Ladyshopper23

We were on Getaway in October doing a transatlantic cruise. There was one couple who started queueing 3 hours before the show was due to start in Syds! The first night I saw them, I actually went and checked they knew what time the start time was, as I was so shocked. They did know, they said that they loved the shows and wanted to guarantee a seat. We saw them every night there was a show on, and they were always that early. I can't imagine anything is that good that I'd want to spend 3 hours of my holiday queueing for it! We didn't get to see any of the shows, as I have mobility issues and cannot stand. My husband could have stood in the queue, but then I wouldn't have been with him for an hour or so, and would have been sat somewhere on my own. That didn't appeal, so we didn't bother. Shame, as I've heard the shows are excellent, but the system as it is just isn't geared up for people who aren't able to stand in a queue.

We have the Barclays Travel Pack, and have just had to make a claim (should have been on a 2 week cruise over New Year but had to cancel due to emergency hospital admission and surgery). Very easy process, and quick pay out (once my husband filled out all the forms, he initially missed one!). All they needed was the cruise cancellation invoice and my hospital discharge letter. Also claimed for the hotel the night before as it was a non-refundable rate, and an excursion we'd booked (not via the ship) that wasn't refundable. All paid out for in 4 days. I did take out another annual policy just for missed ports. However, I didn't disclose any medical conditions at all, so it wouldn't have been valid for any of that kind of stuff, and I did it just in my name rather than a joint policy. It cost me £27 for the year (probably because I disclosed no medical conditions!) and I got £11 cashback going through a cashback site, so basically £16 for the year. It would give me £100 per missed port, and I would have been able to claim on it had we actually gone on our New Years cruise, as one of the ports was indeed cancelled. Having now had experience of actually claiming through Barclays Travel Pack, I can't recommend it enough. It's a shame that they now add a charge for some pre-existing conditions (they used to be free, but this changed last year) but even so, at £12.50 a month plus a charge of £110 for both our conditions, it's an absolute bargain (prior to this we were paying a minimum of £450 a year for an annual policy). It's going up to £14.50 a month in February, but still great value. I did also use the breakdown cover shortly after taking out the policy - car wouldn't start and they came out and replaced the battery (which luckily didn't cost me anything as the previous owner had bought it through the RAC and it was still under warranty).

Sorry, that could be totally my fault. Post op fatigue and a foggy brain means I probably misremembered the port that was changed from beginning to end. I have just seen (and am not remembering this incorrectly!) that they are now staying in Gibraltar until 10pm instead of leaving at 2pm, and Alicante has been cancelled for tomorrow.

I guess it must have changed again? Certainly people were showing copies of the new itinerary on their tv screens and also a printed out copy that stated Cadiz had moved to the end of the cruise rather than the beginning when they boarded on Saturday.

I think most of the port stops have been pushed back by a day, and Cadiz has moved to the last port stop instead of the first. I was supposed to be on this cruise. Sadly had to cancel due to emergency surgery, so am absolutely gutted. Looks like an amazing time was had by all from the photos I've seen in the groups I'm in related to this cruise.

Noticed when checking out my Amex card offers yesterday that this had appeared. Great timing, as we will both be able to use it, so £300 back in total. Offer valid up until end of March I believe. No idea if it's on all types of Amex cards, we've got the Gold Preferred Rewards card.

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That is a really poor decision if that's correct. Those macaroons were lovely. I can't eat the cakes they have at CaB as they tend to have gelatine in the icing, and I'm also vegetarian. Not to mention the fact that they're in there close to all the other cakes, so a total cross contamination nightmare. We've just booked a Celebrity cruise for next year. Our first experience on them sailing gluten free wasn't great, but I gave them the benefit of the doubt as it was the first cruise for that particular ship after a 2 year break from Covid. Really hope I'm not going to regret my decision.

On our recent NCL cruise we took a bottle of brown sauce (the brown sauce they use onboard is HP, and that contains rye which we can't have as we have to be gluten free). For similar reasons, we also took our own bottle of vinegar (wanted vinegar that didn't contain barley malt for when we had french fries). The cruise before that (also NCL) we bought a jar of jam and container of butter spread when we were in port - they'd run out of the individually portioned/wrapped stuff, and reverted to big bowls of butter and jam, which is no good from a cross contamination point of view (coeliac). We did try asking for fresh butter, which they were happy to do, but it took 15 minutes, so it seemed easier just to grab our own supplies. We frequently take packaged food onboard and it has never been an issue.

Just got off 13 night transatlantic on Getaway and no hash browns anywhere. Only breakfast potatoes.

