alwalaska

Thank you both. I understand clearing customs at the end of the cruise, but from what I heard, the cruises from New Zealand to Australia, all passengers have to show their passports and customs cards on the first port day in Australia, before they can do their excursions. I haven't heard the same things about New Zealand. The US is like Austalia where if the cruise originates in another country or you visit another country and then make a port of call in the US, the customs officers come onto the ship and everyone has to show their passports before going ashore. I'm trying to decide if we need to schedule in extra time before our private tour in our first New Zealand port.

Thanks for reporting in. I think the new wording is a CYA in a post COVID world and to have wording to cover people who do it so frequently that it causes a burden on the WP staff if a lot of people keep doing it. There are some travel insurances I saw when I was looking that would cover redeposit fees, but not the loss of the points.

I know things are always changing and it is off-season, but when I go to the shore excursions page on NCL.com, not inside my cruise planner, but the generic one, there are no shore excursions other than Melbourne for any of the ports. In fact, when you pick Australia and New Zealand, all cruises for the entire world still show up. Does anyone know what is wrong? Does NCL no longer have pdf files with a sampling of excursions that could be available for each port? Does anyone have screen shots or any information about excursions from their cruise? I'm trying to put a reasonably correct budget together and knowing what is offered would really help with the planning. Thanks.

I have read that if you are sailing from Auckland to Sydney, that every passenger must clear Australian customs before going about their day. Does anyone know if the reverse is true when you sail from Sydney to Auckland? If yes, I am sure that experiences vary, but how much extra time should we allow before our private tour start time?

That could have been at the same time that NCL cut 50% of the housekeeping staff on all ships when they went from 2 to 1 cabin make-up per day. I would assume they would rather keep current staff than bring on the newly trained that still have much to learn on the ship itself. Or, POA could be going back to a non-US flagged ship and sailing other itineraries. Who knows.

Do you mean that only the smaller ships have these signs, because that is what I was on? I believe I saw them in every dining location. What are the requirements on the larger ships?

Thank you very much for your help. I'm sure it will be a great trip. I only have 400 and some odd days to wait. Ha ha.

I totally understand that. Mine is a "bucket list" cruise that frequently increases in price as it gets closer to the sailing date rather than going down like many of them. I worried about price drops and the possibility of something else like the pandemic happening between now and then, but I decided that I felt comfortable with the price I paid for the interior and I didn't spend any real money getting the points (opportunity costs only), so I decided to go ahead and do it. Believe me, I went back and forth quite a bit before actually booking it. Everyone has their own way of looking at it and everyone needs to do what makes them comfortable. Booking September could end up being a really good deal for you. Just play around with fake bookings and see what categories of cabins are open, both for interiors and balconies.

Thank you for taking the time to upload the Dailies. I found the dress code sign interesting on my recent Dawn cruise. It would be nice to have it in the Dailies and listed pre-cruise as well. In the past, collared shirts for men were only required in Le Bistro and the main dining room. On the Dawn, O'Sheans (like the Local on the Spirit) even had that sign. No one ever said anything about the dress code though, so there were a variety of outfits in all locations.

On the Dawn in Feb, I could get to the Cruise Critic main site, but I couldn't get to these boards. I don't know if that was the one ship only, or if their firewall is poorly configured on all ships.

We refilled our cartons several times during the cruise. We would actually refill them in the evening in our cabin, and then put them in the fridge to be cold for when we needed them. I was not sure enough of the seal to take it with me when I went off of the ship. I simply filled my thermal cup with ice and water in the morning before leaving.

We had live muster in Feb and had to watch the safety video for each person at check-in as well.

We're considering a day trip on the train out to the Blue Mountains for our trip. How many nights did you stay out there? Where did you stay? I'm debating on whether it is worth schlepping our luggage around and checking in and out of different hotels when we will probably only have 4 nights in Sydney pre-cruise.

