Boarding and Vibe beach club passes: We were novices to NCL so didn’t know what to expect. We knew the ship was sold out. Also none of our upgrade requests were accepted so we knew ship would be crowded. I had read about the Vibe and we decided to try to get passes. The Vibe is a private deck area with a dedicated bar, snacks, hot tubs and cabanas. There are also dedicated attendants. We knew the pool decks would be insanely crowded as this week is spring break for a number of groups. So we decided to try for the Vibe at 200$ per person. We were not provided a boarding time at on-line check in time. But we had heard that was irrelevant and so getting a Vibe pass would be all related to ones time getting on the ship and getting a low group boarding number. Thus we did not use ship transfers and arrived to the terminal on our own early.

We showed up at 9. Everyone there was pretty much doing the same thing. I’d say there were about 20 people in front of us. People were “well behaved” lol until security. Then it was a mad dash- we tried to check in as quickly as possible then ran up the escalator to get our boarding number. The agent gave us one of 2 remaining boarding group 1 cards. From there a line formed early on to wait for boarding even though boarding would not be until 11. People were pushing and shoving to be closest to the boarding door. The security guard moved everyone away from that door, and then people were upset since they had been lining up. Security guard threatened to call police. People moved back. I noticed a family who was not group 1 boarding tried to board with group 1. Etc etc it was chaotic.

Then - the doors opened. There was an almost stampede. People ran to guest services. We were among the first and were told Vibe sold out. But then we hung around there a bit and a couple of people changed their minds so we got in by the skin of our teeth. Read more