UKstages

the thing is that other cruise lines (such as carnival) serve this market segment better and have been doing it far longer. NCL invented, more or less, freestyle cruising and is throwing away its brand equity by the decline in its product. it is perilously close to no longer being what it once was and will have to compete with others - who do what they are now doing - better.

no liquor can be brought onboard. well, it can, but it will be held until the end of the cruise. (typically, this applies to in-port purchases.) which tequila and gin do you want? is it not available onboard?

sailed last month from the manhattan cruise terminal. this was not the way it played out. it's true that there are now separate groups, but sapphires are not lumped in with platinums. sapphires and diamonds are together and i'm not sure if ambassadors are in there, too. as i reported in another thread at the time... there was nearly a riot in the terminal when the NCL contract employee told the waiting sapphires and diamonds to be patient, that they would board "next," right after the platinums. one of his colleagues schooled him and let him know it was the other way around. so, i know platinums are in their own waiting area, at the time it was to the right of the boarding door, whereas the sapphires and diamonds were to the left of the boarding door.

onda, los lobos, cagney's los lobos a second time and onda a second time. yes, really. the prima's le bistro is not the finest in the fleet. and most people will have views of lifeboats... not really what you want from a fine dining experience. avoid palomar... failed in both concept and execution. i would also like to mention that the indulge food hall, while crowded, rocks! some of the best food onboard any NCL ship. it's a complimentary venue! plan on eating there many times throughout your voyage.

NCL is clearly now going after first time cruisers. and they have been very successful at attracting them. the problem is that isn't a business model. you can't rely on an endless stream of first time cruisers. you have to knock their socks off or at least please them, so they'll come back. (in truth, you actually can rely on a stream of endless first time cruisers, but that's a different business model... and it's not sustainable.) a lot of the people in this forum have velvet handcuffs... they have status on NCL that gives them certain benefits. they will continue to cruise with NCL, although we've seen quite a few platinum, sapphire and diamond folks who say that they have had enough and will only now cruise on their terms. they will accept the decline in quality if the sailing otherwise meets their needs in terms of price point, departure city and itinerary. other cruise lines are making it quite easy to literally "jump ship," with status matches in loyalty programs and even casino loyalty programs. NCL's post-covid recovery can not be measured now, amidst pent up demand and the high prices and the full ships. joe bob's cruise line could make money in this environment with twenty year old ships! no, the measure of their post-covid recovery will be two and three years from now, when they can see how many they've attracted to their ships during this period return to sail with them again. you can't continue to bleed the core product dry if you want people who are accustomed to that product to buy more of your product. besides, the cruise industry already has the product NCL is becoming. it's called carnival cruise lines, a company that many have now compared - favorably - to NCL. i used to buy a lot of shirts from eddie bauer. they were so well made... the stitching, the thick fabric, the moisture wicking. then something changed. they cut corners, they used substandard fabric, the shirts were thin and tore easily and they shrunk in the wash. it wasn't the same product. i stopped buying. people have talked in this thread about "shrinkflation"... that comparison is not apt here. shrinkflation would be if they charged the same price for a 7 day cruise that they used to charge for a 10 day cruise. (that's the smaller hershey bar for the same price.) what's happening here is that you're buying a cruise - of any duration - and, regardless of the price, the products and services delivered are consistently falling short of expectations. i actually rather like NCL. i'm sapphire latitudes and elite in the CAS program. i have those velvet handcuffs. as much as i comment on the disappearing hash browns and cookies, as much as I complain about service and design faults of the prima class ships, as much as i mock their bogus sales and their fee for a second lobster, none of those things really affect me. i like real shredded fried potatoes (not hockey pucks), i rarely eat cookies, i don't think i've ever had two lobster tails in the haven, i am doing just fine with once a day housekeeping services and i don't pay much attention to their "sales" because - as a casino guest - i don't pay outright for my cruises. i still see a viable NCL value proposition... for now. but if the product continues to deteriorate... and the food quality goes any lower in MDRs and specialties... maybe not so much.

correct. it's a big issue. heaven forbid there is an assault or an altercation of some kind, the OP is on her own... no action can likely be undertaken against NCL because the parents set about to deceive NCL methodically and with specific intent. the minor would have been left to sleep alone in her room every night. you're completely misreading this. "at the time of boarding" does not refer to how they enter the ship together, e.g. the adult accompanying the minor at the time of boarding, two by two, as if they were headed onto noah's ark. the phrase "at the time of boarding" refers to the age of the minor at the time of boarding. if you're celebrating your 21st birthday during the cruise, NCL will consider you a minor for the duration of the cruise. that's what that phrase refers to! no reasonable person would expect that the parent and child have to be "joined in the hip" for the duration of the cruise. that's not what this is about. and yet that continues to be the main thrust of your posts.

the 3% is a "convenience fee" imposed for getting cash in the casino, although it will appear on your folio as an "entertainment" fee (an ordinary purchase) and not as a cash advance. no other charges onboard are subject to this fee.

this was exactly the case on my recent getaway sailing out of new york. i chose to eat lunch there on embarkation day. only two other tables were occupied. one or two days later, there was a 30 - 45 minute wait for lunch and dinner and that lasted for the entire cruise.the place was slammed every day. imagine being a server in the sleepy american diner. and then, suddenly, they make it a free venue and you never a moment to yourself ever again. in any event, yes, they were open on embarkation day.

