a circle.) I think by now it was about 11, and we didn’t wait long for boarding time. Because we were near the special concierge door, and because we opted to skip the boarding photo, we were among the first on board. Go us! We were perhaps the third or fourth table seated in concierge. I had a glass of champagne; BF had an espresso; a guest services gentleman who was helping out concierge went over our options and itinerary, and that was when I found out we could schedule our debark time to be escorted past the line, and we didn’t even need to do express walk-off/wrangle our luggage. We picked 7:20am. (Early flight.) And then our room was ready.
All the above pretty much ran like clockwork. However, BF was beginning to get that glazed look in his eyes. This was the point of near-catatonia I hit right about the same time on my first cruise. So I gently herded him to EG for the small, sedate buffet lunch. Lamb chops: tasty. chicken salad: tasty, sweet. Peel and eat shrimp: good, but too much work. Mozzarella sandwich: good. Hmm, I should admit at this point that I was a little buzzed and everything tasted good. Also some prosciutto wrapped salmon. Didn’t sound like it should work, but it did. Desserts were meh. Back to the room. I deposited BF so he could chill out. I went back to concierge: scored a mimosa. Scored two very nice desserts: a chocolate mousse parfait, and some kind of chocolate covered cookie on a stick. Back to room. BF still catatonic. Told him I was going to go walk around and scope some things out. Ran through Cabanas. Looked decent, not much different from EG, except the pizza station and perhaps some asian stations? And mac and cheese. Then I noticed that no one was in the quiet cove pool, really.
Back to room—BF was napping. This was for the best. Grabbed swimsuit, sunglasses, headed to pool. I love the deep part of the adult pool. I had it to myself for about an hour (once or twice people got in, decided it was too cold, got out. suckers). However “Quiet Cove” is a misnomer. At least on day one, it is a veritable thoroughfare. Kids, some screaming, families, just a constant stream in all directions. I floated, hung on the ladders like a sea monkey, let the cool mist from the misty thing coat my hair with mist. Really was there for an hour. Relaxing, even as I watched the crowds ebb and flow. Finally had to get out for muster. Dried off and changed. Muster in the Walt Disney Theater.
We shall refer to this as the “Cluster Drill”. This seems to be a toddler-heavy sailing. Many of them were very, very unhappy and made it known. It was hard to hear the instructions. I solemnly turned to BF and told him we had to do this each day. He pointed out that the gangways were still up and he could still leave the boat. The worst part, though, was when it ended. This is where Getaway’s heavy-duty elevator system shines. On Dream, we were fed right into the worst kind of bottleneck after the drill. Really, nowhere to go, no way to escape. We ended up walking up eight flights of stairs. That was literally the easiest thing to do, and lots of people were doing it. Ugh.
Back to the room. We decided to run a quick load of laundry. I won’t go into detail on the reasons, but between the two of us we can easily generate about half a load of laundry in 24 hours of travel. It’s a thing. I had planned for it, so it was fine. One thing I said was that I didn’t want to be in the laundry room when the ship started sailaway. So that was where we were when the ship started sailaway. We rushed back to our verandah, waved at lots of people all along the route out, watched the Sheriff (?) boat escorting us, checked out Enchantment of the Seas as we passed her (didn’t seem to be many people aboard), saw fishing boats, parasailers, birds, pier fishers, whatnot. I waved and waved. I missed this entirely on my GA trip.
BF at this point had hit the “ahhhh” phase of staring at the ocean. Oh, let me back up and say that when we asked our assistant steward for lounge-style chairs, we had them in less than 10 minutes (bump-out cat V; it can be done). Then there’s about an hour in here where things are a bit confused; I know we went back and forth to deck 9 laundry several times; we tried sweets at Cove Cafe; we had some cheese and crackers at Concierge (and more sweets); we spent a lot of time on our verandah which was lovely, especially when we passed through some kind of cold front that was legitimately chilly, and followed by a brief shower. We were both suddenly freezing, as was the room. I turned the a/c warmer, the went off alone (leaving BF to contemplate the ocean from his lounger) to get tea from concierge to warm up, and to do some more walking. Did a spin along the nightlifey area. There’s just no comparison to NCL here, sorry. Violinist was playing “When You Wish Upon a Star”. 70s trivia in 687. Charming British lad running it, though. Duo playing Ghostbusters theme song in Atrium. It was all pretty perfunctory. Nothing lost, though, because I’m not really a nightlifey person. But I liked the energy just walking around on Getaway better.
8:15: second seating at EG. I did like our server team. We told them very very politely that we had short attention spans. They kept things moving. We got a few magic tricks. BF was told he looked like Hugh Grant in Notting Hill. I think he looks like a young Christopher Walken. Ronald and Allen were our team. We weren't chided for not eating more; nor asked to fill out comment cards or whatever. BF was very happy with the magic tricks. We never did get bread, though, but we didn’t mention it because we found it more enjoyable to stare at the empty bread platter and make jokes about whether the bread would appear if we just believed. Our team never, ever noticed it was empty, so it just became a running joke for the two of us. The food was ‘decent’. Lobster ravioli was good. That tuna avocado tower I’ve seen a thousand pictures of tastes just like it looks. Avocado was ripe and flavorful, tuna was too chilled to taste. Prime rib as described above (in a word: processed). Twice-baked potato pretty flavorless (I added more butter). Desserts were better: sticky date pudding, apple cinnamon sundae. We even liked both the mini desserts—they taste better than they look. BF had his first adult beverage of the trip, one of those things that’s basically a milkshake with vodka in it.
