European_CruiseGirl

I would just call the normal NCL reservations number and go from there. There is for sure a direct number for lost and found but they don’t want to give it out to everyone who is visiting their website it seems. The reservations folks must be able to find it out for you (or transfer you through to that number) if you explain your situation and tell them that you already got a call from the ship asking you to call lost and found.

Darn, that really is too bad 😔

I would definitely consider Dawn small 😊

I can totally relate and understand 😁 My daughter started to eat the lobsters and filet mignons etc at age 6 at speciality restaurants. She is more experimental with her food than I am. Or DH (her father) 😶 Go figure 😅

Kids dining packages cost the same amount as adults. So you just locate the buy speciality dinners under dining, choose the right amount of dinners (4?) and then choose your daughters name as the person to whom you are buying the dinner package. You cannot use the dining upgrade for your daughter. Those upgrades are for person 1-2 only. For the soda package just choose the overall soda package and when you choose it’s your daughter to whom you are buying the package it gives you the child pricing.

Thanks cruiseny4life: with you mentioning the airport code I was able to locate the flight which seems to be a frontier flight. See below a screenshot. All flights marked with a red dot have been late for over 20mins. There are too many of those in the last weeks already. On 12/22 the flight arrived at 7:47PM. On 12/21 the flight arrived at 4:30PM. On 12/18 the flight arrived at 3:52AM the next morning! On 12/15 the flight arrived at 6:04PM. On 12/12 the flight was completely cancelled.

No no no no no. Please tell your husband that a cruising time of 7PM does not mean you’ll need to be at port around that time. It means you need to be there preferably after noon or latest at 4PM to avoid being late (ok the official latest would be 5PM but nobody should go so late). Any kind of delay and you are in a big trouble. Men usually tend to believe in hard cold facts. If you give me the flight number I could check from flighradar the last 3 month statistics of that flight. Perhaps that would help too. I am quite positive the flights are almost always delayed nowadays… Perhaps also ”but then we lose on eating lunch on she ship and sipping cocktails/beer/add here DH’s favourite drink during the afternoon and we have kind of already paid for it on the cruise fare” might help 😁

The Starbucks package is definitely not available for under 18 year olds. Tried to get it for DD just 2 weeks ago as she would have loved her Creme based Frappucinos, Chai Latte and lemonades but no, NCL considers the Starbucks package to be only for adults. In my NCL vacation planner I could have bought it only for DH or myself but well we have the premium package plus so we don’t need it. There wasn’t any way to add the Starbucks package for our DD. Chatted with an NCL agent during a weekend (well two agents as I didn’t believe the first one 😁) and then during the week with my PCC (who is absolutely fantastic) and they all agree that the Starbucks package is not available for under 18 year olds 😶 Will ask about the package still from the concierge when we board. I guess NCL strongly feels that coffee is an adult stuff. I tend to agree on that one. However Starbucks is so much more than coffee based drinks too.

Vesselfinder would indicate that it was at Amber Cove (see pic from live history data, Amber Cove is situated where Escape was).

Puerto Plata is a known problem. Big NCL ships cannot use Puerto Plata’s Taino bay port as they are too big for it. That leaves only the second port of Puerto Plata (Amber cove) for big NCL ships to use. But Amber cove port is a Carnival Corp built port and only fits two ships so when two Carnival Corp ships are there NCL will be booted out. And NCL very well knows this in advance and has the port schedules available in advance. Looking at Amber cove port schedule for the upcoming days it is obvious that the same day Encore is supposed to be there (Dec 21) there is already Carnival Magic and Carnival Mardi Gras ships -> there was never any chance for NCL to dock there and NCL very well knew it in advance.

For your granddaughter, if you want to extra pamper her one day, I could suggest that you order for example breakfast one day to your suite. The butler will gladly bring enough food for her to eat too. Very many people order for example an omelet and pancakes just for one person etc so unless she has a huge apptite it won’t be a problem. Obviously I’d tip the butler accordingly at the end of the cruise. This would allow your granddaughter to have some special grandma time 🥰

