Bocadude85

I did a quick search online for hotels on a friday night in mid March and came up with quite a few rooms under $200 in the Boca Raton area.

Perhaps the new price is a promotion for new bookings only ?

I finally figured out what the issue is. When I booked last year I got the UBP with out having to pay the 18% gratuity. I also received the UDP. The new pricing still includes both promotions but I would be required to pay the 18% gratuity and the ultimate dining package would be converted to the specialty dining package. So after all is said and done that $900 price drop only ends up saving me $400, and thats before you take into account the value of the 7 nights of specialty dining we would be losing.

The price of our cruise dropped by $900. I called NCL like I have done many times in the past to request a price reduction since we are still before final payment. Today i was told I have to cancel and rebook to get the current price. I've already paid the cruise off so I do not wish to cancel and rebook. I know in the past I was able to have the price adjusted without cancelling and rebooking, is this not possible anymore?

Double digits finally! 99 more days to go.

There is a small water park in Boca Raton that will be open during your visit. You can check the park out here.

http://www.pbcgov.com/parks/aquatics/waterparks/#.VqpEb5orLs0

We are in the UK and booked the same route as the above but on the 12 June sailing. I only found out by following cruise critic that Turkey was dropped from itineraries, which was pretty annoying, I would have expected to be informed straight away by our travel agent. Worse than that, our travel agent hadn't been informed by NCL either when we called in to explore our options. They phoned NCL who said that Turkey was indeed dropped but that revised itineraries were not available yet and that we should 'wait' to hear from them, no timescale given. Our travel agent promised to keep chasing this for us. I then came home and found this post with the revised itinerary already advised to a fellow traveller. So, our agent phoned NCL again, and was told that if anyone had been issued with revised itineraries it was a 'mistake' and that routes have not yet been finalised. What a complete farce!

We chose this cruise because the itinerary included Istanbul and Ephesus, in fact Istanbul was the main focus, so deflated doesn't start to cover it for us. We don't feel that Croatia and Montenegro are anything like an adequate substitution for two world heritage sites and that, for us, the cruise is now completely devalued.

 

Intelligence and safety are cited as the reason for the cancelled ports but, the majority of other travel operators are still offering all areas of Turkey to tourists. If such intelligence does exist, does this mean that the other operators are not in possession of it or worse, are ignoring it? I would venture to suggest that the cruise is not selling well because customers have reservations about visiting Turkey (I do get that) but that profit is the motivation here, not the protection of customers. All European tourist areas are on escalated threat alert but have they withdrawn France from the itinerary, also having suffered more than one attack?

 

We are disappointed that NCL have handled events so badly in our case and, I confess, we have completely lost trust in this company. I doubt that we will take this cruise now, unless NCL seriously redeem themselves PDQ.

This does not make any sense. All you have to do is log into myncl and the new itinerary is posted there in the vacation summary section.

@bocadude-we are on the May 7 sailing and haven't gotten official word yet. Where did you get your revised itinerary? I've emailed my TA to see if she's heard anything since the article says booked passengers will be notified today. I need to change some tours!

I just called NCL and requested the new itinerary. It was in my email inbox within 5 minutes.

Hi Bocadude - which port is replacing Kusadasi? We're booked on a Jade 14 nighter and are already visiting Dubrovnik the first week, so hoping they're replacing ours with Kotor. Did they send you an e-mail?

 

Happy Cruising!

I'm not sure which port replaces which to be honest. I received an email with the updated itinerary after calling NCL and requesting the new itinerary.

Just got our updated itinerary for our May 19th cruise. Istanbul and Kusadasi are being replaced with Dubrovnik, Croatia and Kotor, Montenegro. Here is the May 19th 2016 updated itinerary.

Thu 19-May 11:00 pm SHIP DEPARTS VENICE, ITALY

Fri 20-May AT SEA

Sat 21-May 8:00 am Sat 21-May 5:00 pm DUBROVNIK, CROATIA

Sun 22-May 8:00 am Sun 22-May 5:00 pm KOTOR, MONTENEGRO

Mon 23-May AT SEA

Tue 24-May 7:00 am Tue 24-May 5:00 pm PIRAEUS (ATHENS), GREECE

Wed 25-May 8:00 am Wed 25-May 5:00 pm MYKONOS, GREECE

Thu 26-May AT SEA

Fri 27-May 8:00 am Fri 27-May 7:00 pm NAPLES/POMPEII, ITALY

Sat 28-May 8:00 am Sat 28-May 7:00 pm CIVITAVECCHIA (ROME), ITALY

Sun 29-May 8:00 am Sun 29-May 7:00 pm LIVORNO (FLORENCE/PISA), ITALY

Mon 30-May 9:00 am Mon 30-May 5:00 pm TOULON, FRANCE

Tue 31-May 5:00 am SHIP ARRIVES AT BARCELONA, SPAIN

Yes here is the USA Today article.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/cruises/cruiselog/2016/01/22/norwegian-regent-seven-seas-oceania-cruises-cancels-all-turkey-port-calls-2016/79130430/

We have sailed in insides, oceanview, balcony,mini-suites and suites. We are currently booked in a balcony room on our upcoming cruise. The itinerary and length of the cruise plays a major role in what kind of room we book.

