SouthLyonCruiser

Does anyone have any feedback on ShoreExcursioneer; (positive or negative) for Little French Cay?

We are going on the Getaway and I like would like to do the drop slides. I have heard that ALL jewelry must be removed. My wedding band (after 43 years of marriage) is not removable. Will I still be allowed to use the drop slides?

Hi All,

Been looking for information about NCL air. We got a nice package with air for our April Hawaii POA cruise. I know we can't even get our flight information for a few more weeks. We are flying from Boston and not sure how long it will be. We will have one night at Marriott Resort day before the cruise but would hate to arrive late that night. Have a few questions below.

Thanks as always for CC members help with my stress over things :).

 

Questions:

1- Has anybody flown using NCL from the northeast?

2- Once the flights open can you pick your time like Princess has?

3- Did NCL air jerk you around for your return flight?

I know we have a time difference and hope we don't fly out Sat. morning to get back on Sun. found only one item and they took 15 hours to get home to the northeastern area. Just hope they don't send us home with 2 or 3 stop overs / plane changes. Tough enough going home from vacation hope we don't need another to recover from this one.

Second guessing myself about this deal we got :(.

We stopped using the cruise lines to book our air years ago. It seems that you always have a layover that you don't want because, after the cruise, you just want to get home as quickly as possible. We always book directly with the airline after checking the prices on the discount web sites. The same price but not as likely to get bumped if you book through them as opposed to a discount site.

I attempted to make dinner reservations that are covered by our Platinum perks (dinner at Cagney and at Moderno) but had to put them in the card and pay for them. So, I didn't go through with the reservation.

 

How do you handle Platinum rewards dinner reservations? Thanks.

When I contacted my travel agent before our February cruise and asked about dinner reservations for our Platinum perk I was told that you cannot make those reservations until you are on board. This we did and had no problem getting the times we wanted.

I read one review that said the balcony cabin had only two outlets for USB. Is this true or did the reviewer just miss seeing them?

I will apologize in advance as I know that there may be somewhere else to pose this question.

We are doing the Fury Catamaran excursion in Cozumel and were wondering if, at the beach, we need cash to purchase food or drink; or is that included in the excursion price.

This always seems to be the best place to pose questions of any kind about any part of a Norwegian cruise.

Thanks, in advance, for any answers.

That's one thing I like about Royal Caribbean, sliders to the balconies!!

I have been on ten NCL cruises and all in balcony cabins; I have never seen anything but sliders to access the balcony.

Hi All! I'm sailing on the NCL Getaway for the western Caribbean trip on 4/22/18 returning on 4/29/18. This is a company sponsored trip and I just realized they have me on a noon flight out of Miami on the last day. So the ship docks at 8am and things I'm reading seem to indicate that I'm cutting it kind of close.

 

What are your thoughts? I did call NCL and all they could tell me was that I as soon as I get on the ship I should register for 'easy walkoff'' (requires you to handle all your luggage yourself).

 

Has anyone been in this situation before? Should I take a chance or move my flight. Note that I am a minimalist traveler so will be able to carry all my luggage.

 

Appreciate any insight and thanks in advance.

 

Joe

We have been on 15 cruises and we book the earliest flight before noon that we can and it has never been a problem; in fact, we could probably have booked flights as early as 11am and still made it with the exception of a cruise out of Tampa where fog delayed our ship arriving by more than an hour and this is not unusual for Tampa.

We do two things that may help make the difference in timing; we always take a cab to and from the port instead of waiting for NCL to fill a hot crowded bus for the trip to the terminal, and, prior to getting our Platinum status, we always did the walk off.

We are going on the Getaway in January and I have seen a couple of reviews that said to get reservations early for the shows. In the 10 NCL cruises I have been at we just went to the theatre 30 minutes before show time and had no problem getting a seat. This is the main theatre that I am referring to and not the dinner shows.

Is it really necessary to get reservations for the main theatre?

We will be traveling on the Getaway in January and would like to know what our 3 year old grandson will have to have to get back on the ship when in port.

Party Spoiler Alert !

 

I don't know the specifics about the Getaway balcony partitions but in most cases opening the partitions is a

fruitless effort as the partition opens directly in front of the cabin door leading to the balcony - it is one or the

other open at a time.

These partitions are heavy panels although the new -AWAY class ships maybe using space age lightweight

plastic. One other thing the deck furniture may have to be moved for access of opening and closing the partition.

 

On a curious note if you want to do this yourself better take a MacGyver tool to unlock the hex head bolt and

then you become a security risk bringing a weapon of mass destruction capable of dismantling the ship. LOL !

Your new quarters will be an Inside Cabin with no doors windows or partitions to fool with.

Climbing over and around the partitions is not the same thing as the climbing the rock wall deck 16 - no-no

finger wave. LOL !

 

Best solution to opening party cabin quarters is to get adjacent connecting cabins with a common interior door

between the cabins (only two cabins are possible - not three) - On your location deck 10 there are no

connecting cabins nor on deck 9 or 8. Decks 11 12 and 13 have the connecting cabins on the Getaway.

The partitions will swing either way and may be swung into the fixed panel of a cabin door wall. We did this for three cabins on an Alaska cruise and it was great.

It occurs to me that I have pretty much the same questions about the "Free Bag of Laundry" perk for Platinums. Per cruise or per week? And do we each get a free bag of laundry?

The laundry is one bag per Platinum member for free per cruise. There will be a coupon in your stateroom for one bag but we were told that you could just pack up the second bag when ready and write "Platinum" on the bag and it will be free. they must keep a record of the number of bags you send by cabin number.

