raschueller

On 4/3/2022 at 8:29 AM, Dawg67 said:

We just got off the Breakaway (27 March).  The ship ran out of red wine by the third day.  The only red wine on the menu offered was Chanti.  Service was very bad in Cagney’s.  Don’t see how a ship runs out of red wine.

Just got off Sunday and.... last night.

On 3/28/2022 at 4:31 PM, bigrednole said:

Outside of the over-priced expense of a Haven Aft Penthouse, how is the rest of the cruise...entertainment, drinks, bars, things like that? 

 

I understand that 100% of your complaints at the moment are Haven related and covid related. One of them is due to not knowing (splash pool area). The other is an issue you can have resolved by talking to Concierge. I went in thinking that this is about the other 99.9% of things on the ship to do.

I was just off the breakaway. Here is what I would say.

Bar staff was great. We had premium plus (chose that over Haven). Never waited more than a few moments for a drink. Got upgraded bottles a few times. Had the following: best sidecar and best brown sugar mohito I have ever had. 

Food was good. Best was Le Bistro but La Cuchina was really good. We were scheduled to eat at Cagneys after complaints we switched. Glad we did. Shanghai was great as well. Only real terrible thing was breakfast. It was bad everywhere.

Overall we had a great time. Loved our Aft Cabin. 9322

Apparently I was wrong. For some reason (do not know why) I thought they had a 35 dollar limit. I was wrong.

The other issue that popped up (follow thread back in time) was that the description on one of the pages made it unclear whether you could  order bottles of wine. 

Again the answer is you can. There was a long chain back that got us here. Still wondering where I got the 35 dollars from.

28 minutes ago, Always Cruising said:

Wondering if we purchased the Premium Plus package before the new rules, if the old regulations apply?

I think the confusion is a misplaced comma and lack of a transitional word in the description above. Here is the current flier and the current description.

Current description on the page:

If getting in touch with your more decadent side is on the agenda, then this is for you. Our Premium Plus Beverage Package includes the widest selection of beverages by the glass, such as Veuve Clicquot, Patrón Añejo, The Macallan Quest and more. Enjoy all beverages by the glass throughout your cruises including unlimited soft drinks, beers, spirits, cocktails, wines by the glass and select bottles of wine with dinner, plus, still and sparkling water, energy drinks, and specialty coffee!

premium-plus-beverage-package-2021v2 (1).pdf

5 minutes ago, Hutcha said:

I don't know who they would have pick it up. You can always walk out with it.

 

Take two back with you and tell the room steward you want them to stay.

 

What do you mean? Why $4.20?

 

Yes. Start with a bottle. End with a bottle. Order drinks before, after or in between. I have seen that people have been limited to one bottler per person open at a time. Others have not

I thought the limit on the price was anything up to 35 dollars. Someone posted a menu from Le Bistro from last month and I noticed at the top it had 35 a glass for the yellow label and 38.50 for the rose. And I looking at the flyer I have no clue what to think. Because there is a whole list of things offered by the bottle.

And while the most amazing and wonderous person in the world (my partner) came from Israel. I am not sure about Israeli wine. So that will be an experience in of itself.

BTW thank you so much. 

premium-plus-beverage-package-2021v2 (1).pdf

19 minutes ago, ggTexasGal said:

Just a warning...

NCL seems to have changed the T&C's of the Beverage Packages recently ("bottles" specifically, not as was previously listed.  Also, the link to "flyer" is missing)!

You might want to reign-in your expectations...

https://www.ncl.com/terms/premium-plus-beverage-package-full

I think that is a punctuation issue. Here is the description on the website:

If getting in touch with your more decadent side is on the agenda, then this is for you. Our Premium Plus Beverage Package includes the widest selection of beverages by the glass, such as Veuve Clicquot, Patrón Añejo, The Macallan Quest and more. Enjoy all beverages by the glass throughout your cruises including unlimited soft drinks, beers, spirits, cocktails, wines by the glass and select bottles of wine with dinner, plus, still and sparkling water, energy drinks, and specialty coffee!

