chesswiththedevil

7 minutes ago, jpcdds6 said:

We are on the Feb. 1st Jade in a suite. I booked our 3 grown kids and their sig. others, inside cabins for Xmas gifts, and if they wanted to upgrade, it was on them. They all got their $150 bids to Balconies on deck 9. The total for their cabins is now under $1500 with bev package and $200 OBC. Seems like a good deal to me.

I'm on the same cruise. It can't come soon enough! Congrats on the upgrades!

Bid $75pp to upgrade from an inside to a family picture window oceanview on the 2/1 Jade. It was accepted today (10 days out). I am very happy with this turn of events as I was super nervous about the inside cabin after I cheaped out and booked it. 

8 minutes ago, crash3x said:

I just won my bid today . I bid $10 above minimum for the category I selected

Nice! For the Reflection or a different ship?

11 minutes ago, You Remember Clackers said:

 

Assault is never a joke.

The 3 Stooges might disagree. 

On 1/10/2019 at 4:04 AM, thistimeplease said:

 

I agree with you.  Last cruise dh and I got our chairs by the pool about 8 am next to a couple with a baby.  The mom went to change the baby and the dad went to get coffee.  They were gone about 10 minutes when people came over and started to remove all their items. My dh explained that they just left and the people didn't want to hear it, needless to say there was a confrontation when the mom and baby came back.  Attendants came and made the new people give the chairs back to mom, dad and baby.  After that we were too afraid to leave our spot as we didn't want anything like that to happen to us. 

I make friends with the people on either side and we watch each others stuff/chairs. I usually instigate it by saying something like "we'll make sure nobody tries to run up on your stuff" and they always reciprocate. On the topic of finding a seat, I've never had trouble getting a seat in any area that I need to as long as I get to the Lido deck by about 8:30 or 9. 

1 hour ago, Kmkub said:

I'm glad nobody has said Jade, yet, as their one and done. We've never been on Jade and we leave in two weeks!

Me too. Looks like we're on the same cruise (departs February 1st). Let's hope it's  a good one!

Back to the topic, I have only sailed on NCL once and it was the Epic. If I sail NCL again (after this upcoming Jade trip) I would try another ship if possible. The balcony staterooms were weird, the balcony was small, and the ship was just a little too big for my tastes. Perhaps when I have kids one day it will be better to have all that stuff, but for now "it's a no for me dawg". 

10 minutes ago, ceilidh1 said:

I guess I misunderstood - I thought she said the difference in what she paid for an inside to the current balcony rate was $200 and she was willing to bid more than $115 - in which case I would have thought it would be better to just buy outright....I didn't realise it was for a sailaway without the perks....

I didn't realize that only sailaway's were left either until I just looked at it now. I guess I'll wait to see if I get an upgrade. If I don't oh well, I'm not that concerned. I've never had an inside room (I almost always get balconies except for one time I got a oceanview) so I hope I don't regret my decision to be a cheapskate on the room, lol. 

Can...can you pay extra to get the current promos? I didn't even know that was a thing. We only got 1 Free at Sea promo and took the drink package. If they accept your upgrade package do you get the promos as well?

So I have an inside (non-sail away) room booked for the Jade on Feb 1st. I bid $75 (fair)  for a view room and $115 (on the line between poor and fair) for a balcony. Do bids at these levels get accepted often?

I bought this cruise at about 115 days from sailing and the prices (and availability) haven't shifted much. I paid $379 for my room. An obstructed oceanview is $189 more than I paid and a balcony (sail away) is $200 more. Is there a sweet spot I should be trying to hit here? I don't mind pumping up the bids a little if necessary but I was wondering if the bids I already gave have a decent chance of being accepted? 

36 here. I had only sailed balconies until I did a porthole window cabin a couple of years ago, which was fine. I realized at that time that I only used a room for showering, getting ready, and *ahem* sleeping, so I decided to see what a lower class cabin was like. I was surprised to find that I didn't notice a big difference between the balcony and port window rooms. (Side note: the NCL Epic balconies were really small and not as much fun to lounge on as the Carnival ships so that may have colored my perception of balcony rooms and their overall value.)

For my next cruise (in a couple of weeks) my SO and I are going to try an inside room. I'll admit that I'm a little nervous that I won't like it, but it's only a 5 day cruise so if I don't like it, I don't have to "suffer" for very long. That said, I am thinking about submitting a higher upgrade bid. I think in the end, the balcony is still probably the sweet spot for me in terms of value but the porthole window was pretty good too. The Haven looks so nice, but again, I just really don't spend much time in the rooms.   

