UKstages

nobody is really disputing the points you have made. and they have been made many times in this thread. what NCL can do and what they should do in a customer service oriented environment, may be two entirely different things. few would argue that NCL has handled the communication on this in anything other than a reprehensible way. they are only making things worse by their obfuscation and delays. they don't have to provide compensation, but they should, they don't have to provide an explanation, but they should. and they should treat the human beings onboard, both employees and guests, with respect and dignity. by all accounts, they haven't done that. my goodness, the captain won't even make a bloody announcement... to apologize, to empathize, to put people at ease. the fish stinks from the head down... and the captain won't even talk to his guests, all of whom have entrusted their safety and well being to him!

i was referring to my personal experience of having met people in person who i had known only online. cruising didn't enter into the equation.

the reports are real. if anything the decline in quality and service is underreported and deemphasized because of forum participants' love of cruising. the problem, as i see it, isn't so much the removal of cookies or smoked salmon or veuve cliquot or using lesser cuts of meat, or the closing down of premium broadway entertainment or the shift to once a day house keeping or the unavailability of your favorite brands at the bar or charging more for your favorite brands at the bar... any one or two or three or four of these things is completely understandable. it's the assault of all of them over a relatively short period of time that has taken its toll on frequent cruisers.. the effect is overwhelming and severely reduces the value proposition. will it swing back? if past is prologue, it will. but how long that will take is anybody's guess. if people continue to sail at these prices, with these reduced levels of products and services, there may not be a marketplace correction at all.

how are you figuring $100 a day? the actual "cost" for most people is $20 a day in gratuities. the drink package is "free" as part of the "free at sea" program. are you assuming there are those who actually pay outright for the drink package? very very very very few people do so... probably fewer than .05% as for the healthy profit, it's likely calculated on expected consumption... which is likely why NCL prohibits sharing. my experience has been that those that are abusive online are equally likely to be abusive in person, particularly if they have been drinking.

do they offer a 2.0 mbps service? if so, you will have solved the mystery! if not, then it is NCL throttling, for sure. there may well be. there usually are, but if you have signal and can conduct a speed test, you are not, by definition, in a dead spot! please understand, nobody is badmouthing starlink here. starlink is a fine product, albeit with questionable business practices that have nothing to do with cruise lines. the thrust of the dialogue here is to say that starlink is not our savior. (it would be if NCL were simply passing the product on to its guests with no speed brakes.) so whatever weight or value we placed on NCL switching to starlink in the hopes of improving its wifi and internet service has been misplaced. because, in the end, the new internet service on NCL ships is pretty much exactly like the old internet service. because that's the way NCL wants it.

it doesn't have to be starlink equipment. it's probably not. many people believe NCL left the wifi infrastructure on the ship untouched. again, starlink is new to NCL... starlink gets the bandwidth to the ship; what happens after that is of no interest to starlink. because they wish to sell two different packages... one "regular" package and one allegedly suitable for streaming. so they can reserve capacity for senior officers and business use of the internet by select staff members. so they can reserve the right to offer better faster connections to VIP customers.

i have. i don't need to google to know that the starlink connection is as slow as molasses. the reason for it is open to discussion. but speed tests are quite reliable. the cruise line can absolutely throttle the connection; the cruise line controls the distribution on the ship and it has absolutely nothing to do with the starlink product. the cruise line can make full capacity (or any download speed) available to select staff or senior officers and even select individual passengers (if it so chooses). if they wanted to, they could provide tiered service, with diamond and ambassador latitudes members getting faster speeds, for instance. if you read the RCCL forum, you'll see that people were getting outrageously fast speeds (for service at sea) of 100 mbps or higher when starlink was first introduced (ships at or near full capacity). then RCCL throttled the service, much as NCL has done and folks are getting 2 mbps or less. starlink gets the bandwidth to the ship; how NCL chooses to distribute that bandwidth is entirely up to NCL. what starlink will do, as i understand it, is prioritize data delivery, so that certain commercial customers might get faster speeds than others or variable speeds. i'm willing to bet that cruise lines, though, are priority customers, just by the sheer size of the contracts. but, again, that has no bearing on which speed(s) a particular cruise line will choose to deliver to its guests and crew.

respectfully, that is your point. that view may not be shared by others. to me, it's a lot like spending $3000 0r $4000 to go see taylor swift and instead i get taken against my will to a charo concert. and when i protest, i'm told that it's really for my benefit because my concert going experience is actually being enhanced. and then several anonymous people online tell me there really is no difference because they are both internationally famous blonde singers and both have been on "the tonight show." bonus! as long as i get to see a pony, i am fine with this.

kindly read post #91 in its entirety. hmmm. perhaps. i do know that if i booked a "florida keys" cruise and was told that sailing in and around key west was a central component of that cruise, i would be pretty upset when tampa was substituted for key west. but, hey, you know, maybe that's just me. and then when hundreds of key west lovers assembled in the atrium to protest and request information, i would not ignore them. and then when their videos flooded the internet, i wouldn't issue a statement that disguises the truth. i would instead acknowledger my error in communication, i'd explain what happened and why, and i'd apologize to the key west lovers and then, if in fact i or my company screwed up, i'd apologize for that, too and then explain how i intended to make it right. and then i'd make sure that complimentary key lime pie was on the menu in every restaurant that night. but, hey, you know, maybe that's just me.

