JamieLogical

I can't wait until we are retired and can book these last-minute deals!

Alaska in October is even worse than Canada & NE in October (for which I am already planning to just stay on the ship BTW.) There are always last-minute deals to be had on every line. Still wouldn't want to pay $1400+ to stay on the ship for a week. Not when I can pay under $1000 to stay on the ship for a week in Canada & New England instead. 😋

OMG! How did I forget decent toilet paper?!?!? I am pretty picky about my toilet paper at home (Charmin Ultra Strong). I even bring some with me whenever I take road trips/land-based driving vacations. Fun Fact: On our first cruise together, some guy coming out of one of the men's public restrooms said to my husband, "They got that John Wayne toilet paper. It don't take sh** from no one."

I definitely miss my cats as well!

I finally had a little time to do a mock booking with both lines. I decided to try for a Bermuda sailing in June, as my husband and I like to try to get to Bermuda at least once a year. I picked the cheapest June sailing to Bermuda our of NYC/NJ on each line (they were not the exact same week). Both are 7-day sailings. I chose an angled balcony on both ships, as that is what we always try to book, no matter which line we are sailing. Total check-out price on Celebrity was $3747.54. Total check-out price on NCL plus the $16/day/person DSC was $3849.38. So pricing is pretty comparable. This has been my experience since the restart. My husband and I try to cruise together 3-4 times a year. We usually pick a month/time-range we are looking to cruise. Plug that into our favorite cruise search site, compare the basic prices and itineraries to get a rough idea of which cruises we are interested in, and then do a full mock booking to get an actual price for the specific cabin we would actually book. Every spreadsheet I have done to calculate the total price of a cruise (including flights/hotels/parking) has put Celebrity and NCL just about even, with the exception of our Alaska cruise we did the first week of September. That would have been MUCH more expensive on NCL, but also would have been on one of their newer ships and would have included Glacier Bay. We decided to just save the money and sail on one of Celebrity's older ships to Dawes Glacier.

I have always upgraded to the Premium Beverage Package for three reasons. 1) I drink Bailey's in my coffee twice a day. 2) I don't like having to think/worry about what I order. 3) World Class Bar.

If you are on one of the larger ships, as soon as you get onboard, go to one of the touch screens near the elevator banks to make you show reservations.

Potato chips for sure. My husband always ends up wasting OBC in the shop onboard to buy Pringles. I sometimes miss my streaming channels if I am having a "down day" and just want to veg out in my stateroom. But most of the time I don't even bother turning the TV to anything other than the Navigation channel on a cruise. Buffalo Chicken. I know they have wings at O'Sheehan's/The Local on NCL, but I don't eat meat on a bone. So I miss things like boneless wings, wing dip, and Buffalo chicken pizza while cruising. I live in Rochester, NY so we have everything from Buffalo chicken omelets to Bufalo chicken quesadillas everywhere you go. The BIGGEST thing I miss though is good beer! I am a total craft beer snob and stick mostly to porters and stouts with the occasional Scotch Ale. Even the NCL ships with District Brew House don't have any decent (by my standards) beers. At home, I literally drink beer every day. On a cruise, I try to get the most out of my drink package with cocktails.

I would have been pretty mad if they were scheduled to show the Bills game and you put on the Seahawks game instead. Was the Bills game still at least showing in other places onboard?

I think they mean checking in at your muster station.

You quoted me so I don't know if you were addressing me when you said " I don't understand why it has to be an either/or?" I wasn't implying that it had to be. Someone asked if Celebrity's base fares are more expensive than NCL. I said that hadn't been my experience post-restart. Then you mentioned this one very excellent deal on the one NCL cruise, which I am also going on, because I also agree it is an excellent deal.... Where am I saying anything in that chain of conversation that there is an "either/or" required? Edit: To clarify... every single time I have cruised post-restart with the exception of the B2B when my husband and I used up all of our COVID cancellation FCC and this upcoming NCL cruise with my brother, we/I have compared NCL and Celebrity sailings for the dates we were interested in and Celebrity has come out of top of NCL. For our upcoming Christmas/New Year's Panama Canal sailing, Princess came out on top of both Celebrity and NCL.