What age are the kids? I could imagine older kids (teens/young adults) would anyway prefer to get their own freedom and go to the buffet for breakfast and grab a lunch at pool rather than sit with their parents at a sit down restaurant for breakfast/lunch. Breakfasts at Cagneys (or Moderno) are nice for sure from an adult point of view but I could see older teens/young adults getting bored and rather wanting their own freedom. Lunch at Cagneys gets old pretty fast. The menu doesn’t change at all and is a bit limited IMHO. When we have travelled in a suite which gives access to Cagneys lunch we have perhaps gone there twice on a 7 day cruise. Embarkation is something which I see as a main problem for you as the Haven check in has all the suite level key cards there. Once when we travelled in a two bedroom suite and my parents were in a connecting mini we tried to go to the non-Haven check in to do check in for all of us. We figured that priority embarkation is not such a big deal and we rather want to check in with my parents at the regular check in. But we couldn’t do that. Once we reached the normal check in counter and the check in agent realized we are suite guests she promptly informed us that she unfortunately could not check us in as the Haven check in people had our key cards pre made there and she couldn’t make us key cards or process our check in. And the Haven check in cannot make cards for non suite passengers. So if this still is so (this was pre-covid) you’ll have a problem with the check in as you are expected to do the check in separately from some of your kids. The solution could be that you queue to check in first with your kids who are in the minis and then only after that go to do your own check in at the Haven area. I could imagine you could board with your non suite kids in the same boarding number group as they are by just showing your suite key cards and saying you want to embark together with the kids and do not want to be escorted to the ship together with other suite guests. For embarkation lunch, if you want a more peaceful lunch than the zoo at Garden cafe buffet head to the aft main dining room which is open for lunch on embarkation day. All staff inside the ship will try to usher you to the Garden cafe (or Cagneys if they notice you are a suite passenger) but just walk to the aft main dining room. It is open and a pleasant experience for a quiet embarkation lunch. I wouldn’t worry too much about tendering priority unless you have several ports with tendering and early private excursions. If not just wait around 30mins and the lines become easier. Then just go to the tender all together. I wouldn’t also worry about the disembarkation. I have never seen the value of the concierge escorting us out of the ship as s/he escorts the the passengers only up until the gangway. So there is really no ”skipping the lines” at immigration or customs. Of course you might bypass some passengers inside the ship but not really worth the hassle to going to the dedicated meeting place, wait for the concierge to arrive, then waiting for him/her waiting for more suite passengers to arrive to escort out and then going. Rather just make your own way out together with the kids and you’ll be just fine. Make sure to get luggage tags of suitable colour (=disembarkation time) for your non suite kids when they are starting to hand those out at the atrium level (I guess it is around the second last full day of the cruise). You can choose almost whichever colour (time) that you want. Only those colour that are tied to NCL debarkation tours cannot obviously be chosen unless you are taking one of NCL’s tours. Is it optimal that you all do not have suite perks - of course no. Is it still doable without too much pain - yes it is particularly if those kids at the minis are teens/young adults already. I am sure you’ll enjoy your cruise anyway 😊

Le Bistro is my favourite for sure. Great ambiance (more fancy and romantic than the rest) and better meat than at Cagneys.

I just made several reservations for 4 persons even though we are only 3 in our cabin. If what your friend told would be a new policy I would have ended up paying always for the one extra person. I did not. I wonder if your friend had already booked the a la carte restaurants and then tried to book a fixed price restaurant after all his/her dining credits were used already? You have to book the fixed price restaurants always first, otherwise if you book more restaurant visits than you have credits you end up paying for the fixed price restaurant immediately up front when you book it.

Yes these things happen. And it also happens that when you get familiar to the waiters in a speciality restaurant that they don’t ask for your card anymore particularly if you go there daily. They just greet you like an old friend and assume that you remember your suite number. Or even that they remember already your suite number. And this is where things can go wrong and mistakes can multiply if the suite number was given wrong in the beginning. Obviously it might also be a computer glitch but it’s safe to assume that either way someone elses charges ended up on op’s folio and someone else signed those slips.

Yea exactly we neither 😁

We have done this multiple times. It truly is nice to get the speciality dinner delivered directly to the suite 🥰 Make sure to order well in advance so the butler has time to plan, arrange and prepare 😊 The butler will be more than glad to do this. Once we felt like just grabbing some food from the Garden Café buffet and eat it in our suite. We ventured out to Garden Café, took what we wanted and carried it to our (non-Haven) suite. Our butler caught us when we were close to our suite and almost had a heart attack and started to tell we wouldn’t need to get food from Garden Café alone. We could have just rang him and let him know what we wanted from the buffet and he’d arrange it to us to our suite 😅 We never used this service though snd continued to sneak still alone to the buffet to get stuff to our suite and felt like we were breaking the law somehow 🤣 Ah what a good memory ❤️

Quite many beers seem to be $7 + tax at NCL making it $8.40 which was a reoccurring amount in op’s folio which she shared here. Does NCL still allow 18-20 year olds to have beer/wine if the parents allow and sign a waiver? If so I am starting to suspect a family with mom and dad in a Haven access suite and two kids aged 18-20 in a non Haven cabin. But as the kids are ”immediate family” for the Haven mom and dad the Concierge has agreed that the kids can eat at Haven restaurant with their parents. The young adults would only get a soda package as part of their free at sea as they are under 21 even though they are pax 1-2 in their cabin. Hence the need to pay for beer at the Haven restaurant. And for some reason (computer glitch, wrong suite number marked manually by mistake to the slip by the pax or to computer by the NCL waitstaff) the costs have gone to op’s suite folio, not the mom and dad’s suite. Mom and dad would have been in a Haven access suite which is situated outside of Haven proper making it possible for their under 21 year old kids to have an adjoining non Haven cabin. https://profcruise.com/norwegian-bar-menus-2022/

Sky is one of the smallest ships NCL has.

