KeithJenner

To be fair, we probably couldn’t call that evidence about the Anthem as their agent could be lying as well. If you ask NCL agents whether beers are being served on the Dawn and Star then they would probably say yes (as they did to someone earlier on this thread). Not that we have any evidence of NCL lying of course. 🙂

I know that people think they are lying. I certainly do. That wasn’t my point. To be clear, we aren’t saying “I don’t care what they say they’re lying”. We are saying “I’ve listened to what they are saying and it is clearly a lie”.

Your understanding is wrong then. No alcohol is being served.

Absolutely nobody is saying “I don’t care what they say, they’re lying”. Lots of people are saying “what they say doesn’t make sense and conflicts with the other evidence we have”. They are two very very different things. You may not agree with what people are saying but that doesn’t give you an excuse to misrepresent what they are saying.

No, no, it’s evidence that NCL aren’t lying. Apparently. 🙂 🙂 🙂

This really is magnificent entertainment. I am literally laughing out loud here. Superb. 🙂

But apparently it may be affecting other lines, but those cruisers are completely different to NCL cruisers and just wouldn’t mention it anywhere would they.

Yes, bringing on your own wine is an option, and probably what we would do in this instance. Of course it does rely on knowing in advance about the restriction, and also being able to find somewhere to get some wine. Fairly easy for us in the UK, but if you are flying in from overseas and relying on transfers then it’s not as straight forward. It also seems a bit tacky to me. Rather than just being able to walk to a bar whenever you fancy a drink you have to nip back to your room to get a can from your stash. Hardly sophisticated cruising. 🙂

If only it were just one day.

I prefer to move about when on holiday, so if not cruising then we will most likely do a road trip. The great thing about cruising for us is that the travel part is done whilst we are sitting in a bar or restaurant or sleeping. People often put forward an all inclusive resort as an alternative to cruising, but that is absolutely not what we are cruising for. As a result I am a lot less fussed about some of the things that people enjoy about cruising, such as the shows, spas etc. Give me some bars and reasonable restaurants and I’m happy. Having said that, I do enjoy a sea day to relax.

Yes, you are confused. This isn’t about not being able to get a drink as soon as they board. It is about not being able to get a glass of wine with your meal in ports where the ship sails later (which are relatively common in some of these itineraries). It’s about NCL charging for people to upgrade to Premium plus and then not providing the service for significant periods of time. And it’s about NCL lying to its customers about the reasons. It’s a very major issue.

You will only need to pay if you don’t have a dining package. I think I worded it badly. If you have the dining package and you book Moderno or Teppanyaki first then you pay nothing, whether you are booking for 1 person or 10 people. If you don’t have the dining package then you will have to pay for everyone and then claim back the unused place onboard. You don’t just pay for that one extra place.

This hasn’t just affected the UK. There have been similar problems in Greece and in Gibraltar. There are also some restrictions in Italy at the moment. In some places (currently Italy and Greece) they are only serving people with the beverage packages. Nobody can say what the situation will be in August. I honestly don’t think this is sustainable for NCL, so it’s likely that the UK issues will be resolved by then, but they could still happen in any of those other countries.

Just reserve for 4 people. The table sizes are even numbers which we assume is why they dont usually offer reservations for odd numbers. The only problem is if you are booking Moderno or Teppanyaki and you don’t have dining credits to cover them. In that case you will have to pay for the extra person and get it refunded onboard or wait until onboard to book.

We have paid tax on drinks in the UK on NCL in the past, but it was a few years ago and the last few times were been in Southampton with them they haven’t charged it. I suspect that it is due to having to charge the advertised price, as mentioned.

No it isn’t.

I believe that this is an angled balcony, but I would always just check before booking, as you are doing here, and googling the room number doesn't give a conclusive answer. So, yes, I think that is is an angled balcony, but I can't say for sure. Sometimes the NCL deck plans aren't totally correct. Are there any others available on different decks? If not then personally I would go for it because it is most likely angled whereas another is certainly not.

What ship? The Breakaway is in Naples today isn’t it? Edit - the sign says Breakaway, ignore the question. 🙂

If you book onboard then they will often upgrade you to a higher category cabin (within the same type, so you don’t upgrade from balcony to club suite, for example). It also doesn’t apply for things like aft or large balcony rooms. We’ve done it a couple of times, but I don’t know if it is an always available thing, or just an occasional offer. It is available to anyone, regardless of latitudes status.

That was an early theory last year, but I don’t think that’s the case. You never know though.

Ok, thanks for clearing that up, you had me worried that they had changed something else. 🙂 Yeah, taking bottles on is an option for people without the package. Not ideal for people to have to worry about that sort of thing though.

Were you not able to bring wine onboard? As far as I am aware NCL are still allowing people to bring wine onboard with a corkage fee (only payable if you don’t have a beverage package). Was your experience different? Maybe you are talking about different drinks. That would be an issue as they only allow wine to be brought onboard.

You’d think so wouldn’t you,

Yeah, I think I've mentioned somewhere on this thread that I think this is an NCL issue (in my opinion, others may disagree). 🙂

Last year there was the situation in Santorini where two NCL ships were both there and one was serving whilst the other wasn’t. We don’t know why this was, and staff on the ship that wasn’t serving suggested to a passenger that it was because the other ship was breaking the rules, but it may suggest that this is a per ship thing, Also backing that up is that we had the problem for the first two cruises of the season on the Jade and then it was the Gem on their first cruise that had a problem later in the year. Of course that was Greece and this is the UK so it may be different, but the balance of the evidence (in my opinion, others may disagree) seems to be that it is done by each ship separately,