We're in a Spanish mainland port today (well, just left) and are also in one tomorrow. There was nothing in the daily for today mentioning any charge, and no signs up, nor any extra charges made.

Am quite surprised. We're on the Getaway, and expected Spanish VAT to be charged today as we're mainland Spain, but it hasn't been. Even had the dreaded email before the cruise warning us about it. Cruise started in Southampton, stopped in France first, then Spain today and tomorrow.

Not yet. The last one was only a few days behind the USA one though. Just out of interest (in case we do get one), are the OBC certificates refundable if you haven't spent it all? And how does that work?

I'm afraid I can't remember.

No it wasn't, just Spanish mainland.

I know you aren't allowed to recommend any on this site, which is fair enough. But I assume if I do a Google search it will be easy enough to find a decent one? It's always a bit of a worry when you're in one country, and are looking for an agent in a totally different one!

Hi. I did try searching the forum before asking this question, but didn't come up with much. There is a particular cruise I'm interested, which is starting/finishing in Sydney. I was doing some reading around and it seems as if gratuities are included in the price if you book on the Australian website. I had a look at the price, and it was actually cheaper for that cruise as well, by around £600 (once I'd done the currency conversion). So, the question is, does anyone know if you can book on the Australian website if you live in the UK? I'm aware that there can be problems booking on the USA website, and that you generally need to book via a USA travel agent. Does anyone have any knowledge if it's the same for Australia? I have contacted RC directly via email, so hopefully I'll get a reply at some point, but thought I'd ask on here for any personal experience.

Can't guarantee it will be the same now - I think we all know NCL can be a little inconsistent! But having been charged the 10% in Spanish waters, we were certainly grateful that the 25% in Brazilian waters didn't apply to us in relation to drinks we got with the drinks package. My husband did buy what turned out to be a very expensive Starbucks onboard though in Brazilian waters - he didn't make the same mistake again! 🤣

This was our experience on the Star last November whilst sailing in Brazillian waters - if you had a drinks package, no extra tax was charged on any drinks. Everything else bought on the ship including in the shops had the 25% added. No prior warning, so if you didn't know it was coming (we didn't, but it wasn't a problem) and had been saving buying things from the shops until the end of the cruise, you'd have been in for a shock! We also sailed in Spanish waters during the same cruise (a transatlantic) and the 10% tax WAS charged on every drink, even if you had a package.

Ironically O'Sheehan's was one of the places we had the most trouble, and the place that told us the butter had gluten in! I won't bore you with all the details, as it turned into a complete farce. But I will also give a positive comment for O'Sheehan's in that it was somewhere where the fries were cooked separately in their own oil, so were completely safe (we did double check every single time). Was nice to be able to get french fries whenever we wanted, as sometimes this simple thing can actually be quite tricky to get on a cruise ship. For my husband that eats meat, he was also able to get the burger safely with the GF bun. Just fries for me, so specially made from scratch GF veggie burger like they did on Star (but to be fair, I absolutely wasn't expecting this, and realise I was extremely lucky to have that done for me on Star).

I'd forgotten about our chat (Hashimoto's disease gives me serious memory problems!) but remember now. We did experience Ernesto, he was absolutely fantastic. He was based in Los Lobos every evening, so our meal in there was very good. We ate in there quite early on in the cruise, plus had gone up there the night before to check on things, so I think once he'd met us, he then kept an eye out for us, as we saw him a lot in the buffet at breakfast time and he helped us out. There was also another great maitre'd based in Aqua, so we ate in there every night. He tended to be in the buffet at lunchtime, and it was him that told us about the waffles at breakfast, by bringing us some for lunch! Without those 2 people, we'd have had a really hard time. The veggie bit on top of being GF was a real headache. More so than usual, it seemed to really confuse them. Even though I repeatedly told them I eat cheese, it was missing off nearly every meal, and had to be sent back. The last night the veggie option was also GF (unusual) and it was filled pepper - the filling was spinach and ricotta. They brought mine out, and it was just pepper filled with spinach! 🤣 They also got very confused with my husband, who is gluten free but NOT vegetarian. He also had cheese missing on a couple of meals. For one meal, which was bacon wrapped shrimp (and marked as a GF option on the menu) it came without the bacon. When my husband questioned this, it was because the chef thought my husband was vegetarian (but clearly not vegetarian enough to not being eating shrimp). The other side of this was on the last morning, we'd pre-ordered sit down breakfast the night before. The order was read back to us, as per usual. At breakfast, my order also came with a great big pile of bacon, so not what I ordered, and not vegetarian. We had a couple of isolated incidents of missing cheese on the Star, but this was sorted by the special diets coordinator, and were relatively isolated incidents. It happened pretty much every day on Dawn, and it starts to make you wonder that if the special diets chefs can't get this right, what else is going wrong with the meal you don't know about? We also were told at various times that cheese had gluten in it (not completely out of the realms of possibility if it was pre-shredded cheese and had a flour coating, but that's not particularly common any more so unlikely), butter had gluten in it (just no!), and various other nonsense things. I think if we'd gone on Dawn first, and had the experience we did, we'd still have been fairly unimpressed, but would have put it down to that's what NCL being like. However, having been on Star and having the really good experience with the special diets coordinator, we had high expectation. We certainly didn't expect it to be so different! I'm going to go and put an edit on the entry in my blog for the Star to give a warning that there might not be a special diets coordinator on every ship, and I'll link it to my Dawn blog post when I've finished it. Next month we'll see how Getaway is - will it be similar to Star with a special diets coordinator, or will it be like the Dawn and not have anyone doing that role and subsequently a tricky experience? Who knows!

