G-DawgMN

Nice, good to know! I assumed NCL was consistent with their TV's...apparently there's some variances in the fleet.

The HDMI ports on the TV's are locked out. I'm not aware of any way to break their programming.

I think this is the first time that The Bird has been photographed in the wild! Love the review, thanks for taking the time to do this!

I was shockingly just upgraded to a Grand Suite (From a Balcony) at 12 days out. Pretty excited!

Most decent hotels have a bag check at the bell desk. You can also request to check-in early if the room is available. I'd personally be thrilled to get essentially a free full day in NYC to explore. All airlines (except SW), have some sort of bag fees so this shouldn't be a surprise. Hopefully you saved enough on airfare to offset those charges.

I appreciate you taking the time to chronicle your adventures. Looking forward to boarding the Ovation in a cpl weeks and change.

There are limo services that will do that. I think prices are right around $110 for baggage claim meet and greet. It’s actually a pretty nice service.

Love your cruise reviews! Enjoy your trip!

I think you posted without completing your sentence.

It wasn’t mentioned as an option on the Bliss in May. Not sure if they would have just allowed us to eat anywhere. For us it wasn’t an issue because we also had the 2 FAS dinners. They did not care about the $35 limit in Cagney though. They said we could order any entree except for the tomohawk and something else that was expensive.

1. Yes. The upgrade dinners can only be used by you and your sun since they are specially priced. You could use your platinum voucher for the 3rd guest as long as a platinum member is dining with them. 2.Yes. The vouchers are in the room and you give me them to the restaurant. 3. I would probably go that route.

Correct. They did away with that requirement a few months ago. I believe that still claim to have the right to randomly test but I doubt that would happen on a cruise.

Those penthouses have a balcony on the side. We did this room on the Bliss this spring and it was great!

I don't feel that's entirely accurate. While it's true the MDR's on the new NCL ships will have the same menu, it will have more selections, along with specials every night. Their current menu is half the same and half new items so I don't feel this is a major hardship. I've been on a lot of NCL cruises, and while I like the experience, I do feel they're starting to price themselves out of the mainstream market a little bit for some cruises.

We were on the Bliss back in late April and it visited Glacier Bay which is a much butter itinerary than Hubbard or Tracy Arm. I agree that the Ketchikan stop isn't ideal. Unfortunately the downtown docks are at capacity and it would have been a huge cost to expand that out. I know it wasn't full when you were there, but most days it it. Ward Cove is also used at times by Royal Caribbean and a cpl other lines (one of them part of the NCL family). I feel in a few years it will be a much nicer stop, they're starting to offer excursions directly from the dock for people that want outdoor adventures. I also agree that the short port time along with the short shuttle times make visiting town not that great, hopefully in time NCL will work out the bugs, I know driver staffing is a huge issue right now which probably makes things worse.

Sorry, I thought this post was about people confirming that the option had gone away for them...so sorry.

I just checked in for our September 23rd cruise and I wasn't asked to upload our vaccination cards.

Hallux did answer your question. The terms state you are limited to one entree. So you can order unlimited apps and desserts. Servers a lot of time will try to tell you that it’s restricted to a single app, entree, and dessert but I’ve never had an issue ordering what I want. Worst case print out the terms and take your argument to the restaurant manager if you are billed.

It really depends on the number of items on the menu, but currently about half the menu is "classics" that are every day, and the other half the daily specials. I don't see this as much of a change, it's assumed the classic dishes will be expanded with just a cpl of special items every night.

Personally we get the earliest time we can get there, around 9:30 depending on the port. We've been on many cruises but he hate waiting around the hotel room and prefer to sit in the terminal and wait. Your preferences could be different.

We had an anniversary package from our TA on one cruise. Even though it was specified for embarkation day (that was our anniversary), they didn't actually do it until day 2. It's so crazy it's not reasonable to expect them to get those special requests done the first day, they're too busy getting cabins ready.

You would go through the normal check in line, you don't have any sort of priority since you're a first time NCL'er and don't have a true suite. Interesting that there's no time, but if it's not listed I guess it could be open season at check-in (which is how it used to be (pre-covid) , even when there were times, they weren't usually enforced).

They're not going to honor it. The terms and conditions of the FCC are the bible that NCL will go by, if you're not reading and comprehending that (which do change), then you're SOL. Feel free to spend time escalating it, and I hope you're successful, but I wouldn't hold out much hope.

Flight bookings have been trending around 30 days now due to the airlines cancelling so many flights, the flight department is waiting until closer to cruise time to issue your tickets. You'll see placeholders on the NCL site, but they won't be your final tickets until you get an email from NCL with the information.

If you’re looking at flights on the ncl page, they are just placeholders and aren’t what is booked. Good chance they will change one or more times. Wait until you get the official email with actual flight numbers and confirmation numbers