ontheweb

One conclusion I think we can reasonably make is that if guest services really is advising passengers to remove the DSC, then no one on guest services is sharing the DSC.

Why Oscar Meyer? They could just eat fruits and vegetables, and it would even be more healthy.

The inside cabins are definitely worth it. And they are so dark that it makes it easy to sleep at night. That last piece of wisdom comes from my DW after our first cruise. We have sailed in insides since then except once when an inside guarantee became an OV cabin. One other time we were upgraded, but I declined because we did not want to be under a noisy bar.

I just know what the e-mail from NCL said. It said they were cancelling due to a low tide, IIRC 1 meter, or maybe it was 1 foot.

We never booked out of season (DW was a teacher). But the rest work for us. Neither of is a foodie, I am not really a drinker and DW cannot drink as it is contraindicated with a prescription drug she takes. And we like inside cabins as they are dark for sleeping.

We missed 2 ports on the Prima, Brugge for low tide and Isafjordur which everyone missed. At some point an OBC of $14 and change showed up.

Here's another example of their klunky IT. On our cruise in August, we disembarked in Reykjavik. We had previously been charged $75 each with our BOGO for transfers. DW said, we are not going to wait for so long at the airport (we had a 5 PM flight), so she bought an excursion for us that eventually took us to the airport. We asked before buying it whether the original charge would come off automatically and were told yes. But it did not, and I had to go to customer service to get it removed. And sorry to say, we were still at the airport forever as our flight was delayed. 😢

I agree, but how then do they justify you pay the tips as if you bought as much drinks as you are allowed to buy as opposed to just the ones you do buy?

That is the only thing that makes sense about the question you are answering.

When we boarded the Prima in Southampton, they just had passengers get in line to board as they got off the transfer bus. No one checked the boarding times on the documents. I had estimated when we would get there and put down the 12:30 to 1 boarding time. We boarded earlier by about a half hour.

I think what is gone is the WOW factor. I remember feeling WOW when we saw our first cruise ship. Now the feeling is good we're finally here.

Back when the various cruise lines were inundated with requests for refunds due to all the Covid cancellations, there were many posts in various cc forums of people who "won" their credit card disputes but ended up being banned from future cruises by the cruise line whose charge they had disputed. And there were also posts warning that this would be what would happened and counseling others to instead of disputing a charge they should be patient.

Yes, and they will always post the all aboard time. Plus you will see it when leaving the ship.

On the cruise we completed last month, DW said we are not just sitting in the airport forever. I am going to book an excursion. There were supposed to be two of them, but the one she wanted no longer existed. Actually, that was lucky as it was a walking tour, and it poured that day in Reykjavik. So she booked the other one which turned out to be a a fantastic museum about the geology of Iceland. IIRC, the name of the museum was Perclan. NCL said the charge for our transfers would automatically be taken off if we booked a tour ending in the airport. But they were not, and I had to request that they be taken off. And, unfortunately, we ended up with too many hours in the airport despite the tour as our plane was delayed.

I am going to break this down into different categories---cruise line excursions, private excursions, and do it yourself. cruise line excursions---Two come to mind. The first was the Bob Marley bus in Ochos Rios, Jamaica. Just wonderful music plus you got to see a part of Jamaica that the average cruiser does not see. The second cruise line excursion that comes to mind is the bus back to Heathrow from Dover with a walking tour of Dover plus a stop in Canterbury. We had an excellent guide and it also helped that we knew a few people on the tour from our cruise roll call. The best thing about it was instead of feeling like your cruise vacation was over, you still felt like you were on vacation. (In 2020 we were going to do something similar on a Princess Norwegian fjords cruise and return to Heathrow by way of Stonehenge. My DW actually was looking forward to that more than the cruise itself.) private excursion-- this one is easy our Alla 2 day tour of St. Petersburg. Just fantastic, and our guide Viktoria was superb. She went on to open her own touring company the following year, SPB tours. And we really bonded with all of the other 8 passengers on the tour. (BTW, I set it up on our roll call.) on your own--I would say it was on our very first port, Villefrance (Probably spelled wrong.) You could go to Nice, Cannes, or Monaco. We went to Nice and went to the Matisse and Chagall Museums. Afterwards DW went swimming in the Mediterranean. She left me to watch our stuff, but put me by several topless French women to make my part of it more interesting.🤣

5, NCL, HAL, Princess, Carnival, and Royal Caribbean.

The Prima either does not have lifeboats that are certified for tendering or the captain refuses to tender there with the amount of passengers on the ship. Either way it has skipped the port of Isafjordur every time it has been scheduled this year.

The e-mails that they sent me pre-cruise that always bothered me were the ones about our BOGO flights. Every time I got one, and there were several of them, I expected that one or more of the flights had changed. I would go to my printed copy, and they would always be exactly the same. I would then get the exact same e-mail from my TA, but I knew that was just being forwarded and there would be no change as I had already checked.

There are no formal nights/

They know that with social media ever present, making passengers miss the ship will destroy their business. I even remember having read (probably on the cc forums) stories of independent tour operators helping each other out if one has a problem getting passengers back as they know bad publicity for one tour operator can affect all others when people might read about passengers stranded by an independent tour operator.

I am so thankful that my DW did not need an emergency evacuation from our last cruise. Our first conversation on our wedding anniversary went Are you awake? Yes. Happy Anniversary Happy Anniversary. Could you get the daily and see when the medical center is open. This was about a week into our cruise, and we were having a sea day between Norway and Iceland. She said she had been constipated the entire cruise so far. The doctor examined her and gave her a prescription (which we later learned was an OTC drug in the USA). Still feeling that way, she saw her own doctor at home, said to take an OTC drug. And then about another week later, she ended up in an ambulance, emergency room, and, the hospital for 4 days with a twisted bowel. If this had progressed faster, we surely would have needed out travel insurance! You never know what could happen.

And feeling invulnerable.

If you do take the 1 or 2 day deviation, you will receive a credit for $25 off the first passenger. Also note if you end up with Iceland Air, they do not provide a meal even on trans-Atlantic flights. They do provide beverages, water, soda, juice. Other than that, there is food for sale. But you are better off bringing you own. (We bought food at the airport for our flight back home on Iceland Air after our cruise.)

Right, no cc company will allow a dispute of a charge until it actually goes through as posted. I think the real problem here is that when contacting Princess no one seems to have any idea what the extra charge is. And yes, we all want to hear how this is eventually resolved.

When talking about cruise experiences NOW, anything pre-Covid is kind of irrelevant.