lixogab

Well, sometimes the bidding algorithm grants upgrades many days in advance, so there should be some communication.

My point is that my case proofs that NCL doesn't supply plus grade all information, otherwise it would accept the higher bid without waiting me to call. 

Thank you! 

P.S. Look like Chateauneuf du pape is back!

Any recent changes to the Viva Vino list?

13 hours ago, All-ready2cruise said:

 

This is no bug! NCL is out to make as much money as possible with this bidding program; there is absolutely no incentive for them to have a bid trigger when they drop prices to sell more cabins.  If someone doesn't check the prices between their current cabin and the cabin cat. they are bidding on, well, that's up to them. I check the prices frequently and there's also an app (I think CC offers 1) that will identify price drops for you.  

 

It's like most things in life, you're responsible for taking care of your own things.

Bid at your own risk. 

 

Hm... Let's model the following scenario.

I paid $750 for an OX , and placed a $220 bid for a BX.  At that moment the BX was around $1300.

Then the BX price goes down to $880, meaning NCL is happy to accept $880 if a new customer calls.

But they have my bid of $220, meaning that they could charge me $970 but by some reason they don't do that.

You may assume they just want new customer rather than upsell, but  when I call and offer $130pp, the accept it without hesitation which is $90 less they could charge me by simply accepting my bid.

The only reasonable explanation I have is that their system is not sophisticated enough or plusgrade doesn't know how much I paid. 

14 hours ago, dexddd said:

Don't think it is a gap.  As sailing nears, they have to move rooms.  Upgrading someone now leaves a less desirable room to sell at lower price.  They can hope people miss this gap between bid and lowering straight upgrade.  That way they can hook the bidders at the larger gap now.

Quick follow up. Today morning the plusgrade site offered correct upgrade list range from M to H.

On the other hand after the upgrade the shareholder OBC disappeared from my reservation. I think I saw this before, so assuming it's a glitch. (Will print the amenities receipt just in case).

The cruise company shore excursions are crazy overpriced , but there are few.

I was not able to find any alternative company offering shore excursions in Gisborn.

Some of them even put ads on Google but when I search, nothing is actually offered.

On 1/14/2020 at 6:10 PM, mking8288 said:

 

 

Last month on the Gem, several folks on our Roll Call called in instead & got upgraded, at no extra charge and/or paid a fraction - NOT everyone got their wish.  We asked and was given a much higher $$ sum to upgrade 

Do you mean that they asked more than (current price - what you originally paid)?
 

I booked an OX several month ago. Around 80-90 days before the sail date got the upgrade invitation mail. Placed a “comfortable” bid for a balcony and little bit more for MC. Couple of days ago ( and still 20+ days to the cruise)realized that my bid was pretty close to the difference between the current BX price and the amount I paid. Wasn’t monitoring the prices every day, but today realized that the BX prices went down further and now the difference is half of my bid amount.

Called NCL, paid the difference and got a BX. The NCL page reflected the change immediately.

After that went to the upgrade bid  page and was still showing that my current room is still OX! Cancelled the bids to avoid being charged twice in case their system has some glitch. 
So, 2 observations:

- There is some gap in communication between NCL and plusgrade 

- The system doesn’t trigger an autoupgrade if the bid is higher than the price difference.

(For me it’s a bug or a missed opportunity by NCL)

Thanks Leigh.

Good to know that there is a shuttle to the town center. Hope the i-Site will offer something interesting .

I'm planning  the upcoming NZ cruise and one of our port will be Gisborne.

Unlike all other NZ ports there is not much information on Gisborne. Even viator doesn't offer any excursions.

Tripadvisor shows some attractions (Rere falls,etc)  but they are beyond walking distance from the port.

Car rentals are mostly closed because of NZ national holiday.

There is "Dive Tatapouri" that offers stingray encounter, but they are located 7 miles from Gisborne and apparently don't offer transportation.

Any ideas and sharing past experience will be appreciated.

Same happens to the NCL Star. On September 2020 she cruises around North Europe ( Southampton roundtrips)  then disappera and suddenly shows up in Buenos Aires around Christmas .

