Author’s Note: The blog for this week and next will be a trip report about a cruise my wife and I took aboard the Norwegian Cruise Lines Bliss from Los Angeles to the Mexican Riviera between November 28 and December 5. There were Covid protocols in place, and to my knowledge, no outbreaks on board. At approximately the same time, on the NCL Breakaway (a ship of similar size and configuration), sailing south from New Orleans, at least 10 people contracted Covid — and the ship returned straightaway to New Orleans. That story is still breaking and you may look it up should you like.
In my story, Bonnie and I had a pleasant and safe trip — and returned home to negative Covid tests. Had we been on the other ship, my conclusions would undoubtedly have been different.
For more than 15 years, I’ve maintained my Seven Stars status at Harrah’s/then Caesars/then Eldorado properties. Part of the benefits of that status is a “free” balcony cabin on a week-long cruise that actually runs about $250 or so per person in port fees, plus strongly-encouraged-but-not-actually-mandatory gratuities that now come to $15.50 per day, minimum. More expensive staterooms have larger gratuities associated with them.
In 2020, cruise lines were shut down everywhere in the world in March and are only now opening up again. We were fortunate that we weren’t actually cruising when the shutdown occurred. Some passengers couldn’t disembark from cruise ships for months! Although I didn’t play at any Caesars property in 2020, my earned cruise benefit was extended to at least the end of 2021. Bonnie and I signed up for a Mexican Riviera cruise out of Los Angeles, leaving the Sunday after Thanksgiving on the Norwegian Bliss.
Although we’ve been on Mexican Riviera cruises four or five times together (and I have been on at least that many before Bonnie became part of my life), this is currently our standby vacation. I have numerous relatives near Los Angeles and this gives us a good excuse to get together. It’s a four-hour drive from where we live in Las Vegas, and I pay for dinner for everybody the night before the cruise. In exchange, we get to see everybody, have a place to sleep one night, a place to store our car for a week, and transportation to and from the port. A good deal for everybody.
This year there were Covid restrictions, of course. All passengers, including children of all ages, needed to be fully vaccinated at least two weeks prior to embarkation. What this meant was, basically, no children on this cruise. I did see about five teenagers, but nobody younger. When it was time to make reservations, there was uncertainty as to when children of certain ages would be allowed to be vaccinated. So parents avoided booking this particular cruise. Probably next year we will be back to the normal number of children on these ships, but not this time.
In addition to these vaccines, everybody needed to be Covid-tested at the pier prior to boarding. This turned out to be a nose-swab test that took 15-20 minutes to get the results. We had to make specific reservations for our testing so we didn’t all show up at the same time. We selected 11 a.m. and we got to the pier at 10:45. When we got to the testing area, nobody asked us the scheduled time of our reservation. We just walked in, showed proof of vaccination, and stood in line for the test. After this test, we went to registration where we received a forehead temperature check. It was extremely well organized, and we were actually aboard the ship by 11:45. This was the fastest we’ve ever boarded a cruise ship. In the past, we’d have to wait until noon or 12:30 for the first people to be allowed to board, and then you were allowed to board in groups. But when we had passed through the registration process, everybody was being allowed in.
One thing that sped things up was the lack of passengers. There were slightly more than 1,700 on this trip and the ship advertises a capacity of 4,004. There had been about 100 more passengers the previous week. The scarceness of passengers is due to some combination of CDC or other official mandates, uneasiness among the population that cruising is safe, and some unknown number of people being turned away at the pier because they failed their nasal-swab Covid test.
When you were onboard, masks were optional for the passengers — and very close to 100% of the passengers chose to not wear masks while onboard. Crew members, except performers while performing, needed to wear masks when they were around passengers. (Whether they wore masks when they were solely among other crew members, I don’t know.) When you went on shore in Mexico, masks were mandatory. When you eventually arrived back at the Port of Los Angeles, masks were optional.
NCL was severely discounting these cruises in order to get people on board. They earn a significant amount on alcohol, the casino, specialty dinners, spa treatments, shore excursions, and retail onboard sales, so it makes financial sense to get live bodies on board, even at a small initial loss. Passengers were awarded packages including free specialty dinners, free alcohol, free shore excursions, free Wi-Fi, and a certain amount of help with airfare.
