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I’ve booked one that’s provided by Gastineau for NCL. As I’m sailing in October they don’t offer the photo safari version due to the shorter daylight hours but their other whale watching tour is called “discover Alaska’s whales”. The discover Alaska’s whales excursion description provided by NCL wasn’t at all appealing but when I contacted Gastineau they provided a more detailed description. Through NCL the Gastineau excursion is about $50 more than the Allen Marine one.

Oddly not my experience on Epic, I was streaming a rugby match, couldn’t even get the player to load when I was close to the cafe but it worked perfectly well in my cabin. I’d say keep an eye out for the access points fixed to the corridor ceilings, if your cabin is near one then you should get a decent connection. However the back haul satellite connection is a big issue so if there are a good lot of people trying to communicate with the outside world your connection could be slow no matter which package you pay for.

If you’re on Breakaway then more likely to be ok as that ship has Starlink. Unfortunately the planned roll out to the rest of the fleet has been badly delayed.

Depending on your ship there can be issues docking at Warnemunde. There is a narrow channel access and if the wind is too strong from the wrong direction it can delay docking. I don’t think they use Warnemunde for embarkation anymore so if there are issues with the wind they could skip the port. If you are booking anything with a 3rd party provider make sure their cancellation policy allows for not making port.

Has anyone ever seen those check-in times enforced at the port?

I’ve never seen that as an option on a travel insurance purchase in Ireland and that’s also probably the case in the UK and other EU countries.

Within Europe there are couple of quirks on border crossing… Ireland to/from uk technically you don’t need a passport due to the common travel area but Ryanair require a passport and possibly other transport providers also. Western Europe /EU continental countries in the Schengen area, no passport required once you are within the area, e.g if you fly/sail into France from Ireland/UK/USA/etc. you have to show your passport but it isn’t needed when entering Spain, Italy, Belgium etc from France regardless of what country you are from. the passport period of validity requirement depends on what country you are sailing from & to, e.g. Spain to Italy = no passport as you would have shown your passport getting into Spain in the first place. UK to Spain = passport officially needed but period of validity depends on Spain’s requirement for your country of citizenship. the cruiseline wants passports for ID in Europe because there’s too many inconsistencies with any other form of ID. There was a bit of a joke in Ireland when we first had an influx of polish citizens using their polish driving licenses and the gardai (police) didn’t realise their license layout was different and were taking the polish word for Name as being the name of the driver when issuing tickets.

I was going to suggest booking and then apply the credit when it appears in your account. I know I've been able to do that in the past. Heck I've even been able to apply extra cruise next credits when a promo has activated to allow multiple credits be applied to studios long after I made my original booking.

Hmm they should definitely refund you more than £1 unless the UK has unwound the EU regs that require airlines to refund all taxes and charges if you cancel/miss a flight. The airline can only cling onto the fare portion as the other charges and taxes are related to actually taking the flight(s). They usually gain on the cost of the phone call you make to a premium rate number in order to reclaim those fees.

For a family of 8 it would probably be cheaper to arrange tours privately. Check trip advisor or the local port tourism websites for listings. You can always post here or on the trip advisor forums to ask for others experiences with specific tour operators.

They’re selling to a person on a European website and per EU rules they should be making it crystal clear at the time of purchase for FAS that additional sales taxes may be incurred on drink orders at US ports. We (European customers) pay for FAS, pricing depends on current promos and length of cruise. It’s typically €149 for a 7 day cruise at the moment but we don’t get hit with the gratuities associated with either the drink package nor the specialty dining. A few years ago the daily service charge was built into the main cruise fare but was that decoupled to be a separate line item you could elect to pre-pay or not.

it is standard across the USA for local sales taxes to be excluded from all pricing, it is NOT standard across the rest of world and definitely not in Europe. I’m looking at up to an extra $70 per night in local taxes and charges for a hotel in Seattle. If Spain has a derogation on price display in the hospitality sector is then that is a specific exception to EU laws. There are various exceptions to EU laws across the EU but they are country dependent. Something like Ireland continuing to use imperial measures for beer instead of metric is just such an exception. Pre covid in Ireland we had differing VAT rates for eating/drinking on the premises v’s take out but both prices were published on menus. The VAT on the drink package is already included at point of purchase for European customers unless they book via a US travel agent so NCL can’t charge it a second time. These extra charges at European ports should not apply to customers who purchased their FAS or Drinks package via a European web portal as they’ve already been paid per EU and UK regulations. Heck by rights European guests shouldn’t be getting hit with the sales taxes at US cruise ports either. The EU made it a requirement that travel prices must be inclusive of all mandatory taxes/fees when the airlines were constantly advertising €5 fares but then lumping on €20+ taxes and charges onto that.

Google needs to allow an -ish on opening times. I want to put 5pm-ish for our closing time at work as we close earlier of it’s deadly quiet or if it’s been a busy day and we get a lull at 4.50pm-ish. The local chippers all have ish beside their opening times on their windows here.

I’ve just had a scary thought, I’ve been using one of my cards to make excursion payments for a friend so I hope when we get to check-in that the system won’t have a meltdown when she finally puts her own card details in. She’s not particularly techie and this is her first cruise so I’ve been handling everything for her.

