NCL cracks me up.

I just emailed the public relations because 90% of the time I am unable to do a mock booking past the selection of category. I select the category that shows the per person fare, but when it goes to the next page it most often says there are no cabins available in that category. The page before does not say "Sold Out" though. Crazy!!!

On our sailing next year that happens as well. I've checked it periodically and it lets you select our room category like it is available and shows pricing but then you get into the booking and it says it is sold out. There are only two rooms in that category and while we had our room on hold our TA said the other room had been sold.

I received an email earlier today from NCL and they said they made some changes to the website so that it would work with the Ghostery extension.

It does work...better. It's not perfect. It seems to hesitate in some places, almost to the point where I think it's frozen.

BUT...when all is said and done, it does work for me. That's all I asked for.

And I must admit I'm impressed at the NCL response to my complaint. They jumped right on it and fixed it. Thanks NCL. I appreciate your prompt attention to the matter.

(I hope it's fixed for the others as well.)

. . .

I won't even mention the fact that the 1/2/15 cruise cancelled Tortola without a replacement port.

Actually you just did. ;)

.

I understand the gripe about Tortola... but really, a trip from the USVI back up to GSC would probably consume way too much fuel for the trip to be considered a cost-effective replacement on your itinerary, especially since there is no guarantee the weather would allow anyone off the ship at GSC. The fact that the pier in Tortola is under re-construction is not anything NCL can control. Sometimes there are unavoidable events that change the best laid plans.

 

As for the deck plans on the website... I believe the website will be updated when someone provides an updated set of plans that the web developers can use. These things are usually lagging behind the actual implementation by several weeks.

 

As for the information that the phone reps have available to them... there is no excuse for that... This is simply bad internal communication and if *we* all know about the changes made to the Gem, then by all means the reps should have been given the same information by now. They probably could use some improvement in communicating to the phone reps.

One problem the reason for the dropping of Tortola has nothing to do with the dock. Check the roll call for the 1/2 sailing. The issue is engine maintenance that will be done which will require that they travel at a reduced speed on the return trip. I am on that sailing and just add that to the list of the other complaints and inconveniences that NCL created when they chose to delay the dry dock scheduled for Nov and instead opted to perform a majority of this work while at sea.

One person asked if they switch their booking to the Breakaway and were told they would get a 50% penalty. The fact that this change in the planned dry dock work was not announced prior to people making these bookings so they could have avoided the issues.

WOW, I purposely asked the NCL rep about O'Sheehans because we enjoyed eating there on the Breakaway and she flat out told me that it was not on the Gem and that it was still Blue Lagoon. It makes me leary to want to book through her since I asked her other questions and now I don't know if she knows what she is talking about. She has been with NCL over a year so it's not like she is brand new.

Check the deck plans again. I see both O'Sheehans (deck 8) and Moderno (deck 13) there now. I'm just using Internet Explorer for a browser.

The NCL website is in serious need of updating. For one, a lot of the offline content becomes inaccessible when you log in. On top of that, when cruising with other cruiseships and visiting the websites, I can click on a room and get lots of pictures and a large floorplan, some even offer a 360 view! The deckplans in general are also more detailed on other sites.

I can understand that some content can get outdated and such, but overall the details feel really lacking even for the old content.

Even the most basic stuff like amenities are completely missing from the site. It just feels like whoever made the site did not have NCL's best interest in mind and just wanted to make the bare minimum they were paid to make.

Personally, I think the site is in need of a complete redesign and a lot of basic information to be filled in. Add an interactive deckplan too.

Not only do they need to keep the site updated, they need to get it working properly in Google Chrome. It's been more than 6 months since I've been able to get past the number of passengers on their booking page.

 

The worlds most popular browser by a wide margin (and yes, it's #1 in the USA too) and NCL still designs their site for IE. :rolleyes:

Google Chrome is a second tier web browser at best. It does not fully follow W3C standards and as such it is the short comings of Chrome in many cases that cause problems with web site. Most professional web developers code to W3C standards, not to a particular browser. Trying to write code for the numerous browsers that do not comply would be all but impossible.

Google Chrome is a second tier web browser at best. It does not fully follow W3C standards and as such it is the short comings of Chrome in many cases that cause problems with web site. Most professional web developers code to W3C standards, not to a particular browser. Trying to write code for the numerous browsers that do not comply would be all but impossible.

I am going to have to disagree from my experience on designing websites in the past. W3C is nice and all but realistically, you will be hard pressed to find websites on the internet that are W3C compliant.

The W3C standardization process is too long and is not keeping up with the web. HTML5 was just standardized this October! And this is due to W3C finally trying to speed up the process and dividing up HTML 5 into sub versions to be released separately.

The most common issue of compatibility on the net for chrome and other browsers are websites designed for IE6 and below. Most modern sites work on all modern browsers due to implementation of libraries that do the dirty work such as jQuery. CSS2 is widely supported, CSS3 remains a mess.

Personally, I code for FireFox (has the best debug tools), run into no issues with Chrome or Opera but often times have to make changes for IE. Though IE has improved so it is not as many changes as back in the IE6 days.

My NCL rep yesterday told me O'Sheehans is not on the Gem. Don't know what is going on.

O'Sheehan's is most definitely on The Gem. I just got off that ship. It is beautiful but needs better food. It is mostly breaded, deep fried food. Not my cup of tea. Breakfast there was good, but the rest of the day is considered "comfort food".

Google Chrome is a second tier web browser at best...

