The Traveling Man

Glad to hear that it all worked out for you. She was very helpful to us two years ago under similar circumstances.

You can turn in laundry as soon as you're on the ship, although they may not get to it at once, so it might take a day longer than usual to get it back to you. If you submit it on day two, you should get it back by day three. Hope that helps you with your planning.

The top thread in this forum has thousands of posts on the subject of earning and redeeming points with the NCL Master Card. The long and the short of it is this, your rate of return is many times greater if instead of cashing in 10,000 points for $100 OBC, you hold on until you have 30,000 points and then use them to upgrade from an Inside to an Ocean View or an Ocean View to a Balcony. Depending on the price differential between the cabin categories on your cruise, your ROI can be 30% or more. That sure beats the 3% return on your money when you get OBC.

I think we may have sufficiently flogged this deceased equine.

And there were tons of Irish folks on our cruise, literally tons of them.

I'm not defending either NCL or the disappointed passengers, but just saying that NCL might have done a better job of studying the demographics of the passengers on that particular cruise and provisioning appropriately. After all, they do stock up extra hot dogs and soda on cruises that have lots of kids on board. They probably have the statistics down to a fine science about how much Bratwurst to stock when there's a travel group from Chicago, etc., etc. It would be like sailing in late November with a predominately American crowd and not stocking extra turkeys. Yes, the "Guinness Day" celebration probably was made up by the folks at the brewery in order to sell more beer, but apparently it is a semi-official holiday well known and widely celebrated in the UK. NCL knew in advance that the cruise included an inordinately large percentage of folks from the UK, so it truly is unfortunate that the ship was not provisioned with an extra lading of Guinness beer. Watching those folks go bonkers over NCL's running out of their favorite beer, however, was a sight to behold.

I had a great cruise. As I said, I rarely drink Guinness, so its absence didn't impact me. Actually, the entertainment level of the cruise was quite enhanced by observing the antics of the hundreds of other passengers who were so distraught about missing out on their Guinness.

I rarely drink Guinness myself, only a couple of times when we were in Ireland. As they say, "When in Rome, do as the Romans do." My point was that almost 1000 persons on a 2000 passenger ship were ardent consumers of a particular brand of spirits. Not only did the ship run out of their beverage of choice, they did so a day or two prior to the annual day set aside to celebrate the creation of their brew. Now, if you've ever had a Guinness, you know that Coors Light doesn't even come close to taking its place. Maybe a California Cabernet will do in a pinch when what you really wanted was an Argentinian Malbec, but those folks were royally P.O.ed about not having a Guinness beer on Guinness Day!

We have done that as well. Once or twice we even ended up taking the bottle with us when we disembarked, and enjoyed the wine later during our travels or once we returned home.

For every cruise of sufficient duration. As I recall, the break point is five days or longer.

How about being on a cruise on the NCL Star in the Med where almost half the passengers were from Ireland, Scotland, or England and the ship's bars ran out of Guinness beer on the fourth day of an 11 day cruise. And that was two days before "Guinness Day", an annual celebration honoring the creation of that golden elixir.

Or chair hogs?

Or like Flat Stanley?

And yet @OrcaGirl seemed to have a great time on the same cruise, at least according to her posts on another thread.

Is glamping when you stay at the Marriott instead of the Radisson?

Your information is out of date. NCL changed the policy regarding Cruise Next Certificates some time ago. They no longer have an expiration date.

Yes, but there still are plenty of things that you can purchase with the shareholder OBC. These include shore excursions that you book while on board, wine tastings, specialty dining beyond what is covered by any coupons you may have, laundry services, photos, and purchases from any of the shops on board the ship.

NCL has done that on a couple of cruises we have taken where things went South.

Yes, but you get what you pay for. We have taken several trips with the WW II Museum travel department. You might be able to save a little money on some other tour, but you can savor the wonderful memories from the WW II tours.

Okay, I'll nudge it up to a nine😄

We traveled with the WWII Museum tour group for the 75th Anniversary. Possibly the best trip of my life! It's a bit pricey, but absolutely worth every penny.

No reservations needed, but we just paid straight up, usually at lunch time.

Well, it seems that the OP has left the building and this thread already has been hijacked a dozen different ways, so here goes: Your story concerns getting back to port in time for debarkation and travel to the airport for your trip home. Not a bad story, lots of intrigue, dramatic plot twists and turns, I give it an eight. If we include all manner of travails which might befall a cruise passenger, though, I'll put my Star story up for contention for "worst ever." In December 2016, the NCL Star was less than halfway through a 270 day "around the world" voyage. They really didn't sail around the globe, just from Denmark, through the Suez Canal, to China, down to Australia, and finally back to the Star's next home port of Athens. Leaving Singapore, one of the two Azipod propulsion units gave up the ghost. Travel for the next month was slowed to half speed, meaning lots of missed ports, shortened times in port, etc. Lots and lots of unhappy campers posted frequently on CC about their woes. It took a month of limping along before the itinerary brought the Star back to Singapore, where an unplanned couple of extra days in port resulted in the Azipod being repaired. YAY! Back to normal speed and the originally published itinerary. That lasted barely 24 hours before the OTHER Azipod broke down. Back to slow speed and missed ports throughout Southeast Asia. We were following along, voraciously reading every post on the several CC roll calls for the various segments of the cruise. We were booked to join the Star in Sydney in early February 2017. By that time, NCL already had all but given up all hope. They offered anyone on our cruise and the ones following ours a full refund, without penalty, to anyone who chose to cancel up to and including the very day prior to their scheduled embarkation. Well, we decided to stick to our plans. NCL was offering some FCC, so even missing a few ports, it seemed like the thing to do. We departed Sydney on time, but were unable to get to Melbourne as scheduled. NCL gave us an unscheduled overnight stop in Melbourne, and another whole day to tour the city before we departed early in the evening of 9 February 2017. We limped out of Melbourne on one propeller, bound for New Zealand, where almost half of our port stops already had been cancelled due to our slow speed. About 1:00 AM on 10 February, I was awakened by an eerie stillness. Yep, now both propellers were out of service and we were adrift in the Tasman Sea. It took a couple of days before the tugboats that came to our rescue were able to get us back into Melbourne, where we enjoyed a lovely extended vacation in Australia. They finally did get both Azipods repaired, and by the evening of Valentine's Day we were underway at full speed for Auckland, missing all of our intermediate ports in New Zealand (eight stops were planned, as I recall), making it into Auckland just in time to disembark our passengers and take on the next group, bound for Singapore. We were B2B, so we were able to spend a day in Auckland before rejoining our ship. So, we missed all those ports in New Zealand, but we received a ton of FCC, enough to afford another B2B to Australia and New Zealand the following year. At the time, though, we thought this was the epitome of ship happens.

So have we, several times at several different ports. Ship happens.

What about kilts? Do you consider those to be the same as pants?