yankprintster

I've done it once before, but I felt it spoils the first excursion because I was constantly looking at my watch making sure we weren't running too far behind.

8 hours ago, cruiseny4life said:

Right now! My email has been inundated with solo cruise specials from NCL. I don't pay attention to them as I don't book solo cruises, but I do know NCL is really hyping up solo travel at the moment. Take a look at their site, call and talk with an agent, or call a travel agent that knows NCL. Good luck! 

Wow. I wish I would get those. Instead all I get are offer X (that I'm not interested in) expires in 3, 2, 1 days... Just kidding, we extended it for another X days... And repeat in that pattern indefinitely.

2 hours ago, The Traveling Man said:

We were on the Sky last week and had dinner with GM Jean-Michel.  It was only the third or fourth time that a photo was taken of the group.  As on previous occasions, though, a copy was delivered to our room the following day without any charge.

Weird, I wonder why I had to pay for mine on the Sky this week.  I assume you must mean two weeks ago, as last week is still the current cruise.

21 minutes ago, mking8288 said:

@yankprintster  Nice.  Which ship were you just on ?  Last time we had a bridge tour was 10 years ago on the GEM and since then, not offered to anyone for security reasons.  Behind The Scene tour started up on the ship yet, apparently gradually resuming on other ships lately.  

 

We had an official "Dinner with Officers" Getaway group photo in 2022 and everyone's copy was autographed.

I'm on the Sky.  I had to go to the Photo Gallery to request my photo and it looks like I need to pay for it.  Not expecting any autographs.  I did see a $35 OBC on my account from a few days ago.  Not sure if that is to offset my photo cost or if it was for some other reason.

Earlier in the cruise I did the free CruseNext behind the scenes tour and also did the $89 paid behind the scenes tour.  The paid tour included three areas not included in the free tour. Bridge, Engine Control Room, and provisioning area (fridges, freezers). The free tour included laundry, theatre, and main galley only.  The paid tour included those same areas as well as an included photo of yourself on the bridge.

Just had my first dinner with officers. This is my first cruise as Diamond.  Was never able to so it as Sapphire since the program was not running due to COVID restrictions.

The invite letter said the Chief Engineer would be joining, and during the actual dinner the Chief plus the Shore Excursion Manager also showed up. 

We had one guest no-show.  There were four other guests besides myself.  Two of the guests were on a B2B2B or so (42 days on ship, this is only an 11-day segment).  Due to their long stay, they mentioned they also got a personal tour of the bridge by the Captain on one of their earlier segments.  One of the other guests was on their first cruise ever, and the final guest was on their first NCL cruise ever.  I'm not sure if they had been on a wait-list or maybe had a suite. 

A photo was taken but I haven't received it yet (been 3-4 days). Guess I'll run down to cruise next and ask them about it. We dined in the Main Dining Room. 

I also asked about Starlink and heard the tests NCL was doing on the other ships was going well at sea, the problem was when in port, Starlink doesn't have licenses to be used in all the countries the ship visits yet and they are still working out the details with that.

Everyone had a nice time.

22 hours ago, kruzerci said:

Not a tipping debate thread. But curious to know if anybody had ever heard an approximation of what percentage of guests remove the automatic gratuities on Royal sailings. I overheard a number of requests on the last day of our most recent sailing. Please keep the debate and thoughts on why this should not be done out- that topic has been beat to death. 

Don't know for Royal, but about a year ago, there was a former Carnival guest services employee doing an AMA on another social media site, and they mentioned it was inversely proportional to the price of the cruise.  On cheap cruises ("most of guests onboard coming in straight from their trailer houses"), you would "expect 50%" would remove the gratituties.  On "higher end cruises" it was "less than 15-20%".

On 2/24/2023 at 4:08 PM, alwalaska said:

Also, have you considered offering a soda package as a free at sea option instead of the alcohol package?

This!  Please!

So many things onboard are catered towards alcohol it is annoying. I know I'm outnumbered on this, so understand why it's popular, but it would be nice for the non-alcoholic drinkers to be thrown a bone.

Many of my latitudes perks go unused. The latitudes party serves alcoholic drinks (though they will usually bring you a mocktail if you ask nicely), the wine tasting, the free bottle of wine for one of the dinner vouchers, etc.

I always decline open bar on free-at-sea and separately purchase the soda package.  Would much better switch free-at-sea to soda package and pay the lower service charge.

On 2/19/2023 at 2:40 PM, mking8288 said:

Look for an email (today - Feb 19th) from one's NCL PCC - up to 3 extra points per night booking - Feb 1 to Mar 31, for the Jewel & Spirit sailing Alaksa and Dawn, Gem, Getaway and Star sailing Europe.

 

I didn't get any kind of email.  Can you share what it said?

