rattla

Yes it was was that per person, however it was the sunset suite bid that was successful at £515pp, so £1030 total. Buying that now though would have cost nearly £6k more, so happy to win at that price!

Ship: Silhouette Length of Cruise:12 Cruise Sail Date:July 1 Date email offer received:May Captain’s Club Tier : First cruise Booked through Celebrity Direct OR via TA: Costco Travel U.K. Current Cabin:Aqua Class Bid? Yes/No:Yes If YES - Bidding Details: Cabin Category: place winning category, if accepted (all category offers, can be mentioned in comments) Bid Offer:Sky Suite £425 (strong) Sunset sky suite £515 (poor) Aqua Sky Suite £515 (fair) CS £525 (poor) RS £565 (poor) Notification Date: put offer in 24th May was offering 50% reduced minimum payments Accepted / Rejected : Accepted 6th June General Comments (offer details, etc.) 5th June other offers all expired except the Sunset Sky suite which remained at Pending (unable to modify), so knew it was likely to be confirmed. Only one sky suite was available, but there were multiple Aqua Suite and Sunset Suite. Bid was strangely low for Sky Suite (highest bid available was £650 ish), while for the others I think it was max over £1k. Sunset Sky suite still for sale and was nearly double what was paid for the Aqua Class (even after including the extra £1030!), so have a bargain I think.

Have put this list together of the available cocktails, that shows where they have them and which package they are on. I think it’s got most venues on there now. Iona Cocktail List May 2023.pdf

Sorry, yes this is the same, apologies this isnt the clearest photo, but it’s a Canadian Sparkling wine, only available in the Glasshouse. It’s on the Deluxe only.

I’m not sure they have a Long Island Ice tea now (whether on the package or not). Certainly on Iona a couple of months ago they didn’t have one anywhere on any menu. Sadly they are one of the cruise lines with some of the fewest cocktails available. And being on Iona twice in the last 18 months they definitely had less this time than they did last year.

This isn’t a complete list and I think the person has only posted at a point in time based on the menus that have been posted online. no one has posted the Glasshouse menu yet, and seems nothing in this list from there. So still to see in Peller Ice I think.

I guess you’re talking about a fixed amount of alcoholic a day alongside unlimited non alcoholic, or something like that? I guess everyone would want something slightly different so wouldn’t be possible to come up with a set amount. and tbh at that stage you may as well pay as you go.?

I’m not aware of any cruise line doing this. You obviously have the option to pay as you go anyway, which is relatively reasonable on P&O anyway. Or if you are saying low amounts of alcohol, buy a soft drinks package and then add the odd alcoholic drink?

From what I see I’d say prices rises are only 2-3% ? soft drinks up 5p, cocktails up 20p, so been quite fair I think, and not as high as 5-10% ?

One of the first new P&O drinks menu photos has come through. This from Iona Olive Grove. Great to see more non alcoholic drinks included, like cans and bottles e.g. fevertree. And that’s on all the packages except the basic one.

A couple of the Admin in the big P&O Facebook groups have posted they have now had it clarified from P&O that the 15 drink cap is still for Alcoholic beverages as it was before.

Someone in my NCL sailing cruise Facebook page has apparently had an update from their TA suggesting that they’ve had an update it’s now been resolved? 🤷‍♂️ I guess we will hopefully find out today or tomorrow if that’s the case?

Why beer and wine and not other drinks? 🤷‍♂️. Also, let’s wait until we see what happens as my experience of receiving accurate and consistent information from via these cruise line call centre agents is not exactly great. 😊

Im sort of in this camp. I’m not like “I must have alcohol”, but if I was aware up front I would have considered these sort of points when weighing up my decisions. I’m flexible with cruise line and itinerary and maybe knowing there may be these restrictions in advance it would have lead me to consider an alternate line or cruise. There’s plenty of choices of cruise out there and NCL does have some Cons compared to others, but a Pro, and part of the appeal of going with NCL for me this time was to get a wider choice of cocktails. I’ve sailed with P&O most recently and missed the range of cocktails they have by comparison so this was a draw for me. So it’s a small consideration, but it’s something that attracted me towards NCL this time, even though I had to pay a bit more for this trip than I could have done with alternative options. Hence the disappointment of maybe not being able to access them for a proportion of the trip, including key days like first and last day. I do think it’s possible it’s a mess up on their side, but I also think it may be they then decided to try to get away without resolving it, hopefully there’s been enough uproar they are trying to fix the issue.

I guess you haven’t been to another English port or Belfast yet. NCL Star was in Belfast a couple of days ago and that was affected too. Why Scottish ports seem to be avoiding this seems to make no real sense to anyone at the moment…. I mean it’s good, but not sure it means the problem is resolved as I think last week Scottish ports were ok too? 🤷‍♂️ I think the real test will be when you get to Belfast and Liverpool on Friday and Saturday.

Yeah I’m intrigued as surely the same should apply there?

Yeah that was part of the reason I thought it was good to mention given her recent interactions with them! she’s not responded yet but I think she’s cursing and her mum did tag her so maybe she will respond ? 😊 Or maybe she will feel a bit awkward about it!

I think the reason for the lack of detail is primarily they don’t want to come out and say - 7 of your 10 days onboard you won’t be able to have anything but soft drinks! that and probably the usual thing that you don’t always get very informed or accurate responses for the customer service guys!

I’ve already started a post on Emma’s Facebook group, getting quite a lot of attention on there, so I think the more coverage, the more likely NCL will get uncomfortable about the impact.

hate to be bearer of bad news but Belfast is in Northern Ireland which is also part of the U.K. so only Dublin and Ringaskiddy that are not in the U.K.

This is the thing. one of the things I love whe. I board in the tern on is to get a cocktail and makes me feel like I’m on holiday then 😊 So to not be able to do that probably until the 2nd day is disappointing! I’ll have to stick with a mocktail! 😑🤷‍♂️

Urghh, that’s naff! I wonder what they will do in Scotland? Would think they have the same HMRC/Customs rules? I see Dawn is England 3 days and Scotland 3 days out of 10?!

Also going to ask some of the British social media cruise bloggers to see if they can (or are willing to) try to find out anything, as I’m sure they have contacts. That would be a good way to get a bit of attention on this 😊

https://www.ncl.com/uk/en/about-ncl/contact-us# I used the email link under pre-cruise guest services.

I’ve contacted them to ask for clarity on the situation and to see if this will be resolved for future sailings. May be good if others do the same to apply the pressure a little 😊 highly suspecting it’s them cutting corners and costs.