CCJack

When to sail: For both our Iceland cruise and Norway cruise, I booked as close to June 21 as I could. I just think 24 hour daylight is something unique to experience. If you cruise to the North coast of Iceland you will be very close to the arctic circle (close enough for daylight all night at the end of June), likely same for Norway depending on how far North your itinerary takes you. When to book: I agree with others. Book now, then keep an eye on prices. Unless we have another pandemic, cruise load is going to increase. There will be some price drops but nothing big, except for the 2 weeks prior to cruise when they may try to unload empty cabins, but that is too late for my planning comfort zone. Ship size: Both of our cruises were big ship (but not NCL) . Big ships can get into Flam and Geiranger in Norway, make sure you see one or both of those. Fjords are very deep by their nature. I am tempted to try to book a small excursion type cruise in Norway, to see the smaller fjords, but so far not in my budget! BTW, I think Norway is a much more beautiful cruise destination than Iceland. In Iceland you will be driving or busing inland quite a bit from the coast to see the geological sights. Norway is stunning from a cruise ship and beautiful along the coast. We did spend quite a bit of time on the outdoor decks on the Norway cruise. Some people recommend a Norway only cruise and a land cruise to Iceland on a separate trip.

A few comments on our 9/13 NCL Joy cruise. We are new to NCL. Food… Excellent across the board. Buffet, MDR (3 dinners) and Specialty (4 dinners) all better than other more costly cruise lines we have been on (Viking, Cunard, Celebrity). Service… Outstanding service from cabin steward and wait staff…We did get some bad info from guest services, but all other staff was great. Cabin… Our cabin was great.. Looked newer than the ship is, clean, modern and everything worked! I likely would not book our cabin type again, however. My fault…. I didn’t think it through, we booked deck 8 club balcony suite with the large balcony. For just my wife and I we did not need a large balcony and there are some drawbacks to those balconies. They are the same width as a normal cabin, but the balcony is probably 4x as deep. This means when you are in your cabin looking out through glass door, you have tunnel vision with the deep balcony and a much narrower view of the ocean. Plus these balconies are completely uncovered and thus exposed to the elements. They were very windy and almost unusable. I believe the normal-sized balconies are all covered, and we would have enjoyed a normal-sized balcony more. Ship.. No complaints, the Joy is clean, looks new and is big. Not our favorite ship (our last cruise was Celebrity Apex which sets the bar high) – but I would go again on the Joy for the right itinerary, etc. Note that on the Joy a lot of real estate is used for kid’s activities (great if you are a kid). The go carts and the laser tag take a lot of the space on the sun decks. I don’t know why they put the laser tag on the sun deck since it is a big enclosed box – it needs to be dark inside. They could have put that on a lower deck in my opinion. Thus, the remaining swimming pool – jogging track area available to non-Haven folks is not that big considering the size of the ship. Free-Style Cruising….I know a lot of cruise lines are doing something similar, but I am not sure I am a fan of this. It seemed like on this ship it quickly becomes a task of getting a lot of reservations for dining and entertainment. Even though we made reservations before the cruise, you still have to take what times you can get sometimes and that is the opposite of what free-style implies (that you can go when you want). It seems like they are putting more and more people on these ships but not increasing the theater size, etc. On the Joy there is only 1 big theater rather than 2. I would guess that a lot of people don’t get reservations or are late to try and then they don’t get to go at all to some of the entertainment. It never used to be that way with cruising... there was always a seat for everyone. All said, we had a great trip and our experience with NCL was a positive one.

We are looking at booking Odyssey OTS and have not been on this class of ship yet. I see a guaranteed balcony is quite a bit cheaper than selecting our own cabin. We do not care about location on ship, distance to elevators or anything like that.. However, I am wondering what the worst case scenario would be in terms of obstructed view.. Are there any balconies where you look directly at a life boat or something like that? Any tips appreciated... thanks.

Just starting to plan a cruise to Greek islands... Never been there. Can someone advise on what ports to prioritize when choosing a cruise. I know there is personal preference involved but maybe there are a couple ports that are considered "don't miss" by most people thanks.

We did the Tay Mac walking tour about a week later than you... I agree, it was a great tour. Then spent a couple hours on the boardwalk and it makes a full but not overwhelming day....

Plan on a couple hours in the fjord. Roughly 50 miles, will depend on ship speed. You will be dealing with darkness in both directions. I would get up at sunrise at 6:45, you will already be in the fjord somewhere. Note that quebec city is not that far away. If you are at QC the day before, then the ship has time to kill so they have a lot of options on ship speed. They could be already near the dock by sunrise but hopefully they don't do that and allow some time for daylight sail in for the benefit of the passengers.

My wife is a non drinker and I am a light drinker... So I looked at the cost of the drink package gratuities vs what we would pay for drinks a la carte. I came to the conclusion it was about a wash so I kept the package. We have completed the cruise, and I think it was the right call. The virgin margaritas etc. went down pretty quickly ! It is nice to not worry about the cost a la carte. I agree that NCL plays games with the pricing, with fine print... free really isn't free cause they add the gratuities, etc. Also, the free 150 minutes wifi is worthless. It does make you a little frustrated. However, all told ....the total price was a bargain even with those add-ons. It was our first NCL cruise and I was impressed. The food was excellent. We were on the Joy and had a great time.