Nothing is totally free, of course. If you sign up for the dinners or alcohol packages, the tips get billed up front. The dinner tips aren’t too bad. The alcohol tips come out to about $25 per day per person and if one adult in a stateroom signs up for the package, every adult must sign up. Since Bonnie doesn’t drink at all and the two bottles of wine they give per cabin if there are one or more “Platinum” or higher members in the cabin are more than I normally drink, we passed on the very expensive “free” booze package.
The free excursions amounted to $50 per cabin per port (of which there were three, although it’s possible that the home port of Los Angeles was included in the places where you could use the discount), but they couldn’t be combined. Didn’t matter to us. We’d decided to stay onboard for the entire cruise and by the time we arrived back in Los Angeles we were ready to head home. We’re not sure how Mexico is faring with Covid, and we didn’t wish to risk infection. I believe returning passengers had a temperature check before they were allowed onboard again.
For the Internet, we received 250 minutes in addition to whatever free minutes they had given us for being “Latitude Plus” travelers. When I logged on the first time, my computer anti-virus system gave me strong warnings that the Norwegian Bliss Internet was particularly unsafe. I decided to believe the warnings. I did logon once to check that my weekly blog posted, but most of my free Internet minutes went unused.
We knew we were going to get two free specialty dinners because of our Latitude Plus status, plus our “Ultimate Dining Package” dinners that came free with the signup. So experienced NCL travelers head to the “Dinner Reservations” desk as soon as they are onboard. Although I had made reservations online prior to sailing, these reservations did not show up on the ship, so I had to make them again. The Ultimate Dining Package formerly included three meals. In 2021, it includes two meals.
We find the complimentary meals satisfactory, albeit less desirable than the specialty dinners, so we picked times for the four free meals we were getting and decided to wing it for the rest.
We actually did things backwards. The Norwegian Bliss offers entertainment options every night — some you need reservations for, some you don’t — and the show times are fixed. It would have been better had we stopped at “Show Reservations” prior to “Dinner Reservations,” but we made it work. We were among the first onboard, so we mostly got our first choices for times.
I have lots more to share with you. I’ll continue this trip report next week.
We went on a different cruise line from Miami to the Virgin Islands (two of them anyway) a couple of weeks before this. Everybody except kids had to show proof of vaccination. We took a home COVID test under cell phone video supervision 48 hours before boarding–although I also saw COVID tests being given at the port.
Masks were required on board except in “adults-only” areas like the casino (since the only unvaccinated passengers were kids), and in open-air areas like the pool deck. This was a “poker cruise” and the poker room (run by a different company and completely separate from the casino) was also mask-optional.
Ship’s personnel were masked all the time without exception.
They had a small ice rink with a sort of mini-ice-capades show, and a big theater with a complete production of “Cats.” Masks were required at both for audience but not performers; and the first three or four rows of seats were blocked off.
On the two islands, it was a mixed bag. Masks were required to get off and back on the ship and around the port; but out in the interior, very few bothered with them.
Thanks for that very interesting report. I have never been on a cruise ever but flirting with the idea to do so. However, after I read this (first part?) report, I noticed that you actually need to be well prepared and know what to do , when to do and how to do it, before you even get on board of the ship. It must be nice to get the free cruises from your heavy videopoker play and for everybody else who has to pay in full it’s a completely different story. While “free” even for Mr Bob Dancer is not actually free (port fees, tips etc), this would all come in addition to the regular reservation costs for regular passengers.
It’s very interesting to get basic infos , especially about the covid procedures and how they organize everything. While it must be a slight advantage to book right now under these conditions (discounted rates, no overloaded ships), the covid restrictions are not making things more pleasant these days. Perhaps it’s a good idea to wait 2 or 3 years and then test it out , when hopefully this covid craze will be behind us.
From Switzerland
Boris
Bob–you forgot about the $300-400 “booking” fee that NCL also adds. I have found that
my “free cruise” with NCL usually adds up to almost $1000. And if you book an Alaska
cruise that doesn’t even get you a balcony cabin. I have found that my free casino cruises booked
on Royal Caribbean are a much better value and really only do cost me the Port taxes for
approx $250-$300 (for a 7 day Caribbean cruise) and gratuities. Either way–it’s still a pretty
nice vacation. . . .
