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I know people say Carnival had done this in the past but I would just say Carnival is a very very different brand than the other lines. Nothing against Carnival its just not the style of vacation I would want now. This change for sure means I am even less likely to ever get a standard room on NCL and for sure wouldn't put someone in a room that required the bed be pulled down or put away. When at WDW when I use murphy beds its fine because the rooms are massive in a 2BR but not the same in small balcony rooms on a cruise ship.

From the horses mouth (obviously this is a single person but is the first firsthand information out there to my knowledge): On embarkation day, we came in the room with the bunk bed down already. I talked to our cabin steward and he said that they were just told that no more turn down service. Not good because there is no room to move if the top bed is already out the entire day! So he just told us how to put it down. He said he will do the bed daily and put it up. So we were the only ones to pull it down every night. The room stewards were given 10 extra rooms each with one cleaning daily. They told us it didn’t really help them now that there is no turndown service anymore.

Think of it this way. If you go to a jewelry store and ask them to pull out a diamond that is 2CTs and its the only one in the store its now in front of you. Someone comes in and asks for a 2CT diamond and a different salesperson looks in the case and tells that person there are none. This is what is happening. The website is "dumb" it is trying to make sure the room is not booked from out under you essentially coming over and just stealing that diamond from in front of you. This will cause issues when you are in the store looking (online) then call the store to ask about it. Which essentially is what you are doing. Now NCL might do something shady but I dont think that is what is occurring here its likely the issue I describe or possibly just a broken system.

If someone is going in to the room it gets held. So now if you call instead its gone because its held by you or someone else on the web. The hold isn't that long typically though. I can essentially make a whole category go on hold if its small enough and really wanted to. There is no benefit to this but just outlining that is likely what is occurring. See this all the time with NCL.com when I am comparing things actively.

Bullet point sections as well helps. A sample format below allows the reader of the email to easily see the 3 main areas of why there is now an email occurring. Issue: Bullets How it was addressed onboard (include actions you took as well): Bullets Why you are now writing: Bullets

I think the ship can handle just over 5000 with all berths full of guests. I could see it occurring during a Christmas cruise when its way more families on board. Didn't read the cruise but in the end some people on that same cruise likely have the exact opposite view. Doesn't mean one is right or wrong simply had a different expectation and experience occur. Its partly why I like going during the cheap lower attended cruises. Christmas on a cruise ship just sounds awful with how likely full the ship is. Others love it I know though.

Royal is no better..... The buffet is going to be mediocre, locations around the ship might be okay for certain items, the pizza will be worse on NCL but better for pub food instead. Royal has the benefit of the unlimited dining plan where as NCL will charge based on the number of specialty meals you choose to opt for. Personally on NCL we go Haven for a number of reasons including the food is much better. With Royal we are fine with balconies and can go with specialty dining instead. NCL will be more expensive if you plan on eating specialty dining each night for that subcharge of your overall cruise.

The roll out starts with Epic as of the 1/8 embarkation cruise. This will not be fleet wide until the end of March. So your cruise would 100% not have had this policy.

Well you randomly decided that doing two services per day was 2x the work as one so I figured I would throw out my actual view from what I see from a 2nd service which essentially was turndown not an actual cleaning. Hopefully we can agree 30 rooms getting touched twice a day is not like 60 different rooms for an initial cleaning. The question would be is a turndown service on average 1.5x, 2x, 3x, 4x or even faster than the initial cleaning today. Yes people in rooms are different which is why we would talk about on average. I would bet turndown on average is going to be a bit faster if not quite a bit faster than the initial cleaning of a day.

Which is why I said they likely could get away with this specifically. Doesn't stop the comment of "its in the cruise contract" from being over used though by many.

30 people twice a day is possibly less work than 44 people once a day. Be interesting to ask them in a couple months. The evening service from my view was never an actual cleaning just a quick tidy. So would you rather have to do full cleaning of 14 rooms or a quicker turndown service for 30 rooms is the question? Also think about port intensive cruises and lots of people are likely hardly touching their rooms between the morning and evening service.

I think Hurtigruten does some things out of Norway but no clue and no information on my side other than that. We won't seriously start looking at Norway cruises for another 5 or 6 years when the kids are a tad older. If we do Norway any sooner we would do it driving again (we did it a few years ago and driving was great IMO).

This is never acceptable. Just because its in the contract doesn't mean its right or actual legal either. With this they might be able to get away with it but doesn't make it right.

