Madmariner7

Joke’s on them. The pizza is pretty mediocre.

On 4/27/2023 at 11:36 PM, singleflyer said:

Grey Goose is listed under Plus.  Did it used to be included in the standard open bar?

I sailed on Escape 2 weeks ago and GG was in the standard package.

13 hours ago, cruisekitty22 said:

OMG!  I would loved to have seen "Behind The tours" again.

The Behind the Scenes tour for the Latitudes cruise special is of Great Stirrup Cay. As far as I know, they will still have BTS on the ship for Platinum and above (I hope so, I want to do that).

15 hours ago, JIMESOPUS said:

We should get notified sometime this week about what events we are going to attend or will we?

 

The email I got after registration said we’d have invitations to the events we selected/were approved for when we board. I think that they let as many people sign up as wished to and are randomly (or not, who knows with these things) selecting as many as will fit.

Based on a few cruises on NCL, we love Cagney’s and Le Bistro. Cucina is forgettable, you’ll get better Italian at a mid-priced sit-down on land. Teppenyaki is OK but when we went, our waiter recycled the jokes that we heard from the next table 15 minutes prior. It’s salty ingredients on a grill and you can get that anywhere, and the show would be fun if not repetitious. Moderno is OK but frankly, Fogo de Chao (on land) is quite a bit better.

TL;DR Cagney’s and Le Bistro are must-do, others that we’ve tried not so much.

59 minutes ago, bortman23 said:

Few things stand out to me, some have been mentioned by others:

- I've never seen a pop-up to add excursions or transfers etc, on the NCL app, or site

- I've added and left MANY things in my cart, but always get a warning and often an email stating my cart is "about to expire"

Same here, on both counts. I have a fully paid cruise booked now that I’ve added items to, within 30 days of sailing, and if I don’t complete payment on my cart I simply *haven’t added them*. And I know of no way to book transfers from the app, nor have I seen popups.

My take: This is either an issue with Uplift messing everything up, or is simply grossly misrepresented or fabricated by either the original customer or the consumer advocate.

2 minutes ago, Panhandle Couple said:

Dark web types can easily get stolen credit cards, charge a few thing through Uplift, then request the whole amount back.  If NCL complies, scammer gets over $5,000

NCL would be refunding Uplift, not the customer. 

If you’ve opened an email from an external source, it can’t be removed by the original source. This puts the entire story in doubt for me, as well as the expertise of the consumer reporter.

Sent to TAs.

53 minutes ago, hunter68 said:

I will be on the Prima for 10 days, does anyone know the price of the pass for the entire trip?

Log in to the website or the app, it will be listed for purchase for your cruise under “spa”.

47 minutes ago, BirdTravels said:

The Prima was charging $99 for a day pass on port days. The Escape will be somewhere in between. 

I’d expect on the higher side of that range, of course. Thanks!

Does anyone have recent information on the cost of a Thermal Spa Day pass (for a port day) on Escape? I do understand they may not be available depending on demand from voyage passes and spa cabins.

Also, what are the Thermal Spa hours?

I’m Coal, but I hope that by sleeping under pressure on a really hard mattress that I turn into Diamond some day...

Haven Garden Villas on NCL Jewel-class ships have 3 bedrooms.

There are several people with sailings in the next few weeks that have promised to post updates/photos. I'm sailing 3/13 and will do the same.

We've enjoyed the Asian restaurants on both Jade and Pearl. On both cruises, it was the one specialty restaurant we repeated. I'm not sure why they never got a lot of traffic, but we just counted that as a blessing. Sorry to hear the menu is shrinking with the up charge removal, though. If they've dropped the creme brûlée flight, I'll be very saddened.

Note if you book through NCL they provide transfer to the pier - but if I did it again, I'd take a cab. The bus took forever, stopped at another hotel, and when we got there the driver had to unload all of our bags by himself because the Port of Miami is a disorganized cluster-F. What should have been a 20 minute journey took an hour and a half.

We stayed at the Miami Courtyard Cadillac, just north of South Beach. Right on the boardwalk (1 minute walk to the beach). Not fancy but a nice place and well-maintained; great pool, second adults-only pool, good breakfast, Starbucks on site, and options right there for lunch and dinner. We booked it through NCL and got a better rate than I saw on ANY travel site, too - and then paid $50 for an upgrade to Oceanview Balcony. I highly recommend it.

