smoosh21

Definitely check fr your airfare via NCL. Cruise line fares for international one-ways are often quite good.

 

For a westbound transatlantic I'd prefer a port side balcony ("sunny side").

 

Have a great trip:)

I haven't done a TA with NCL, but I have done them with Royal and the fares for the one way are significantly cheaper with the Cruise line. I think that they make deals with the airlines. I have flown a few times from Barcelona back to the US for less than $600, most of which was actually taxes. I also was able to fly to London for only about $550. It would have been around $1600 to book on my own

And as others have said, check out IcelandAir, they are a good alternative if you live near a city they fly to

My Coke-aholic husband is going to be veerrrry unhappy. Let's just say it will temper his excitement for any Norwegian booking.

THis is my biggest disappointment. I like bringing my Coke Zero on board. I don't drink Pepsi.

I really hope that other cruise lines don't attempt this

For me this is just a rumor, not even sure if the your bar staff source is reliable unless someone else besides you is validating this info and came from another ship.

 

One single post from one person only is not yet convincing.

I understand. I dismissed what the barmaids said while on the ship, even though they were pretty insistent it was going to happen.

It didn't sound like they were making things up because when I asked about the concierge lounge, or access to Diamond lounge at other times of day, they said they didn't know anything else.

I only put weight into it when I saw this post and thought that maybe what they said was true.

Here's my guess...

 

By another passenger on the ship who heard it from a bartender, who heard it from an assistant waiter on a different ship.

It was the bar staff themselves. They told us that they had been told it was ending soon, in the Diamond lounge. just the evening receptions. They would no longer be serving drinks in Diamond Lounge in the evening.

So, I guess I am now that guest who heard it from the Bar Staff who is passing this information on to other passengers.

And I actually hadn't put much stock in it until I read this post

OK - I'll bite - told by whom??

The bar staff who were working in the Diamond Lounge. They told us, that they had been told the evening receptions in the Diamond lounge would be ending soon (well, the drink service would be ending), and that we would just use our 3 drinks on voucher

Does anyone know when they are going to release more schedules for Asia in the second half of 2017? (August to December)

There are over 100 sailings scheduled for that time in 2016, but hardly any in 2017. I am guessing that there will be ships over there and that Royal is not giving up on the area.

I have done several Europe Cruises now, and I figure it is time to see Asia via ship. I am a planner and want to start thinking about next years trip.

Thank you to anyone who has information on this.

Sorry if this was already mentioned, but this is a big thread.

We were told on our cruise earlier this month that what is happening will be No more evening event in Diamond Lounge, it will be vouchers only. This was on the Rhapsody, were we took over the entire Shall We Dance lounge every night.

Everyone Diamond and Diamond Plus will still have access to lounge, but they will not have a special reception with the food and service anymore.

They mentioned nothing about changing breakfast or access during the day for the better coffee maker and such.

They gave us $50 in total and to answer the other question, we booked specific Spa cabins.

 

The other point about the Spa not been owned by NCL is interesting. On arrival I set off to explore the Spa, but was approached by two different staff members trying hard to sell the $149 package. I explained I had a Spa cabin and expected access to be included.

 

One lad (don't know his name but he told me he came from Newcastle, England, if that identifies him?), specifically told me, 'that Spa cabins used to come with access but it is all chargeable now' followed up with,' can I sign you up for the package?'

I have just signed up for a Spa Cabin on the Epic. The Website very specifically states you get access, so I will be very upset if they even try to pull something to tell me that I would have to pay extra

I certainly hope that this was an anomaly

This was just posted by Cruise Critic elsewhere.

 

http://www.cruisecritic.com/v-6/news/news.cfm?ID=6743&UTM_Source=Social&UTM_Medium=Facebook&UTM_Campaign=News&UTM_Content=Norwegian&UTM_Term=Norwegian

 

No Harvest Caye for us

Yikes, I just booked a cruise on the Getaway mostly because it stops at Roatan, but I liked that we would go here instead of Belize City again.

It is for Thanksgiving week, so with all the delays, we still may not make it.

I am hoping this time they erred on side of caution and put a date that is later than they think it will actually take now

I am sailing to Norway on the Koningsdam late August 2016 round trip out of Amsterdam. Would like to know what weather is like and how to pack for excursions in Norway. When I sailed the Deutchsland out of Kiel Germany I found the weather much cooler than expected in July and could have left the shorts at home. For those that have sailed Norway, should cool weather clothing be my game plan?

Very excited to sail a new area, sail out of Amsterdam and all on a new ship....

Booked one of the new single outside cabins......although forward and on the first deck, the price was great. Knowing my cabin neighbors are also single may make finding pre dinner cocktail mates a bit easier:rolleyes:

So any other pointers on Norway touring would be greatly appreciated.

Tom

well, we did a Norway Fjord Cruise last month (June) and the weather never went above 55, but also never went below 49. I wore Jeans and a hoodie over a t-shirt or a long sleeve shirt most days on excursions.

Changing the departure time for St. Thomas on the Escape from 6:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. to me is a big deal. This new time change changes our plans for the day. Three hours is a lot of time.

Are they also arriving earlier? I realize that if you made independent plans it might mess them up, but the cruise line also usually still wants to get as many shore excursions in as possible, so have the moved up the arrival time a few hours as well?

Hey there

So are there any other LGBT cruisers going on the NCL Breakaway on Nov 1? This will be my first time solo cruising.

