jazzydiver

I was on the NCL Joy in January 2023 and did the Panama Canal Experience.  I was very glad I did, as I got to experience going through the old locks in the small tourist boat.  The next day, the Joy transited the canal using the new locks.  So it was very interesting to get to experience both sets of locks (on the Pacific side, anyway).

On 12/16/2023 at 2:53 PM, chengkp75 said:

 An open jaw cruise (that begins at one US port, and ends at a different US port) is required to stop at a far distant port.  A "far distant" port is defined as any port not in North or Central America, the Caribbean, Bahamas, or Bermuda.

Ah, OK, that explains why Panama Canal cruises seem to universally include a stop in Cartagena.

Not an absolute must-have, but I always bring my set of magnetic hooks.  I use them for hanging up hats, not-quite-dry swim suits, necklaces, other random stuff.  Keeps clutter off the desk and nightstands.

ninjacat, I'm a U of O alum too, GO DUCKS!!  And I also went to SHS 😄

We'll let you all know how the OBC turns out...or if my husband gets out his tux tonight, lol!

We are in Springfield. One of my brothers lived in Salem for several years.  🙂

My husband joked that we should take screenshots of the messages and complain to Carnival, and I said we should just ask for OBC for our next cruise, ha ha!

I'm also a fan of the Jewel class ships.  Have been on the Jade twice, the Jewel one, and am about to go the the Gem.  I love, love, love the Great Outdoors and am also a fan of the Spinnaker Lounge.

O/P, I've also been on the SS Norway!  What a wonderful ship she was 🙂

I'm finding this amusing, so thought I'd share.  My husband and I have cruised Carnival before.  Right now, we have an NCL cruise coming up really soon (January 2nd).  A few days ago, my husband got a notification from the Carnival HUB app that the water shuttle would be leaving soon.  And just now he sent me a screen shot of a HUB notice reminding him tonight is Cruise Elegant night!  "Let's be fancy!"  I'm not sure which cruise the app thinks he's on right now.  Not planning leaving the house tonight, but maybe we'll dress up, lol.  Maybe Carnival is jealous we'll going with NCL this time? 🙂

Was scrolling through the scuba threads and noticed I never followed up as promised.  We used Swiss Divers in Acapulco and had an extremely positive experience with them - I highly recommend them.  The diving itself was somewhat murky and not a huge variety of life (lots of pufferfish though, and a couple turtles and a seahorse), but the absolute best part was hearing humpback whale song for over 20 minutes!!  We were very glad to have dove there.

I sailed on the Dawn a few years ago and enjoyed it.  Yes, it's smaller and older, but I liked the ship.  If you are the kind of person who likes to explore odd corners of a ship, be sure to visit the lounge overlooking the atrium on deck 9.  Nothing special about it, just an interesting spot to have a place to sit, and my group used the "secret" side door from the cabin hallway on deck 9 as a shortcut to get to the "fancy" staircase adjacent to the atrium (as we are stair-takers vs elevator users).  Depending on where your cabin is, the secret door is pretty useful.

I just wanted to add, yes, go to the CruiseNext desk to sign up for wines of the world tasting, but be prepared for an extremely hard sell talk on the CN certs. I still had one remaining CN cert and didn’t want to buy any more at that time, and almost had to resort to being rude to the CN rep to finally get away.  Next time I’ll just walk away after saying “no thank you” even if they’re still speaking. 

Same for me, the discount shows up after the item is in the cart. You can always remove an item out of the cart if you want to put it in just to check the discounted price. 

Thank you for info, everyone. What wound up happening is that I booked Cagney’s online for $0. Then I called customer service regarding making a Moderno rez, and they transferred me to my PCC. He couldn’t help me with getting around paying the fee, but said since he had access to only 30% of the time slots (they only release that many ahead of time) that there should still be plenty of availability if we book right away when we get on board. So we’ll just do that.

Water slides and rope course, woo hoo!  Bring ‘em on!  Not a deal-breaker for me whether a ship has them, but I definitely make use of them and enjoy them!!

Just to clarify, we don't have the dining package.  I am referring solely to the two platinum dinners, which are free.  The online booking software apparently doesn't register that we're platinum.  We shouldn't have to pay anything at all, and in the past it has shown as $0, regardless of whether it was an ala carte or a flat fee restaurant.

