CCJack

We stayed at the Hilton and loved it. 5 min. walk to a wall gate, and then you are in the old town and can walk anywhere including piers 21 and 22 (I don't think you can walk to pier 30 from any hotels - not far but just not a good walk from what I could tell.) With luggage you may want to taxi no matter where you stay as QC is very hilly (but beautiful). The Hilton is a high rise with spectacular views of the old town. You need to get a room on that side of the hotel (we had a corner room .. even better) Plus it is one of the best Hiltons we have stayed at.

Yes, the Joy had Starbucks gift cards. However, you can only use refundable OBC to buy gift cards and merchandise (mugs, etc.) at Starbucks. To purchase beverages at Starbucks you can use both refundable and non refundable OBC.

We have been on an RC cruise tour and really enjoyed it. (You will get a lot of negative opinions on CC for cruise tours but be careful some of those comments may be from people who haven't been on one.) For RC we got very little information ahead of time, but once on the bus our cruise guide was very helpful and assisting with planning for each of the guests. We actually booked very few organized excursions. We enjoyed day hikes around the lodges in the woods on our own, etc. I remember quite a bit of free time, but maybe that is because we didn't do a lot of excursions. Note there is a lot of travel time (bus, train) to get to these destinations. Alaska is big ! One of the things I enjoyed on the cruise tour is getting to know our fellow passengers. You will be on a bus with about 40 not on a ship with about 4000, so it is a totally different experience.

thank you, we will do that. Looking to save some excursion money by DIY in Rhodes and Mykonos.

perhaps. You are correct, in that Alaska is such a popular cruise destination there are a lot of independent companies that offer differing excursions. We cruise quite a bit and we used to always do DIY or independent excursions. However, last couple years we have migrated to taking mostly ship's excursions. The price advantage of independent isn't what it used to be. An issue we have also had is getting off the ship in a timely manner. In Reykjavik there was a problem with the gangway - 1.5 hour delay -then they allowed only those with cruise excursion tickets in hand to go first. Everyone else was further delayed by an additional hour. In Waterford, we tendered with 3 boats. One boat's motor stalled in route. They used boat # 2 to rescue the people from boat #1 (no one was ever in danger), leaving only one boat for everyone else to tender. Again, ship's excursion people went first. Very long delay. Lastly in Flam, our ship docked, they let ship's excursion people off, then they backed off and everyone else tendered. A different cruise line's ship then took the dock space. I have no idea why they did this. I would look at all options.. have fun planning !

thanks. that is good news... We are walkers, won't be a problem. I was confused as I was looking at the big piers south of Rhodes town - upon further zooming on google maps, those look like marinas for yachts or something. My way of finding cruise terminals is not very sophisticated, I look at google maps and look for cruise ships parked.... and in Rhodes there are no cruise ships parked at the cruise terminal when they snapped the satellite image!

I agree. We had the 150 free minutes on Joy, and it was worth nothing in my opinion. You have to go to a logout page to stop the timer. However....... It was so slow that it took minutes (many minutes) for the logout page to load with your timer going the whole time. You will spend most of the 150 minutes messing with this administrative stuff. Some ships have upgraded from what I understand and things may be faster.

I am wondering if NCL has a shuttle to the old town for Rhodes and also Mykonos. It appears to me that the ships dock close to town but not walking distance close. I understand you can take a water taxi in Mykonos from new port to town, but I was wondering there is also an NCL shuttle. . (I know that Santorini is a whole different (complicated) story !!) thanks

I do not think there would be a difference in cruise lines. I do think there will be plenty of excursions offered that are more "nature" or "hiking" than in a cruise elsewhere (Caribbean) One that comes to mind is glacier wilderness safari out of skagway (or haines) some hiking, some canoeing all to get to the Davison glacier. There are others. You can also choose to hike on own. Alaska is a great place for people who enjoy national parks, etc. If you have not been on a whale watching excursion I would recommend that - no hiking but a fun experience. . Good luck.