You can craft a model to get to whatever end result you want within reason. So yes it can very well be "rigged" in favor of a specific point or end result you want. Additionally NCL is rigging the math by changing a variable (cost of ala carte purchase). The further you increase that cost the math skews more easily in favor of taking the all inclusive. Finally if you add on a cork fee to wine and remove "free" carry-on that also adjusts the math for people. Its all a game to make the math come out in favor of an expensive drink plan. A plan that they can then later adjust prices of certain drinks on to remove certain options without an upcharge like in case of the OP.

NCL has rigged the math to make it seem like its a good deal. Additionally plenty of people don't even consider doing the math and just take it because its "free". Typically anytime an unlimited consumption model is offered you are paying more than you could otherwise. As an example people do the math right now and think "oh I only need to have 5 drinks per day" but in reality its math based on unlimited consumption ala carte pricing. NCL doesn't need to aggressively price their ala carte offering of drinks because a large quantity of customers are on the unlimited consumption. So the only reason you take the drink package is because the business has directly created a pricing model to make it seem like its a good deal. My alternative? I don't just cruise with NCL every time and when I do I calculate everything in to a total cost. Which is why you are seeing some people bring up land based vacations more and more as these "small" upcharges add up overall either in cost or reduction in offering quality.

PGFCC-10 is for a 10% discount that was on my accounts Latitude Rewards section.

They wouldn't offer it if it didn't make them more money in the long run. Additionally they will singularly raise prices and adjust things if something started costing them money as oppose to leading to more profit. People always use to talk about Disney World and their Dining Plan as well. Thing is they raised prices to simply make it seem like it was a good deal (like NCL - per certain drinks going over the included threshold) and reduced quality of the food offered (like NCL - per people talking about wine in this thread).

Except what you just described is not accurate.... hence the context of this whole thread. A previously included offer is now not fully included and you only receive a $15 credit to reduce the cost. Hence my point. I am not missing anything with their word play and trying to act like they are including something they are not.

Not comparable exactly because the markup total is much higher on alcohol than food which is why restaurants literally go out of business just for losing their liquor license. Additionally NCL goes further to avoid allowing you to carry on anything as I think wine as an example has a cork fee regardless where consumed. So its not like NCL isn't marking up alcohol by like 2000% compared to the food markup of like 30% at a restaurant so they can absorb a tiny change... they dont though because this is a way to nickel and dime you but get some people like in this thread defending them and sayings "its only a couple dollars". The primary issue is that you say its "free at sea" then charge for it. Don't call it free then and just say its a $15/drink discount but that doesn't sounds as good or sell as well. Finally keep your list of drinks included up to date and don't change it multiple times during the year.

It would be much easier if other cruise companies didn't skirt US law and taxes..... They do skirt it so they don't as a business deserve a bailout with US tax money. In the end US flag cruise ships do exist both in the River Cruising and Hawaii because its harder for other cruise lines to skirt the laws to cut costs. Non related and non relevant to the conversation. Aid packages and business bailouts have no correlation. Now find a non-critical, non-humanitarian, non-diplomatic money being sent outside the US and we can talk about it.

Do it by request is the fix. Additionally if you provide the FreeStyle format in PDF for you to get on your phone even better in addition to a normal app interface. Heck even further when you get down with an event on the ship you can rate it and then state you would want to do it on your next cruise. When you get on your next cruise its premarked as its the same or similar to what you liked to do in the past. Issue is they would need software developers to drive this action and someone thinking outside the box on how to get better engagement from their guests. Another example they miss on is something that Royal already does which is allow you see all sailings daily schedule before you even board. That way you can check before you book or even after you book leading up to your cruise.

They don't need to have full proof to file a lawsuit again you in civil court or for NCL to simply charge you for costs incurred that you then need to fight. They can show you bypassed protocol and had COVID on the ship. Also I am not sure what "experts" you are talking but they know how COVID can spread some may just disagree on the most likely way it spreads. You may not lose but it will be a headache you can avoid by following the policy and taking the 5 mins or whatever it is to do the testing required under the policy. But I am not your care taker you can do whatever you wish I pushed out the warning that the headache later is not worth the couple minutes saved now. Things that never will happen do happen at times and people are left with issues to deal with.

Don't try to see absolutely everything the first day. Instead do a ship tour via YouTube and look at the deckplans to get a general idea of things. Make a list of things you want to check out while on the cruise if you would like and spend a couple mins each day looking through the Daily Schedule to see what activities you would like to do.

Yup this is what I was talking about. Look up negligence as it might apply. Its just not worth it because if you simply follow the rules then you essentially are covered since you acted responsibly even if you still cause an outbreak.

And this is one of those things that if you were there just follow the policy. There is likely some legal issues that could come your way if there was a major outbreak, you were shown to be sick, and lied about where you had been. Its just not worth the headache when you can take 10 mins or whatever it will be to just follow the policy.