European_CruiseGirl

That was our experience too on the Joy. We did not make bookings for main dining room and had to regret it. Once we waited over one hour to be seated. The second time we waited well over 30mins. The third time we went right when they opened up and there were long lines already then…but we got in without a beeper. The staff just said to us ”it’s like this always on the Joy, if you don’t want to wait book your MDR table in advance”. And you couldn’t book MDR anymore during the cruise but would have had to do it in advance even before the cruise. So yes we like the small ships where all you need to book is the specialty dining and thats only 1-2 days of the cruise. Other days you go to the MDR whenever you wish and you’ll be seated very quickly. You go to a show when you feel like it, not book it in advance.

We like peace and quiet and want to relax while we cruise with no need to make a reservation to everywhere and schedule our days deciding in advance when we want to see a show etc. Hence we choose the smaller NCL ships. We tried the Joy once and it truly wasn’t something that we liked to put it nicely. So Jewel class ships it is for us or Spirit. Or if not NCL we will cruise HAL, Oceania or RSSC.

A taxi for 5 is an almost non-existent thing in the Mediterranean area. The normal taxi cabs are small. You might have to even argue to get 4 passengers in them. For 5 passengers you definitely need a special car - they do exist but you definitely don’t find one without specifically ordering. Uber might be your friend in this.

Same experience on the Joy around a week ago. They stopped MDR reservations early on the cruise and after that it was a madhouse unless you went to dine at 5:30 or 9. We had 4 speciality dinners and 3 MRD dinners (without reservation). Once we waited 40 minutes to be seated, the second time 60 minutes. The third time we went already at 5:30 and got seated immediately but the lines were long even then. It was so bad that we even got a pager twice for MDR breakfast and Garden cafe was completely full too unless you went just when it opened or closed. Suffice to say we realized very quickly that we like Jewel class ships (with 10+ days cruises) the most. We are not fans of the mega ships.

This is 100% true. I was referring to the discounts and dynamic pricing that RCCL has where the price of a shore excursion fluctuates on an almost weekly basis (the discounts being between 5-20% and you never know which week you'll have what discount...or full price).

As you have previously cruised on other lines and not on NCL there is one thing you should know about the NCL shore excursion reservation process/system. Once you book a shore excursion all the other shore excursions for that port disappear from your view if they are overlapping with your booked tour with even 5 minutes. So where on RCCL you can book a shore excursion and then constantly check which new shore excursions come available on NCL you simply cannot see anything else than your chosen shore excursion for that port anymore. So there might become new interesting shore excursions available after you book yours and you have no clue about them. It’s a shame the system works like this but it is what it is. Also it’s good to understand that NCL never has discounts on their shorex (or wifi or whatever pre-cruise things you can purchase). If you want to book something just book it, they don’t use dynamic pricing or discount these items like RCCL does.

It’s the one where you get automatic notifications that ”It’s your friend xxx’s birthday today” and ”2 years ago this day you posted this and that”. On that site you can find groups for almost all big cruiselines individual cruises (the are usually categorized first by cruiseline, then ship and finally sail date). These groups are usually very active with sometimes several hundred members per sailing.

The most horrible ”direct flight” that I know of is from Paris CDG to Papeete PPT Tahiti. It is actually a flight from CDG to LAX, refueling in LAX with all passengers out of the plane meaning each and every pax needs to go through immigration in LAX and have ESTA or visa if they are non-US citizens and then back to the plane for the LAX-PPT. For non-US citizens it is a complete horror story 🤯