I haven't read through the whole thread, so I am sorry if this is a duplicate; I really strongly recommend for anyone with food sensitivities to have the allergies added to their reservation and ask who you should talk to at the main dining room if you go there for your first lunch. For meals where I know I am ordering something "safe" for me, I won't mention the allergy. The really good thing both for you and for the kitchen staff is that you can look at the menu for the next evening and order anything that you want specially made without what bothers you. Another thing I have found on some ships is that my waiter doesn't speak English well enough to convey that I can't have anything with citrus fruits, be it lemons, limes, oranges, etc. The staff are all so busy, that having to take your food back, or even having to go to send someone to the kitchen to see if there are things you can't eat in a particular item is a lot of extra work. It is different from a land-based restaurant where they feed significantly fewer people and typically have a kitchen that is very close and easy to get to.

I booked with my TA, then called the number earlier in this thread to do the upgrade. Just be sure to book the highest category interior and make sure there are numerous categories of balconies left to upgrade to since there is no clear documentation of which category interior on each ship maps to which category balcony. Our cruise was way in the future, so there were plenty of cabins to pick from, but it wasn't in the category I had originally been expecting to be offered to me. As far as price drops go, it seems from others that it is hit or miss and mostly miss. I would still do the upgrade now if the balcony is important to you because balconies frequently start to sell out before the interior prices start to drop. Good luck.

I was able to get 25k earlier this year. If you don't have anything immediate in mind, I would wait and see if it comes back. We used the points for an upgrade that ended up worth a lot more than the OBC would be. If you like sailing in an interior, that it really doesn't matter, but if you would like to sail in an ocean view or balcony, you might want to compare the value of the OBC as compared to an upgrade.

I would call again and see if a different person can get you into another cabin. What I did was search on NCL's site and found an available balcony in 2 different categories that I would like that were still available and when I called, I asked if I could have that specific balcony. I would think an O4 would get you a BA, but you never know.

Most banks have a limit across all cards. When I ran into that with BofA many years ago, they were able to lower the limit on one and increase the limit on the other. Although it is too late now, I would have kept the card for the signup bonus, used it enough to hit the points for an upgrade, used the points, and then canceled the card. I do understand though getting irritated and acting on it because I do that sometimes as well.

Good to know it happens sometimes. I didn't realize you could still bid on higher upgrades. That is interesting and something to think about when the time comes.

On the Dawn recently and really, not that much of interest to do. Unless you want to get there way early and stay all night, most of the venues for evening and night music were completely full. Plus, we travel for the ports and sometimes at night we just want to chillax and hang in the cabin. Out of 17 cruises I have never been bored until our most recent Dawn cruise.

I'm a semi-newie too, but here are some ideas. I think Clay was correct when he said BA is probably the highest that you can upgrade to, but you can call the number on the redemption page and ask them. Depending on the itinerary would help me decide whether or not a balcony would be worth the points and possibly extra cost. I had hubbie get the NCL card as well which gave us another 25k sign-up bonus and then we put charges from our previous cruise on it to get us the rest of the way to 60k to upgrade from interior to balcony. We booked an IA on the Spirit and were told we were eligible to upgrade to BB. Not sure what would have happened if we had booked an I3 or I4. You can definitely go from an oceanview to a balcony, but maybe not an aft balcony. One thing to be aware of, if you do the upgrade and prices decrease, you will be, according to everything I have read, locked into the price and NCL will not even give a future cruise credit for any price decreases.

I used my points for an upgrade. What I do with most cards is look at the value of the different options. As MagnoliaBlossom (who has helped me out a ton on this thread) said, you can look at all of the options on the Rewards tab, but what wasn't clear to me was that once you click on the Rewards tab, you then click on Redeem Rewards Points. Once you do that, what wasn't clear to me was the next step is to click the colorful Learn More on the Reward Yourself Box rather than the other options. So for me, the double meta upgrade saved me just over $4,000 and cost me 60,000 points. In contrast to that, 60,000 points equal $600 in Amazon or similar gift cards or $600 worth of cruise discounts or OBC. I'm not sure how the free cruise thing works, but it looks like you need 80,000 points for a 3 or 4-day Bahamas cruise interior cabin and those really aren't that expensive right now. I'd be curious to know what 7-day Mexican Riviera or Caribbean cruise options work, but those look like they are around 180k, so again, for me, not as good of a deal as my upgrade, but every situation will be different for people. Good luck and have fun picking something fun to work towards.