2nd tier? :rolleyes:

VV ...read what he said... VV

I am going to have to disagree from my experience on designing websites in the past. W3C is nice and all but realistically, you will be hard pressed to find websites on the internet that are W3C compliant.

 

The W3C standardization process is too long and is not keeping up with the web. HTML5 was just standardized this October! And this is due to W3C finally trying to speed up the process and dividing up HTML 5 into sub versions to be released separately.

 

The most common issue of compatibility on the net for chrome and other browsers are websites designed for IE6 and below. Most modern sites work on all modern browsers due to implementation of libraries that do the dirty work such as jQuery. CSS2 is widely supported, CSS3 remains a mess.

 

Personally, I code for FireFox (has the best debug tools), run into no issues with Chrome or Opera but often times have to make changes for IE. Though IE has improved so it is not as many changes as back in the IE6 days.

Yup, that's a typical NCL rep. Completely clueless. No excuse for giving incorrect information on such a simple question. If you don't know, ask or simply say 'I don't know'.

When I was new to NCL, I called and asked a rep if there was a limit on soda I could bring aboard.

She said that each passenger is allowed 1 carry on, so if I bring 1 case of soda, I can't carry anything else onto the ship! And there's no way to check soda as a bag, according to her.

I asked, "So there's no way for me to get more than 1 12-pack of soda on board?"

She said, "There is. You just need to keep leaving the ship and re-boarding with 1 case each time."

When I asked for her supervisor, she put me on hold 15 minutes and said that her supervisor "verified that's the correct info" (lie, obviously).

I called back, got the Miami office, and complained. They investigated this, told me that the rep was completely incorrect and inappropriate (and that she had lied about the supervisor). I was given some OBC for my trouble, which I appreciated.

Anyway, yeah, many reps are lolbad.

Oh, and I agree that the website is terrrrrrrrrrrrible, especially by 2015 standards.

NCL needs to fire their web designer.

All were really saying if your listening. Bring the web site up a bit please.

Sent from my iPad using Forums

I am going to have to disagree from my experience on designing websites in the past. W3C is nice and all but realistically, you will be hard pressed to find websites on the internet that are W3C compliant.

 

The W3C standardization process is too long and is not keeping up with the web. HTML5 was just standardized this October! And this is due to W3C finally trying to speed up the process and dividing up HTML 5 into sub versions to be released separately.

 

The most common issue of compatibility on the net for chrome and other browsers are websites designed for IE6 and below. Most modern sites work on all modern browsers due to implementation of libraries that do the dirty work such as jQuery. CSS2 is widely supported, CSS3 remains a mess.

 

Personally, I code for FireFox (has the best debug tools), run into no issues with Chrome or Opera but often times have to make changes for IE. Though IE has improved so it is not as many changes as back in the IE6 days.

EVERY web site that my teams develops is 100% W3C compliant and it takes minimal effort to code in a manner to make it be compliant. It is actually very easy to run a page through the unicorn validator and make any adjustments necessary. The problem with 'coding for firefox' etc is that a lto of the browser specific css "moz', etc" menas a page will not look right in any other browser. In the end, almost any effect that a developer wants to achieve in any browser can be done using W3C compliant code. None of that however changes the fact that Chrome is pretty far from compliant in many areas. It is almost as bad as the early days of the internet when you damn near had to have a 100% separate web site for AOL users. I am sure most of us recall going to a site and have a link that said "AOL users click here"...

2nd tier? :rolleyes:

 

VV ...read what he said... VV

What he said does not change that fact that what I said was 100% accurate!

All those technical details are just bad excuses for not doing a job properly.

The task is pretty simple, ncl.com is an important website for the business so it has to work with all standard web browser in supported versions on all operating systems used by customers in the nowadays usual plugin and security settings.

If you need to follow the technical mailing list, code repositories and bug trackers of the projects do so. If you need to test the daily builds of the browsers against your website do so. All of that is no sorcery and lots of websites prove it day for day.

And when you upgrade or fix the website do it without a customer visible maintenance mode information page visible for hours.

EVERY web site that my teams develops is 100% W3C compliant and it takes minimal effort to code in a manner to make it be compliant. It is actually very easy to run a page through the unicorn validator and make any adjustments necessary. The problem with 'coding for firefox' etc is that a lto of the browser specific css "moz', etc" menas a page will not look right in any other browser. In the end, almost any effect that a developer wants to achieve in any browser can be done using W3C compliant code. None of that however changes the fact that Chrome is pretty far from compliant in many areas. It is almost as bad as the early days of the internet when you damn near had to have a 100% separate web site for AOL users. I am sure most of us recall going to a site and have a link that said "AOL users click here"...

Again, you missed the issue that I explained with W3C compliance, the W3C standards are too slow to keep up with the modern web. If you are making basic pages sure, but if you wish to use advanced new features you are pretty much stuck. That is why if you look at top websites such as yahoo, amazon, microsoft and etc they all fail the unicorn W3C compliance test (NCL and CC fails compliance as well btw).

And let me rehash, when I code for firefox, I don't mean code specifically using firefox only features. It means using firefox as a base. You can see what works across browsers using tools like caniuse or just use premade libraries like jquery. If you stick to 1.X they will even for the most part work even on old browsers.

Just because browsers implement their own scripting and styling elements does not mean they are not standard compliant. Those elements exist for more than just web development but webapp development as well.

I also think that you are going a bit too far with comparing it to the old days when we had separate sites for AOL.

I have never ran into any issues with Chrome on any site other than sites that are coded for IE6.