I appreciate this post, it’s nice to hear about cruising from someone who just got off of one. My wife used to work for Princess Cruises. we honeymooned in Alaska and went to the Caribbean as well. She was free and I had to pay $15 a day, and we got 2/3rds off all beverages, we bought rounds for people who thought we were rich. The difference is the nickel and diming they do now, dangling “good” food options is kinda evil, “good” is in quotations because if you are from Las Vegas like Bob, the food on a cruise is not comparable to fine restaurant dining. It’s banquet food, prepared for hundreds or thousands. We are from L.A., by the third night of the Alaska cruise we were sick of the food, in Juneau we asked locals where the best restaurant was, they were all shocked because all they had ever heard was the food was great on cruises… Employee’s and spouses were not allowed to gamble on board, so I saved even more $$$…
From the substantial financial data supplied, I can tell you have carefully applied the techniques of advantage play and structured your family get together in such a way that it produces a positive E.V. of 102.5, with no variance. I assume your family aren’t APs since, if they were, they would probably trespass you.
Why do you intelligent people continue with this scam. If you have got the jab why do you have to be tested. What type of test and what did you you get tested for. As you were sysymptomatic what happens then. You could have no symptom infection when. Seems they are saying the jab does not work. This has been proven worldwide. With booster the hospital admits are 90 vaccinated. If you had 15 cases of flu would you have returned to port? Hell no. Until you so called intelligent people start pushing back this crap will never end. This is global people control. Have you read about Australian with 100 % lock down. Germany and France a police state. Recall they promised return to normal after the jab? Well? Have you noted they say there are more deaths under Biden who by way is 86yo. And all his vaccines than trump. Adm. the journalist from South Africa could not get microphone from gen Saki to say there were 4 cases of Omicron not a pandemic she said. Now it is much feared and it is next deadly pandemic with all variants. You have been told at onset corona did not effect kids and people under 21. They are not at risk. Never were. Yet they get jabs some at school without parental knowledge. Figures are all wrong. Hospitals get windfall from gov payout for corona. Hospitals got 963 million here in Memphis from first stimulus. The economy destroyed. People made more money staying home and getting check and foif stamps. No incentive to work. Why should they.
The current Vegas high charges is new trend and they are so busy the charges will continue. Resort worlds run 55%?occupancy. How is that? Could the vegas thing be big false flag and big lie. Economy is on brink not prospering. Shortages have just started and will be worse. Climate engineers control the climate. Monsanto sells aluminum resistant seeds. It is in air and soil. Perhaps that is why ky garden failed and plants are dying. You people just just watch CNN. Believe me cursing any parting is not our problem. Watch GeoenginerringWatch.org on utube. This will change your perspective. I am retired md. Had major chem and biology. My son is physician. Just like some of American people -intelligence but dumb as telephone pole. Tommy Lee jones described average American as stupid ignorant and dangerous. Do you recall this in movie Men in Black. We are on brink of police state. Take off your useless masks and maybe you will wake up before it is too late. Ps I am the guy who forecast this in Feb 2019. Someone suggested I was on drug high. Well?
I highly doubt Mr. Dancer wanted to make this into an anti-vax platform, or to insult people who choose to listen to the worldwide consensus of doctors and scientists… If your “position” is that solid, why do you obviously fudge so much…
I agree, sure glad he is an ex md.
Think of all the future patients this quack could have harmed.
The mandatory shots,1st plus the 2nd are not 100% They are approx 95% with reduced effectiveness as time goes by. Birth control is 99% and pregnancy still happens. The jab is NOT a 100% guarantee of no contraction. In addition the vaccines are only meant to be affective in reducing severe symptoms not eliminating a persons chance of COVID 19. To sum my thoughts up. A person could still contract COVID and be walking around after getting vaccinated. A person could still infect others. Masks are mandatory where I live. Masks are proven to help reduce transmission. I have no problem with another person’s belief about masking. I will not be so rude or impolite as to start a conversation about how I believe they are mistaken. However when someone comes in contact with me or my family without a mask they are not being considerate of my beliefs on the matter and so I believe they are rude and impolite. My wife has a compromised immune system and I know if she contracts this I will lose her. So please no matter what your belief may be. When in Rome do as the Romans do. Wear a mask it’s such a little small thing being asked, no real need exists to be selfish. A mask either helps keep people stay healthy, or keeps people from stressing out.
Just beware that it could have easily gone differently:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/20/us/miami-cruise-covid.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur
“The cruise line said that the ship sailed with 95 percent of its guests aboard fully vaccinated and that 98 percent of the people who tested positive were fully vaccinated. I”