We were so disappointed. I'd been raving to everyone about how good our experience had been in November with the special diets coordinator, and everything I've read suggests that every ship has one. Definitely not on Dawn though. I even wrote a letter to the food and beverage director to ask the question, and to provide some constructive feedback about other GF issues we were experiencing onboard. She very kindly came and found us, and had a long chat. She totally understood, as she is gluten intolerant herself. However, she's fairly new to NCL, and had never heard of a special diets coordinator. She brought the restaurant manager to the chat, and he said that prior to covid they'd had them, but since then not so much. To be honest, it didn't sound he really knew much, but I found it very odd that the sister ship of the one we were on had one, but not this one. Our eating experience on Dawn was not great, in fact it was quite hard work. We found one maitre d who was very good with special diets and pre-orders, so we stuck to the one restaurant he was in. Our best meal of the cruise was in Los Lobos, the speciality mexican restaurant. The maitre d in there really knew his stuff including about cross contamination, and pretty much everything on the menu was either already GF, or could be adapted quite easily. The food in there was gorgeous. If I'd been a first time cruiser, especially on NCL, I would have found the whole eating experience really hard work, as no-one was particularly forthcoming about things. It's only through our own knowledge of cruising NCL before that we knew you could ask for GF pizza and pasta in the buffet for example, and GF bagels, toast, cookies and muffins at breakfast. They must have had supply issues, as there was no individual wrapped portions of butter in the buffet until day 8 of the cruise. Before that it was in a big bowl right next to the bread, a huge no no. When we finally got a member of staff to understand why we needed fresh butter, it took 15 minutes, and the poor guy had to go all the way down to deck 3 to get it. We remedied this by buying our own butter and jam at a port stop, which definitely made life easier! We've gone from really looking forward to our Getaway cruise in October to be wary of it, and this is all down to the lack of special diets coordinator and poor gluten free dining experience on Dawn as a result. Having the special diets coordinator is something that really sets NCL apart from other cruise lines (something I put in my blog write up and also in my letter to the food and beverage director). I'm really hoping that our experience on Dawn was unusual, and it will be back to having fab dining on the Getaway. Fingers crossed!

If you have a look at my signature, you can find the link to my travel blog with our experience on Star in November. We had the special diets coordinator, and the experience was great. HOWEVER, we've just got back from the Dawn, and they have no such position onboard. I'm in the process of writing this cruise up, so blog won't be available for a few days. It definitely impacted in a negative way though on our GF dining experience. I'm pleased to see someone has mentioned there being a special diets coordinator on Getaway back in April. I hope they still have someone doing this role, as we're cruising on her next month. It really did make life a lot easier having that one person doing all the pre-orders.

We had a great experience! The special diets coordinator made such a difference to our gluten free dining experience. I think it's really good having one specific point of contact. They must get in so steps during the day though, they are literally running between restaurants at every meal service! I've written up our experience on my blog (as per my signature), so if you want to have a read of that it will give you the full breakdown of everything, including photos of menus and food. We had 3 brilliant speciality meals at La Cucina, Moderno (even as a veggie I had a really good experience as the salad bar and all the sides they give you were fantastic for GF, plus the special diets coordinator brought me up a main course I'd ordered the day before) and also at the Teppenyaki place. We're cruising again on NCL twice this year - once at the end of this month on Dawn (sister ship of Star), then later on in the year on Getaway. I'm hoping that those experiences are just as good.

That's good to know about the poolside grill. I'm definitely going to investigate more on our next Princess cruise, as would be great to have another quick eats option.