European_CruiseGirl

Not sure of Bermuda or Bahamas but after you have entered EU (Funchal) you won’t get stamped in any other EU ports (all of your ports after Funchal are EU ports). You might not even be stamped at Funchal, Madeira anymore. So you are definitely good to go with just a couple of blank pages.

And our FAS+ disappeared again from our booking 🤦🏼‍♀️ Thank god we have still approx 3 months to go before the cruise but anyway… some serious glitches there currently…

I cannot imagine you’d need more than 3 blank pages for a TA route. Which ports are you stopping at?

Yea I had this price problem today on MyNCL. My NCL PCC told me that they are having an IT problem and very many people have this problem and that they are currently fixing it. My price became correct approx an hour ago. Didn’t really check the add ons so not sure if those had/have a problem too. I was too fixated in the problem of my price being almost 1000€ higher than it should have been 😂 Ah yea…now just checked. Apparently the FAS+ we bought is not shown at all. Edit: and now the package shows again… Got to love NCL IT 🤦🏼‍♀️😣

So op, you may bring your adult daughter to your Haven suite and the concierge may allow you to bring her to the Haven restaurant for dinner a couple of times. There is an extra charge for that dinner that someone already mentioned above. Other than that, no your daughter cannot spend any time at the Haven area. Haven is not like a ”day pass” area where you can purchase a day pass for your non Haven cruise mates. Even if they are immediate family. Now the 2 bedroom Haven suite is really nice and if you are travelling just the three of you there is really no real reason for your daughter to not share it with you…except for the fact that she might want to get away from her parents completely for whatever young adult reason she might have 😁 But of course it might be that you have younger kids with you who will already stay at the second bedroom. In that case I understand. But in any case it is what it is: either your daughter stays in a non Haven cabin and doesn’t get to use the Haven facilities or she stays in your 2 bedroom Haven suite and she can enjoy all the Haven facilities and perks. Putting her as pax 3 on the Haven 2 bedroom suite is going to cost you very little (only the third-fourth pax rate which is usually around $300-700/pax) so getting her another non Haven cabin for single use must be much more. Edit: found this pic of Viva 2-bedroom Haven suite.

Considering the political turmoil currently at the Black Sea area I would definitely not go now or during the next few years to any cruise which includes any Black Sea ports (here in the top ininerary Bulgaria and Romania ports).

Looking at your signature op - we are talking about the Prima yes? And deck 16 spa cabins? Yes indeed I would at least for now avoid the deck 16 spa cabins until I would have heard from quite many people if the deck 17 Galaxy Pavilion caused any disturbance for the deck 16 cabins that are partially below it. I tend to usually shy away from all cabins that are directly below or above any kind of high activity area (gym, club, pool etc).

If you are travelling with teens the teens will not get the free at sea alcoholic drink package but a soda package instead and the gratuity price is reduced accordingly after you add the passenger details while making the reservation. The reservation system realizes there are minors in the reservation and automatically removes the alcoholic package from the reservation and automatically adds a soda package for the minors instead. So in the end it won't be $600 for the four of you if you are travelling with teens. If you decide to remove the drinks package from all of you it is of course also absolutely possible. Just good to note that NCL's soda package includes exactly only that: soda. No mocktails like RCI's non alcoholic package would include. So if you take a soda package for yourself and want to enjoy mocktails you need to pay for them separately.

This. The kids menu is the same in all restaurants. Very boring, full of gluten. Hamburger, nuggets, pizza, pasta. Nothing remotely exciting (not even chicken breast with veggies/mashed potatoes, fish or kids steak).

We are booked on a cruise that goes to NZ/Aus in 2025. I keep on hoping that by 2025 this problem has already been solved. If the situation remains as it is now still around late 2023/early 2024 we will most likely change to another RSSC cruise/cancel our RSSC cruise completely and change to Silversea or Seabourn on a different route.

That particular route has two embarkation ports on NCL. Rome and Barcelona. So NCL is making a 7-day roundtrip Barcelona to Barcelona cruise and a 7-day roundtrip Rome to Rome cruise. Actually RCI does the exact same for this route. Barcelona is the port where most passengers typically board this 7 day cruise so you might not find so easily a roll call for Epic 7 day cruises starting from Rome. Also NCL roll calls have moved quite much to ”the Zuckerberg site you cannot name here” so you might find a roll call for your cruise there.

They usually want some concrete proof that the child has indeed sailed on a cruise. For example a picture of key cards would do. And then you just keep your fingers crossed. It is stupid yes I agree and not too much that you can actually do at this point 😔 I am in the same situation as you are within a couple of years.

I had this problem a week ago and found the solution through CC 😇 In my case NCL IT had screwed up and completely lost my username. My account existed but it wasn’t associated with an username anymore. Using my email address as an username didnt help either. What solved my situation is that I registered myself again to MyNCL through NCL’s website like a kind CC member suggested me to try. Note: when registering you must add your existing latitudes number while you create your new registration. It then pulls up your old information and when you create a new account you actually only add an email address as your username to your existing account. Strange as it sounds, trust us here at CC, this is what happens and it solved my problem asap.

I have definitely had a bunch of NCL staff trying to get me to the buffet. The first ones are usually situated at the elevator lobby when you enter the ship. They are the ”welcome welcome” people and if you try to go somewhere else than up to the pool/buffet area they automatically try to assist you in finding your way…to the buffet…and some even insist that the MDR is not open if you tell you are going there. Then when you get past those crew members and walk to the MDR if you pass any other crew members they try to kindly guide you again to the buffet… as in their mind you obviously must be lost 😂

Yes the Sky has been there consistently on every scheduled port stop. It is so small compared to NCL’s megaships that it has never had this docking problem at Taino Bay.