3 hours ago, Sthrngary said:

@raschuellerI want to be very accurate with you. First, I am on the NCL Joy sailing tomorrow.  I am not in the Haven.  I am in a Club Balcony Suite so the information I am giving you is NOT for the Haven. You can NOT get a bottle delivered to your room.  You can NOT get a glass of wine or spirits delivered to your room.  YOU CAN but it will cost you for each one.  They DO NOT come with this package. 

 

What you can do and I will be doing is having a "Selected Bottle Of Wine" at dinner.  If I have a few glasses left over in the bottle, I will take it back to my room.  Once when I was in the Cagney's steak house, they offered to bring the half open bottle to my room for me.  

 

The room steward would be happy to get you ice anytime you want it.  Most rooms come with a cork screw however I always bring one.  

 

I think that covers your questions.  

 

Cruise well. 

I framed that poorly. I meant to say would they deliver the opened bottle from dinner to the room.and I see that is a probably not.

Only a few questions: can we get wine glasses for the room.

Also noticed on the last iteration of le bistro menu that veuve rose was 38.50 a glass. So that would be about 4.20 a glass?

Lastly, can you still order drinks ... say moet and still get a bottle or red and a dessert wine.

Thanks so much!!!

On 3/6/2021 at 2:35 PM, Sthrngary said:

Sorry for the late reply.  For some reason I did not get a notification you commented. Here is my experience.  Any meal, if my wife ordered a bottle of selected wine, it came back to the room with her.  What you will notice is that regardless of the restaurant (Haven or Specialty) this holds true.  I am quite sure, even at breakfast, you can do this.

On a side note.  My wife loves wine.  Some days, she would drink a bottle at dinner.  Then order aother bottle.  Have one glass just so she could take the rest of the bottle back to the suite.  Sounds petty however, having a bottle of wine chilling for time on the balcony at night is a huge thing for her enjoyment. 

I hope I helped. 

You can get the bottle delivered to the room???? Also will the room steward bring an extra ice bucket to chill the wine? Also glasses? I assume we would need our own corkscrew.

We are not in the Haven.

Oh and do the main dining rooms have a sommelier?

8 hours ago, JandC_Cruising said:

 

1.  You can get up to two Starbucks on the Premium Plus package. per T&C ("Eligible guests are entitled to two beverages per person per transaction")

2.  Each PPBP gets one bottle of wine with dinner. You do not have to finish the bottle to get the next. 

3. You can cork any left over wine and bring back to your room and then still get the 2nd bottle.  We've done this....Start with Champagne and move on to a still wine with the main course without finishing the bubbles first.  Use the left over for nightcap or Mimosas the next morning🙂

4.  No...Also, per the T&C of the Plus package, Room service is not included.  

Here is the link to the Premium Plus Package with the T&C at the bottom:

 

https://www.ncl.com/sites/default/files/premium-plus-beverage-package.pdf

 

We love the package and will be enjoying the benefits at the end of the month!  Woohoo!

I always love the person in the know. Few additional questions.

We plan to get Veuve rose by the glass at Le Bistro. Checked the last menu and it was listed at 38.95 a glass. So as I understand it we would pay the 3.95 plus 20% for each glass?

Also we would want to drink that as well as order 2 bottles with intention of taking them to the room for adult reasons. Can we order drinks and order our bottles as well? - I realize they will open them there.

Also on other days can we get a bottle during lunch or better yet breakfast. Or only dinner?

Thank you ahead of time. This is our first time on NCL and only or second cruise.

Lord our generation is soft. Average meal at Cagney's 90 minutes. This lasted maybe 10 at most. We complain about everything.

