Norwegian Encore | Do's and Don'ts | Tips and Tricks | Is it REALLY worth it?

Welcome to our Channel traveling with the yells in this video we're going to share some very important tips some things to do and some things not to do on the ship the encore on our Alaskan cruise first thing we want to talk about is the check-in and so you can check in 21 days ahead of time for the Norwegian Encore and so I stayed up till midnight to check in right away right at midnight and it checking it was pretty easy but what that did is it got us an early on board so we were able to get to the this ship dock at between 9 30 and 10 o'clock which was important because that got us in one of the first groups that we're actually able to board the ship the one nice thing about the early check-in got on and we were able to get to the buffet before it got crowded because as the afternoon wore on we saw that it got really crowded in there so if you happen to be a later check-in we just want to give you a heads up one floor down from the buffet is the observation lounge and they do offer light fare in there and there's no lines also too when you when you get on right away you're going to want to go and uh to your muster station there's actually a a place where you're assigned to go it's usually on your your ship car do you get and you go there right away as soon as you get on the boat and check in and they scan your card and that way you make sure you've done your mustard station want to book Your Entertainment Club there and you want a book we did book choir man ahead of time we did that right after we did our online check-in choir man is a must do we've been on many cruise ships and I'm gonna rate that a solid five one to five that is that show is a must-see I I liked it but uh you know I'm I've seen other shows before on ships and I'd say it was a four out of five in my opinion it was good though so the other things you're going to need to put book in the cavern Clap the cavern Club is the comedy show they have two shows we just did the clean show which it was okay um if we're gonna do a raid on that again I'm going to give that a three yeah I'd give it a three all so it was okay it was nothing uh spectacular so it's probably three out of five but uh the band that that did the tribute to the Beatles they were really good and they played in the cavern Club you do not need reservations but you want to be there early or you're not going to get seats so uh you'll if you watched any of our other videos you saw lesson I jamming out to The Beatles we really enjoyed the Beatles The Beatles show was super popular uh they only had a couple shows that week and the one show that we did actually get in to see they actually were also streaming that live in the The Atrium also so if you didn't get in the cavern Club you could watch it in the atrium but I would say in my opinion that's definitely a five out of five The Beatles show it absolutely you want to don't want to miss that check your luggage you don't want to be carrying your luggage around because we found they did really good at getting our luggage to us early we were allowed in our rooms by 2PM and I think by three our luggage showed up which we were very happy about uh because we had a specialty dining the first night so we wanted our dress clothes and we had no problem getting that in time one one of the things too that the swords especially dies you can book those ahead of time and so we did we got a complimentary two uh especially dining in our package and what we did is one of those we went for ocean blue and that was our very first night on the ship we did ocean blue and I would say motion blue was pretty good ocean blue was was good but I feel that I picked the wrong thing um it just was it came down to a matter of taste not whether they made it good or not I just think that I picked the wrong thing but I know Les really liked his meal the Texas Q that's the Texas barbecue in my opinion was the best meal I've had on the boat and so maybe some people have a little different opinion but I love the Texas Chili I love the barbecued ribs the drinks and stuff so forth they were excellent to me absolutely a five out of five it was my favorite meal of the entire trip yeah we're gonna go against the grain of what a lot of people say and and to me that was a five out of five too and you want to make sure that you get the banana dessert in the mug that is amazing that was my favorite dessert of the whole Cruise something else we want to recommend you do is you get the water package in your room you're going to be thirsty in there you're going to want drinks we bought the 12 pack of water and it it I forget what it cost it might have been about 30. 