dolfan1980

19 hours ago, Victoria wood said:

My TA spoke to an NCL agent when I couldn’t find the cruise listed either and was worried it was cancelled altogether. NCL said it was fully booked and when that happens they remove from being able to search🤷‍♀️. I thought it odd cause before changing the itinerary there were lots of cabins available.

Sounds like people giving made up answers to get people to stop asking questions.  I'd be shocked if a sailing that far out is 50% booked at this point unless there was a large group.  Many of the folks here book a year or more in advance, many of us book within 30-90 days and I can count on one hand how many sailings I see officially sold out even a week before sailing.  I usually track prices on a site that shows all sailings including those that are sold out.

8 hours ago, Magicat said:

I have very few problems flying out of YYZ.  However, that is because I have to be there 3-4 hours in advance of my flight to check my bag, go through security, then if flying through the US, go through US pre clearance.  Arriving less than 2 1/2 hours you run the risk of missing your flight.

Returning waiting on the tarmac for 45 minutes until a gate is open and then another 45 mins for luggage are inconveniences that occur the last few times I flew through Toronto.

So my assessment is based on the additional time, sometimes more than the actual flight, it takes to have a problem/stress free experience in Toronto.  

Why do you think YUL would be better?  I pre-cleared in Montreal three weeks ago and the US customs hall was an utter mess and long lines.

4 hours ago, Magicat said:

I just did a high level search...does JetBlue fly from YVR?  They had some good flight options, long days but no overnights.  Not sure of your exact dates so just guessed at Feb for 8 nights.

All of those departures from SJU were the problem I came up against, nothing that works for a departure from a cruise.  We ended up booking Southwest to FLL and Flair to Ottawa coming home.  A risk, but I have AC status so as long as we get to Florida I can get last minute tickets on AC from there without too much trouble.

The answer is sometimes the price drops and maybe you'll get a better price.  It's also possible the sailing sells out.  It's such a weird time right now that nobody seems to know where/where things will be busy.  

You can probably also blame Liz Truss for your tanking currency contributing to the increase as well.  I am Canadian and was shocked going to Europe two weeks ago at how much the Euro and Pound Sterling have fallen compared to the Canada/US dollars.

On 10/2/2022 at 3:40 PM, whee-sailing said:

I had no idea how difficult it was going to be to fly Vancouver - Puerto Rico! The flight times are just awful. Most arrive in the middle of the night or are red eyes (but with multiple stops and layovers so it's not like you're sleeping). I thought about flying to Fort Lauderdale an extra day earlier and spending the night (I was already intending to arrive in San Juan the day before) and then flying from there but if my luggage gets lost on the flight to Fort Lauderdale (there will be a layover) then I'm hooped. For those who've done it, how did you do it?

 

And yes, I do regret not looking into this before I booked the cruises. The last time I flew to Puerto Rico I lived somewhere else.

I recently booked my flights for San Juan in January from Ottawa and also can't easily get there either and am overnighting in Montreal unfortuantely.  I think if you're checking bags and want to stay with the same airline at least, then perhaps book a daytime flight to YYZ or YUL and then onwards in the morning.  You could always do a red-eye, but I agree that those are brutal.  At least if you lose your luggage you can get it sent the next day perhaps.  I'm a never check luggage under any circumstances person, so I understand your dilemma.  

You could probably do the same thing with United/AA/Delta too who fly to YVR and do an overnight stop in Atlanta/Houston/Fort Lauderdale/Dallas, etc.

Currently $114/day CAD right now for my upcoming 5 day which is about $83/day USD.  Plus tax plus gratuity.  If it got to $68 perhaps we could stomach it.  It's currently more than we paid for the balcony with tax and gratuity added.

4 hours ago, Magicat said:

Have to agree YYZ sucks.  Pearson is our airport however we are now exploring alternative options like taking the train to Montreal and flying out from there.  

I fly 60-70 segments a year within Canada and being Ottawa based that now requires me to go through Montreal and Toronto fairly frequently post-covid...I wouldn't say Montreal is that much better than Toronto, certainly not better enough to justifying a train to Montreal to get a flight that probably is an incoming plane from Toronto anyways.