I hope this helps.

My husband and I are both Platinum with NCL. I seem to remember that Platinum members get a meal for two at one of the specialty dining locations (like Cagney's) either per cruise or per week. This Fall, we will be on back-to-back-to-back-to back cruises on the NCL Star. An 8-day out of Venice, a 14-day Trans-Atlantic out of Rome, an 11-day southern Caribbean out of Miami, and a 14-day Panama Cruise out of Miami ending up in Los Angeles.

 

As you can see, all of the cruises are over 7 days, and two of them are 14-days. So, my first question is: is this perk per cruise or per week?

 

My 2nd question is: since we are both Platinum, do we both get that perk separately (so my husband would get a dinner for two, and I would get a separate dinner for two)?

 

My 3rd question is: how far ahead should we reserve our dinners?

 

My husband was Platinum on our last NCL cruise, but we didn't reserve until we got on board, and the best times were, of course, already taken. I became Platinum with the points received on that last cruise, so we haven't cruised with both of us Platinum on NCL, before.

 

I would try to find answers to these questions on the NCL website, but we are in Ecuador right now, and when we go on the NCL website it only appears in Spanish, and we have found NO WAY to switch the language!!

The Platinum dinner perk is two dinners for two, not two dinners for two for each of you.

The perk dinners cannot be reserved until you board the ship. This is all per NCL as of our February 2018 cruise. These things are always subject to change but I think that, as of now, that is the rule.

This is what I do... When I am ready to sit down, and of course every chair has a hat, book, one flip-flop on it, I sit at the end of the chair. Usually some one will yell at me "that chair is taken". I politely inform them that I will be happy to move when the person gets there BUT....If it is more than 30 minutes, I move the articles to another chair or ask the staff to move it.

Works every time!!! ;p

What a great idea. I would have no problem moving someones stuff after seeing that no one was there within the thirty minute time frame. If someone has the nerve to reserve the chair for hours I would have no problem having the nerve to move their stuff.

My advice is to always save all of your paperwork and copies of their policies so that, years from now, when the child is 18, they can't say that they don't remember that was ever a policy.

Sorry, I am OCD when it comes to ALL of my cruise documentation.

Find yourself a reliable travel agent. We have used the same travel agent for 15 cruises and anytime we needed anything we just emailed her and got an answer within 24 hours. She has never steered us wrong and on one cruise got NCL to give us a lower advertised price on our cabins (we had 3) without us having to cancel and rebook with the chance of not getting our originally booked cabins. A good travel agent is worth their weight in gold.

How long after booking a cruise can you purchase insurance from a third party? I am still 7 months from the cruise but bought the cruise in June of this year.

I always buy AIG and you must purchase within fifteen days of booking. You can add your airfare later if you are still shopping for that, I just call my travel agent once we get our air fare and add it. The premium may stay the same depending of the cost.

See if they have a website and book it directly. We booked parasailing directly with Fury in Key West last November. It was significantly less expensive than the cruise ship, and there were cruise passengers from our ship with us on the excursion!

thanks for the advice; I already tried that and the dates we are going to be there are blacked out.

We are sailing in January on the Getaway and the Fury Catamaran excursion, our favorite in Cozumel isn't listed as available on our My NCL page. Are they probably sold out or maybe they wont list them until a later date?

This is still listed as an excursion on the excursion section of the NCL home page.

Has anyone used cruise excusioneer for an excursion? They are a lot cheaper than cruise prices and they guarantee back on board... Western Carib on Getaway in June!!! Woohoo!

I have never used excursioneer but have used Shore Trips. If you are using a travel agent a good bet would be to check with him or her. They would know as well as anyone.

When do the excursions become available for viewing on the NCL website. We are going on the Dawn in January 2019 and under shore excursions three of the destination ports are grayed out and two others the only excursion in information about the port itself. Thank you.

We are going on the Getaway in January and there are over 50 excursions listed as available as of now and more are added fairly regularly. If you are just looking for an idea of what may become available you can go to the NCL web site and research excursions by port. Good luck, maybe we are going on the same cruise?

I believe that Princess has the better web site. One of my favorite parts is that you can see what cabins are not sold when researching a cruise. NCL makes it difficult at best to get this information. And, yes, I realize that cabins shown as "Sold" may just be on hold for bulk travel agencies.

For people that used flights through NCL, how was it?

 

For people that have used Norwegian Airlines, how was it?

 

 

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I stopped booking through the cruise lines years ago. It seemed that the last couple of times we used them; both NCL and Princess we did not get non stop flights and we do not care for the layovers. We are very satisfied booking them ourselves. Also, in case you were going to ask, I do not believe that the insurance through the cruise lines will cover air travel if you book it yourself. That does not effect us as we always get our own insurance because the insurance through the cruise lines are secondary insurance meaning that you have to file claims with your credit card company and homeowners insurance before they will pay.

I am not a big fan of emailing for any problems with cruise lines. I have always used snail mail and kept a copy of my correspondence. I always received a quick written reply. You may as well try it, you have nothing to lose

You are actually expecting fresh, locally sourced seafood in the MDR of a mainstream-priced cruise line?

 

Galley provisions are loaded frozen into bulk containers and delivered to the ship at turnaround ports. From lowest-bid suppliers often halfway around the world, having been prepared weeks in advance.

It seems that I had read that cruise ships are not allowed to receive fresh meat or fish. It must all be frozen. I really don't know the reason behind this but it may have to do with the Health Department.