I will be sailing as part of the DNR listener group

I had already prepaid the service charge for our upcoming trip, but wanted to bump this to the new August 1st rate. I called NCL, and the rep checked with her manager to see if there was any way to accomplish this. They didn't believe the system would allow them to do this, and suggested visiting guest services once on board and asking for the adjustment to be added to our room.

 

Since the charge is only $15.40 for the four of us, it's obviously no big deal to let this hit the onboard account vs. paying it ahead of time.

 

Am I serious? Yes - I really called and asked them to do this. If this recent move was NCL's way of encouraging guests to show their support of the onboard crew, I'm all for it. After all, they spend 9 months away from their families working grueling hours in order for us to enjoy a week or more dedicated to ours. I'll gladly pay another $15.40 to show my support of what they do.

 

Having said all that, I understand those of us that are less than thrilled with the way NCL has implemented recent changes. It would certainly appear that we're in a transitional period under new leadership. I'm not supportive of every change that has been made, and remain uncertain if I'll continue to favor the line when making future bookings.

 

Time will tell how all of this pans out. In the meantime, I'm going to enjoy one hell of a trip with my family, and I hope I can show my appreciation for the crew along the way.

Why not just give the standout crew cash?

Never had fume problems with an aft cabin

Just boarded the Serenade in Copenhagen. Everything is 14 which includes gratuity. I did a Europe cruise on Celebrity last year and drinks were same price as US ports. These new prices are ridiculous. I hadn't been reading the boards lately so I didn't know these huge increases occured. I had to come here to investigate. These will greatly reduce what drinks I buy, if any.

Last Summer in the Med it did not seem that dressy to me, and that was on a Celebrity ship. Shorts and t-shirts were common in the day, and people wore business casual to dinner.

Formal night seemed more strictly adhered to, but as we didnt want to pack tuxes, we just ate at the buffet on those nights.

I really hate the new website layout, hate it. I am not sure what team at corporate worked on it, but I don't think that they test marketed it very well.

Then again, the cynic is me is thinking that they did and there are financial reasons behind why they made the changes. A few years ago the company I worked for redesigned the website to make it very difficult to find out where you would pay my credit card, but very easy to find where you could pay by debit/ACH because of how much money they saved.

Maybe they want it to be harder to do searches looking for cheapest rates

For anyone who's been on QOS, were there other activities scheduled in SeaPlex besides skating and bumper cars? How was the Dance Hall? Any other notable live entertainment?

They also had Circus school where they trained people on the trapeze.

We will be doing some maintenance on our web site, http://www.RoyalCaribbean.com starting at 9:00 PM EST. The site will be back up Wednesday morning.

 

Thank you in advance for your patience.

Well that explains why I cant log in, but they should have a notice on their site about this. It isnt hard to do

its been almost a year. I wanted to see if anyone else joined

The hallway from Vintages to 270 was always very quiet during the day

I would call our cruise "enjoyable". Was it the best that we have taken, not by a long shot; nor was it the worse. The ship is a "work in progress". I don't agree with RCI's decision to put it into service without having it completed. Everyday there were contractors on board working on installations. Yes, it was driven by economics. Dynamic Dining was far from a WOW. For some it was more like an Oy!. I have never seen a Windjammer as packed at dinner time as it was on this ship. That has to say something.

That was very much my opinion too. However, I am concerned by the continuing number of posts I am reading talking about the lack of organized activities. I am worried that this might be another cost cutting measure.

I want a ship with plenty of cruise staff

You did get money back, but I had to ask for mine. It did not show up onboard so after 5 days I went to the Diamond Concierge and then I was able to get it to show up.

Now that someone started it...

 

Here is my list of complaints :

 

Dynamic Dinning: No Sirloin Steak in any of the venues offered which is not acceptable since this is a staple of the former main dining rooms. Booking is a hassle and still leads to line ups and looses the personal touch with a head/assistant waiters.

Reservations are a pain... Royal IQ needs work, especially since it required internet connectivity and did not always sync up with the system. (Restaurants said they 'lost' our reservation despite it showing up in Royal IQ having been booked over a month before).

North Star - Line up was crazy, only 14 people at a time at 15 minutes each is too long - this need some improvement as many cruisers were not able to get onto the north star

Entertainment program : Nightly entertainment (in Royal Theatre) was missing the introduction/exit nights from the Cruise Director. Yes there were programs but there was really very little 'stage time' for the cruise director. Maybe it was a case of being the first cruise and being disorganized but I thought it was surprising.

Day to Day activities - I didn't see any of the 'typical' cruise programs and I thought the cruise was running on quite a skeleton day to day program. I was not able to find much to do unfortunately when the weather was heavy and prevented some of the outdoor activities (ie rock climbing/flow rider/iFly)

Flow Rider Schedule - Would have liked more 'Boogie Board' time given its simplicity for new/beginner flow riders. Most of the time were assigned for wakeboarding (5 hrs/day as opposed to boggie board which was 3 hrs/day)

Bumper Cars - Would be nice if there was more time slots allotted for this as the lines were always full everyday. This activity had only 2 hours dedicated daily and should probably be given 4 to 5 hours a day, given the long lines and the large hours of overhead in set-up required by the sports staff.

The activities were very disappointing for a crossing, they were honestly more akin to a port day, there was so little going on during this sailing.

While disaster is a strong word, the maiden crossing was definitely my least favorite Royal cruise.

very cool. Is it a big space or do you think it will be very crowded

It was not as big, and not as nice as the Suite area on the Allure. There is no bar on the Suite area here.