UKstages

it is indeed posted on the MSC boards. this thread contains a link to that post for all the OP's NCL friends.

so, would you agree... having a picture on the NCL website suggesting a speed of 100 Mbps is aspirational at best, intentionally misleading at worst?

not sure i follow... pre-booking the vibe has been allowed for a year or so. it's a thing. the "glitch" refers most likely to a legitimate glitch in which more passes were sold than were available OR it's NCL's way of avoiding explaining that they sold all or a large portion of the vibe in bulk to a large group after they had already committed that same vibe capacity to individual travelers.

if you have the drink package, there is no corkage fee and you are allowed to bring wine and champagne on board at embarkation, for sure. i can't imagine why it would be any different when returning from port, but i've never seen the question posed specifically like this... NCL's own liquor and beverage FAQ does not mention any prohibition about wine or champagne being brought onboard in port.

the vibe is about more than the hot tubs and the loungers and the kid free and smoke free oasis. on an alaskan itinerary, it is also about the views. and, depending on the ship, the vibe is offering, arguably, the best unobstructed views on the ship, in some cases, wrap-around views. in cold climates, such as a departure from new york, it is quite common to see people in parkas or hoodies and scarves enjoying drinks and the view. and once they take their outer garments off, the hot tubs, too.

the OP has a very strong case. similar to having a confirmed upgrade to business class on an airline that then decides to downgrade a passenger due to a booking snafu or because of a last minute booking by a VIP customer... the OP has a confirmation for paid vibe passes. i would be shocked if the OP were not successful in getting some sort of compensation.

getaway reportedly has starlink, as well. reportedly, so do the prima and viva. you can tell if a ship has starlink by navigating to the ship's wi-fi page on the NCL website. if it has it, it will state that it does as well as claiming that it is the "fastest internet at sea." also included will be an extraordinarily misleading photo with a phone showing a speed check indicating you can get service at 100 Mbps, which is truly a fantasy speed.

you can book a cruise in july that leaves in july! the ship's sailing date has to be at least 120 days from when you purchased the cruise first certificate/credit. you can book a cruise for next week, provided you bought the certificate 120 or more days ago.

NCL has a prohibition on door decorations. not to worry... the cabins have numbers clearly visible adjacent to the door. and each cabin has a unique, generally sequential, number. i use this to guide me to my cabin. works likes a charm.

i imagine NCL thinks that if they allowed takeout/take away, food costs would go way up and there would be more waste and lots of plates and utensils to retrieve from staterooms and around the ship. it's frowned upon by NCL, but most restaurant servers, managers will let you take leftover food back to your cabin. and dessert. the thing is... they have no takeout containers. so, most servers give you a plate and a napkin to cover it. again, the official policy is no takeout; that's why they have rooms service. but most times, you can take leftover food from a restaurant. what you can't do is place an order and then walk with it. that being said, i was on the prima last may and a very drunk woman ordered three or four items at the local bar, including nachos and hamburgers and fries and insisted on taking them back to her cabin. she stacked the four plates and walked... or stumbled, to be more accurate. she got as far as the elevator bank, whereupon she dropped the entire thing on the floor, accompanied by an earth shattering crescendo and a blood curdling scream.

get to the ship as early as you can and try to purchase passes on the day. there has been much discussion of this in several threads, but the prevailing thought among people who have actually done this (including me) is that a certain number of passes are made available on embarkation day. now, if they have proactively canceled your (and perhaps others') passes it's entirely possible that they will have none for sale on the day... they may have already eaten up that allotment. but it's worth a try, assuming you are unsuccessful in getting passes, speak to guest services, speak to the general manager and/or escalate your concern (via email) to the corporate office in miami. explicitly state each time that you booked the trip around having vibe access and that the cruise is not as worthwhile without it. be polite, but firm. explain that you would like to be compensated for the inconvenience. NCL seems to max out compensation at $500 OBC for each passenger when there is a major screwup, my best guesstimate of comp for this would be about what you paid for the vibe, which i assume would be around $350. glitch or not, one day notice is not enough for you to make alternate plans or plead your case. NCL, of course, is not required to do anything except refund your money, but you have a very strong case and some sort of service recovery is likely. alternatively, before you board, you can try to call NCL and explain the situation and see if they would cancel and refund the entire cruise (if that's something you'd want to have them do). it's unlikely they would. and it's also unlikely that they will even talk to you... referring all matters to personnel on site at the pier for a cruise about to embark.

