Freckles_51

8 hours ago, dukenurse416 said:

Freckles, Where did you decide to stay? Looking for one night and we have to return rental. Thank you.

We are staying in Hollywood.  Seems like we can use I95/MacArthur Pkwy/Tunnel to get to the port.

28 minutes ago, CruiserBruce said:

Yes, the light rail is still a great way to get to Hampton Brickell.

Thank you!

Does anyone know if restaurants and shops are walking distance from TownePlace Suites NW 11th street (MIA southeast area) 

Also considering Hampton Brickell I know shops and restaurants are nearby, but extra taxi adds to overall cost.  stayed there many years ago, took the train from airport to Brickell station and walked to the hotel.  Is the train from MIA still a viable option? Any other recommended hotels in Brickell, close to train from MIA?

Thanks everyone for very helpful responses.

On 5/17/2023 at 11:58 AM, BoozinCroozin said:

Based on this year, I would not take a chance.

 

Are you able to elaborate?  We are sailing out of Miami on that date, understand there will be lots of road closures, wondering if anyone can give advice on best area to stay 2 nights pre-cruise for easiest route to the port on marathon day. Airport area?  North of the port? South of the port? as close to the port as possible? Etc

1 hour ago, Cruise till you drop said:

thanks for the info.  When you book the tour online, do they charge your credit card immediately upon booking or only put a hold on your card

No she charges on the day of the tour. She wants the credit card info to hold the booking and I assume will charge if you don’t show up on the day or don’t cancel outside 7 days prior. I actually paid in cash Euros and my card was never charged. 

I had this tour just last week.  We were able to pay in euros on credit card, or cash in euros (75) or USD (90) (actual USD depends upon her exchange rate on tour day). For me, coming from Canada, the exchange rate was almost the same to buy Euros or USD so I took Euros cash and took enough euros to include tip.

Christelle was at the end of the pier in the same area where people congregated for Celebrity tours.  She held a card with everyone’s surname.

Hello!  First Celebrity cruise coming up, begins March 27, I have linked 3 cruise reservation numbers together for a total of 4 people and trying to reserve Select dining times.  
 

The app shows  dining room opens at 5:30pm for Select dining, but the app does not show this time when I try to make a reservation, seems like 6:00 is the earliest on any day.  

Does this mean only walk-ins from 5:30-6:00, or does it mean bookings are full before 6:00?

We would like 5:30 time each day, are we better off not making reservations and just arriving at the dining room at 5:30?
 

Another two friends will be on the same cruise and may want to join us for dinner sometimes. How would we arrange this if we have reservations for 4 people?

Also Terms and conditions show that cancellations must be made 24 hours prior, otherwise there will be $10 per person charge. Is this only for Specialty restaurants or Select dining as well?

2 hours ago, ksp819 said:

We just took this tour and Cristelle is as sweet as the come!  She was such a joy to talk to.  There are several stops but most are not in town where there are stores.  I believe there may have been one place to buy a snack but we didn’t need it.  Some of her “tastes” were small but there were small sandwiches and a couple other heartier things too.  We were not starving when we returned to the ship.  Our driver was a little late so we met her at 9 and returned to the ship around 2:15.  The tour was wonderful!

That’s good info thank you!

14 hours ago, Betsynh said:

The Cafe also had desserts at that time. We got pizza and pasta after excursion, too. No worries!

Thank you!

1 hour ago, olsen66 said:

You can also do the mast grill

Great to have several choices, thank you

6 hours ago, onyourmark said:

We returned from an excursion around 3pm and found the OVC had pizza, pasta and salad bar with a few desserts, maybe ice cream too.

 

 

That’s good news, thank you.

Hi, I will be on the same ship and itinerary in March, thank you for the review.  I thought I read somewhere (maybe in this thread … lol) that there is no food available anywhere after the buffet lunch closes, until dinner time.  Is that correct?  So if returning from an excursion at 2:30 or later, we need to be sure to eat before reboarding the ship? There is nowhere to get a light lunch or snack after 2:30? (Or whenever the buffet closes)

Hi, I have booked this tour for March.  Since the snacks are not lunch and the tour is quite long, are there any places at the stops to buy lunch or at least more snacks?