Off note of dinner: Two ‘round’ tables, right across from us, let their small children, collectively, play with the central fountain and scream, run back and forth, scream, fall down in the middle of the floor (where waiters and patrons were trying to walk) over and over and over, and they allowed them to do this for a solid half an hour (conservatively!). This was while we were trying to enjoy our entrees. No other kids in the room were misbehaving. Their parents grinned and watched them scream, and lay down flat on the ground in the path of the waiters, the whole time. BF took it stoically. I stewed and considered switching to early seating. (It was ten feet from us.) I got over it. Dessert helped. It goes in the ‘possibly DCL is not the line for us’ column. There is nothing DCL staff can do. One (unrelated) mother tried to intervene with the loudest girl, pointing out that she was waking her baby, but the girl did not speak english and went back to screaming and lying on the floor. Grrargh.
That said, there are many things DCL does right, and I will write them up tomorrow, at it has been a very very very long day.
—
New day! I ended writing last night intending to list some good stuff, so: service is definitely very personable, especially in concierge. People from the concierge lounge are always finding us in other places on the ship and stopping to chat. This includes both the concierge hosts (Ashley in particular I believe may have clones—he found us in the shopping district today) as well as the bartenders (one spotted us in Vista cafe this morning). Everyone definitely wants to bend over backwards for us. It does mean more small talk than we’re used to, but it’s usually not long enough to be tiring. (Note: I know many people would love this level of service and personal attention.)
We’ve had an ongoing plumbing issue since last night—I took a bath, and when I drained the tub the water began backing up from the grates in both bathroom halves. We called concierge, this is probably around 10pm last night, and maintenance was there within about five minutes. They spent a long time snaking/draining, then left. Then Ashley, or one of his clones—or maybe he just never sleeps—called us back to ask if someone could come sanitize, which was fine with us. Today they came back again and asked if they could do more work / snaking, etc. To be specific: I’m not complaining about the plumbing issue. I know the systems on these ships are touchy (as soon as I realized what was happening I stopped the tub draining). I’m telling this story to illustrate how much they have been on top of this maintenance issue, including following up on it.
The concierge lounge has been pretty fantastic. The espresso machine rivals the one on the Getaway. I’m on my second latte of the day and I’m not a coffee drinker. *vibrate* Between this and the Studio lounge on GA, I don't think I can cruise within a nearby beverage/snack lounge.
I really believe those folks would swim to shore and get us anything we requested.
The ship is very clean, aside from the previously mentioned lack of hand sanitizing or washing stations.
We love our veranda, especially since we got the loungers. I believe BF has napped out there a bit. We either use the straight back chairs for sightseeing (storms, other ships, birds and fish, etc), or the loungers to lounge.
Breakfast today was partially in concierge lounge, partially in Cabanas. The croissants at Cabanas were very good, warm and flaky. BF had some small blueberry pancakes which he described as ‘crunchy’, which seems non-ideal. I saw biscuits and gravy, sausages that looked really good, fried potatoes, lots of pastries, the expected Krispy Kreme rack, the make-your-own-granola station (looked very nice), lots of other stuff. I’d say Cabanas wins over Getaway’s breakfast buffet.
Onboard internet: Okay, so on the Getaway I just bought an unlimited internet package. There is no unlimited internet package here. I bought the biggest one (1GB/$90 or something). It has been a very very long time since I had to deal with metered internet, and it is HARROWING. I’m technically savvy and I’ve turned off EVERYTHING, and that meter still keeps ticking over, megabyte after megabyte. Load your gmail inbox without clicking any actual messages? 6MB gone. The DCL internet portal shows more usage than my own network monitoring reports. This is not really a big deal—BF hasn’t even gotten online, he’s taken to the ‘unplugged’ life much better than I have—but I am skeptical of their motives in not offering an unlimited package, and skeptical of the bandwith usage monitoring/billing. That said, I don’t NEED to do anything online. (So far I haven’t done any real writing on this trip, and not sure I’m going to yet, so I don’t need wikipedia/dropbox/etc access.) Mostly I’ve just been checking email for updates from our pet sitters (the cat separation anxiety is real). Just reporting it for info’s sake, and particularly for people who do need to get online (for school, work, social, ill relatives, whatever). That free 50mb is going to be gone in a BLINK even if you do everything right.
Today is a sea day, weird itinerary, and we’re basically just chilling out for now.
More later! I’m also taking pics but no way am I going to try to upload them till I’m back on a normal internet connection.
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I get the sense she was having a good time (she was with a large group of other ladies). She's off to the NCL Getaway tomorrow, and I hope she and her husband have a good time. 