respectfully, you've established a false equivalency. this isn't about liking one ship or the other or one cruise lime or another. it's about saying that people have no right to comment on the chocolate that they've just eaten, simply because they prefer the vanilla. i prefer vanilla, too, but i'm fully capable of making a. determination as to whether the chocolate is any good and if it's just as good as the chocolate they used to serve and it's perfectly OK for me to wax nostalgic about the chocolate they used to serve and lament its passing. so, too, all opinions on NCL ships are valid, regardless of whether one had a grand time or a horrible time. if somebody had a great time and they want to disagree with somebody who didn't, that's swell... they should share their experience and not brand that person as a negative nelly who constantly complains. fox's u-bet is traditional and is still made. it's also a born-in-brooklyn product.

thanks for the heads up! so, for the folks who keep insisting NCL offers the higher value certificate (er, i mean "credits") twice a year... please note that it's been offered three times in the past six weeks.

it sure does depend on one's perspective. it's a reasonable assumption that in order for something to be classified as a "negative" then one perceives that something has gone "wrong." semantics indeed. there is a recurring theme in many of these threads that people who voice legitimate concerns about NCL are somehow constant complainers whose opinions aren't valid. it gets tired quite quickly. these folks are just expressing their opinions based on their personal experiences. read what they have to say, read their next post and the post after that. then read their following post. and the one after that. if they are truly aways negative and never have anything nice to say or can't propel the conversation forward in a positive direction, then, by all means, discount their contributions. but this constant dismissal of anybody who says something negative about our beloved NCL is not really very helpful. let's stop pretending as if there is an imaginary community of NCL haters who only post to express negative opinions. i find many of these negative tales farfetched and don't always agree with them, but i don't doubt for a second the legitimacy of the opinions, even when different from my own. wait till someone serves you an egg cream made with hershey's syrup. that's sacrilege!

wow. a dozen cruises and nothing ever went wrong? nothing? wow. i'll have what you're having. i enjoy cruising on NCL, but things go wrong all the time, as they do on most cruise lines. shows get canceled, ports get canceled, steaks get served at the wrong temperature, steaks are inedible, there's a 45-minute wait for a table at the MDR, the ship arrives into port early, the ship arrives into port late, they've run out of [insert your favorite food item here], bartender puts vodka in your mocktail, staff is surly, rude, absent, lacks empathy, doesn't listen or spills a hot beverage on your freshly laundered shirt, room service is late, room wasn't made up, housekeeper failed to bring extra towels, as requested. nothing ever went wrong? you are truly blessed with great good fortune.

for those who say the offer is not misleading, i kindly point you to the OP's initial posts in this thread. i would then point you to the communication from NCL itself. i'd still love to know what the title of the email was and if in fact this was presented by NCL with a. confirmation of the original BOGO air booking. if so, that's bad form. it's not in fact a confirmation and if presented as such, it makes it seem like a continuation or required element of the same BOGO booking process. if not, kudos to NCL for being a smidge less sleazy. they would indeed go from a 9 on my sleaze-ometer to a 7. still pretty high, and still a whole lotta sleaze, but a marginal improvement, for sure.