I wonder if someone else in Haven on that cruise had non Haven guests with them dining at the Haven restaurant? Perhaps the Concierge allowed someone to have repeatedly (the same) non Haven guests eating with the Haven guests daily. Perhaps an extended family or so. And perhaps either because of a computer glitch or some other reason NCL got the suite number wrong for those Haven guests who had non Haven guests repeatedly with them? So lets say suite 17102 had non Haven guests daily eating with them at the Haven restaurant. They signed after each meal at Haven restaurant because they had guests. But for whatever reason that cost wasn’t marked for suite 17102, it was marked for suite 17112. I also know they are supposed to always ask your card but I have experienced on several occasions them just simply asking for a suite number. Not at bigger restaurants but in Haven once they get to know your face. I am not saying the person would have said a wrong cabin number intentionally but things happen. I have said multiple times my cabin number wrong on a cruise ship because I have just mixed things up 😅 So there might now be someone who was on that cruise and who is now an extremely happy person because NCL let their non Haven guests dine with them ”for free” as those costs never ended on their folio even though they signed every day.

Not sure if you tried to ask this from me 🙂 In any case yes we knew the suite perks woudn't trickle down. But we didn't think it was such a big deal. But it obviously was 😁 And we had our DD in that 2nd bedroom already. So we though the 2 bedroom and a mini is a good solution. After that cruise we just switched to booking two full suites for us all. Having though experienced that second bedroom in a 2 bedroom suite many many times the thought of putting an elderly couple (my father is already in his 80's) in that room seems (for me) impossible. In my opinion that second bedroom is suitable only for children/teens who are happy to have a bit of privacy but thats it. Perhaps it is also suitable for one young single adult. The bed is not comfortable etc. and the room is very cramped. Granted those staying in the second bedroom can use the suite's other areas but still. I couldn't imagine sleeping in the master bedroom with DH, having the lovely bathroom with seaview while knowing that my parents are in that second tiny tiny uncomfortable bedroom. And yes, I don't want to put myself and DH in that tiny bedroom either 🤣

I do not believe there is an easy way to get to Nassau. GCS is NCL’s own private island so there aren’t normal passenger ferries operating to/from the island.

We tried it once so that my parents were on a (then) mini suite category and we were on a 2 bedroom non Haven suite. It was on the Gem. Even that was cumbersome. Starting from check in: hey bye bye, we’ll check in here at the suite check in, see you at the ship. Continuing with embarkation lunch: well would be nice to go to Cagneys for suite lunch but well it’s the situation of my parents again, well…lets go together to the main dining room. Breakfast together? Only if we skipped the suite breakfast at Moderno and went with my parents to Garden Café/main dining room. Ah and now comes the tender port…ummmmm…well, we’d have priority tender tickets but my parents don’t so do we just split up again or will we forget our priority tender tickets and queue with them? And we weren’t even on a Haven suite which would have made it even more awkward. We made the decision there and then that as long as we travel together we will always have cabins with the same type of perks. On the other hand when we travel with my brothers family we both aknowledge that it is enough for us to meet for an occasional dinner or pool time at the main pool etc. So with them it is ok. Quite often they choose the inside cabin (and buy the jewellery instead I am sure 😁). So it really depends with whom you travel with and how much you want to experience and do stuff together with that person/persons. And when thinking about parents/grand parents: do you feel comfortable getting all those suite/Haven perks while knowing your elders don’t. The decision is always based on your individual feelings of these factors 😊 Currently we are planning an RSSC cruise and it will be me, my DH and my mother. There is no way the three of us will be in the same cabin 😂 And as we are getting a Penthouse suite with my husband so is my mother too although she has to pay the full double occupancy rate even though she will be alone in that Penthouse. Now I can tell you that a Penthouse suite for a solo passenger is expensive with RSSC prices 🤣 But we still prefer to do it like this and will skip a couple of cruises before it 😊

I guess the problem with Amber Cove is that it is a Carnival Corp built port and only accommodates two ships max. So if there are already two ships scheduled at Amber Cove by Carnival, HAL, Princess, Seabourn, Cunard, Aida, Costa or P&O cruises on any given day NCL won’t go there. Those Carnival Corp ships always take the spots at the port before other cruiselines ships. So the best that you can do is to check the Amber Cove port schedule and if you see on your day 2 other Carnival Corp ships there you can assume you might not get to Puerto Plata at all. There seems to be some kind of trouble at the other Puerto Plata port for NCL and they are not using it currently. However if Amber Cove has only one or zero other ships scheduled for your day you could imagine that you’d likely go there. From what I have read when NCL has skipped Puerto Plata it has gone to either Nassau or Great Stirrup Cay.

Just to ad to my post (I took too long time to edit my post anymore): having worked for years in an incoming travel agency also serving cruiseline guests and doing shore excursions it is business as usual to follow into which port ships arrive. Changes are frequent and not a problem at all. If a change occurs we adjust ourselves so that wherever our booked guests arrive we are there 😊 And we make sure that the change means minimal to zero change for our guests tours. Port changes (and even airport changes) are indeed very usual and taken care of efficiently by tour operators 😊