Thanks for the link and thanks for offering to learn how!

Let me know if the link worked - first time I've posted a "public" document to my corporate Gdrive.

And you're welcome!

Well.... do ya?

Yup - 3/26 Southern Caribbean

18MB PDF

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0J-a6fneUlXa25Nb2FxTlZmcDA/view?usp=sharing

Cheers!

Here is a link to a complete set of Pearl Freestyle Dailies from the March 26 Southern Caribbean cruise (Aruba first).

Warning: 18 MB PDF!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0J-a6fneUlXa25Nb2FxTlZmcDA/view?usp=sharing

I'm a rank amateur guitarist who has considered brining my acoustic for practice (I didn't just because I didn't want to lug it through airports etc) and I agree that you should always be respectful of your neighbors regardless of where you are, what you're playing or how loud it is. Having said that, any acoustic guitar, unless played violently and/or accompanied by loud singing, is going to be less intrusive that a jacked television, a screaming child, a drunken adult argument, or music played too loud on a portable system - all of which I've had to bear. I'd suggest asking the crew about a meeting room (most or all ships have these; there's two on Pearl near Stardust), which are almost always empty, or just do it anywhere after asking those impacted if it's OK. ECCruise is right - common sense and common decency (courtesy) should be the rule. There are plenty of people on cruises lacking both without guitars. Have at it.

VZW used to have a global data package for NCL fleet ships - while at sea (not anymore,) and that 100MB for $25 was fine for the "smart" users familiar with tweaking & tailoring background data usage & staying away from media streaming. It is available if you cruise with another line at sea, but not with NCL at this moment, AFAIK.

I used it on Pearl last week. Everything else you said was spot-on.

+1 Correct. Ultra expensive !! @ $20.48 USD per MB data used - under its Global Roaming plan when on the cruise ship, rates varied and are set differently in non-US ports. VZW used to have cruise ship coverage at "reasonable" rates but it has been discontinued and no longer offered.

http://www.verizonwireless.com/landingpages/global-roaming/

 

For the GEM/Dawn sailing to Bermuda, VZW's trip planner showed voice calling at $2.49 per minute, 5 cents for incoming text msg/SMS, 50 cents for outgoing text/SMS, 2G data speed is billed at $20.48 per MB used (thus, 100 MB would be $2,048 USD as in two thousand and forty-eight US dollars - not a math error or mistake)

All true but Verizon's global package ($25 for 100MB) can be less expensive IF your data needs are limited. If all you're doing is checking email, 100 MB goes fairly far. I used it on an 11 day cruise and it was plenty. If your data needs are higher, the shipboard WiFi is the way to go.

Don't under any circumstances turn your cellular data on at the per-MB rate, as mking so well illustrates above. And if you're using a cell or tablet even with a data package as I did, make sure data-hungry background apps are disabled!

question- can someone please explain to me if those little hotspot devices( Verizon) work? Do they work on the ship ? Do you need to connect to the ship or can it connect to a satellite, do they work in port? Do you need to buy one of the internet packages for these to work? Dawn Boston to Bermuda. Using with a cell or tablet..

 

thanks for the knowledge !!

 

treefrog

They should work, if you mean the Verizon cellular hotspot devices. Go to myverizon.com and make sure your device is suitable for one of their global plans; you will use the ship's cell capability (not direct to satellite), which U.S. cell companies treat like foreign roaming. I added (for my phone) a plan that included 100MB data, 100 minutes voice, 100 outgoing texts and unlimited incoming texts for $40, works on board and in foreign ports. I think it would have been $25 for the data only - if you go over 100MB, they will charge you another $25 for another 100.

Without a plan like this, I forget what they charge for data per MB but it's cringe-worthy. Also, the data will not be 4G on the ship - I think it's 2G at best. Verizon has a chart with what you can expect in the different countries.

If you do this, you will not need a shipboard internet plan. All the charges come through your cell plan. If you are using a lot of data, though, the ship Internet (through wifi) may be less expensive if you manage your minutes well, doing as much as possible offline and then connecting only to send/receive.