it's misleading because the "offer" is disguised as an air fare booking confirmation with a sense of urgency that includes foreboding of all the horrible things that can befall the passenger if they don't act now. i'd love to see tne top of the email to see what the wording is... does it say "confirmation" or does it clearly state that this is a new offer being made that requires an additional purchase? it's clear that the call to action is a button that says "get started" and not a button that says "spend $300." here is your reservation number, the offer says, and now, to complete your booking process, it suggests, you will of course want to choose your direct flights. eligible customers can do that now! hey, you're an eligible customer, you lucky stiff! and, by the way, if you don't do this now, we can't guarantee you'll sit together or that you won't be on a flight with three connecting segments. those conditions are ones that the guest has already agreed to as part of the BOGO air package the guest has already purchased, but they are barely discussed or they are minimized when booking that BOGO fare. NCL now turns around once the BOGO air has been purchased and uses the disadvantages of the BOGO program, which they glossed over previously, as a sales technique to upsell another program. and they are apparently doing it in a smoke and mirrors way by obfuscating and confusing their prey, er, i mean, guest. that's why it's misleading and deceitful. hey, i got no horse in this race. i live a short ten minute walk from my local cruise terminal and if i have to go to a distant city, i use frequent flyer miles to purchase my ticket. but i can smell a misleading sales pitch a mile away, especially one with a false sense of urgency.

internet speed sucks across the fleet, no matter the ship. that, by most reports, seems true even on ships which have been retrofitted with starlink, which does seem to improve the reliability of the wifi connection, but not so much the speed. that being said, you shouldn't have any problem sending an email or two or seven... on the pearl or any other ship. as for when the internet is more robust and reliable, yes, off hours is the way to go. for some that means early morning, just before breakfast, while most are sleeping. for me... it means midnight or 1 or 2 am.

it's a sales pitch and a misleading or downright deceitful one, as i suggested upthread. "eligible passengers... now can request..." yes, you can request it... and pay more for the privilege. the OP's initial post in this thread shows how misleading this can be. the OP describes it at first as plain old BOGO. sounds to me like premium air... lite. and NCL is blurring the lines in their promotional pitch to make it seem like the up-charge is part of the BOGO program. also, NCL is promising a direct flight, which is not always possible from many departure cities. what's unclear is if this email is only going out to people who live in major markets in which direct flights are possible. this is a lot like when a magazine sends out a promotional piece via direct mail that looks like an invoice, but is actually a sales pitch. a small percentage of folks (or their assistants) pay "the invoice," thereby signing up for the magazine, not realizing that it wasn't an invoice at all.

yes, i agree, which is why i offered an alternate justification of what might be happening, i couldn't tell you if it was premium air or not... but it sure doesn't sound like BOGO air. in the absence of some sort of rationalization, i hypothesized that an agent or NCL itself could be misrepresenting premium air as the standard air deal with a $300 surcharge to guarantee your flights. that's all i got.

this sounds to me like a clever (or deceitful) way to market NCL premium air, or whatever it's called. did they offer you a customized choice of carriers and seats and routing, as well, or did they simply say this was to confirm flights, which were rapidly booking up? perhaps you have an over zealous PCC... or NCL might be trying something new. (horrible and new) to sell premium air arrangements, without calling it that.

that may well be because it is no longer called the daily service charge. it is now called the "onboard service charge" (OSC). same thing, different moniker.

no issues on iOS.

the MDR steak is not a transgression. it's not a defect; it's a feature of MDR fare. we're not talking about one bad meal; we're talking about a consistently bad product, improperly sourced and poorly cooked. shoe leather and gristle. those in the know don't order it... the uninitiated learn after ordering it once. those who are excited about getting a "free steak" may order it every night. and some may actually enjoy it. but few who have ever been to a restaurant as ordinary as sizzler or applebee's or houlihan's would ever consider the NCL MDR steak edible. the opinions expressed here are my own and don't necessarily represent the views of the national cattleman's beef association. (or sizzler. or applebee's. or houlihan's.)

you get all you can eat for a fixed price of $0.