I'm not technically new to RCCL, in fact my first cruise was with them, but it was 3 nights MIA - Nassau and it was 17 years ago.

Now after trying Princess, Carnival and sticking with NCL last 3 cruises, I'm back with RCCL and sailing this weekend from San Juan on Adventure of the seas. So I guess my questions still can qualify as "newbie" questions.

1. Dining time. When booking I got to choose fixed timing or "My time". I went with My time hoping it would be similar to NCL Freestyle when I can go to the dining room at any time without and get a table for 2 within few minutes.

But then I realized that even with "My time" reservations are recommended. Now, I hate waiting so I'm thinking if I should plan ahead and make reservations or just relax.

The question is: what would be an average wait time for 2 people willing share the table?

2. Dress code.

How formal are the formal nights in MDR?

I don't plan to show up in polo shirt and Tommy Bahama shorts but what about casual shirt + jeans or chinos ?

Is it allowed ? Is it common ? What percentage of fellow passengers follows the dress code on formal nights on a Caribbean cruise?

The real problem with Spirit is that they have few flights AND plan very tight: if a pilot or flight attendant gets sick or the plane has some issues, that may result in a flight cancellation more often than on AA or DL.

And with less flights rescheduling a cancelled flight is harder and translates to a bigger delay.

On the other hand, FLL is Spirit hub.

"Sailaway" rate means no (free) UBP.

The options are :

- Preorder or buy as you go starting approximately $30 / bottle. Plus 18% gratuity.

- Buy on shore and pay $15 corkage fee. Looks attractive if you leave from a port with decent wine store. But in Seward the wines are really overpriced.

- Viva vino package. They offer 4 bottles for $88 +18% or 6 x $132 +18%. The list varies. There is another more expensive package.

You don't have to designate where and when you will use your free dinners at the moment when you choose the dining package nor when you pay.

However, it is recommended to make the reservations as soon as possible either online or on the ship since the most popular times go out pretty fast

If you're active and have 2-3 weeks to spend in South America, I would recommend to skip the cruise at all.

Instead book your ticket to Buenos Aires (EZE), spend couple of days, then book a round trip to Iguazu falls (2-3 days, you'll need Brazilian visa assuming you are US citizens), then from Buenos Aires fly to Puerto Madryn/ Trelew, stay in Puerto Madryn 3 days, visit Peninsula Valdez (whale watching season is September - end of November) and Punta Tombo park.

From Trelew you can fly to Calafate. Visit Perito Moreno Glacier (2 days), El Chalten (2 days) village and Torres del Paine park in Chile (2 days) .

From Calafate you can either go to Punta Arenas, Chile or fly to Ushuaia , spend couple of days there and then go to Punta Arenas (that part could be challenging). From Punta Arenas you can fly to Santiago ,spend couple of days there and return home.

As an alternative, you can skip Chile and fly from Ushuaia to Buenos Aires and then home.

Within Argentina you can either use local bus system (very developed, but still add time ) or rent a car (expensive and manual transmission only)

Availability on the Jewel (for Aug/13th) went from 20+ non-interior cabins available to sold-out in a couple of days.

Wow, that got sold out fast :-(

May be they had a lot of GTYs and just assigned them.

Let me share my very limited experience.

I booked an OX, got a cabin assigned after some time, then upgraded to BX (paying the difference between what I paid for OX and the current BX price) and then got assigned the cabin again.

- Both cabins were assigned within couple of weeks. (The OX took 2-3 weeks, the BX , 1-2 weeks).

- Based on information shared on the roll call, fellow passengers that got an X the same time that me got assigned the same.

- As many other says, you can be "upgraded" to any subcategory, included the "obstructed view" for the OX. Common sense suggests that if the cheapest cabins are available, they will put you in that cabin. Based on that logic, if you buy well in advance, most likely you'll get your cabin assigned pretty fast. So, the best chance to get an upgrade (or an "upgrade" ) would be to buy when the category is almost sold out.

