PDIDDYwife

You need to download the free app from. The AppStore BEFORE the ship leaves port.

Both of you need to.

You then will be presented with the option of messaging.

It will show up as a charge in your stateroom account .

The free things are booking shows, checking your invoice, making dinner reservations.

If it is you and your children adults, maybe

But there is no real privacy

No. Unless you are amazingly close.

I am speaking of GA and BA.

My opinion only

That should have said reservations, not readies

Can't edit on this cell phone

Their sign in also shows as complete and I have all docs printed

Just did it last week

With the rep on the phone I completed children's ( son was listed as 21) check in.

The rep goes in after the check in and she changes the date of birth . The documents now show the proper age for the kids in the connecting room.

At the pier we have to sign that we are accepting the T and C and are responsible for the charges.

The shore excursions booked to this cabin and all entertainer reservations have remained in place.

The procedure i just outlined has been confirmed with email from NCL.

I will not be able to add anything to their reservation now that the age has been changed.

All readies and amenities have also been confirmed via email

We were on the Christmas cruise of the BA. Got there at 9:30. Boarding group 8. Got #11, 12 and 13, no sweat. HOWEVER, the people in front of me were the first - they bought TEN passes, which I didn't even know was allowed, but good for them. You never know.

Wow! I have not heard of being allowed to buy them for others . Maybe they were selling them for a profit in those back alleys of the ship!

Yeah, its definitely looking more and more like that, Thanks Bob. My concern stems from what I see on this board, and the rest of the internet as well, is that when you buy online you have to purchase the whole room, but even as PryHeaven herself was able to get just her card tagged on the Pearl. That was back in 2012, but there's still so much ambiguity.

 

 

 

Thanks again though.....Maybe I'll find Coca Cola flavored Mio!!

You can buy them individually on board

Just go to any bar or one of the stations that they have set up.

We have done this on our last 2 NCL getAwaycruises

Upgrading to a suite and you aRe FINISHED for life!

When our kids where still in a triple stroller we were upgraded. By Disney to a 2 bedroom suite.

It happened at a time in our life when we needed some TLC .

We were goners after that.

We really love the NCL suite life the best .

Sure, royal has free booze for a couple hours every evening, but the don't have a Haven.

I had problems with the "gifts" section.

We are sailing in 2 weeks and I wanted some OBC gifts for te kids

It would accept the order, have a shopping cart, the little "check here" to accept T and C appeared, which I clicked and then a " thank you for your purchase. "

Never was able to pay.

Tried several different times today, gave up and called.

Ran through it with the rep, she got the same thing when accessing my reservation

Had to have a"supervisor" handle it.

Lots of wasted time for a small gift.

On the positive, the phone rep was really sweet

I'm sorry if this was previously posted, but when did the time for Nassau change to 12:00???

We were on Getaway with Sheehan last July. The very next cruise Nassau was changed from 10 to 12.

In Nov. our. Ticket said 10 am - 6 pm also. We were at least 1.5 hrs late

Our June reservations originally said 10am but in February we received an email changing the time from 12 to 7.

We don't care either way

Thanks for the answers. I guess that package is worth it if you book all those things through the ship. It is a winner for the line because you try out almost everything except art auctions and gambling (and I guess the Bingo covers the last one). I'm getting the UBP, DSC's and $100 OBC so even if available I wouldn't purchase it. Our three specialty dinners, two excursions, and Wine Lovers experience totaled only around $400 so I think it would be hard for me to justify $1,800 extra. I may of been tempted at the time however if the other perks weren't available.

If you are in a suite it is totally worth it.

Saved 600 dollars on the suite.

Add the UBP and UDP, gratuities etc and right there we are ahead of the game.

The stuff we don't need we don't use .

The price of our upcoming cruise has increased $2400 since we booked the AIl In.

I would not have done it if I were in a less pricey cabin.

The nice thing is that if I change my mind I can cancel right up until the time we cruise.

WHICH IS in 19 days!'n yippee!

OP

We booked all our excursions and did not pay a cent.

You call the phone number for excursions and they book you.

It takes a little longer than doing it on line, but we paid nothing .

In fact our total comes to more than the credit, so here will be 12$ each billed to our onboard account

I have the confirmations. Our kids are not on AI and I booked their's online.

A friend traveling with us did the same thing. She called in and booked her excursions.

We snagged a bunch of Getaway shirts, hats and adorable Miami Getawy totes for 1/2 off . The "sale" was the last sea day and was not announced-all the stuff was put out at those counters outside the shoppes . These were Getaway specific items as opposed to generic NCL branded stuff we found at the Grammy sale.

