Liljo22

Not sure but Royal sends the Anthem of the Seas to Norway ports and that class is around the same size as the Breakaway+ class.

Hopefully the bad reviews for cold weather itineraries will be taken seriously by NCL. Royal doesn't send Oasis class ships to cold weather destinations which makes sense with the bulk of open space outdoors. They have plenty of ships. Keep Prima class ships in warmer weather.

MSC and Carnival also had ships anchored offshore.

There may not be a lot of complaining from the cruise coming back to port but I can promise there will be a rash of bad reviews from the outgoing one. Like a lot of bad reviews, there are going to be people upset with what happened and it will magnify everything going forward. Issues that are normally a minor inconvenience people don't notice will now be a bigger issue.

Looks like they changed it up and went to GSC today instead of Puerto Plata tomorrow and GSC on day 7. I am guessing a sea day tomorrow and head to St Thomas and skip DR entirely? Do they still hit GSC up again on the way back or just add another sea day?

Very confused why a review of your NCL trip was needed in this thread? Don't see how the quality of the food and entertainment of NCL is appropriate in a thread about delays because someone died in the ship channel.

They had a banner on the home page since Thursday that the site will be down for maintenance starting Saturday night and booking will be unavailable.

I would recommend asking for a brand even if you have the basic package. They will grab the house brands if you don't specify.

Its not that those liquors are not included. You can still get those drinks with the basic package, you will just be charged anything above $15. If you order a Grey Goose and tonic for $17, you will be charged $2.40. To upgrade, its about $35 per person per day. You would have to order 15 grey goose drinks a day each to make the upgrade worth it. If you are picky about whiskeys and scotches, thats a different story. The difference for the upper level whiskeys can be $20 extra per drink.

I previously asked about price drops and losing the full value of the CFC. Wanted to update that I just called in for a price drop on my cruise and the full $500 was still applied to the reservation. I did lose my double latitude points since its no longer offered on this cruise but the $400 price drop was more important.

Southwest pretty much runs Hobby so there are only a few other airlines that will fly into there. If you are ok with Southwest, Hobby is the easier of the airports to fly in to. Webster is the next closest "big city" to Galveston. You can find a lot of mid tier hotels near the highway that will be close to a lot of restaurants. You will also be close to NASA/Space Center Houston and the Kemah Boardwalk if you would like to visit.

What’s the fear? That you will see the bags under the bed?

Let them know you are gluten free and they will give you the menu ahead of time to choose what you want. They will let you know which items can be made that way. They will prepare it separate and you just give your waiter your room number and name when you get there.

Agreed. Tito's and soda is my go to order. My wife may order a Expresso Martini which sometimes is an extra couple of dollars but it would take a lot of going over $15 to make the Plus worth it. Will order a whiskey but usually its a Buffalo Trace or Bulleit. If I was ordering a couple of $35 Whistle Pigs every day, the Plus would 100% worth it. Now for wines, they usually only have 1 to 2 wines in each type that fit into the base package. Those are sometimes too sweet and we would need to go above the limit. If you are a big wine drinker, you probably want to upgrade.

Flyers for the packages: https://www.ncl.com/sites/default/files/790164-BEV_Package_Flyer_UOBP_PPBP Update_V7_no_crops.pdf

What brand liquor do you like to drink? The package covers any drink up to $15. If the drink is more than $15, you only pay the difference plus 20% gratuity on the difference. I only see it worth upgrading if you like high end whiskies or are very particular about wines. Yes you can get Starbucks with the Plus but that is a lot of coffees to cover the costs to upgrade.

My last two cruises were with Royal on the Oasis and Liberty. I had a great time on both cruises but found them to be similar to the other mass market lines in those areas. I will sail with them again but not for thousands of dollars more than other lines.

Try pricing her out of Galveston. Since NCL is just starting to sail out of here, I don’t think the general population has figured it out yet. You can get pretty good deals especially during the off season.

I am booked on the Prima out of Galveston in December and it’s cheaper than the Encore and Escape the same week. There are deals to be found on the Prima. Paying about $4,500 for my family of 4 in a balcony. Same week on the Harmony of the seas out of Galveston is over $6k and it would cost me probably another $1300 for the drink package.

Nothing in terms of paying sales tax. The difference is that Texas forces the cruise lines to sell liquor from Texas distributors. Since they can't get the lower prices they get with their contracted distributors, they limit the brands that they sell while in Texas waters. They will usually have 1 mid-tier brand for each type of liquor.

I have sailed plenty of cruises out of Galveston and have never seen the cruise line close down bars. They all keep the regular alcohol locked up and just have a limited amount of alcohol available for sale. Each cruise line treats the rules different. Royal eats the additional sales tax and also allows you to use your drink package on the first day. Carnival charges the sales tax and does not allow you to use the drink package day one. NCL has only had the one Prima sailing so I don't think we can say what they are going to do but I would assume charge the sales tax and allow the drink package to be used since they charge gratuities for all 7 days.

I don't think Royal is looking at the number of ships as they are the number of passengers. The Icon OTS covers 3 Vision class ships on its own.

Holland doesn't have a ship over 100K GT. So yes. If you want a newer smaller ship, they may be the best to give a try. Their last was in 2021 and was just about the Radiance class size ships.

What is considered smaller to you? Virgin is building ships around the 110k GT size. NCL and Celebrity are building around 130k-140k GT size. I think its a little crazy to say the whole industry is doomed because Royal is building 200k GT ships.

I would think sharing at the 4 item restaurants was never the intent but has been allowed and even encouraged at times. Every ships restaurant manager is in charge of their own budget/expenses so given the climate, I am sure they are under pressure to keep expenses down. It will probably be a ship to ship decision on the manager if they are going to enforce the sharing rule.