My family owned a tour company pre-covid (we were in business for 30 years, opening slowly again this summer) and we specialized in the later years almost solely on cruise ship shore excursions. And yes we have always had this type of guarantee to get our guests back to the ship on time. And I have seen it for many many other tour companies too around the world. What this guarantee meant for us was/is: 1. We are professionals, we know our stuff. Our tours are never planned so tight that there is a risk to get late back to the port. Our excursions always ended minimum 1,5 hours before all aboard. We constantly monitor the routes of our tours and are sure we know of the traffic conditions for example. We have extra vehicles that we could use in needed. 2. Our employees are professional, we know how to make sure we stay on schedule and we know how to handle people who might have the tendency of being always late, we don’t let our guests be late (there are ways of handling this gently but proactively, trust me). 3. Things happen, thats why we always have an extra pair or two pairs of hands available close by at any given time. You cannot imagine how often tour participants might for example experience health problems etc during a tour and you need to have someone to stay and help them (get them to the doctor, hospital, find a pharmacy, whatever). This won’t disrupt the tour for the rest of the participants if you have those extra pair of hands close by. 4. Still, things can happen. In the 30 years we were in business we had one (1) tour that missed the ship due to a very big road accident in a location that we simply could not pass. We had 14 people on our tour and yes we arranged everything for them: we contacted the ship to explain what was happening (professional, well established tour operators have good contacts with the harbour people) and arranged where the people could meet the ship, we made sure the people got their documents they needed and if someone had medicines only onboard the ship made sure they got them too. We arranged hotels for the night and transportation to the next port. Was it expensive? Of course but this is what a responsible tour company does. We never ever leave our guests in trouble. Which truly makes me wonder what that company was like that these people used. Most likely (I can only assume) this was a company who had no experience in cruiselines and had zero clue of all aboard time truly meaning all aboard. But still, what tour company leaves their guests in trouble. I honestly cannot understand. Tour companies live on being reliable and taking you back on time. You get a bad reputation really soon and really quick if you are not reliable and you don’t take care of your pax.

Yes they do. Just ignore them and head to deck 6 aft to the smaller main dining rooms. Both are open. Deck 7 aft larger main dining room is not open.

Getting back to my topic which I started almost a week ago. The number of passengers that missed the ship was much higher than the 60+ that I reported earlier. 120+ passenger got onboard at Belize and an unspecified number of people got onboard at Roatan (Roatan was not arranged by NCL rather people arranged their flights to Roatan without NCL as they didn’t want to wait one extra day to get onboard). Therefore it’s somewhat safe to assume that over 150 NCL passengers missed the Joy in Miami on 3/23/24. I will do a brief review of the whole cruise when I am back home. The internet is not the best we have experienced on NCL.

First check in times at NCL Miami port are usually around 9:30AM. Based on my experience from yesterday nobody will check what check in time you have when you enter the port. However please notice that check in time does not equal to boarding time which does not equal to when you get to your cabin. Yesterday the Haven folks started to board at 11AM followed by 1) special assistance, 2) ambassador, sapphire and priority access 3) gold and platinum. We are platinum and boarded around 11:30AM. No idea how long it took after that for others to board. Most likely not very long. The cabins for Haven pax I assume were ready very quickly after 12PM. However for the rest of us it took long. Around 2:30PM they announced decks 8 and 14 to be ready followed by decks 13 and 15 just before 3PM. A bit after 3PM they announced that all cabins were ready.

As I haven’t seen a thread about this yet on CC: just to report the situation that occurred yesterday in Miami. Miami experienced very bad weather this week on Friday and Saturday. Particularly Saturday was very bad with heavy rain and incredibly strong thunderstorms. On ”the other site” (which we cannot name here) people were yesterday writing about their situations being stuck on delayed flights to Miami. Some got to the port just around 4PM and were still able to board (sailaway was at 5PM) but at 4:10PM there were over 60 passengers at the port who were not let in anymore and had to watch the Joy sail away without them. Others didn’t even make it to port even at that time as flights experienced multiple delays yesterday. All of the passengers I heard of had flights booked by NCL. This cruise seems to have very many first time NCL passengers cruising (out of which I assume many were first time cruisers altogether) who had grabbed the opportunity of booking air through NCL which they felt the safest option to do. Flights were supposed to be arriving around noon at the latest but were delayed by several hours. NCL is trying to book people to fly to Belize which will be day 4 out of 7 of this cruise. Day 3 is Honduras and NCL says they have no options to fly people there. Some people are taking the Belize flights, others are throwing in the towel, some would be more than willing to fly to Belize but are not able to fly due to no passports (this is a closed loop cruise so BC was enough to cruise). An important reminder or two for us all: 1. Always fly a day or two before if you can. Flying NCL booked flights does not guarantee that the ship will wait for you. It won’t. Do not trust weather either. What are the chances of severe weather in Miami in March? Well, it happened. 2. Have a passport. Things happen and without a passport your options are limited. Take care everyone 🙏

As others have already said the only way to get points is to cruise.

It’s (per person) one appetizer, one soup or salad, one main course (with two sides, sometimes they allow more sides) and one dessert.