T shirts were 10, hats 12 or 14 and the sparkly big tote bags 19.99

Gotta say, the gift shoppes on Getaway are lame-oh.

As for the cash, royal charges 3% as well.

On certain sailings NCL gives military discounts. I've used that several times. I won't join AARP despite their discounts.

 

http://www.ncl.com/promo/military

We won't , either

I like the way you think!

And

Thank you for your service[emoji631]

We have had it and the texting was spotty, as described

Any recent experience? Last time was November

August is fine - the captain knows what he is doing and doesn't take the ship into storms

We have cruised many times in mid August.

Th islands are hotter than in the spring and you may have more of a chance of showers.

We have been rained out of our beach at St Thomas several times-but we didn't care too much as we were still on a cruise

I cannot remember hearing about cruises being cancelled for an August hurricane recently..or even not-so - recently . It is pretty much a non- issue. The ship will leave, if you have a hurricane you may miss ports.

The Haven on the Getaway is great but there is so much to do that you may not spend much time there.

We leave on our third Getaway on 22 days, 3 hours and 11 minutes!

Usually future cruise deposits are booked to a credit card not your room. This is that if they expire there is a CC to credit back to.

No

They are charges to your onboard account like everything else.

Due to sail in 3 weeks on Getaway.

Our last experiences with the iConcierge app on board were less than stellar.

Our issue was with the messaging...texts were delayed by hours and even days a couple times.

Any recent GA cruisers have comments about the app? Would love to use it if it works well now..

Thanks so much!

24 days 19 hours ......

Mmmm....we have never paid $10.95 for one drink before on RC, Carnival or Princess. The most we have ever paid was $8.95 (that includes gratuity) for a Miami Vice. Everything else we have ever drank was less than $8.95.

 

 

 

As far as Noro, if they really wanted to prevent it, they would make everyone wear plastic gloves when getting food from the buffet. Everyone touching the same handles? Yuck. Not us, we always use a napkin and then wash our hands. :p

Wearing plastic gloves does nothing a passenger wearing gloves will still wipe their nose on their now gloved hand and then grab a roll.

They will still pat their hair and then take food . Touch their shoe and then grab a ladle. Wearing gloves doesn't make your hands sterile - or even keep them clean for more than 10 seconds!

Moreover, they are grabbing gloves out of a box with dirty hands effectively contaminating the other gloves that they touch .

Donning gloves in a sterile or even clean fashion takes a lot of practice .

If the buffet was served TO the passengers by trained servers you would see a difference.

Agreed. Even at the higher end accommodations you can't beat NCL specifically for suite fares . Cruising in suites in not an inexpensive undertaking ( neither is spending a week in Disney World') but we get a lot lot lot more bang for our buck with suites on NCL vs any other line we've cruised. Carnival doesn't even have any comparable suite option to any of the other popular lines.

As to the way NCL implemented the changes- sorry, but they have plenty of notice about smoking changes and still the boards were obsessed for weeks . Same on the RCL boards

All the talk about evil capitalism,the comments by the forensic accounts who know exactly where the $$ are going... And on and on..

Has taken some joy out of cruise critic. I don't even read the threads re: changes ( but I knew this one's title was in jest)

But the whining oozes in to many other threads as well.

Thanks for this thread!

There is no charge for room service on The Haven.

Are the towels the thinner beach towel variety or are they thick and fluffy? The last cruise we went on was an RC cruise and the towels were very thick which was actually really annoying because they were difficult to carry around and I could not fit more than one into our fairly large beach bag. I can't recall what the NCL towels were like. I was going to bring my own towels (at least for our kids) to be totally honest... but then I saw this thread and figured I'd ask.

Your towels will be pretty stinky by the time you are ready to go home !

We like the NCL way- you can take them off and then dump them before you get back on the ship- they have towel exchange right at the gangway.

No more sandy, wet towels in the cabin

We arrived at 11 last time to our Haven waiting area. Special needs groups, a group of journalists and Travel agents boarded right before the first Haven group at 11:20.

Non Haven boarding was announced as we walked up the gangway.

We have had multiple devices using the Internet at once on Getaway. The plan will subtract minutes for each device so they don't really care how many in your cabin are logged on at once . We were in suite both times and would have 3 kids checking email at once. Each got a confirmation of minutes used when signing off and each device's usage total was subtracted from the plan minutes.

Internet was crazy slow and we only checked emails-

no big Internet searches .

We did not have the unlimited plan- not sure that it was available .

There may be restrictions on the unlimited plan as sharing it with other cabins wouldmwan less$$ for NCL.