6 hours ago, LHT28 said:

That is a good  deal

We have to  pay $175  PP for the deviation on their sister company Oceania

Which makes little sense as you'd think the further away from a departure / arrival of the ship the less strain there would be on available seats.  I am surprised that they allow cancellation of their ground transportation though as I suspect they make a good profit there.

2 minutes ago, OCSC Mike said:

 

No problem.

 

Not being snarky, but doing the math, check-in opens 45 days out which is 6+ weeks.

Even better, only two days to go, thanks for that info.  It just says they'll e-mail me when it's available, didn't say when.  My last few sailings have been on NCL where it's 21 days before.  Nice!  Thanks again.

2 minutes ago, OCSC Mike said:

 

You can't because you won't have your set sail pass until after check-in.

That's what I thought, but was confused by some folks saying they were looking 5+ weeks out from their cruise.  Thanks for the reply, was making sure I didn't miss something and seems I didn't.  Can check in for mine soon and will use this trick when I do, thanks.

5 minutes ago, binro01 said:

Not necessarily true. I'm on Allure of the Seas (Oasis class ship), have the Deluxe Beverage package (More comprehensive then the included Open Bar package on NCL) in a Balcony. Have the Chops+1 specialty dining and Unlimited WiFi Stream VOOM vs 150 minutes.

The cost was significantly less than on NCL for an eastern Caribbean cruise on one of their breakaway plus class cruise ships. 20% less to be specific. My RCCL cruise is costing me 2280.00 with 200.00 OBC vs the NCL equivalent of of 3100.00 and no OBC (2 people 7N cruise)

My experience is certainly true, but I appreciate that yours has been different and I also continue to compare prices over time too.  I'm sure for every time of year and ship the pricing models are different and it pays to price out your specific circumstances and desires.  In your case it doesn't look like you value the drink package which is really, really expensive on Royal.  For my upcoming 5 day Navigator cruise it's currently $1000 for the drink package (which I won't buy at that price) and we only paid $1050 all in for the balcony room.

EDIT:  I see you did get the beverage package for that price which is impressive!

5 minutes ago, hazeleyes46 said:

Thanks 🙂  I have priced out the inside rooms for both ships. 

For me it really comes down to if you value the drink package and other free at sea items like the dinners and wifi.  For me, the drink package I love to have to take the stress out of extra costs in particular.  Royal is quite expensive to add that on top of the cruise fare.  Good luck deciding, there are worse problems to have 🙂  

On 8/3/2022 at 3:56 PM, OCSC Mike said:

 

I've booked many GTY's. It can be any time, but there's a trick to finding out your assignment early that usually works.

 

Method 1. If you have an apple device, add your set sail pass to your apple wallet. Numbers will now appear under your bar code. The numbers after the dash represent your cabin.

 

Method 2. Scan the bar code with a QR scanner from another device and that should also show you the numbers.

 

Hope this helps.

How does one do this before the check in period opens?  I've been on RCCL many times, but not since 2019.  Thanks.

I have sailed both, though my Oasis experience was when the ship was brand new.  If you could get both ships and packages for the exact same price I would go with the Oasis, there's just so much to do and so many options.  That said, I sailed the Joy last fall and it was probably my favourite cruise so far, especially love the Observation Deck.  

My experience with pricing is that for what I value, the NCL prices are significantly less than the equivalent thing on RCCL.  To get an outside balcony (not central park) mid-ship on the Oasis, plus a drink package, specialty meal and wifi, it would cost significantly more on RCCL than NCL.  That's what has drawn me to NCL in recent cruises.  I do have a RCCL cruise coming up in a few weeks though, so I'm not completely biased!

That said, if you're getting the equivalent cabin on Oasis, she's an amazing ship.

I'm sailing Epic Jan 22nd and it has dropped $250 Canadian since the payment date two weeks ago if that gives you any useful data point (anecdotal at best!).  We are booked in a balcony.  My 10% off code also would have expired at the end of Sept., so technically it was cheaper for me prior to the final payment date.

