workink

Although the casino is closed, some passengers in the buffet have started a pool with a fifty dollar buy-in on when, if ever, we will leave port. Gambling, like life, always finds a way.  Updates will follow this exciting story.  

I'm about to purchase the Free at Sea Plus with Streaming wifi for my upcoming Gem cruise in December.  However, I've seen a few comments that the free at sea plus DOES NOT include streaming.  The ad suggests it does...but also lists a phone number to call.  Does anyone have any information about this?  I'm logged in overseas but the american price is still the same and has the same advert.  

We are cruising in July to Alaska and I have still not received any RoyalUp offers.  Our travel agent indicated that they should send an email, but so far...crickets.  I did check the RoyalUp website and input our information, but it just comes up with a message - "please ensure that your cruise is within the next 30 days.  Please ensure that there are no errors in the information you entered."  

Could it be that we are not eligible?  

Yes, we get one of everything and then a charge.  

Mini bar rules... Pick your bottle carefully...

So far, so good.  Embarkation was a breeze and the Butler there confirmed that the ship was only about half full.  YC appears to be a little more than 50  percent full, but still plenty of room for all.  

We were surprised that the bar did not include all drinks (see attached menu).  Food had been amazing so far.  I'll post the mini bar guidelines in a bit.

QR_V_YC-BAR-LIST_OTHER_DAYX_EN_1639815690.pdf

We have never needed insurance in the past, but not it seems to be required by MSC.  Can anyone recommend a company that could cover our cruise from Dubai?

Do we need to have cruise insurance for this trip?  I'm sailing on the 18th of December and still have not purchased anything.  If you have recommendations, please post them.

We booked the Virtuosa out of Dubai for the 18th of December.  I'm getting some mixed signals from the travel agent regarding the capacity of the cruise.  Are you finding that MSC is running at full capacity (all cabins taken?) or are the ships still running with a smaller amount of guests?

Well, the main thing is that we are getting what we paid for and we will have a great cruise. Thanks again to the good folks in Germany for taking care of this issue, you have taken a load off of my mind.

I just got a call from the next level of management on NCL, who fixed the situation right away. We now have the mini-suite that we were promised and they were quite apologetic for the mix up. Thank you NCL for making this right!

So after several days of back and forth calls, here is what I am left with:

1. NCL in Germany agrees that I was told that I was getting a mini suite.

2. They insist that, even though I have it in writing, that the price was actually for an upgrade to a balcony.

3. They cannot move me to a mini suite now since the cruise is fully booked. The also cannot refund my money to a standard stateroom w/o balcony since the staterooms are all booked.

4. To compensate, they have given me $100 US dollars in on board credit. The upgrade, that I now don't want, cost me 340 euros (about $500 US dollars).

Any advice will be appreciated since I feel like they pulled the old "bait and switch" on me.

We are sailing on the NCL Jade on December 18 out of Rome. We booked through the ncl.eu site and so the NCL US rep could not help us today. She sent an email to Germany and thus triggered the angry phone call from rep1. Not a good situation.

There is a b2 on the Jade, but since this was our first time on NCL and the rep kept saying mini-suite, we were none the wiser. I had googled mini-suite to see what the Jade room looked like. The difference (I now know) is that it is bigger and has that all important curtain next to the bed.

At any rate, the US folks said that they can't help us and the folks in Germany did not call me back today. So I suppose I will call them in the morning. I'll ask for a supervisor. Thank goodness that I have all of the emails that were sent to me saying things like "mini-suite" and "suite" when referring to a balcony stateroom.

So I just got off the phone after talking with three different people. I phoned NCL customer service, who promised that someone would get back in touch with me by phone in a few minutes. So who should phone me, in an angry voice, but my original NCL agent that booked the "mini-suite." He was not very happy and told me that he sent me an email today, in which he sent the exact specifications for the room. He wrote..."your cabin is a B2 which means that it is a suite with balcony..." So now he is calling the room a suite.

I just called NCL back and asked to speak to a customer rep, but none were available. The sad thing is that I am not trying to get something for free, I'm just trying to get what I paid for.

I'll keep you updated.

We did get an email from our NCL rep that says, " I have found you a mini-suite , so an increase of 340 euro, but again, because of the time limit, there is a charge of 98 euro" They ended up waiving the 98 euros as the cruise was not full, but we did not get a mini-suite.

How do I get a hold of a supervisor?

We recently booked our first cruise with NCL and later decided to upgrade. Our NCL rep wrote us an email quoting a price for a mini-suite, which we thought would be better for our family of four. We just finished paying over the phone for our "upgrade" and we soon discover that our new room is a B2 category (Family Balcony Stateroom), not a mini-suite. When we asked this rep over the phone he said that they were the same thing. Mind you, this is an NCL employee. So we were quoted a price for a mini-suite, paid for what we thought would be a mini-suite and are now in a B2.

Does anyone have any advice for us? The cruise is about 2 weeks away.