29 30 something like that but what it did gave us 12 like liter bottle size drinks and there are things you can drink while you're sitting there look out on your your balcony looking around and I thought that was really good because the actual cups upstairs they're just small cups and so you always had water there like whatever we need if you gotta take take pills or just to to keep hydrated while you're sitting there in your balcony on your stateroom there are so many lists of things you need to buy for the cruise and a lot of the things we bought we didn't even use I'm just going to give you a two must-have list uh if you want to know more about things that we bought for clothing and things like that we're going to do a separate video on what you need to pack but the two things that you want to buy you want the magnetic hooks they were wonderful we loved having those and the other is the lanyard the lanyard to carry your card your room card they were the only two things we we bought specifically from other people's lists that we really used some of the other things we didn't use the whole week yeah I would agree with that the the hooks are awesome but there were a lot of things people said to buy like tags and other we didn't use a lot of that stuff we are from the East Coast so it was kind of hard staying up real late for us but the first night you get on the boat you want to party you're very happy to be on there and we did go to the uh the comedy where the comedy comedy club yes that is where you want to go for the silent disco I never did a silent disco before and it was a blast I had so much fun they have like about four different genres of music are being played inside that one room everybody has headphones on and they like light up like a red blue green or yellow color and as you move from one area to another in that room the music in your headphones changes to a different genre and so like they had Brock and roll they had country and other ones it was really fun because you see people dancing over here one way and you're your music isn't matching up with what they're doing so it was really cool I thought that was something that uh you don't want to miss that that was a lot of fun yeah we we love doing that now we want to talk about the thermal pass we actually spent the money to do the thermal pass we debated about that we were weren't sure whether to do it or not and then we decided to go for it we enjoyed it uh we were there pretty much every day we knew we weren't going to be able to use the pools outside much at all and so at least that way we would get into some thermal water but they have a nice thermal like uh large pool there you can get into that's heated it's got jets in it too also it's real it's almost much larger than probably any swimming pool you'd have at home and it could you know fit a number of people in it but that was just part of what it was in that thermal Spa pass yeah um the Jets around the the whole Edge but in the middle was a waterfall that would pound and I really enjoyed neck and shoulders it would just would pound on you it felt so good and then there was another corner of the pool it was like a stand-up Whirlpool those Jets were so strong you had to hold on because they wanted to shoot you right up but it felt so good and in that thermal Spa there therapy rooms you could choose from the sauna they had an ice room but my favorite room was The Salt Room I spent a lot of time in the slot room I really enjoyed that one of the things that you could do besides that is they actually have tables so you can lay on they're like heated like a stone ceramic tables you can lay on for your neck and your shoulders and stuff and you can lay on them and it's actually pointed out at the back of the boat so you can actually see the the view from the back of the boat as you're relaxing there one of those nice warm heated Stone loungers yes those loungers were nice now you got to be patient again they're hard to come by everybody wants those loungers so just be patient uh people will move from them if if you're waiting for one of those There's real nice loungers nice cushy loungers that you can wait until you can get one of those nice stuff hang out in that warm pool until one of them comes available and jump up and go and grab yeah yeah so we really we didn't it was expensive costs about 300 a person but in the end I thought that was probably worth it because we didn't get to do any swimming outside or any of the other stuff outside it really it's not designed for that in Alaska yeah now we did not buy a any of the spa services we only stuck to the thermal pass just using all the stuff that came with that pass we just want to give you a heads up about the complementary correct so you think about they had the Garden Grill which was very good I mean they they pretty much is a buffet like any Buffet has pretty much everything on it and so I would say I would say that probably that's a good three out of five on that the food was good there was nothing spectacular about that and sometimes if food wasn't maybe quite as hot as you you would want it because sometimes I think they're making preheating and pre-making a lot of this food and putting out but still it's regular food just like you would get at a buffet and it was pretty good yeah we enjoyed that especially for our breakfast in the morning um we did go one morning down to savor for our breakfast where we could order our breakfast which was delicious the Manhattan dining room is the main dining room for the ship so in the evenings a lot of people they try and get into the Manhattan dining room but that also means it gets pretty crowded too A lot of people trying to go with probably the time you want to eat and it might end up that you have to wait or we even had the one time we went down there we had to sit with somebody else so we didn't have a table for two we had to sit with another couple and