We were travelling with the kids, so getting tix to the vibe would’ve been pointless, as our goal was to have a family vacay. But we still managed to do a few grown up things. My hubby loves to play tables, so the daily blackjack and poker tournaments were a big plus. He met a few people and got some good stories about Norwegian and other cruise lines. We also met a few people at the casino at night, and one gentleman said he got the last two tickets for VIBE around 2 pm on embarkation day. He said they were worth every penny for him and his friend. He said it was quiet and loved having the service.but they had older kids who didn’t want their parents around anyway.

One thing we did before hand was sign up for the roll call on cruisecritic.com and one of the guys there organized a meet and greet and gift exchange. That was really enjoyable. We had the heads of all departments come and introduced themselves and gave us cards to let them know if there was anything we needed. Even the captain came! And we had taken the kids for breakfast before hand, but they had special food and smoothies for us at the meet and greet. The gift exchange was kinda fun. You were supposed to bring something that represented your area. All the Canadians brought treats like chocolate bars and chips. I also brought an eskimos travel mug, thinking I would need to explain Canadian football to Yankees but as it turned out the folks that picked my gift we’re from Toronto. On any future trip I would join the Facebook group and the cruise critic one just for the pointers.

Later, it was good to be able to put faces to the voices we heard when the captain came over the PA and said there was a sailboat taking on water off Belize and our ship was the closest. It took about 90 minutes Total but watching the rescue was exciting and knowing who was doing what was cool. After posting on Facebook, a lot of our friends have had rescue experiences when on a cruise so that was cool to share tales. Read more