Hello all. I thought that since I had so many questions that people helped me with in the Credit Card Sticky thread, I would write this mini-review of my upgrade process. I know I "pulled the trigger" too soon and upgraded our 2025 Spirit cruise since we won't be able to get price adjustments now, but, I wanted a particular cabin (only 2 like it on the whole ship) and for being almost 2 years out, the available cabins seem to be dropping fairly quickly. This was my first time doing anything other than shopping with the NCL/Bank of America World Points card. Overall, the process was quite painless. I first logged into both mine and my husband’s accounts on the BoA website to double-check our points. Between us, we had the required 60,000 points for a double-meta upgrade. While checking, I noticed a box on the rewards tab to transfer points between friends and family. I clicked there on my husband’s account and put in the credit card number for my account, read the notice, and clicked OK and that was it. As soon as I logged into my account the points were there and ready to use. It was almost too easy. Just one more reason to protect your credit card number and login information. I then clicked on the Learn More button on what looked like an NCL ad on the rewards page. Finding out where to click was probably the hardest part of the whole process. I read the fine print on the meta and double meta upgrade options and decided to call because I wanted to pick a specific cabin. After posting on Cruise Critic and with what I saw on the website, it seemed clear that you get an assigned cabin if you do it online. I called the 866 number on the page with the upgrade options on the BofA WP site. The answering system welcome said something to the effect of thank you for calling the World Points NCL line or something similar. They then asked for people who booked through a partner travel agency to push 1 and everyone to push 2. I booked through a TA, so I pushed one. After a short wait (less than 10 minutes, probably less than 5, not long enough that I started a timer), a gentleman picked up and thanked me for calling NCL. I explained that I wanted to do a double-meta upgrade with NCL points and he put me on a very short hold while he logged into the BofA website. He came back, verified what I wanted to do, and again put me on a very brief hold while he entered everything into the system. He came back and said that my originally booked cabin level (cabin 9051, which is an IA according to my confirmation and the deck maps on NCL) mapped to a cabin on deck 10 (BB) and he gave me a number of the “best available” cabin according to the software’s algorithm. He mentioned that he could also check another cabin for me if I would like. I asked for my pick and it was available. He booked it, thanked me, and that was that. When I checked online about 2 hours later, my new cabin was reported on my reservation information. Luckily, I really wanted a cabin on Deck 10 (BB level) because I thought that the IA would map to a BA, but it didn’t. I guess the I3 or I4 is required to map to a BA. I guess, there are 5 levels of interior cabins (IX, IF, IB, IA, I3, and I4) and Balconies also have 5 (BX, BF, BC, BB, and BA), but the I3 and I4 have special names with “Family” in the name and also, I was able to go from an IA to a BB, so it isn’t straight across, so I’m still not sure what cabin you would have to book to get a BA cabin if that is what you really want. I hope this helps someone else. Although no one knows what will happen in the future with prices, I am comfortable with what we paid for this trip and at this point in time, the points saved us over $4,000.

Please tell me why there was smoke at Spice H2O. Maybe it was the location on a specific ship? We booked a cabin not far from Spice H2O and I was hoping to use the outside stairs for each access to buffet and other locations, but I get migraines from cigarette smoke. We'll be on the Spirit and I thought the only outside smoking location was Bier Garten which is closer to the main pool than the Spice H2O pool.

From one car-sick person to another, I would rent a car and drive it. I'm not sure about now, but when we went, there were 2 rental car locations less than a mile from the port. There is no way I would want to do that road on a bus of any type.