that worked out yeah that was all right but we we were there for our anniversary so we wanted to just be in a smaller group just him and I so if you're in a smaller group and you want to keep it a little more intimate we suggest going down to either Savor or taste they're just one floor down from the Manhattan and it's the exact same food that they're serving in the Manhattan which we thought was very good we liked the the complementary food now if I were to rate that I'm going to give that a solid 4.5 all right yes it was pretty good the the main dining room and the Savor and taste both of them had the same menu they were pretty good yeah I'd say a four out of five on those and one of the things too is if there's a big crowd up at the Manhattan then go down to save or taste they can get you through a little quicker maybe you get in and out and don't have so long away and and that did happen to us because it was an hour wait for the Manhattan room so we went down to savor and we went right in and for lunch the our favorite was the local and that was like on that mid-level overlooking the atrium and there they have sort of like pub food like Burgers and Fries they had fish sandwiches I love my favorite was the Reuben so and there also was a really good dessert there that I liked it was a a nice thick chocolate brownie with like a cheesecake layer on top that was very good too so again another place you might want to save room for dessert and that and that area too there was a lot of tables for two so if you're just a couple you only have two of you a lot of small tables and then they can put them together if you have a larger group so that was a real one of our favorites was a local something you might be wondering about is cell phone usage I know this was something we were wondering and didn't know till we actually got on there our package came with some uh 30 minutes of complimentary internet as far as the cell phones you cannot use your phones on the boat the only place we were able to use our phones even a little was while we were still sitting in the Port of Seattle the rest of the time when you're on the boat and we have two different carriers and neither one of our carriers worked on the cruise ship towards the internet we got a 30 minute complimentary deal with our package we we got but I'll tell you that's that's tricky too because you got to go on the app to activate it and then what happens is you use it and then if you don't log out of that app it keeps right on accruing that time and before you know your 30 minutes has gone and you only use five minutes of it the the internet package the complimentary one the 31 minutes we didn't get our use out of that important point is if you if you Internet it's if you're posting pictures to Facebook or Instagram I'm sure you log out to save those points they do have that you can purchase small amounts of minutes and we did do that on the last day I wanted to get my boarding passes for the flights home and so I got up bought a small package like 20 minutes of of Wi-Fi and I was able to get all that taken care of and in the end it was a blessing that we didn't have our internet minutes because we just we focused on what we were looking at and each other I'm going to go right into Glacier Bay I have to give props to our captain he was amazing how he maneuvered that ship some areas where it was really close but when we got up to the glaciers he did something spectacular for the whole boat we were on the the starboard side of the boat so what happened is when he went in he was on the port side and so that side of the boat could see the glaciers real well and then when he got he got right to the glacier and he would spin the boat around in the same spot he did that at least three times and every time especially in Glacier Bay every time it spun our side we saw the glaciers calving don't fall victim to the idea that you have to run to the front of the boat to see it and a lot of people did yes it's cool because that's the only time that it's open and you can be out there but once you get out there it's hard to see because you have so many people in front of you and we didn't realize he was going to spin the boat so then we went to the side of the boat in one of the public areas uh along the railing but then when we saw that he was spinning the boat we ran back to our balcony and it was it was it was beautiful so he made sure 360 everybody on that boat got to see those glaciers correct and so that that really was cool I as far as the the captain was awesome and the views especially they have Glacier Bay we highly recommend if you you got a cruise and it has Glacier Bay on it that's the one you want to be on our favorite Excursion we loved them all but our favorite really was in Skagway do not miss the White House pass Yukon Railway that was so beautiful and less really like the history of it because the whole time you're on there they're talking about the gold rushers and what they went through and what they experienced but you can't get the view of Alaska like you can from that that train that was worth every penny to make correct that that would train ride I mean I think I might have been my favorite part of the whole trip I liked it all believe me but that part of the trip was just it's like you're back in the 1800s riding