We were just there last week. I would say either side, it does not matter. Saguenay was our favorite stop (other than Quebec City which was our embarkation point). The sail into the fjord is not quite as majestic as in Norway (Flam as example) but it is close. For a North American fjord it is pretty impressive. We took the ships tour to the national park and hiked up the fjord, it was our favorite excursion.

Yes, we just went on quebec city to NYC cruise and we were in and out of cell service. Hard to predict though. Sometimes land in sight.. no service but at times no land in sight... cell service.!

For sure.... statement credit is the way to go, but I had already applied for the OBC before I knew that. Sometimes we learn as we go !

We were just there last week.... We took the 2 hour walking tour from Tours Voir Québec, and can highly recommend it. I think it was less than 2 miles total walking. I don't recall cobblestones being much of an issue but there was some walking up / down hills in the old town. It was a great tour. A Hoho bus will not to go to anywhere that our walking tour went.... Do you have time to do both? The walking tour was very reasonable priced.

We just got off of the Joy and we had some refundable OBC and also some non-refundable OBC from WorldPoints. I made 3 trips to guest services to understand the exclusions and the first two people told me gratuities (service charges) are excluded from non-refundable OBC. Finally, the 3rd trip I got the proper answer that there are 2 different kinds of non - refundable and the WP non-refundable can be used for service charges. Here is my understanding of the exclusions: refundable OBC: no exclusions non refundable OBC excludes: service charges gratuities casino cruisenext Starbucks gift cards Starbucks merchandise WorldPoints non-refundable OBC excludes: casino cruisenext Starbucks gift cards Starbucks merchandise

We just got off of the Joy. I would say the 150 free minutes are worthless. Not only slow, but very cumbersome. You need to login and it starts the 150 minute clock, then you need to go to a logout page to stop the clock when you are done browsing. If you don't logout properly, the clock runs whether you are browsing or not, your phone could be off and at the bottom of the ocean, and the minutes will still accumulate. The system is so slow, the logout page sometimes doesn't load properly, so you have no way of turning the clock off. We did not try the upgraded package, but I would be real skeptical on that too...

Thanks. We are boarding today but currently in hotel in departure city. I downloaded the app and found our reservation, but having lots of trouble with the app such as "this page did not display properly" errors, and others. Is it possible errors will go away when connected to ship wifi? I already tried re-installing the app. It is currently unusable with these errors....

Thanks. Do you know if i can make changes to reservations in the app on board? I was able to make all of our reservations online ahead of time but i cannot make changes.

Where do we go to make changes to our dining and entertainment reservations right after we board? This is for the Joy. Thanks

I can recommend the hotel Abruzzi, we stayed there and the view of the pantheon from our window was exactly as shown on their website.

Our departure from Amsterdam was delayed several hours ( 4+) as the lock traffic controllers sometimes hold the big ships at their pier to allow other traffic to go through the lock first. With an at Sea day the next day for most cruises heading North, it is not a big deal as they know the ship can make up the time. However, that put is at the lock after dark, which was unfortunate as I am really interested in locks and how they work. On our Danube river cruise we went through more than 20 locks some with very large vertical displacements !

In general, I like the plan, especially the 3 full days in Rome post cruise. For the pre cruise just be aware of the drive times to Rome and then to the port the next day. An 11:30 am arrival means you may not be leaving the airport until 1:00 arriving at hotel at 2:00 and you will lose daylight around 6:30. Seems like the day might slip by pretty fast. If it turns out to be a nice dinner, shopping for wine and a hotel, you may be better off doing that in Civi. rather than Rome.

What transportation options are there to EWR. I assume taxi is the easiest but wondering if there is a shuttle bus service or other. We have a 1:30 pm flight after debarkation, so I think we will have plenty of time to work with.

This topic is covered extensively on these boards..... There are pros and cons of each. DYI offers much more flexibility and most people recommend that. I am the exception in that I really enjoyed our cruisetours - I hate driving while on vacation. Also, I enjoyed the company of the other tourists in our group and our tour guide. But it is personal preference. We did have kids on our bus about the age of your kids. You mention the cost of meals, note that unlike on the ship your meals many not be covered in a cruise tour, you need to check. Have fun.

Are the OBC from World points "redeemable for cash" at end of cruise, or "not redeemable for cash"? I believe most cruise lines have two different types of OBC. thank you.

As others have said, no real drawback to booking early since you can get a refund or re-book before the final payment date. However, I did run across one big drawback to booking too early on a Viking river cruise. We booked about 14 months out. Turns out we were the first cabin booked. A couple months after we booked our TA called and said Viking had contacted them to tell us every other cabin on the boat (except ours) had been sold to a single group. We would be the only people not part of the group. Viking offered us nothing for the inconvenience other than we could cancel and take another cruise if we wanted to. We did that. It was quite inconvenient for us as we had scheduling issues we were working around with work, flights, family, etc. even a year out. I will never book the first cabin again.

We are on 9/13/23 NCL Joy out of QC, we live in Michigan. We booked on our own - Detroit to Quebec City. No direct flights, but at least we fly into QC. If you look at our roll call, those that booked through NCL are getting mixed results. Some are being flown into Montreal with a transfer to QC, others fly into QC. If you book flights through NCL, you won't find out the flights until 30 days or fewer before the cruise. That also makes planning for your time in Montreal or QC difficult.

Agree.... timing is too tight for my liking... Last summer we flew out of Schipol and the airport recommended arrival 4 hours ahead of flight. Many, many people missed their flights in that airport. Better now, but things could change again. I would take the lower stress option and spend the night.