I said our cruise is going to above....where other ships go I have no idea.

 

Istanbul & Ephesus are no longer on Ncl.com shore Excursion list.

 

I wonder why.

 

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OK where did you get the information that your cruise will be going to the ports mentioned above? I called NCL yesterday and spoke to one of the higher ups and was informed that as of right now nothing has changed. Now I am fairly confident that our cruise will not be stopping in either of the turkish ports but they were unable to provide me with any information regarding alternative ports.

Sure....It was first posted by folks on the Istanbul to Dubai repo...Ncl clearly told them all Istanbul ports of calls were going to be cancelled for2016/17.

 

I have since had that information confirmed.

We are on the cruise after you. Where did you get the information that the two Turkish ports are being replaced by Croatia and Crete?

Final payment complete and past final payment date?

Edit: After reading Harriet's response... do you surrender your right to rebook after you make final payment even if its prior to the final payment date?

We just dealt with this situation the other day. We had paid off our cruise but were not past final payment. Our cruise fare dropped by about $400. I called NCL and they not only refunded my credit card the $400 they also gave me $100 OBC and I was able to keep all of my existing promotions.

Any one want to comment on Gio our Great Cruise Director?

 

We Loved Him.

 

Take care and safe journeys everyone.

 

Remember to TIP TIP TIP!

 

We are the Moore's,

Tampa Bay

 

N/A

Respectffully, I think that's very naive. You can "be aware" of your surroundings as much as you want to be and you still aren't going to stop a suicide bomber in a tourist area. I spent twenty one years in the military and visited some very dangerous places. That's fine for me and my risk level but I sure am not going to expose my family to that.

 

Is there a chance of terrorism everywhere these days? Sure, of course there is but why go to a location where your odds are exponentially higher? Even the cruise lines don't want to go there and expose their employees or passengers to that environment.

If NCL decides to cancel Istanbul as a port of call that is fine with me, I was responding to a question that asked about my lack of concern with a stop in Istanbul. Everyone has their own comfort levels, I would be comfortable still going to Istanbul assuming no other major incidents occur.

I find it interesting that you seem to have no fear of Istanbul after a suicide bomber killed several German tourists. I'm an experienced traveler and normally I don't get shaken very easily. But with Isis anger over Turkey siding with United States and NATO, our Istanbul port stop has made me nervous from the day I booked our NCL Mediterranean cruise. I have several first time cruisers/travelers with me on this trip and they are very scared right now.

As much as I wanted to see Istanbul I am hoping that NCL will substitute this port. Sigh...

I'm sorry if this sounds like I'm attacking you, I'm not but I would like to know what your thoughts are on the Istanbul situation.

We are seasoned travelers and have been all over the world including Turkey multiple times(just not Istanbul). The chances of being killed in a terrorist attack are very remote compared to other travel related accidents. If we sat and worried about all the risks involved with traveling then we would probably never leave our house. We were on one of the last sailings to Egypt before NCL cancelled all stops there due to the unrest. A lot of the people on our cruise stayed on the ship for fear of being targeted or kidnapped, we decided to go into Cairo and see the pyramids anyways and it was the highlight of the trip. We made sure to be extra cautious and always be aware of our surroundings and this is the same way we will approach our stop in Istanbul. If NCL decides to cancel our stop in Istanbul this coming May then of course we will understand the reasons why and be perfectly happy with whatever port they decide to replace it with.

Our stop in Istanbul was cancelled a few years back when we were on the Spirit. The replacement for Istanbul was Dubrovnik, Croatia. We are hoping that our cruise in May will make it to Istanbul this time around.

We have a 12 day Grand Med cruise booked for May 19th 2016. We have paid the cruise in full but final payment is not until the 1st of March. Due to a job opportunity that we can not turn down we may have to cancel the cruise in May and take a last minute cruise in January 2016. My question is since we have paid the cruise in full will NCL transfer that payment to the new cruise or will they have to refund us? Also will we lose the perks we got when we booked the original cruise or can we ask to keep the same reservation number and perks?

Read a guidebook on your ports. You might find that what interests you requires no excursion at all!

We have done this cruise before and have been to most of the ports multiple times. I just like to look at the tours NCL offers and see what is new. Just seemed odd to me that no tours are showing up yet.

There is no set time. On some cruises I have seen them available over a year out, but on others it can be a lot later than that.

 

Your example does sound quite close to sailing though. Is it an unusual sailing?

The sailing is a Venice to Barcelona Grand Med cruise. We did this cruise two years ago and I remember looking at the excursions well before final payment.

When does NCL usually offer the shore excursions for sale? We are not sailing until May but I remember being able to book shore excursions before final payment on our previous cruises, at least I thought we did.

Does anyone know how many months prior to your cruise the shore excursions become available to book online?

Had the same issue with our passport information. We were using an IPad to check in. Went to a laptop after a few days and the information was taken with no problems

I was using my IPad when I ran into the issue. I used a desktop the next morning and had no issues.

Love the review so far. We did this cruise last year and are doing the reverse route next year.