donna summer was removed from the prima? wait! what? did she have a 15 year old unaccompanied minor in the room across the hall from her? or did she try to decorate her door? which transgression did she commit?

that article is from last november. the video, while new, is from an unknown youtuber with about fifty subscribers, who has probably just stumbled on an old story. this seems to me like a followup to the well known case (first reported here by @Sailing12Away) of haven suite hot tubs being unexpectedly shut down without explanation. at first NCL was quite evasive, then it became apparent it had something to do with health and sanitation and CDC protocols. what's different in these reports is the mention of a one-hour limitation. i hadn't heard that before. but i don't believe this is really anything new. nothing to see here.

when you go back to january, it's possible that the restaurant had not yet been converted to a complimentary venue. not that the conversion has a bearing necessarily on opening hours for breakfast, but certainly for opening hours of 12 - 5, particularly if they were getting ready to make it over into a complimentary venue.

it's a 70-minute history lesson of tudor kings and queens as if it were told by the spice girls. nominated for six tony awards and won two: best score and best costume design. it's very good.

this question gets asked once a week. do a search. opinions and eye rolls abound. could you get extra keys? absolutely! does NCL allow minors to be in a room unaccompanied, across the hall from their parents? absolutely not! NCL expressly forbids this. an adjoining room, yes. a room across the hall on her own? no.

while the video report seems legit, no sources are quoted and this seems inconceivable to me and largely unenforceable. there is nothing in NCL's FAQs - internal or external - about this. not yet, anyway. but if this is true, i imagine they need the tubs to store the excess lobsters from the haven that are no longer being ordered due to the charge for secondary crustaceans.

so silly for NCL to have an entire casino department with dedicated phone numbers and cruise consultants to handle the "very few people" who qualify for casino comps.

two things: the american diner has always had a complimentary breakfast mini-buffet on all the ships i've been on that had an american diner. as with everything else on NCL, inconsistency is their hallmark. i can't speak to what may or may not have been available on your sailing. i can tell you that it wasn't listed as a dining venue in the daily, presumably so they could put the spread out willy nilly, as they saw fit. it was always kind of a secret discovery kind of thing, since american diner was not a complimentary venue. if the ship is not at capacity, there would be no need to open up american diner for breakfast. now that the american diner is a complimentary venue (lunch and dinner), they have standardized the breakfast availability (also complimentary) and it's listed in the daily. at least it was on my 1/27 getaway sailing.

some folks are, some are not. kindly read posts #35 and #36 again. it is entirely unclear what is being referenced. first you talked about how you could not remove apple wallet from the phone. then you were replying to the previous poster who said he had to wait for his venue attendees (who did not use apple wallet) to access their tickets using the internet. and in reply, you said "also, you do not need the internet to access boarding passes, tickets, loyalty cards etc." but using the wallet was not a part of that discussion, as the previous poster had already indicated that folks were not using the wallet under his scenario.

midnight ET 120 days out. NCL website is on miami time.

it was open for a buffet style breakfast on the getaway about a month ago. very limited options, but they were open.

well, i hate to have to say this... and i hate to bury it in this nondescript thread, but here goes: apple is making major changes to iMessage this year. it's mostly about taking future-proof security measures, but the iOS 17.4 update will include changes to iMessage that may forever end the text massage backdoor loophole. or so i fear. too soon to tell. the new PQ3 messaging protocol is all about protecting your messages as they travel through cyber space. it's part of their post-quantum cryptography plan. but it might mean you'll have to fork over ten bucks to text. on the plus side, the android/iOS incompatibility will be a thing of the past as part of this same update.

i don't disagree. the beatles and their music is indeed timeless. but my experience onboard NCL is that you're not really getting the beatles music as it was supposed to be performed; the fake four are not timeless, they're just wasting a bunch of my time. you've clearly had better luck with the beatles onboard NCL than i have. every single quartet i've seen has been a dud. it's especially apparent if you see them in the cavern club up close, as opposed to the theatre. distance can hide a lot of blemishes, if not the sound. in any event, i was using "the beatles" as a data point to illustrate how ridiculous it is to say that they eliminated this and they eliminated that to appeal to younger cruisers. if NCL wanted to appeal to younger cruisers, they wouldn't put "the beatles" onboard several ships.

how is that working for NCL? that's what gets discussed here on the daily. have they gone too far? have they alienated their core customers while not bringing in enough new customers to take their place? i'd say opinions are decidedly mixed here in this forum.

it can if "paul" can't sing. invariably, out of the four beatles onboard certain NCl ships, there are a couple who look really good, but can't sing and a couple who look like andy williams and paul williams and can sing. by the way, as far as "the beatles" are concerned... for those who really think that NCL is going after "younger cruisers," that's a hell of a way to court them... with a tribute band of a group whose last concert was nearly 60 years ago! most younger cruisers don't know who the beatles are and are unfamiliar with most of their songs. if they really wanted to shift to catering to younger cruisers, they would produce a show called "swiftmania" (not taylor swift, but an incredible simulation).

it's de riguer on cruise critic!

if you haven't taken a screenshot of your boarding card or tickets or loyalty cards or whatnot or loaded them into your wallet, you do indeed need the internet to access those documents. this is precisely what was referenced in post #35.