would somebody, for the love of pete, please share the "explanation." some folk seem to think there was a bonafide explanation offered up by NCL. i still have not seen an actual explanation other than that NCL wished to enhance the guest experience by providing more time in stanley. can we agree that's not an explanation? if not, there's little point in continuing this discussion. that "explanation" doesn't explain why they've chosen to deviate from the original route. it's not a question of choosing to accept an explanation or not, it's nota. question of what is or is not antarctica... it's a question of knowing an explanation when one sees one. you can't accept an explanation until an explanation is offered.

i'm pretty sure most of the tours run in conjunction with the ships schedule. at that time of year, you'll probably have daylight until midnight or 2 AM or thereabouts. so, i imagine many tours would not even begin until 4:30 or 5:00 or even 6:00 PM.

that is astonishing. i reckon the only way i would ever get 70 mbps on any NCL internet connection would be to have an improper relationship with the captain.

kindly refer to posts #28, 37 and 45.

regarding food... generally, i agree, however i did a golden circle tour that included lunch at a nondescript restaurant, just a room really, in the back of a gift shop. and they served some of the best fresh salmon i have ever had in my life.

the $500 (for $250) cruise first certificates are back... this time for "valentine's day." purchase by february 15, 11:59 ET.

geez, i dunno. i haven't seen an explanation. i've seen a rationalization. we wanted to give you more time to explore stanley. that's not an explanation. it's an after the fact rationalization of why they chose to do it, if you choose to believe them when they say it. it doesn't tell guests what happened. it tells guests how NCL chose to solve the problem and characterize the solution after the fact, whatever the problem may or may not have been. we still don't know what the problem was. the problem wasn't that more people wanted to see stanley! why would they give more time to explore stanley? and if it was so important, and enhances the guest experience so much, why isn't it done on every itinerary? this is looking and smelling more and more like ísafjörður with every passing moment.

on the larger ships, this is typically no problem, assuming they have decent inventory left. but if they are only offering "guarantee" cabins, then they might not. i always book through casinos at sea and was given a "GTY" cabin. a cabin was assigned just a day or two later and it was midship and it was fine. on the smaller ships, such as the spirit, it could well be a problem, and a considerable risk. i recently refused to book on the spirit because the only rooms available were either adjacent to the smoking section on the ship or below the fitness center or the pool or the buffet.

my goodness. i guess the people onboard must have been clamoring for more time to explore stanley. and so NCL responded by adjusting the itinerary to accommodate them, you know, as they so often do when passengers request itinerary changes. this is a strawman explanation... simply because it's doubtful anybody onboard was lobbying for more time to explore stanley (except, perhaps, stella).

what's the apology for?

this question was asked, more or less, several times in this thread and answered to the OP's satisfaction - and in the OP's favor, quite frankly - several times, as well. and i, too, have offered an opinion as to this very question and it, too, falls in favor of the OP doing absolutely nothing wrong. but you've chosen to focus narrowly on this one [heavily edited] question and ignore everything else the OP has said. i've actually read everything the OP has said and in those comments it is clear what the intent is. the OP plans to deceive and obfuscate in an attempt to secure free drinks for another guest. the OP freely admits this, so it's not clear where the disconnect is. oh, no... we get it. we understand completely.

i honestly don't think so. from the answer, those onboard - and the sailing public at large - can judge the legitimacy of the reason and NCL in general. many people would not like or empathize with your endangered pregnant whale scenario above (and some would question how NCL knew the whale was pregnant), but that would be a legitimate reason... more or less. saying that it's being done to enhance the guest experience is not a legitimate reason... because it's not really a reason at all. i'm not really in the guest enhancement business... i'm just a humble country bumpkin... but from the protests, it would seem that not many guests' experiences have been enhanced.

it's extremely unlikely that an individual bartender would deny service for drink package sharing. NCL can in fact do this, however. but what a bartender would do, if he were motivated or rewarded to do so, or it was part of his job description, is report the suspected sharing to a supervisor. yes, package sharing is prohibited... i happen to think it's theft, too... but that's an NCL thang, not necessarily a bartender thang. i seriously doubt a bartender could cut somebody off... there are a bunch of things that would have to happen and a bunch of approvals that would have to be made and decisions that would have to be rendered. and then the card's coding would have to be deactivated... all of that is beyond what a bartender could or should do.

really now? what was the explanation? that this was done to "enhance the guest experience?" that's not an explanation. that's a dodge. it says absolutely nothing. is NCL running a company... or running for congress?

i've been told it depends on whether there are spaniards onboard. they are, apparently, known to hatch elaborate plots designed to share their drink packages, so crews are on high alert for this sort of thing. see the other thread on "sharing drinks on NCL."

ok, well, please understand that my report was in fact an onboard report with real world experience. different ship, but onboard. look, we have no reason to believe that passenger internet would be treated more favorably on the joy than on the getaway, but it is certainly possible. we do have other reports here on cruise critic, however, and they are about the same... within the 2.0 - 2.5 mbps range.