On 3/5/2022 at 1:25 PM, mking8288 said:

#cough #cough, hmmm - are you sure ??  Best to look closely at the production date(s) and expiration/valid dates to use ... It might be ineffective much sooner than a year. 

 

We have self-test home kits from iHealth, Roche and BinaxNow with EUA & latest expiration date is August 2022, or about 6 months ... one box is good until this April, being the earliest batch via employer HR.   

Yes I am sure. Was ordered in Feb, 

15 hours ago, 5onadime said:

The most stressful part of planning right now for me is the figuring out the when/how/what covid test.  

Looking forward to the day we no longer need to do this. With more destinations removing travel restrictions, any wagers when that will be for NCL?

The home test is pretty easy and you get six of them so it takes care of the whole issue for about a year.

12 hours ago, 14pp said:

 

What are the testing hours for emed? Trying to figure out if we can squeeze them in before work and school before committing to buying a kit.

24/7 they also do testing for returning to the US.

On 3/4/2022 at 10:14 AM, zzupschuck said:

The ID Now test is a PCR test.  It is accepted.  Going to Walgreens 2 weeks from today for my test...3/20 Breakaway Cruise.

I thought about doing a test at Walgreens and decided to do the at home test. Good thing is there are plenty of options.

Anyone know if where you take the home test matters? i know it ask for a state of residence, but does that need to match your location when testing?

On 1/12/2022 at 9:40 AM, Funky Fusion FoodsJ said:

It is very unfortunate that you didn't fully understand the process being new to cruising.   I'd have to correct you on your statistics though:  according to Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA)  the cruising population is actually getting younger rather than older.  As a TA my Customer Base has seen a great increase specifically in the Gen X'r population.

 

Hopefully you'll calm down at some point and give cruising another try, it doesn't have to be NCL, though they are good, there are plenty of other good options.  Find yourself a truly good TA who will take the time to ensure you understand the agreements and take care of the stressful minutia for you so you don't get in situation again.

Name one other travel industry that acts like this.

(BTW I am Gen X. We are not young at all. )

On 1/12/2022 at 10:13 AM, bigrednole said:

Cash is KING. If you wanted cash, you had to take a refund. There were no questions on that. Moving money from one cruise to another is FCC, period. Its unfortunate you did not understand that. Many people fell into your same situation by not understanding the agreement you made. In those cases, if you don't know what you are agreeing to best to consult an attorney or take the cash and wait for the dust to settle. We almost fell for it with RCL by taking the 25% bonus until we looked at future cruise prices when we could go and they were 2x what we had paid. We chose full refund because cash in my hand is better than cash in NCL's hand. Wound up there were no RCL cruises in our price range and it was the best decision. 

Ground zero why I will not do this again.

Imagine this. Airlines cancels flight. Transfer ticket to another flight. That flight gets cancelled.

Airlines refuses to rebook you on another airlines. Refuses to refund the money. Says you can only use them for another ticket in a year. No we do not know if your flight will be available. No we do not know how much it will cost. 

No one would stand for that. So no. I am good. 

Oh, there will never be a next time. but let's be clear. WE DID ASK. We were told that would be fine. We SPECIFICALLY also said if they cancel July 2020 will we get our money back, The answer was yes.

But no. We will not be in this situation again. Since 2020 we have taken a 20 day trip to Portugal. Flew in. Drove around the country. Had an amazing time. The cruising industry lied to us. They got us good. This time. 

Also process this. We DID ASK. If they had answered honestly, we would have said oh hell no and gotten our money back. I am sure that NCL will do fine for a while with all their stans. But that audience is getting older and there is a bunch of us first time customers that got burned.

5 hours ago, bigrednole said:

This 👆👆👆👆

Again, read what happened. We never agreed to FCC. Followed what they told us. We told them to move the cash from the April sailing to the July sailing. THEY converted the April sailing monies to an FCC. They specifically were told not to do that. We made it clear that we wanted the money back on the July sailing if it was cancelled. They said no problem. When the July sailing was cancelled, we handled all the paperwork which was subsequently denied. So funny enough what you are THISING never happened. 