- As of now, the X categories are priced a lot less mainly because they don't include the NCL freebies (UDP, etc). However, since the cheapest cabins (i.e. "obstructed view") could be priced very close to the X but get all freebies, if you wait long enough chances are that you'll not get that one.

But be careful with that assumption (see below).

- The NCL and many TA websites allow you to monitor the available cabins.

The websites show no more than 15 cabins in a given category, but you can get little bit more information using the following tricks:

-- If you query for 2 or 3 people, it will first show cabins for only up to 3 people. If you see cabins for 4 or more, that means that you see all "available" 3 people cabins on that deck.

-- By you querying for 4 people you can limit the search only for cabins that can hold 4 people or more. This will expand your results beyond 15 cabins.

-- Some web TAs show more available cabins. Don't know why

- Now the bad part. If a cabin shows up as not available on the website, it doesn't mean that you can't get. Even if the whole sub-category shows up as sold out, you still may get a cabin there. This happened to be with the BX assignment: I monitored for at least a week before I got the assignment days and the BB category on Sun was sold out but I got a BB cabin.

May be the person there got an upsell/upgrade or may be they have "pre-reserved" cabins.

Last minute deals exist, but only for undersold dates and itineraries.

If your date and itineraries are not flexible, most likely you will not get much deal.

Currently the best offers are on southbound NCL Seward (Anchorage) to Vancouver: Aug 01 OV $599/ Bal $999, Aug 29 : OV $599

You can get Seattle roundtrip on HAL for mid august for $729 internal or 829 OV.

Thanks.

I was looking more for a good hike or something like that.

Now I have to decide between just wandering / getting beer at Icy Strait brewery and a whale watch (I know, I have not much time: F.I.S.H.E.S , g-wind and Tecck are filling their boats pretty fast).

It's expensive, we just did it, but it's really gorgeous.

I'm loyal to any brand. Booked Alaska cruise on NCL mainly because they offered better price than the competitors. I booked a GTY though, so no UDP or SDP

Some people pay same price than competitors but get a free package.

We are sailing southbound Alaska is a month and I have some ideas for all ports except for Icy Strait Point/ Hoonah.

I read here that ISP is an excellent location for Whale watching, but we did it a year ago in Argentina, and ISP prices are pretty high for an "ok, let's do it again", so I was looking for alternatives.

We love hiking, but I didn't see any hiking trail except a short road between the pier and the town.

Bear "searching" ? It looks like spending all the time in the van rather than walking.

Be sure that her US visa is for multiple entrances.

For other countries, you'll have to check with each country consulate.

In most cases, the information will be available on the consulate web site.

(That is, if the cruise visits, St Kitts and Nevis, Grenada, Aruba, the best way is to check the St Kitts and Nevis, Grenada, Aruba consulate in Philippines or in the US)

Now, the cruise VISA requirement differ from the regular requirements that you can find on Timatic:

It is very common that the cruise passengers of any nationality sailing to Caribbean from a US port do not need any Caribbean visa as long as they spend the night on the ship, but you have to double check for each country she plans to visit.

I got a balcony GTY BX interline rate and even with the 79pppd &18%=92pd I'm $500+ less then the category that gets the "free" UBP . I just have to decide if I'm going to drink 8-9 drinks a day on an AK cruise.

Right, in our case (we sail on the same cruise) the BX is $1000 cheaper than any assigned balcony.

Regarding the UBP, don't forget that according the

https://www.ncl.com/onboard-packages/beverage-packages:

Beverage packages must be purchased for all guests staying within the same stateroom, additional stateroom, adjoining stateroom or travel with.

With your 12 year old, she would probably also enjoy Teppanyaki especially unless you frequent Benihana back home because it's kind of like dinner with a show.

 

If the MDR serves the equivalent of an Applebee's steak, then Cagneys serves the equivalent (on a good day) of a Morton's.

.

I like the idea to compare with the land restaurants.

Is Teppanyaki comparable to Benihana ?

How about the Moderno ?

Is it like Fogo de Chao? Or it's more like Texas de Brazil ?