This seems crazy, a lot of folks might only have one credit card logged against their stateroom to cover multiple guests like their partner or kids. Are they now going to decline everyone’s card except the keycard of the person whose name matches? I work in retail and my company card got blocked a couple of weeks ago because I hadn’t responded to an authorisation query that I never received! Since it was unblocked I’ve had messages twice to authorise the original charge that triggered the query in the first place and despite saying it was okay it still hasn’t gone through. What’s truly nuts is that there is an authorisation mechanism built into the banking app which is what I usually get notified through and never have any issues with. But this one charge is triggering a text message alert but nothing in the app. 🤯 I’ve seen one fun quirk with customers using Revolut for apple or android pay, our card machine tells them they are in location A, but our WiFi tells their device they are in location B so the mismatch causes a card declined, the fix… turn off the WiFi on your phone. (Our broadband provider doesn’t program their routers with the location they’re actually installed at, instead it’s some random location in Ireland).

If you mean Larry Mullen of U2, then not at provincial level. He’s a dub so Leinster is his local side, I’m from Munster. There’s the national side Ireland which is the whole island (Northern Ireland and Ireland) and 4 provincial pro sides - Leinster, Munster, Ulster and Connacht. My home county was considered part of Connacht by English invaders but is actually part of Munster. Munster would be my team but Connacht are 2nd, and after that it’s whichever side has the strongest connections to Munster or Connacht with Leinster only supported if playing Saracens or Toulon (2 moneybags teams from England and France respectively). Leinster lost this season’s European final to a French team coached by a few ex Munster players. Much to the disgust of the Leinster supporters the Munster fans were almost all supporting Stade Rochelais (La Rochelle). The Connacht supporters also went for La Rochelle as one of their former players is now with that club and then the Ulster supporters had a similar excuse as one of the ex Munster players in the coaching setup is also ex Ulster. Tribal politics are strong in Ireland….

I managed to avoid covid for ages and did so through 2 cruises and long haul flights. I eventually caught it in October last year at home just 2 weeks before I was eligible for a second booster. I’m mildly asthmatic and it’s usually triggered by respiratory viruses. As it was a bank holiday weekend I couldn’t talk to my doctor until 4 days into it, he wound up just prescribing me steroid tablets along with upping my inhaler usage. It was pure misery for the first few days and completely wiped me out for about 2 weeks, if I’d been on a ship I’d never have left my cabin. I probably would have shaken it off without the tablets but would have been an even longer recovery. I am eligible for a booster again now but I’m putting it off a while until it will give me added protection before my next cruise.

Bet you’ve some Celtic ancestry in there, I’m violently allergic to Aloe which was in pretty much every hand sanitizer pre-covid and of course 99% of after-sun products. I worked long and hard to find sun block that works on my skin and unfortunately that company is closing down later this year. Any time I spot an after sun without aloe I buy it regardless of whether I need it or not. A lot of sunblock products have zinc in them which is a common allergen for those of Celtic and northern Spanish ancestry. Spain has basically stopped using the copper euro coins due to the level of zinc in them.

Same here, I’ve had a male classmate significantly taller than me give out that I walked too fast. I’m not quite as quick these days but still get annoyed at slow pokes blocking my way.

I’m doing an Alaskan cruise in October and live on the west coast of Ireland. While some elements will likely remind me of Ireland I’m still expecting the wildlife and glaciers to be enough of an attraction to make it worth the long haul to get there. I’ve been to Oregon briefly in March about ten years ago and it was every bit as damp as home. Snow is a rarity in my patch of Ireland and we define don’t have any glaciers. While dolphins are regular visitors whales are not so common, nor are large birds of prey, there is currently an effort ongoing to reintroduce eagles to Ireland so I haven’t seen them in the wild either. I see a lot of American tourists at work and shared houses with American students on study abroad, they always commented how the locals here were so blasé about castles and other pre-colonial features dotted around our landscape. There was literally an old castle/watchtower in the field beside my primary (grade) school and another 4 within sight of our house, most in ruins, just one that’s been kept usable for tourist purposes.

I have almost 350 ID/password combos in my personal account password manager and probably another hundred or so in the manager at work. There is no way I’m going to remember all of those and some of them have a requirement to change the password on a regular basis. Having to remember one or two complicated passwords is a heck of a lot easier than the alternatives.

Tikka masala is definitely not traditional Indian but it is very yummy. It’s my go to when I am eating in an Indian restaurant in Ireland, I’ll occasionally go for the tandoori but only starter sized portions. But I have issues with certain peppers so tend to be iffy about anything where there are mystery veg in sauce.

I usually book very early and I book a studio, on my upcoming cruise(Oct ‘23) I could only use one CN at the time of booking (Jan ‘22) but I managed to apply a second one about a month ago when there was a promo running. I’m currently using my second batch of 4xCNs, I wound up passing one from my first batch to a friend as it was about to expire thanks to covid. The transferability of the CNs is one of their benefits if you re not a frequent cruiser, I’m doing well to cruise once a year so I push the expiry dates to the limit.

I would suggest everyone grab screenshots of the FAS/PBP terms/offers on the NCL website and keep them for reference. in Europe you can certainly raise a case for false advertising when they move the goalposts. after dipping in and out of this thread I will be screenshotting every possible description of the various packages and their associated t&cs whenever I next book a non-USA cruise. there was none of these shenanigans when I cruised the western med in 2021. I was already planning to bring a couple of bottles of bubbly onto the ship for my cruise out of Seattle since they shrank the options available.

When I was an undergrad I was in the volleyball club and there was an abiding theory that if you drank just right amount the night before you would play brilliantly the next morning! We had mixed results with that theory. There were 2 fellas in the club who were notorious for falling asleep at the night club and regularly had to be carried out to the bus back to our accommodation but they were also 2 of the best players in the club. At one tournament one of the sleepers woke up as we got back to the accommodations (everyone sleeping in the sports hall on gym mats) he disappeared off into the bowls of the building, he reappeared just in time for the first game the next morning still in his nightclub attire.