Yes I see now that transfer was the wrong way to do this and caused confusion, my TA had actually contacted NCL before we started this process and was told to have me make the request. Oh well I will have my TA handle it and hopefully get a satisfactory result. 
Thanks for your input.

Thanks for your response, I get what you’re saying but I want the full FCC amount applied to the same cruise that I had booked ie the amount applied to the deposit plus the amount in my account which I had intended to apply to the same cruise, in effect then, transferring it to the other person. This was all explained in my email to NCL.

So if I had made full payment before the name change, (final payment not yet due), using the very same FCC, what would they have done with that upon the name change? Left it applied to the cruise or placed it back into my Latitudes account, in which case I would transfer it to the other person anyway? Either way it amounts to the same thing. Or am I still missing something?
 

After several rescheduling of March 2020 cancelled cruise, we now have a booking for March 2022, but I recently had a medical

issue for which I cannot get travel medical insurance. Someone else is going on the cruise in my place, TA made a name change and I asked NCL to transfer FCC to that person. They will not allow  “partial” or “remaining” balance transfers. Wondering if anyone has dealt with this situation?  Can I just apply my FCC to that cruise even though I am not going? So not actually transferring it to someone else for their future use? Or any other suggestions? I would ask my TA but she is out of town for several weeks.

in my account the FCC is listed as 100% future cruise credit, but the whole FCC thing was complicated back when the cruise was cancelled, teens credit was transferred to me but that portion used as deposit for upcoming cruise, not exactly sure of the amounts, maybe part of mine was used as well.  It’s a mess.

22 hours ago, dexddd said:

Hello Freckles.  Hope all is going well up your way.

 

Good luck with your refunds.

Hi dex, yes all is well thanks, as I hope it is for you and family.   Just patiently waiting for a few refunds and some kind of normalcy. 

NCL is not the only cruise line delaying refund.

We expect the same wait time for a refund from Celebrity, and we cancelled that cruise prior to final payment date.

2 hours ago, Dar & Bob said:

It's an extra 20% on top of any current sale. 

Yes that is correct
 

We also received an additional 30% discount due to sale when we booked

2 minutes ago, hallux said:

At least you were able to use FCC for the deposit.  Apparently Royal is not allowing the FCC to be used for deposits, requiring a CASH DEPOSIT for new cruises, then the FCC can be used for the remainder.  Yup, NCL isn't the only cruise line with "horrible" policies...

 Hey I'm not complaining about NCL policies. 😉  Glad we were not booked with Royal.

We got a much better deal on the rebooked cruise than on the cancelled one.  Of course it is only a great deal on paper and if the sailing is not cancelled 🙃

We were booked for 2 adults and 2 teens. (March 29 sailing). We took the 100% FCC +25% bonus FCC. 

Working through our Travel Agent - We booked another cruise using each of our 25% bonus FCC as deposit, (we had to use this bonus FCC in order to get the extra 20% discount that they offered), leaving the 100% FCC in our accounts.

Then we requested that the teens' 100% FCC be transferred to the main guest.  NCL agent told our TA that their IT dept was looking into a batch process to transfer minors' FCC's to adults.  This occurred not long after our request. They placed one teen's 100% FCC in each of the 2 adult accounts.  We will use this for final payment and to purchase pre-cruise items (shore excursions etc). 

The only restriction we are aware of is that FCCs cannot be used to pre-purchase OBC

Good to see a positive post!

We had our March cruise cancelled, we rebooked for December this year in an attempt to use air fare credit, part of which expires in December. Fingers and toes crossed that all goes well. If not then we will just rebook again 😉

We had another cruise booked for August, we decided to cancel prior to final payment as we did not want more money tied up in credits. Everything we had paid - cruise deposit, air fare, private excursions, hotel, insurance premium - was refundable except air fare cancellation fee. This was a Europe cruise, would have rebooked for next year but the cruise fare was $800 pp more! Ugh!

Thanks for responses.  Looks like we will not be affected. 

We just realized that a cruise we have booked is a special events cruise, Casinos at Sea VIP Beach Party.  I have read about other group special events, where much of the ship is taken over by a group, affecting the enjoyment of non-participants.  We don't usually contribute to the casino machines so it is no problem if the casino is constantly busy. I only see that they will have a beach party at one of the ports, no skin off our nose either. Wondering if anyone has experienced a CAS event and , as a non-participant, did it affect your enjoyment of the cruise and in what way?