When our DD was 15 months old we took our first NCL cruise. Looking back do I think we were crazy to do it - yes. Did we have a lot of fun - also yes. Mind you for us going on the cruise meant a 4 hour flight so it wasn’t so easy to begin with. In any case we ended up having a fantastic time. We however realized that we were not comfortable to let our young daughter go to the splash type of pool area. Even with us of course with her. The area was swamped with kids aged 2-3,5’ish and they were just so big and quick in running around etc that it just didnt feel comfortable putting a 15 month old there with them as we thought she might get run over by the bigger small kids. But…we had bought a small inflatable pool and brought that with us. We of course asked the room steward if it is ok for us to use it at the balcony. It was, no problem. And our DD had the most fun time spashing around at that pool. I mean a pool like this with only 1/3 height of water in it: https://www.amazon.com/Intex-Sunset-Glow-Baby-Pool Other than that our DD was at the ”exploring” age and she loved just to walk around and check what is where. At that age everything is new and exciting for them. We had my husband’s parents cruising with us so were able to have a couple of date nights and one shore excursion for ”mom and dad time”. Overall we did splurge though and take a suite (non-Haven) so we could have some of the dinners and breakfasts inside our suite too. If at all possible I highly recommend this. So what I guess I am trying to say is that even though the ship wouldn’t have any bells and whistles for a toddler you can still have a very fun cruise with the young one.

We have done this several times. Not worth it tbh. You are told a place where you meet the concierge who will escort you off the ship up until the gangway. There is a small advantage in it as the concierge brings you down with the service elevators so you can access the gangway more easily. However in our experience the concierge rarely is there at the meeting point at the exact time when you want to leave (he is escorting a previous group of people out) so you are waiting there for him to come back and then possibly for a group to again gather that he will escort out. So you usually end up waiting anyway. Now if the concierge would escort you off the ship and all the way past passport/customs via a priority route - that would truly be a good perk. However this has not been our experience ever.

Wow it was reported preliminarily by several CC users that it is $4.95 for all room service orders now when the change was implemented. I guess NCL realized another money making machine and quickly changed it to $9.95 for other times than breakfast...

Actually nowadays it is only $4.95 for room service delivery. And yes you can order as much as you want with that one set price. Some people are happy, some are not. Because even though $4.95 is lower than the previous $9.95 at the same time as NCL lowered the price for room service delivery NCL removed the free continental room service breakfast completely. So want to have a pot of coffee or tea and croissants in the morning in your cabin? It's $4.95. Want to get pizza, salad, dessert, drinks, whatever to your cabin during the day or in the evening? It's the same $4.95.

Beer is around $7 + tax. I haven't seen buckets of beer in the last few'ish years. A glass of wine is in minimum $9 + tax, soft drinks $3 + tax, many cocktails $11-$14 + tax. Remember the drinks package gives you also soda so it might (or might not) be important for you to factor in. I drink coke/pepsi around 4-5 glasses/cans per day so just soft drinks could be around $12-15 + tax /day without the package. I also drink club soda during dinner and that is included in the package also so around $6 + tax /day for that daily too. Add to that just one glass of wine or a cocktail (or similar) daily and it already makes sense to take the package.

Have you checked they both really went through? Usually when you try to book the same restaurant for the second time all seems to go well and the system even says that the second reservation is added to cart but when you then check out the second reservation never made it there. It is a well and widely known fact here at CC that you cannot make more than one reservation per restaurant online so if you indeed were able to successfully make more than one reservation for one restaurant online it would be completely new. Hence check that you truly have all those reservations confirmed.

I 100% agree.

What I suspect it that NCL’s insurance company has forbid NCL for going to Taino Bay with their large ships after their 2022 ”incident”. Most likely NCL at that time claimed that the conditions of that port were so difficult that their ship got stuck because of that (and not because of ”human error”). Most likely human error would have meant a lesser compensation from the insurance company for NCL than blaming the conditions of the port as human error can be seen as NCL’s own fault whereas port conditions are not something that NCL has authority to. Because NCL went with the route of stating port conditions as the reason of the 2022 incident their insurance company has said ”ok, as long as that port is not improved we don’t insure your big ships if they go there”. So NCL mega ships go don’t go there. Even though, as op mentions, other cruiselines much bigger ships go. And as other cruiselines big ships can go there the local port authorities at DR Taino Bay do not really see why they should do anything about that port’s conditions.

You do not lose any promotions. That sentence however means that if the new category would have better promotions you don't get the better perks just by upgrading into it. For example a higher cabin category might mean more speciality dinners but if you just upgrade into it you won't get more speciality dinners. You keep what you originally had.

If it doesn't say "premium wifi with streaming" it is not. I cannot give you an exact value for 250mins of wifi but 100min is around $55 and unlimited wifi (not premium with streaming) is around $230 on my cruise. So 250min is somewhere in between. Your son can purchase a three meal speciality dining package for a cost of around $150. So most likely those two perks have quite a similar value. Now the question in my mind is as follows: would your son want to go to three speciality restaurants also? You already told he wants the wifi anyway. If he does want to go to speciality restaurants too then he could take either one of the perks and in the end he would pay approx the same total amount for the cruise taking into consideration all the add ons that he would buy either before the cruise or while cruising. However if the speciality dining would be just a nice add on but he could just as well also skip it then he should definitely take the wifi. Btw there are usually possibilities to upgrade the standard wifi package (in his case 250mins) to an unlimited wifi package or an unlimited streaming package if he wants to take the wifi as the perk and would want to upgrade. He should just be prepared that wifi is spotty at times (oftentimes) on a cruiseship.