Karaboudjan

Those are not cheap, they take up space, and probably take more time to use properly than a busy NCL bartender has.

I'm thinking it is NCL wanting to make sure they can go through a whole bottle before it goes bad once it is opened.

And this is already being discussed. Looks like the Sky may be taking over some of these cruises?

Maybe they made another arrangement like they did with the Spirit in Asia.

You could try a dummy booking for the Haven. That might give you an idea of how many cabins are unsold. I suspect that a lot of the upgrade process is automated so not sure if two invitations is significant or not. As for the value, the Haven is a whole different experience, not just a different specialty-level restaurant and a private deck area. I got an upgrade to the Haven once for a bit more than $800 and I thought it was well worth it.

I appear to be able to book a regular airport transfer for my cruise in February 2024 under Summary/Transfers on the desktop web site...

Maybe this has something to do with air promotion ticketing being done around that timeframe?

It looks like the Sun is taking over these cruises for 2024-2025. An interesting variety of itineraries but high prices (for now anyway)

It's only their opinion too... Have those people explored every square mile of New Zealand? Just living somewhere does not make you an authority on all things concerned about the place. I'm sure there are places to see spectacular scenery and wildlife within 100 miles of my home that I am completely unaware of.

I am planning to Uber. Will have the special road info handy in case the driver is not familiar with the closure.

It no longer applied to many, but it seems worth noting that as of 10/6 NCL removed the final vaccination/testing requirements for sailing. Travel Requirements by Port & Country (ncl.com)

Quite possible that they will just not bother. As far as I know those characters were used in very few places, so I doubt it would be any great loss or surprise to not have them on the future ships. If they do use something, maybe it could be the second 'A' in Aqua stylized as a water droplet. I don't see any standard alphanumeric character that really works like the '1' and '!' do for Prima and Viva.

Complaina Grumbla Gripa Whina

There has already been some discussion about this on this thread. Some speculation but no clear answers: https://boards.cruisecritic.com/topic/2957721-updates-for-australia-cruise-ship-covid-protocols/page/8

Prima and Viva already have a game show. Maybe there are exclusivity agreements as part of the licensing.

They could do the game show during the daytime and then it would not have to replace anything...

Do you have a source for the 'Broadway out'? I don't see any mention of dropping other shows in that press release.

NCL has passengers from dozens of different countries and cruises to dozens as well, so they would have to keep track of hundreds of permutations and document them all. If they tried there might be mistakes leading to bad consequences and probably bad publicity. Better to just let people just take responsibility for their own situations. I don't know if there is a connection, but there was a report recently about a large number of guests being denied boarding because they lacked some documentation. It was not NCL but maybe that prompted them to send out a reminder.

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by 'lookover Port' but in Puerto Plata and Tortola there was no real 'port' to speak of, so unless you hung your head down off of the balcony your view would be pretty comparable on each side. Unless, of course, there is another ship docked next to you...

I do not know about Miami specifically, but they do offer tours that end at the airport for some cities. If nobody can confirm you could try to locate the dailies for another cruise ending in Miami and see if anything is mentioned. I believe they sometimes advertise them that way.

I did a few TAs in the early 60's on Holland America - The Nieuw Amsterdam and Rotterdam. Other things I remember that you don't see much, if at all, nowadays: - Clay pigeon shooting - Kennel - Children's dining room - Horse racing (the artificial kind) I remember the QM passing us in the middle of the Atlantic one time. Pretty cool.

The deck plans seem fairly specific now about where the slides are on each deck. My bigger concern, though, would be privacy issues with the rear-facing balconies on the cabins that the slides go around.

They were using Food Republic as overflow seating for the buffet on Prima also, so #3 above is not new with Viva. In general, just because something is mentioned as 'an issue' does not mean that it needs to be addressed by NCL. Often it just means that some people don't agree with NCL's choices/priorities for how to use space. There is no guarantee that changes would not produce as many or more complaints from a different group of people.

If you select 'Extraordinary Journeys' for the Destinations filter there are 102 cruises in 2024. A lot of those are probably not unique, but what you are thinking of might tend to be longer so you could also filter for a longer duration and see what shows up. As to your second question, I believe that schedules are typically released in blocks of time, so I would think that the 2024 schedule is pretty well set by now.

Already being discussed: