Haven amenities

[AJHELLER]

please..we never have booked the Norwegian-Haven rooms and  on this cruise we booked a Haven aft penthouse .

Is the Haven dining room free or does it cost to eat there and...we paid our  tips when we booked our cruise so what is the normal tips for the diningroom and also a butler ( we won't be using much)

Sorry to ask this but we are lost in this area.

thank you

[CruiserBruce]

Welcome to Cruise Critic!

 

For all the NCL info you will ever need, come over to the portion of Cruise Critic devoted to NCL, located here:

 

https://boards.cruisecritic.com/forum/64-norwegian-cruise-line/

[mjkacmom]

Dining room is free, butler and concierge are not part of the tip pool.

[cruiseny4life]

Let us know if you have any other questions. Also, a fantastic resource that helped me get ready for my Haven cruises back in 2022 is this thread. It's really long, we go off on some tangents, but gosh it helps you get every possible value out of the Haven experience.

 

Which ship are you sailing on? 

[havoc315]

Not that your tips are prepaid for the dining room.

As noted, Butler and Concierge are not included in the tip pool — they need to be tipped separately. Even if you don’t see yourself using the butler, they are doing things to make your trip better — they will be delivering snacks to your room every day. They are your main point of contact for most issues. The butlers and concierge are arranging your expedited disembarkation at ports, reserving your seats in the theater, etc. 

So they are deserving of a tip, even if a guest isn’t using their services a whole lot.  (And certainly, a guest who uses them slot should tip more). 

[BirdTravels]

7 hours ago, AJHELLER said:

please..we never have booked the Norwegian-Haven rooms and  on this cruise we booked a Haven aft penthouse .

Is the Haven dining room free or does it cost to eat there and...we paid our  tips when we booked our cruise so what is the normal tips for the diningroom and also a butler ( we won't be using much)

Sorry to ask this but we are lost in this area.

thank you

Welcome to Cruise Critic!  
 

What ship are you sailing on?
 

The Haven Aft Penthouse room are wonderful. 

The Haven Restaurant is a complimentary restaurant serving Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner. Here a link to my post on what kinds of foods to expect. 

 

[AJHELLER]

23 hours ago, cruiseny4life said:

Let us know if you have any other questions. Also, a fantastic resource that helped me get ready for my Haven cruises back in 2022 is this thread. It's really long, we go off on some tangents, but gosh it helps you get every possible value out of the Haven experience.

 

Which ship are you sailing on? 

We are going on the Escape. 

[AJHELLER]

23 hours ago, cruiseny4life said:

Let us know if you have any other questions. Also, a fantastic resource that helped me get ready for my Haven cruises back in 2022 is this thread. It's really long, we go off on some tangents, but gosh it helps you get every possible value out of the Haven experience.

 

Which ship are you sailing on? 

 

[AJHELLER]

We are sailing on the Escape this March.

I also made an error as we have front  penthouse nor aft.

Sadly I see there is a huge difference. 

We never sailed Haven before

[AJHELLER]

I'm sorry as I do not know how to fix a typo

I meant front penthouse NOT aft

[AJHELLER]

18 hours ago, BirdTravels said:

Welcome to Cruise Critic!  
 

What ship are you sailing on?
 

The Haven Aft Penthouse room are wonderful. 

The Haven Restaurant is a complimentary restaurant serving Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner. Here a link to my post on what kinds of foods to expect. 

 

 

[AJHELLER]

I made an error. We have front penthouse not the aft. I did see it's a huge difference.  And it's the Escape this March.

We never sailed Haven area before. 

Nor had a butler in our lives so we were a bit lost there with how to tip them. Thank you

Are those menu and pictures daily in the Haven restaurant and same menu for the Escape ship please?

Thank you for your help

Annie

[cruiseny4life]

6 minutes ago, AJHELLER said:

I'm sorry as I do not know how to fix a typo

I meant front penthouse NOT aft

You can only edit a post for the first 15 or 20 minutes after posting. It's all good! Everyone makes boatloads of errors!

[cruiseny4life]

4 minutes ago, AJHELLER said:

I made an error. We have front penthouse not the aft. I did see it's a huge difference.  And it's the Escape this March.

We never sailed Haven area before. 

Nor had a butler in our lives so we were a bit lost there with how to tip them. Thank you

Are those menu and pictures daily in the Haven restaurant and same menu for the Escape ship please?

Thank you for your help

Annie

The Haven menu is an unchanging mystery. So the photos and menu should be the same for you on Escape. The presentation might differ slightly, but that's a great representation of what you'll find. 

 

Until our first Haven cruise we had never had a butler. We're quite simple people. In the past we've tipped the butler between $55 and $100 for a cruise. Others will tip far more. Some less, though I'm pretty sure we're on the low end with that $55. Lots of people will have many opinions so you may do best to go read a butler tipping thread. They're out there. I'm on mobile today, so not going to look through to find it. But, you can. Search bar at the top right of the forum.

 

You're right about a huge room difference, but your Haven experience will be very similar. Just not as long a walk to the Haven area. 

[SplashOfWater]

1 hour ago, AJHELLER said:

I made an error. We have front penthouse not the aft. I did see it's a huge difference.  And it's the Escape this March.

We never sailed Haven area before. 

Nor had a butler in our lives so we were a bit lost there with how to tip them. Thank you

Are those menu and pictures daily in the Haven restaurant and same menu for the Escape ship please?

Thank you for your help

Annie

We were in the Haven on the Escape last week. The photos of the restaurant and poolside menus were the same for our sailing. The photos of the breakfast cold buffet reflected the same items we had (maybe a few differences but very close). The Escape does not have a forward Horizon Lounge, so the buffet items and specialty coffee machine available on the Encore are not on the Escape. The Haven staff puts some snacks out in the Haven Courtyard in the morning (pastries, orange juice, regular coffee) and afternoon (pound cake, banana bread, peanut M&Ms, gummy bears, infused water). They will also place the poolside menus near the snacks around lunchtime. Just stop one of the waiters if you want to order something.

 

We found the Haven staff on the Escape to be top-notch! Enjoy your cruise!

[Tallulah20]

My family was in the Haven on the Escape in December. It was fantastic. As others have said, the menu for the Haven restaurant does not change and there is no extra charge for Haven passengers. Some people have gotten special permission to have other passengers join them for a meal in the Haven and the other passengers are charged for the meal.

 Even though the menus don’t change, you can make special requests and it helps if they are done in advance. We had one particularly outstanding waiter on the Escape, named Christian, that was outstanding in trying to make every meal fabulous. He noticed when there was something we really enjoyed and made suggestions that he thought would make it even better. He set aside items from the lunch menu for us to have at dinner when we asked and always brought my husband a plate of sliced pineapple after seeing DH take just pineapple from the breakfast buffet the second morning. 

The best dessert, IMO, in the Haven is the chocolate brownie with macadamia ice cream. You can request these be set aside for you for dinner as long as you ask at lunch time. You can do this with any meal if you make the request ahead of time. I’ve seen on these boards people that ask for all kinds of things and the staff will accommodate when they are able. Be prepared, that some requests might be denied, but not because they don’t want to make you happy, just because it may be out of their control. 

 

Also, whenever possible have Kay at the Haven bar make your drinks. She’s awesome!

[Jordan61]

I also requested a couple of lunch dishes for dinner last year on the Bliss. It was never a problem as long as I let them know ahead of time.  I also asked if I could have the raviolo with some sautéed shrimp on the side (since they have the shrimp as an option for the caesar salad, I figured it would be doable). The next night we went to dinner and they actually made me a special raviolo with the shrimp INSIDE of it! I think that's the moment I fell hopelessly in love with the Haven.

[BirdTravels]

8 hours ago, AJHELLER said:

I made an error. We have front penthouse not the aft. I did see it's a huge difference.  And it's the Escape this March.

We never sailed Haven area before. 

Nor had a butler in our lives so we were a bit lost there with how to tip them. Thank you

Are those menu and pictures daily in the Haven restaurant and same menu for the Escape ship please?

Thank you for your help

Annie

The Haven menus are about the same. They tweak a few things from time to time. We love the Forward Penthouse Haven Suites because of the extra space (separate living room) at a lower cost than the smaller room in the Haven complex. On the Escape about 1/3 of the Haven rooms are outside the Haven complex proper.

 

We sailed to Alaska last September in a Forward Facing Haven on the Encore. And it did not diminish our Haven experience. We didn't give a second thought to running up to the Haven bar for a drink, or up to the Haven sundeck to see the Alaskan scenery.