DCGuy64

Have a great time on your trip, and if you feel like it, report back. I'd love to hear how it went.

Thanks for thinking about me. I honestly don't think I would have bothered to check again. They allegedly cancelled our June 2025 cruise due to a charter, but now I wonder if that fell through or something. I'll see if my wife wants to take the plunge - I certainly do! 😁

Son of a gun, you're right. When did they put that back on? I'm going to see if my wife wants to cancel our Alaska cruise (which we booked when they cancelled the Norway one) and revert to our original plan. Thanks for this!

There are plenty of things I can gripe about that I would argue *are* the responsibility of the cruise line, like unsanitary kitchen conditions, slippery decks, poor staffing, long wait times in the restaurants, etc. Not saying these things are easily solved, but at least they're things the line has some control over. But to give a frequent example: it's not the airline's fault if my my Uber driver shows up late, or there's lots of traffic, or there's bad weather, or I don't like the food I order at an airport restaurant. Yet people will fault the cruise line for weather, strikes, CBP officials, and the like. That's totally inappropriate.

Common sense isn't common, and reality shows aren't real, LOL.

I always enjoy reading your posts and it's a joy to see what you write. However, this time I can't agree with you. As far as I'm concerned, cruise lines are only in charge of what is actually theirs, meaning their staff, and that's it. Dock workers, pier workers, tugboat operators, customs and border enforcement, and municipal workers do not work for the cruise line, so any delays or bad customer service are NOT the fault of the cruise line, period.

I didn't say anyone HAD. That's why I used the conditional "would be" in my post. 😉 Several posters HAVE suggested that the passengers' advanced age may have been a factor. And maybe it was.

Exactly right. We all know those who are saying "oh, they're in their 80's, they didn't know any better" would be screaming age discrimination in case the cruise line took their advanced years into consideration. Classic case of trying to have it both ways...

Thanks, yes I read those earlier posts, as well. It wasn't until the last one I saw yesterday that we had actual confirmation that that's what happened.

Exactly

There's an old saying "correlation is not causation." If it starts raining every time I wash my car, it doesn't follow that the car washing causes the rain. If people complain on FB or CC and then a cruise line changes something, it doesn't follow that the social media posts were the cause of the change. They might be, but aren't necessarily. It could be hearing from shareholders, it could be as a result of things that were passed along to management in person on a cruise, or a follow-up survey, or something guests mentioned at Guest Services. Unless I have actual evidence of a representative from NCL saying "we changed this because of feedback on Cruise Critic," I'm not convinced.

Well, that's a very important detail that, as far as I can tell, wasn't known from the outset. When people (who I am sure are trying to be helpful) say that the TA just didn't want to deal with declining the FAS or that they were "sure" it could be dropped, it was (I'm guessing) under the assumption that this was a regular booking. Thank you for providing the additional detail. In the future, if I see a similar question from a different poster, I may ask if there's a deal going like this that prevents the FAS from being removed. Good to know!

Yep, which just proves something I've believed for a long time: people will complain no matter what. They'll complain if they have to wait too long (because 90% of the passengers show up at the same time), and they'll complain if the cruise line actually does something about it. Hence why I am very skeptical and frankly dismissive of people who only use CC as their personal whine chamber, even more so if they just joined yesterday and are only here to say "Line X is terrible and I'll NEVER sail with them again!" (Often ALL IN CAPS) 🤣 🤣🤣

I personally doubt whether that happens, but that's just my opinion. But let's say you're right and NCL onboard staff ARE reading CC. Are you aware of any changes that NCL made company-wide that can be traced back to a post on Cruise Critic? I'd be rather surprised to hear of that happening. Not saying it hasn't, just that I'd be surprised if it did.

I'd love to see NCL actually enforce the boarding times people are given, since so many people have complained about the long lines. NCL could say something like "we listened to you, our guests. In order to ensure an orderly boarding process and minimize waiting in lines, guests who show up in advance of their printed boarding times will be asked to wait in a separate area of the terminal until their assigned time has arrived." And I 100% guarantee people will find a reason to complain about that, too! 🤣