erdoran

Sign up with the roll call and attend the M&G!  That will get their trip off to a great start!  Also, depending on their budget, if the Haven. Is within the budget, it’s a wonderful experience.  DH and I prefer to be IN the Haven for the full experience—we love rolling out of bed and either into the hot tub or the bar, depending!-but it is an investment so may not be worth the $$ for them.

Does Platinum meal INCLUDE tip or should they be "extra-tipped"?  I've heard both things.....

book online unless you are past final payment already.  You can transfer to a travel agent at your leisure within the first 30 days, and most likely if you finally reach an agent and decide the cruise isn’t for you, you can cancel with no penalty (depending on country and final payment status of course).  But get that placeholder in there while the sale is on, if you like the price.

Just read through Bird’s review - seems most wines are same price as our last sailing, so the majority under $15/glass.  These price increases really stick out - NCL testing the waters, or they are just low on stock of their wines and want to discourage consumption?  

TA checked with NCL after I spotted a lower price for my cabin - we had the option of getting $200 off Haven PH or upgrading to a 2 BR Haven PH for about $900 total—if we were going to do the upgrade bid thing, we’d have bid that in a heartbeat!  So I did the upgrade and wound up with an additional $200 OBC (had $100 OBC from previous booking).  First time I’ve benefitted from price drop!  This is 12/5/20 Getaway TA, definite price drops!

@seemoreroyals please report back about if other wines are marked up like that, and if anything is left that isn’t $$extra!

Good news if it’s only those two wines, although there really were very few under the $15 limit...it reminds me of last January and the uproar about a lot of the booze being repriced above the $15 threshold...I hope this is NOT the beginning of a trend, because it makes me concerned that there will be zero “free” wine other than the gross fake champagne available without upcharge, and even at $2.40/glass it will add up.  I’m not a huge drinker and $20/day is enough for me to spend on booze!

In another topic here talking about seafood going missing from the Encore MDR lunch menu, someone noted that the two recommended wines - both NCL East/West blends - are $17, which is above the $15 threshold and represents a 70% price increase.  

I want to see if this is widespread  across the fleet, and if there are other wines included in UBP, or if all of them are now extra, even with UBP.  

Seems like it slipped by that both wine recommendations are $17 - so an upcharge of $2.40/glass. 

I went back and looked at Prof. Cruise's Bliss mdr dinner menus and they "recommended" $$ wine, but i wonder if it was a bottle price?  

https://profcruise.com/ncl-menus/

Her wine menu shows East & West NCL proprietary blend for $9.95, so the $17 price displayed is a 70% price increase.....

I applied and was approved for casino credit on my last sailing, May 2019.  I have an upcoming sailing January 2020.  If I want casino credit do I have to reapply, or can I just stop by the casino cashier with a check when I board?  Tia

If you are looking for health insurance type coverage, check out GeoBlue.  That is only Health insurance, just like Chae is trip cancellation/delay insurance with a token medical insurance and more than token evacuation.  Worth a look.  Steve from the Trip Insurance Store is very helpful with that as well.  I did my homework and plan to buy it to cover any medical bills which we hope we don’t have, and just rely on Chase in case of cancellation.

Thanks guys.  Figured I could stay warm a bit longer and not deal with the Penn Station outdoors mess but you’ve convinced me to do the cab thing.  No idea what subways even cost these days (believe it or not, FREE for seniors in Philadelphia with their senior card) but defeats the purpose to have a long walk in the cold to save perhaps $10.

Are there subway stations right in Penn Station?  We leave on a Sunday morning in January, I figure it will be freezing outdoors.  Does it make sense to subway there/back?  If yes, which subway do we take and which stop do we get off at?

We can self-manage luggage, one medium-size rolling suitcase and carryon each.  TIa

Beginner here (although experienced blackjack player).  Any idea how points are earned?  And are they based only on total dollar play volume ultimately, win or lose?  TIA

We have a few future cruises booked using our Chase Sappire Reserve card’s cancellation coverage.  They have a six month look back period for pre-existing conditions.  At the time these were booked we were both “clean”; however subsequently my husband has been ill and if we were to book a new cruise today, he would definitely have a pre-existing condition.

If I wanted to take advantage of a Black Friday or other price drop, is my original booking date going to hold and I just loose or change my perks, or is my actual booking date going to become the date I switched to the price drop fare, which would pretty much void our trip protection?

I read an old blog on Steve from Trip Insurance Store’s blog which sounds like my original booking date holds unless I get a refund and re-pay my deposit, but I wanted to check to see if that is how NCL handles things - original deposit date is booking date, and my invoice total and perks are the only things that are adjusted.

Anyone have any experience with this?  TIA

Fees for GSC that aren’t refunded if you don’t go to gsc?  Something not right here....

Overcharging port fees and taxes is a dumb business practice for a couple of reasons, apart from being deceptive.  If you cancel after final payment, these are still refundable to you, right?  So $$ out of cruise line’s pocket.  Second, if you miss a port there WILL be expectations of those to be refunded and a stink can legitimately be made if they aren’t. 

Yeah, I agree the above sounds relatively fishy....

Tell me about entertainment please....

Smoked old fashioned

I may be OP on the original lower cal drink thread - at home hubby and I like diet cranberry juice with vodka.  Of course NCL won’t let us bring that along! (The juice, I mean - even though we have UBP).  

One trick I tried was asking if a drink had sugar or simple syrup in it (think mojito) and if it did, asking the bartender to leave it out, and I’d use an envelope of artificial sweetener instead.  For that matter, I could hand it to the bartender too 😆 or he might even have one.

We are not taking the risk of bringing med. marijuana.  We will deal.  Narcotics, drugs, etc, with a legit prescription in original bottle ought to be just fine, with the exception of some Arab countries that prohibit them altogether no matter what—there was a long list from one of them, I forget which.  But under normal circumstances legit meds are just that - legit with documentation.  Medical marijuana is a special case unto itself.

Hubby’s medical marijuana is a tincture, which is a liquid.  he’s supposed to put a couple of drops under his tongue.  We clearly won’t bring it along, but it obviously wouldn’t smell or bother anyone.  It’s just a liquid medicine, like pepto-bismol or robitussin, just treats a different illness/symptom.

I get the “no medical marijuana” and the reasons, but I have to say for the LEGIT users it sucks;  My hubby has restless leg syndrome (short description:  he kicks the heck out of me all night in his sleep and he barely sleeps).  After 4 or 5 neurologists and sleep doctors,and upteen different prescription meds, none of which helped more than minimally (Lyrica helped the most, at $2k/prescription) out of desperation he went to a medical marijuana dr. And got approved—and he uses two tinctures (not smokable) which HELPS!  NOTHING ELSE has come close to working

So now we have cruises coming up and I don’t know what we will do to control his RLS because we clearly can’t bring his tinctures along.  Maybe back to lyrica, which causes withdrawals when you stop taking it.

Wish there was some common sense in the laws!

Not to cheapen what is a difficult experience for some, but I liked the link to the article about the $2950 facial!!!

Our local liquor store is huge on tastings things - tiny little sips of this & that!  On my Bliss sailing I thought I’d DIY my own tasting using UBP. Any suggestions for flavored vodkas?  I figure we can have shots of the various flavored vodkas.  Any faves or suggestions?  Anyone else into this kind of fun?

Am also considering Distric Brew House “tastings” if you can do a full beer for a tasting 😆. What do they tend to have on draft other than the boring usual stuff like Bud?  Ever any interesting draft stuff?

other “free” tasting suggestions?  Why pay for a martini tasting when I can use UBP to do it free?

Ideas?