2 hours ago, 603NHCruiser said:

Ohh interesting, somehow I doubt it. But, you are outside of final payment so it can't hurt to do a mock booking and if your price hasn't gone up dramatically call to find out if you do qualify. 64 Lat points is a nice dent in getting you towards your next level. Report back to us if you get an answer!

I checked with my Norwegian personal cruise consultant, and she said it did not qualify, but she isn't very reliable.  I'm boarding the Norwegian Gem later today, and I'll ask their CruiseNext team about it.  If it isn't, then I'll consider booking a B2B cruise on one of the qualifying ships that travels leaves from Vancouver.

Anyone know if the 16-day transpacific (Seattle-Tokyo) 10/3/2023 Jewel would qualify for this?  It's technically doing Alaska too.

I only see shore excursions available for Honolulu on the Carnival website.  Did all the excursions for the other ports already get fully booked?

11 hours ago, baloothecat said:

The travel insurance seems to be hot topic. We haven’t purchased yet but are looking at Allianz yearly plan. From what I’ve read The keywords the checkin agents in Brisbane are looking for is that it covers Covid and cruise (in Australia not all travel insurance covers cruises). We got another email today from Carnival:

Thanks.  Went ahead and booked the cruise as a solo traveler.  The fare for a 22-day cruise was just so unbelievable good.  I found a reasonable non-stop flight from Vancouver BC to Brisbane that was cheaper than flights from Seattle.

I checked my Allianz yearly plan and it seems to explicitly exclude anything related to epidemics (and a FAQ on their website says this means Covid is not covered) unless there is some kind of Epidemic rider that I couldn't find any reference to.  I guess I'll need to call Allianz on Monday and find out what can be done about that.

By the way, I haven't traveled on Carnival since 2013 (been doing mostly NCL lately).  Are you supposed to receive a confirmation email from Carnival after booking/paying?   How long does it usually take to receive?

50 minutes ago, baloothecat said:

Yes You need a Visa. You can get apply for it  with Australian ETA app approx 20dollars, good for 1 year. You’ll also need to provide proof of comprehensive cruise,Covid,& repatriation travel insurance as required by New Caledonia and Fiji. Testing - Neg. (-))48hr PCR or within 24hr Rapid antigen test self test. 

Thanks. I have an annual travel insurance policy with Allianz. I assume that would qualify?  Ok, the Australian ETA can all be done remote with the app without having to actual mail your passport anywhere, so that should be easy enough.

Considering booking this cruise if I can find reasonable airfare from Seattle to Brisbane.  Do US residents need to acquire any visas prior to the cruise?

1 hour ago, BirdTravels said:

We have been on the Encore 3 times since relaunch and never saw Kinky Boots because it was "unavailable" for our sailing. We saw it once on the inaugural voyage of the Encore out of Miami in 2019.

Same.  We saw it on the Encore inaugural transatlantic from Southampton to New York, but it was unavailable on the two Alaska sailings we did out of Seattle in late 2021.  I think it was supposed to be available then, but the rumors were some the cast were sick.

On the Spirit right now.  Purchased the spa pass for $259 for our 11-day Alaska cruise.  Feel it's been a waste of money.  On Day 8 now and only used the thermal suite twice so far.  It doesn't have a pool.  Doesn't have a hot tubs. The thermal loungers don't get very hot (very, very low heat in one specific spot, the rest of the chair is ice cold).  Ambient air temperature is very cold.  The lights are often turned up very bright and you have to wear a hat or hold your hand in front of your face if you want to read your phone when in the heated loungers--although you can ask the spa desk to turn down the brightness.  They will do it, but it also seems to turn down the light level in the spa lobby, so they often turn it back up to full brightness in the mornings.  They do have a co-ed steam room and sauna -- I have not personally used, but my wife has and she said those are fine.

I have used the thermal suite in Epic (long time ago), Encore (last year) as well as Star (this year)--all were significantly better.  The thermal suite in the Spirit should just be demolished.  I really regret the purchase of the pass.  (No issues with Epic, Encore, or Star--those we're all worth the money.)

Maybe they will get the thermal suite on the Spirit fixed one of these days. I did see maintenance crews working on the loungers for many hours one day trying to increase the heat, but it doesn't seem they were successful.

Am on the same cruise.  Don't even know what ArriveCAN is yet.  Guess I better figure it out.

7 hours ago, Purple_Pig said:

 

Just off the Iceland/Greenland cruise.  We received a partial refund due to several days / hours without internet.  I think I received maybe 35-40% back.

Who did you talk with to get the refund?  I was on the Iceland/Norway cruise (was supposed to be Iceland/Greenland too) and had similar issues, but no refund.  Probably spend more than $700 for Internet in total for that cruise (two streaming packages).

I just did this back on the 22nd, so I'll give you a rundown:

I did a mock booking on the NCL website for an inside cabin on a 16-day cruise I was interested in.  Lowest cabin category was IF and mock booking total came to $3502.32.