that railroad up into the mountains looking for gold it it really made you feel like you were a part of that uh time frame where you were on the Gold Rush team we have two tips for that train number one left side that will give you the view going up the mountain you view you want so sit on the left side tip number two don't just sit in your seat get up they have open areas get out to the open area where you can really experience it without the obstruction of the windows exactly that the people they're they're all sitting in their seats but if you get up and move to the back of the train or the front of the car you can actually get out and you can take film and cam pictures or whatever and you don't have all that reflection of the windows and the glass on it and it really gives you more of that feeling of the air blowing through your hair and and how cold it is that some of those spots and you get the whole feeling of the the railroad not like it is today but like it would have been 100 years ago and I think that's really awesome some of those places this the snow drifts were like six seven feet deep up there on top there and then they have a cut pass cut through it or the the Train's going but it was super cool and I that is absolutely a five out of five no question about it for the the White Pass Yukon railroad I agree I agree and then in Juno you gotta go see Mendenhall Glacier you got to get close pretty close to it on that tour you're and you're able to even walk out even closer if you want but one of the things about Mendenhall Glacier I like not only how close you got but the huge big chunks of ice that have broken off of that Glacier are out floating in mended that Lake right in front of the glacier and they're just they're bigger than a a school bus or a building or your house that's how big these broken pieces are and it's that was really cool to watch you only have a very short time in Ketchikan and a even shorter time in Victoria so Ketchikan just just be careful because you're only there a couple hours we enjoy just walking around but if you're going to do an Excursion just remember you're there a very a very short time yeah so and that that's another thing too we thought maybe they could have budgeted time a little better for those it did seem like maybe they would have been nice to have more time in Ketchikan early Excursion we recommend you waiting it out a little bit so many people get in line and shove in in especially like in the atrium to wait till that call that you can get off and it just it's hot it's uncomfortable there's no place to sit so if you don't have to get off right away we recommend you wait and so one thing I wanted to mention too is as far as like souvenirs for the actual the ship souvenirs it's because I that's part of what I enjoy I enjoy getting my things that I like to have is like a nice Polo that says Norwegian Encore or Alaska on it and so I was a little disappointed they didn't have those on the the ship that and it seemed like the actual ship itself souvenirs was very limited I really think that they could do a better job of that maybe some personal souvenirs for that ship that you can take home with you was the Norwegian Encore Alaskan Cruise worth it so the money to go on an Alaskan cruise is significantly more than that of a Caribbean cruise so initially you're going to have a lot more upfront money on top of that too you also have your excursions and they're not 50 excursions all these excursions that the popular ones are at least 150 to 300 or more per person and those are for the good excursions everything costs more in Alaska but that being said was it worth it absolutely it was worthless yes it was this without a doubt was our at least my favorite vacation I've ever been on the scenery just the experiences to see those snow-capped mountains to see those glaciers to ride that train nothing compares to that so absolutely we highly recommend the Norwegian Encore cruise to Alaska I have to tell you visiting Alaska and seeing those those views and enjoying it it does something right here I will always have Alaska right here we highly recommend if you have not gotten a chance to see our videos of we have a video for pretty much every quarter Port of Call we'll have one for Juno we have one for for Skagway we have one for the Glacier Bay we have Ketchikan and we also have our pre-cruise videos so it's called traveling with the l so you might want to make a note of that it's traveling with the yells to watch all our videos and hopefully you'll find something there that's going to help you as you plan and then eventually complete your uh trip to Alaska on the Norwegian Encore we we hope that you get to have this opportunity for yourself and if you are somebody that already has it booked oh you're gonna have the time of your life so just get ready for for an amazing an amazing experience we want to share one more thing because we've been there done that if you have any questions whatsoever please put them in the comments and we'll do our best to answer them for you make sure to like And subscribe to traveling with the house

Channel: Traveling With The L's

Views: 24,386

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Id: zi2VptnsvEg

Length: 24min 5sec (1445 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 07 2023