You left out your FCC. I think the actual "sticker price" for your sailing was around $900? But in any case, that is one specific cruise. One that I am also going on because of the cheap solo fare. Generally, when shopping for cruises with my husband and some of the solo cruises I took post-restart, the all-in price with promos, gratuities, OBC, etc., I have found Celebrity to be cheaper than NCL for most of the times we have been looking to cruise. Our recent Alaska sailing was WAY cheaper on Celebrity than it would have been on NCL.

Not in my experience post-restart.

For me, it's not the name of the package that makes it hard to swallow. It's that they say the package covers drinks under $15, which most reasonable humans would think means most drinks. And then something as basic as Bailey's isn't fully covered because they say it's worth $16, which is patently absurd.

The two things I am dreading are no couch in the room and having a shower curtain in a tiny shower. In order to get a couch on Princess you need a mini suite and on the Panama Canal sailing we are doing, it would have cost us thousands of extra dollars to upgrade.

I just checked the terms of the drink package for my upcoming Princess sailing. The included "Princess Plus" package covers drinks up to $12. According to the most recent menus I could find from August, Bailey's is listed as $7.50. So Princess is already beating NCL and Celebrity in one category at least.

I certainly don't hate NCL. If I hated it, no amount of persuasion would get me to sail NCL again. As I have said in other threads, there are pros and cons to any cruise line and some people value certain aspects above others. That is fine. When I first sailed Celebrity, I was disappointed that Bailey's wasn't covered in their Classic package while it was covered in NCLs, so that was actually a point in NCL's favor. Currently, I find Celebrity to be a better value for my tastes. I am sailing Princess for the first time in December, so we will see how that goes. Right now I only have NCL and Celebrity to compare to one another. I think it's pretty natural, when you experience two different versions of a thing, to compare them to one another. Sorry that some people disagree.

Well, the problem there is that the cruise lines set their own pricing. Bailey's is most definitely under the $15 limit on Celebrity, as are the VAST majority of drinks. I think I only came across two drinks over the limit on Celebrity. Whereas, NCL can say that a shot of Bailey's is worth $15 and therefor over their limit. Rather than saying what the price limit is, it makes more sense to say what actually liquors you can actually get within the package. The Premium Plus on NCL and the Premium package on Celebrity are directly comparable in terms of which liquors are included, regardless of the dollar limits listed. Edit: I don't drink wine, so yeah, I haven't compared the two packages in regards to that.

I see you are correct. It is now $15/day + service charge to upgrade on Celebrity. So $18/day for a drink package that includes Bailey's and just about everything else on the ship. Whereas for a comparable package on NCL, it will cost you $54.60/day.

In reading another thread (not specifically about the drink package), I found out that Bailey's is no longer included in the Premium Beverage Package. That package is supposed to cover drinks up to $15. So you are telling me that they are charging over $15 for a shot of Bailey's now? That's completely insane. I have been sailing on Celebrity since the restart and Bailey's isn't included in their Classic Beverage Package either, which only covers drinks up to $9. However, unlike on NCL, you don't have to pay any service charges/gratuities on their included package. Also, the cost to upgrade from their Classic to Premium Package is only $12/day, which is cheaper than the $20/day you have to pay in service charges for just the included package on NCL. To upgrade to the Premium Plus package on NCL is $30/day. So to get the equivalent package to what I am used to from Celebrity on NCL, it costs $38 more per day?

Surprised that NCL is allowing studio occupants to bid now. They used to be excluded from the Upgrade Advantage program altogether. But as @hallux said, all upgrade offers are doubled no matter how many guests are in the cabin. If it's one guest or five guests, the upgrade is always bid x2.

I believe it's a certain number of items per credit, like Food Republic. However, I've never used my specialty dining credit there, as the number of items we order and the per item pricing means it's sort of a "waste" of a specialty dining credit when we get more "bang for our buck" at places like Le Bistro. We have always used OBC or just paid outright for our meals at Pinchos.

Even with the new Le Bistro menu (which I am obsessed with) I would still eat at Pinchos a couple of times if I were back on the Escape. I would pay a la carte prices there rather than use a specialty dining credit, though.

I have never ordered more than one of anything that I can remember. One appetizer, one entrée, and one dessert is already way more food than I can eat in one sitting.

Pinchos Tapas was my favorite. With the new post-COVID menu in Le Bistro, that would probably be my favorite now.