CruiseMH

They only have the breakaway+ class ships as the biggest,so when they tell you the pier can handle them then its the same as if you are a group of 25 people and someone tells you "the elevator can handle the whole group at once". it does not say that the elevator can`t handle more.But it simply is not necessary cause your group is only 25 people.

It is absolutely dangerous to try to have the perfect ship for every type of guest. No cruise line has that and no cruise line wants that to have. Because it is extremely difficult to offer a good service all these different types of passengers. So it is much easier to concentrate on a specific type of passenger. Of course the cruise lines try to get as many different passenger types as possible onto their ships, but not at any price. NCL has 2000 Passenger ships, 3300 passengers ships, and 4000 and in future 5000 passenger ships. If people want to have smaller ships they can go to Oceania or regent. If they want to have expedition ships, there are other cruise lines available on the market.

Simply because they don`t need it. 😉

If it is for the itinerary: Italy/greece. If it is for the ship: the escape

As far as i know you only need your key card and show it to the crew. As your latitudes status is mentioned on your key they know whether you are entitled to use that service or not.

Because thats what people pay for on a cruise. Depending on ship size there are dozens or even hundreds of crew doing nothing else then cleaning the tables and removing plates and waste, in the buffet restaurants and in the table-service restaurants as well. this is called service.

therefore they have regent and Oceania 😉 Yes, these are not explicitly expedition ships, but most cruise lines don`t have expedition ships. I guess there is a good reason for. In the mediterranean and the caribbean there are still enough ports where such a ship can dock. not the very exotic ones but still enough.

The bigger the ship the less are the costs per passenger.It is as simple as that. For most people it doesn`t make any big difference whether its a 4100 or 5000-passenger-ship. They either hate them anyway or love them anyway. The people who are preferring smaller ships are preferring MUCH smaller ships (2000-2400 passengers).

the cruise ended in Barcelona. At the other ports one could assume that they would go back on board. But in Barcelona they had to do the regular immigration process because they were disembarking.

The needed documents were presented at check-in but they were faked. During check in this was not realized and only popped up at Barcelona when the cruise line handed over the docs to immigration authorities.

Payment is also a reason for a ship to get a better position. But most ports would not admit that. 😉

Most ports handle it based on first come first serve. The first cruise who books a berth on a specific day gets the "best" berth (e.g. closest to the city or whatever). In case there are more ship calls than available berths then usually the cruise line that has booked a berth for that day the latest has to tender their guests in.

As far as i know that stop at Sao Tome was not the first stop of the cruise. So they had a few port stops before and hence should now how NCL handles this.

Most ports charge per docking or to be price per berth usage. Every port has a limited number of berths. No. of berths x 365 days = max. amount they can have as income. Thats why they usually charge per day.(midnight to midnight) It doesn`t matter whether a ship is docked from 7 am till 5 pm or from 5 am till 11 pm. Only when the ship e.g. is docking from 8 am till 8 am next day then there is an additional charge.Some ports do charge supplements for arrival/departure during night times(e.g. between 10 pm and 6 am) but this depends on the port fee tariff of each port. I do know it because i studied a lot of port fee tariffs(because i was curious on how much a average day in port costs) and because of many Q&A`s with captain and other nautical officers.(german market cruise line AIDA does Q&A`s with the captain on almost every cruise)

From my personal experience and what i read here in the forums i would say that Europe is the area where NCL makes the least amount of itinerary changes that have nothing to do with weather or safety. At least the mediterranean sea.