In short. We will try to take this cruise. If we go we will enjoy it. But it will likely be our last and certainly will be our last with NCL. They have lied to us. They have held our money hostage for two years. We never agreed to this. Nor would we ever agree to this. We trusted their word, and we got burned.

We are wiser now.

I do not think you are grasping the reality. They cancelled on us in April and we rebooked immediately for July. They had the money. This was not about lost travel or the insurance. We made it VERY clear that we wanted the money transferred to the July cruise. We also made it clear we wanted the money back in refund for the July cruise. They said no problem.

After the second cruise was cancelled, they then said that second cruise was paid for by FCC which we made clear we did not want to happen. 

They flatly lied. 

Keep in mind we were one of the first groups to be cancelled and there was no real process in place. And they ended up keeping our money for two years. We never agreed to an FCC and we would have never agreed to this insanity. The process should be simple. They cancel. We get our money back. That has not been the case. And again, we did not gamble and lose. We did not cancel. THEY DID. 

NCL has held our money for two years because we trusted them back in April 2020. We were foolish. And we are fairly sure we will never see our money or get any value for it. 

5 hours ago, julig22 said:

Or did they get FCC because they cancelled their cruise. I believe NCL opted to offer FCC to those who cancelled instead of applying the 100% penalty that was in effect at the time.  Now there are claims that NCL owes them a refund on the FCC they got in lieu of nothing.

It was April 2020. They cancelled. We never agreed to FCC. We trusted NCL and booked a cruise on the Gem in July. Put a deposit down and told them to transfer the funds from the April CANCELLED BY THEM cruise to the July cruise. Made clear if the July cruise was cancelled we wanted our money back. We were told no problem since it would be a money transfer not FCC. We did not even have credit back at this point and had to make a deposit back on the July cruise.

All we ever asked for was the original 3,000 back. We did not gamble. We trusted,

5 hours ago, MoCruiseFan said:

 

Actually you did opt for it by not complying with the requirements for getting a  cash refund.

Let me be clear. We got the notification that we were cancelled on April 3rd. We were on the getaway the 20th. We called our CC. We were told that it would be MONTHS before we would see our money. (Which in of itself made no sense). We asked if we could transfer the MONEY to a different cruise. Note. We made it very very clear we wanted to transfer the money.  He said no problem.  We ALSO made it clear that if the second cruise we would want our MONEY back. Again we were told NO PROBLEM. We set up a cruise on the GEM for July. Again made it clear we wanted to transfer the MONEY. He said the transaction would take a bit but should be no problem. Told us a date to call back to finalize. Which we did. Cut forward to that cruise being cancelled and we got our deposit back. Rest of the original money not so much. Spent endless hours and we were told that the money used for the second cruise was FCC. Again a complete lie compared to the assurances before. 

We never agreed or gambled. We TRUSTED NCL. They violated that trust. We never asked for anything but our original 3,000 dollars back. Had they said in any communication that we will keep your money if the second cruise was cancelled then we would never had agreed to do it in the first place.

This seems simple. I contract with you and pay for a service. Then you fail to provide that service then give me my money back. At any rate. We are using the FCC to take this cruise. We will not use Norwegian again. Our choice. Probably will not cruise again (we have been one time before) And we would recommend not using Norwegian again to anyone who asks. Cruising is ok. But it is not worth this stress. 

As far as "you did not follow the directions". This was OUR money. Not theirs. And now we were given a deadline to spend our money? We actually feel a bit lucky to have found a cruise we can take. Lucky to get value out of OUR money. 

We did not make a choice to take it as an FCC. That was not what we chose to do. That is what happened. 

I suggest you reread what happened with the OP. Or perhaps listen to what happened to us. We NEVER opted to take an FCC it was what was done. Without our approval.