Our experience with these big sporting events on cruises hasn't been good. What seems like an obvious choice in what to show at the bars, sometimes isn't obvious to the crew I guess. Plus there are some issues with availability if at sea, etc. I would start asking around on the first day of cruise.. maybe you can find the decision maker ahead of time and put in a request. (Better karma if you would have asked this tomorrow (after BIG championship game) and not today don't want to jinx anything !!!!)

For those that have been on this Delos excursion can you comment if you liked it? It sounds as if it is mostly Archeological relics... I would appreciate and enjoy that but I am not sure my wife would. Does Delos also have beautiful scenery / does the excursion stop at a village or town? Trying to figure out if this excursion makes sense for us or should we stay near Mykonos.... no issues with long walks for us. Ours would be an NCL excursion. Thanks

Itineraries are very similar. I do like Northbound just because Vancouver is a great pre cruise stay for 1 or 2 nights.

Agree with all. My additional input is Venice can be extremely crowded around St. Marks between approx. noon and 5 pm. Early morning and evening is much more pleasant. Not sure how your 1 1/2 days fits in there but if you have a morning in Venice get up early and you will see so much more before the crowds arrive. Maybe spend that afternoon time elsewhere in Venice besides the popular sights. You don't need a tour operator. With only 1.5 days I probably would skip Murano and Burano because that can take a half a day at least. You could take the vaporetto over to the church of San Giorgio however. That is an easy trip which doesn't take much time, and we enjoyed going up to the top of the tower in San Girogio. It has great view overlooking Venice.

It is not half covered. the larger bathroom pushes your floorpan outboard as compared to the cabin above. So your glass doors are directly below their balcony railing... BTW, it was our first NCL cruise after mostly cruising on RC and Celebrity. I was pleasantly surprised with NCL. Especially the food... excellent across the board, MD, Specialty and even buffet was very good ....better than RC. Entertainment not so much... I think there was some budget cutting in the entertainment department !

I agree that a land based vacation gives you much more in depth experience of the country than a cruise. However, there are destinations where cruises are more ideal than a land vacation.... Norway is one place which is really ideal for cruising and you can leave from Southampton. I do think cruises are more relaxing than a land based vacation. For 14 days away I think 7 days on land and then a 7 day cruise would appeal to me. 14 days all on land if you are transporting yourself via trains or driving, seems too much for me. A 7 day land trip in the U.K. followed by a Norway cruise seems ideal to me but it doesn't get you to France and Disneyland. To do a land trip in the U.K. followed by a land trip in France seems like it would be difficult to fit a cruise in there. Have fun planning!

We were just on the Joy in one of those deck 8 club suites. We did hear the theatre but not very much, and it did not bother us or keep me from sleeping. Location is also very good in terms of access to things on the ship. We had the large balcony. However I would have rather had a normal balcony. The large balconies are very large but skinny and very deep. I felt like when standing in your cabin looking our your glass door it had tunnel vision and really restricted your field of view of the ocean as compared to a normal balcony. Of course if you are at the railing on the balcony the view was fine. We were on the St. Lawrence Seaway in September so it was too cold to be out there most of the time. So it depends on where you are sailing to.. Also note that these balconies are uncovered where as normal sized balconies are covered by the balcony above... the covering helps in terms of wind / rain protection IMO. That said, we really didn't have any major complaints with the cabin.. Have fun.

As others have said, I would not count on this. Consider you are looking 9 months in advance, and those direct / good flights likely have plenty of room and prices are reasonable. When NCL books your BOGO flights it will be 30 days prior to departure and many of those seats will be gone so the airline will raise those prices for those desirable flights, thus NCL likely will put you on cheaper flight combinations (that no one else wanted) I am all about saving money on domestic flights, I can sit in a middle seat to Florida. But for trips across the pond, I want more control. Besides very long layovers, I would also be concerned about very short layovers that I would not book for myself. I am surprised if you go to a travel site and look at what combinations they pull up for you, sometimes it is a little as 45 minute layover in a big airports like Frankfurt or Amsterdam. That is too tight for me, considering there could also be passport control, etc. Your choice to fly in 2 days early is a good choice though. You will get there if you go BOGO, but personally I like to book my own flights.

