GCS2000

Yes this cruise is port intensive as well we will basically only be on the boat at night to sleep or relax and eat breakfast and dinner. Air concerns - it is a pretty big savings tbh (at least $1500+). We would like to get the air info so we can see if the airline would let us upgrade to better seating since I know we will be in the cheapest worst seats but as I understand it that is hit or miss depending on airline and we won't know that info until 75 days from cruising date and it will be too late. Drinks - yeah cancelling may make since just really surprised at how high the gratuities were especially on a "free" item. On our last cruise I drank water and soda nothing else (mainly water) wife had mocktails, water, soda and that was all. I guess its either eat the $400 gratuities and keep the package or pony up for the other beverage packages and their gratuities which my guess will be more than this. Excursions - this is odd for sure. They have 20 listed all but 3 are for the same port/day the 29th, the other 3 are all for the 25th. There are none for any of the other port days. This was never an issue on our RCCL cruise. Granted I know we can book on our own outside of NCL as well but that $50 credit becomes pointless of course and we have to be sure that whatever tours we book will fit with our port timeframe. Just surprised by this

Booked the 10 day Ireland tour out of Southampton for May 2023. I got sucked in by the itinerary, drink package, wifi and the BOGO air etc. After spending the last 2 days reading, researching etc I am having second thoughts. Lots of bad reviews about the ship, the service, the food and more. And of course the BOGO air seems to be a nightmare. The cruise came to $6900 for everything (no excursions of course). We are not really drinkers (very rare) and the gratuities we are hit with for the bev package are high at $400 (218 x2) - highly unlikely we would get full advantage of this unfortunately. Wifi is limited to 150 mins as well (which was misleading but no surprise there). Excursion choices are VERY LIMITED which sucks since part of the deal was $50 off excursions each day. I do have 3 of the AMEX NCL offers (maybe a 4th if I check with my brother-in-law so I save at least another $1050 netting out to $5850). Not cheap of course. With all the negativity I am reading I am actually very much considering cancelling. FYI we are new to cruising only done 1 - RC to Alaska which was amazing in every way. We have nothing substantial to complain about RCCL (bathroom sucked but that's about it) Any comments you guys care to share are welcome. Thanks.

How does one book/schedule for these shuttles. We just booked a Greece cruise that runs out of Ravenna as well.