Then I went down to the cruise next desk and booked it.  They mentioned it would take several days for all the promos to get added properly and to not be surprised if I check and see the price is higher than I expect.

I received a confirmation email that showed a total of $3631.92, which was higher than the mock booking of IF category.  The statement mentioned it was an IA category stateroom (the two bump in-category upgrade).   It also had promo codes of DISXIN (assuming for in-category upgrade), DISC40, EASYFARE, LATITUDE, LATERW, SHX50).

About 10 hours later, I got another confirmation statement emailed, and now the price matched my mock booking of $3502.32.  The stateroom now mentioned IF-IA instead of just IA as it has before.

5 days later, I got the third confirmation statement.  A new promo code had been added, CNUD10 (cruise next 10% discount?), and the final price showed $3189.78.

The three statements were all sent automatically to me.

Keep in mind the geography of your surroundings.  If your at really high latitudes or in fjords surrounded by tall mountains on all sides, the satellite signal can be compromised for large portions of the voyage.  Had the unlimited streaming Internet package on an Iceland/Norway cruise and the hours that it worked was probably less than the hours it did not work.  No discount for intermittent or zero connectivity either.  When it did it work, it was great though (Hulu, Zoom, YouTube).  AMC+ did not work well though--not sure if that was bad connectivity or if they NCL doesn't prioritize traffic for that specific service.

6 hours ago, whitezin1776 said:

I am flying in to Seattle from NY for our cruise to Alaska on July 3.  Our flight from JFK is at 7:35 am Air Alaska.  Now, the flight coming home is not ideal but it is what it is......Seattle to JFK is at 9:30pm Air Alaska.  So If you are off the ship at 10 am.....what the heck are you supposed to do till 7 pm when you need to be at Seattle Airport.  The flights are non stop and they only cost $199 per person round trip, so you get what you get.  

Plenty of stuff to keep you busy in Seattle all day. The problem will be what do you do with your baggage?  You could go see some movies, a play, a Mariners game (if they are playing), go up the Space Needle, check out some of the museums (MoPop or Museum of Flight, etc.

I haven't been very impressed with mine.  The next cruise I book will probably be with a TA.  I used to use a TA all the time, but she retired a few years ago so have been doing the PCC route since then and it's just been infuriating most of the time.  There doesn't seem to be much benefit to using the PCC.

It hadn't been all bad.  There was one time the PCC called me to say I could rebook some of my existing cruises and get triple latitude points and save money too.  But that was the only thing proactive they did for me.  Everything else I had to research myself and ask them to add it on, which they almost always screw up the first time, despite my exact instructions.

I always decline it, and then buy the soda package due to the large gratitiues on the "free" alcohol package.  I wish there was a way to downgrade it to the soda package versus declining it.

On 9/29/2021 at 4:25 PM, zerooveride said:

I finally got a response back from Jolle Brito, Senior Director Guest Relations, that now says that the sailing wasn't eligible. Neither the Terms and Conditions or the Offer e-mail says this. It actually says 2021 Sailings and does not list any exclusions. Plus I know of individuals on my sailing that DID get the bonus points. I am just blown away by excuse after excuse that they keep coming up with not to honor it. I prove one assertion wrong, then they come back with a different reason . . . Everyday more and more I feel I made the right decision to cancel my December 2021 Breakaway sailing . . .

lixogab posted the link the other day to the terms and conditions.  If you got a sailaway rate (IX, OX, BX, etc.) it is not eligible.

I ran into this issue on a booking I did the other day and did not see the LATDBLX code.  Had several back and forth with my PCC on this.  She said it was ineligible but I asked where it actually said this on the website, because the promo, as you stated, had said "all 2021 sailings".  She was unable to point me to anything even when consulting with her supervisor.

After spending about an hour on it myself, so finally discovered that if you scroll almost all the way down on the page that shows the sailings that have the offer, there is a little line of text that says "*Terms and Conditions". It doesn't look like a link, but it is.  If you click it, it takes you to https://www.ncl.com/latitudes-rewards-program/insider-offer/terms where the first thing it shows is that sailaway cabins aren't included.

In my opinion, it is very misleading the way they market the promotion for the double points. It should be much more clear it doesn't apply to sailaway.  And the PCC's aren't even able to find the T&C page on the website either.

13 hours ago, 2 Fun Guys said:

We want to buy 2 copies each of the Boarding the Ship photo and the photo with the itinerary map on it. Does anyone know the current price of those?

My wife and I were on the August 21st sailing of the Encore and we purchased a single copy of the photo with the map.  It didn't come with anything else except a paper sleeve.

The cost was outrageous.  I just checked the invoice and the total we paid at the photo shop was $34.93.  It's possible my wife might have got something else while she was there, because I thought she had mentioned the price was "twenty-something" while we were on the ship, but I don't have the individual receipt handy to check.  We are Platinum, so I believe that also included our discount.