Those are two long Fjords and I thought our view of the fjords from the ship while sailing through was spectacular, maybe more memorable than excursions. I agree with the comment on weather. If you get up early to see the sail-in rather than just watching the sail -out in the evening, you double your chances of good viewing weather. While we were sailing into Flam, I was on the only person on the deck at 4:30 am for about 1.5 hours... It was very nice. All the other 4000 people (including my wife) were sleeping!. The views in the morning were much nicer than in the evening, since our sail-out was under cloudy skies and windy, plus a lot of activity with ship's dinners, etc. For this moment in my life, I thought I was the smartest person on the ship (or at least the smartest person in my marriage!) Note that our cruise line and crew told us nothing about the fjords, what they were, when we would enter the fjord in the am, etc. So it is worth doing a little homework before you go with a map.... such as when is your docking time? approx. how long will it take the ship to sail through (likely a few hours)? what time does the sunrise (likely very early)? etc.... so you can get a rough idea of a good alarm clock time! At least the ship had the coffee going for me at 4:30, which was a godsend! Have fun.

thanks, this is helpful. Sounds like Uber is the way to go.

Yes, if you hear more about this let us know.. i did look up the website and you board a boat at the old port and they take you to the new port, where you board their bus (van). then you bus to Oia, then to winery, then to Fira, then to new port and board boat back to old port where you can tender back to ship. In theory this would work. I am hesitant from your comments above about chaos as well as their website which isn't very good. It only allowed me to choose Carnival ship port dates, and only a few dates available. Bad websites make me nervous. Maybe we will hear more about this option.

I am curious to learn more about your uber experience, at one time uber was not allowed in Athens but they now allow regular taxis to use the app. But I have read that normal private uber vehicles are not allowed. I don't know any of this for sure, I haven't been there yet. Was your uber pickup a normal taxi ? I guess it doesn't really matter as long as they honored the uber fare from the app. Also, your trip to the museum was from the airport? thanks.

I am convinced that the CEOs of all the main cruise lines meet once per year in secret and renew their pact to serve horrible coffee on cruises. In that way, all passengers must pay $9 per cup of premium coffee no matter what cruise line they go on. By the way, this is illegal and should be reported to the S.E.C. (Securities and Exchange Coffee committee).

thank you all... these are all great inputs.. A couple questions... itsnotjustme... how was the volcano hike? We are not on B2B so if we do the volcano we will not go to Fira. Do you think Fira is a "don't miss" place? We are on a 9 day cruise with 8 ports so we will be busy and I am fine skipping some towns if necessary. Another option is the Oia excursion (without winery) and take our chances on the cable car down. It is listed as a 3 hour excursion that starts at 9 am, so I would assume we would be in Fira at noon with cable car tickets, then we could may be be in line for cable car by 1 pm or so. There are 3 ships in port that day but one of them does not arrive until 2 pm, so basically a 2 ship day for the morning / early afternoon. All ships stay until 9 pm. I am hoping a 1 pm line for cable car down would not be too bad.

Our NCL cruise lists about 5 different excursions for Santorini. The descriptions are very poor in terms of telling you the logistics, and in Santorini the logistics are important. My understanding is all cruiselines tender their "non excursion" passengers to the old port and then you are on your own to get up the cliff to Fira via cable car, donkey, or walking the 600 steps. The "excursion" people are tendered to Anthinios so that they can board buses for their excursion. My question is, do the NCL excursions all end up at Fira, where you can spend some time on your own and then cable car down or walk down to the old port and tender to the ship, or do some of the excursions return you to Anthinios? I am considering booking an excursion just to avoid the possible 2 hour wait for the cable car but would still like to see Fira and walk down ourselves after the excursion. My guess is they all end up at Fira. Thanks for any insight here.

I would just make sure you understand the credit card's travel insurance coverage very well. I have had good luck cancelling 2 cruises when I had 3rd party travel insurance, I got everything back I was owed. However, with a "free" benefit on a credit card I would be suspicious. Travel insurance can get very complicated in terms of what is covered and what is not.