Greetings,

My husband and I are platinum.  I'm certain that on past cruises when we made dinner reservations online prior to a cruise, the online system would recognize our status for the two free dinners and change the price to $0 when adding the reservations to the online shopping cart.

We just booked a cruise for January 2024 on the Gem, and when I add a reservation for Moderno, the shopping cart shows the list price and asks for a credit card.  Just wondering if this is a system glitch, or if things changed for online dinner booking for Platinum.

Anyone else experiencing this?

What time does your ship get in?  I was on one with a 7:00 am arrival time and made it to MIA for a 10:00 am flight without any issues.  *However* you have to be prepared to be up very early and get in line as soon as you can for self-disembarkation, and have your airport transportation figured out.  If your ship is scheduled to get in after 7:00 am I would not risk it.  Also, if you are risk- or stress-averse, a later flight would certainly be better.

I see you did get a later flight, but I am posting the above info in case you want to try for stand-by on the earlier flight per what kingbob posted above.

I had one remaining CruiseNext cert, and recently noticed it also just said "view terms" in lieu of an actual exp date.  Having said that, I purchased it probably close to six years ago, and during covid the expiration date got bumped out later at least twice, so I thought perhaps it was related to that.  Anyway, I just used it two days ago.  If there really aren't expiration dates now, I'll think about buying another two when on board in January.  I had been debating trying CruiseFirst certs instead in the future, but maybe I'll stick with CruiseNext.

Woo hoo!  46!  and I booked it only two days ago!!!   By far the most "last minute" cruise I've ever booked.  🙂

My husband still brings his tux, he likes getting a chance to wear it.  But I'd say it frequently seems he's the only one in a tux 🙂 .  We still have fun dressing up.

You can use Starbucks gift cards at the Starbucks counters.  I am not sure about in the dining rooms (Starbucks is offered on the menu).

Beware!  The Starbucks prices vary greatly throughout the ship (at least they sure did on the Joy this month).  So you may want to shop around while on the ship, and check to see if you can use your gift card when ordering Starbucks in ship restaurants (espresso was a couple dollars cheaper in the restaurants).

I tried the Saturn Landing and really liked it.  An interesting mix of bitter and sweet with a nice fruit flavor.  It's available in the Sugarcane mojito bar (look at the list of non-mojito cocktails).

I would have had more of those but was still working on getting my beer count up at the District Brewhouse.  Speaking of which, the Hoegaarten beer is very good and my husband talked it up so much to the friends were we making at that bar that it seemed like every other time we went in there, the staff was having to re-fill the Hoegaarten tap (change out the keg, refill it, however that works).  🙂

37 minutes ago, lax19 said:

Interesting topic. There seems to be a loophole here that allows one to turn non-refundable OBC into refundable OBC.

Yes, this does seem to be a loophole that perhaps some folks may want to use on purpose.  I just got off the Joy on 1/21 and we had the experience of our non-refundable OBC turning into refundable, although it wasn't on purpose.

We had $250 non-refundable OBC (stockholder credit) plus some from the TA.  We had one excursion cancelled by NCL, and another we cancelled by choice as there were openings on the excursion we had originally wanted that previously showed as full.  So two shorex cancelled and two we booked on the ship to replace them.

(As a sidebar, the accounting sheet was sort of a nightmare with $50 shore ex credits showing as charges, because the full amount of the refunds were applied, so the $50 "refund" which wasn't a refund was a charge, blah blah blah...)

The accounting sheet was weird but all the math added up so I was OK with it.  I then noticed our OBC showed as entirely refundable.  I realized it was because after the shore ex cancellations, the rebooked shore excursions were paid for out of the non-refundable OBC first, hence all credit left was refundable.  (Plus it was even larger, because our replacement excursions happened to be less expensive.)

We had already planned to use a lot of the OBC using the Speedway 🙂 so we went ahead and did that even though we didn't "need" to anymore, lol.

Regards,

J

Thank you for replies, everyone.  Looks like things are lining up to have Acapulco be our dive day (due to time in port in PV, etc).  Swiss Divers in Acapulco has good reviews, but looks like no availability.  I am still checking things out and will let you all know how it goes.

40 days since last cruise, and embarking on the next one in 8 days!  This is by far the closest together I've ever cruised.  Making up for a couple of skipped years due to Covid.