I'll try to sample them all in a couple of weeks when I sail and I'll let you know my favorite when I get back.

3 hours ago, newty25 said:

It literally takes about 10 drinks per day for you to break even on paying for the drink package. That's 70 drinks for the week to break even.

 

Definitely much easier to do on a sea day.

 

But, if on a port day, you leave the ship in the morning and get back in the late afternoon, fitting in 10+ drinks on the ship might be a challenge... especially if you did any drinking while at port. So, if you plan to drink on the ship from 7pm until midnight everyday, that's two drinks an hour to get to 10.

 

An average person would be pretty lubed up drinking that much.

Can’t do 10 drinks on a port day? Hold my, er...beer. 😉

Good to hear. Carnival won't do it so I guess that is a welcome perk to Norwegian's beverage package even if it doesn't work all the time. 

Awesome thank you. As for adding a shot on top of a drink? Is that possible with the package?

I seem to recall that I had to pay extra (sales tax maybe?) for drinks using the drink package on a Carnival cruise when leaving NOLA and I was wondering if I have to pay extra while in port (waiting to leave) in Miami? Is this a thing? Also, does the Norwegian UDP allow for floating shots on drinks such as getting a rum floater on a pina colada?

If it's between love and hate I'd go with love. I wasn't overly impressed with the specialty dining but it might have been a fluke thing as most people like NCL food better than Carnival which I like well enough. I'm taking my second NCL cruise here in a few weeks so I look forward to being wrong about NCL food. The Epic was a great ship with lots to do. The Circ show was great (I got to be in it with my ex wife, which was interesting and fun) and the other things were nice too. This is a huge ship.

4PM would work but that whole drive and area is awfully pretty. It would be nice to see the wildlife conservation areas among others since you will be there. I hope your trip is great. We love tourists in Alaska!

+1 with Trucker Dave. My cruise on the Epic was good but not perfect. I enjoyed myself mostly because I understand that I won't be happy with all elements of a cruise and NCL hit enough of the solid points that the failures they had didn't matter much. That's more a life philosophy, really. Also, accidents can and will happen - that's why they are called "accidents" and not "on purposes".

I asked my SO if we could cancel our bungalow excursion in Harvest Cay due to the Superbowl being on the same day and wanting to get a good seat at the outside venue and you can imagine how that conversation went, lol. I guess I might hoof it early back to the ship around 2pm(ish) to get our small group good seats? Does anyone know about how soon all the outside seats fill up for an event like that? I hate how excited I am for a football game that I have little to no emotional investment in but maybe it's because I get to celebrate the game in the warmth with an unlimited drink package and I don't have to work the next day.

I sailed on the Epic in 2015. It was a beautiful ship with lots to do, especially for kids. The show (some Circ De Soleil thing) was good, as well as the comedy and piano bars. The food wasn't impressive but that may be a Norwegian thing (I'll find out next month when I take my 2nd cruise with them). Overall I still would rate it a solid 8/10 time because I had the drink package and that kept me happy, lol.

This whole thread is making me excited. I completely forgot, until now, that the superbowl is going on during our cruise and I also forgot that there will be a casino so I can play some squares! 

I don't think that it's good for society but I agree with cdnsteelman that people can often pay to get in the front of the lines in many circumstances. I'll never forget that expose where wealthy people in NYC were "hiring" handicapped people to accompany them to Disney World so that their children could go to the front of the line every time. Again, it's terrible but a thing. 

I'm sailing on the Jade in early February next year and am happy to hear that so many people like it. I don't mind smaller ships as long as there are some fun things to do and the drinks are flowing. My last ship was the Epic, but it was in the Mediterranean so we actually didn't spend much time on the ship. For those that have been on the Jade, do they have comedians? I have tried looking everywhere but haven't found much to confirm that they are a reglar part of the ship. 

I'm glad to see the Jade mentioned so many times as I am about to sail on her for the 1st time in a few months. I've also sailed on the Epic as many of you have, and would totally sail on it again as it had an absolute ton of stuff to do on board. 

Well, I may have been convinced just to try to the specialty dining out 1-3 nights. My girlfriend really wanted at least one formal night(ish) where we could dress up so maybe I'll buy us a package to try again.