I haven't done it for many of the answers to the questions you have in your post.  They book you day of unless you request a deviation which has to be done a certain time in advance (want to say 75 days but that might be wrong).  They also charge you for the local transportation if you book air through NCL.  They also have full control of flights and seem to not care about putting you on red eyes, long stopovers, long waits after the cruise to depart, etc.  In order to deviate I think you have to call them before the deadline to deviate and there may also be a fee for that.

I just booked a SJU cruise for January and also had a really hard time with flights from Ottawa.  We are flying through Montreal with an overnight on Friday night and then down Saturday morning direct from Montreal (sail on Sunday).  Coming back I booked Southwest to Fort Lauderdale and Flair home (which if they go belly up will figure something out lol.  I also wasn't expecting it to be so hard, the last time we did YOW-IAD-SJU no problem at all.  Good luck.

Use a credit card.  While most Canadians are happy to take USD, they basically charge a 15% exchange rate giving you around 1.20 CA to 1.00 US.

Hi folks,

I've been reading up on all the positive and negative reviews of NCL Air.  I'm trying to get set up for an Epic sailing the winter, but struggling to book a flight that's halfway reasonable/affordable.  If we go the NCL Air option, what are the odds they will have us on one of the 4am arrivals in San Juan and departures in the middle of the night (e.g. 2am departure from San Juan)?  Has anyone recently gotten flights from NCL (last winter I guess is recent at this point) to Canada and had good luck with them?  There's basically one option on Air Canada mid-day that gets us home same day, would they book this, or is an overnight stop in Toronto or otherwise something we could get stuck with as well?

Also curious if the transfers that automatically get added to the booking are required or if we can decline those?  No reason to spend over $200 on transfers when we could get a taxi or uber for far less, especially since we would definitely be arriving a day before the cruise given limited flight options if something was to go wrong.

Thank you in advance, I know there are lots of posts on this general topic, but I didn't find anything specific to San Juan which seems to be particularly difficult to access from Canada now that it seems Sprit/Jetblue dominiate most routes from San Juan and United which are the usual link to Canada have far fewer flights than the used to it seems.

5 minutes ago, CruiseAF said:

I have never seen this particular discount. I would snag that deal asap! 

It is nice for sure, cruise next cert and 10% takes my balcony ABC cruise under 3k Canadian for January which is pretty good.  

Does anyone have experience with the expiry of these codes?  What I'm specifically wondering is if the 10% off I have that expires the end of September if it will likely disappear or if it will likely just be replaced with another one just like the "sales" that keep churning.  I know it's a gamble, but curious if anyone has first hand experience.  Have a cruise to book, but ideally would wait until my next visa cycle until my work bonus is paid.

1 hour ago, SpacemanSpiff said:

That's blasphemy! 😆

When The Local had hundreds of Americans on a sailing out of Miami wanting to see it (It was the first bowl game of the championship now that I think of it) and they're playing a soccer game on TV that was clearly not live given it was 3am in Europe, it just goes to show they're a little out of touch with what people want and they could pretty easily offer.

Isn't this what cell phone camera lights were invented for?  😛

30 minutes ago, Rob-Bob said:

I logged onto my account and these show up.  I just looked based on another posted topic that mention the 20% discount on their account.  I just logged in and find it interested that I would never have known if not for reading it on CC.  No notification from NCL that these were posted.

 

Does anyone know why I am getting these?  Can they be used together?  

 

Thank you CC posters for making me aware of these.

 

 

Coupon	ID	Amount	Dates	Onboard Credit
10% Off Discount Future Cruise Credit		10% Off	Expires On9/30/2022 Sail by12/31/2023	Not Applicable
20% Off Discount Future Cruise Credit		20% Off	Expires On9/30/2022 Sail by12/31/2022	Not Applica

I wish I had that one, I don't see any coupons on my account, when I go to pay for a cruise I see the 10% one unless the 20% is new today.