av8tr21

I am still waiting for a refund from an early May sailing. It was cancelled beginning of April, we requested refund on April 13th. We bank with USAA, and I have disputed once. Only time and LAST time I have paid for a cruise with a debit card (still don't know why). The temporary credit was reversed because NCL gave USAA some bs story. I escalated and am waiting for a callback from a department manager at USAA. To say the file at USAA has grown would be an understatement, although I have a feeling they will rule in our favor.

I'm sorry but AFTER 90 days is not an acceptable time frame for a refund. I do not care about their cash flow, and the work from home excuse is old. Most everyone has been working from home since March, so that argument is invalid. I paid for something that I did not receive, give me my money back NOW.

Now we wait for all the NCL apologists...

Going on 6 weeks at home now...AGHHHHH!!! We both can work remotely, so not a whole lot of change. I prefer going into the office since I manage a team, but so far everything has been great. I normally travel for work quite a bit, and that has been an adjustment. Started sewing masks yesterday, trying to play the piano everyday, getting 5-6 Peloton rides in a week and other workouts, walking the dogs, hiking, etc. LOTS of wine...speaking of which.... 

We had a cruise booked the first week of May with my entire family (they live in FL) for my 30th bday, my Dad's bday, and my younger brother graduating from Embry Riddle. Not gonna lie, SUPER bummed out. But what can we do? Other than try to stay positive and have a good attitude. 

Currently sitting on our balcony pretending to be on a cruise....sigh 

We live in Bellevue, which has turned into a ghost town during the week. I work for a large company but have my own team and a satellite office in downtown Bellevue. Took a proactive approach, and my team and I have been working from home for the past two weeks.

Leave once a week to go to the store, and to go hiking a few times a week at a nature preserve about 10 mins away, but that's it. If everyone would stay home and stop being selfish and exercise a bit of common sense, I think this would be over a lot quicker. 

I expect the 30 day pause on cruising to be extended... 

2 hours ago, erewhon said:

Enjoying your reports.

What length of time was the train journey?

 

Have a fabulous cruise on the Noordam.

About 4 hours, give or take. Highly recommend!

We are on the ship! Beautiful train ride from Anchorage, HIGHLY recommended. Here are some photos. More details later. Currently relaxing on the Verandah with a glass of wine and a book 😎

We’re about 180 miles from Anchorage, should be starting our descent soon. Flight has been great, awesome crew. Terrible catering this time around. Ridiculously small portions. I was on this same flight a week ago, and the entree portion was 3x the size! Crazy!

The day has finally arrived! Said goodbye to the dogs (they were not thrilled to say the least, but fortunately they LOVE our dog sitter. We actually love her so much, that we flew her up from Phoenix (where we moved from in April), because we don’t just trust anyone with our “kids”. One of the challenges of moving to a new city/state. Anyway. 

Grabbed an UBER and off to SeaTac!

July 27, 2019
Delta 688
Seattle-Tacoma/KSEA – Anchorage/PANC
Scheduled Departure: 6:59PM PST
Scheduled Arrival: 9:29PM AKST
Aircraft: Boeing 737-900ER
Seats: 3C & 3D

Airport
If you have flown in or out of SeaTac, you know it is an absolute nightmare. Security lines are long, especially in the summer. There are 3 Pre-Check checkpoints, only 2 of which have CLEAR. Allow plenty of time regardless, as you never know!

Fortunately, Saturday evening is not TOO busy a time at SeaTac. 

I travel often for work, and generally see complimentary Medallion upgrades (Gold), being a Seattle-based DL flyer. If you read my previous blog post detailing the booking process, you would know I purchased these flights with Skymiles. Only 7k per person for the one-way. After booking, I was offered a paid upgrade for $120 x 2. I consider this to be a good value for a 3 hour flight, and accepted the offer. 

Side-note, I have noticed many more paid upgrade offers, despite being a Gold (should hit Platinum by September. FCM=first class monetization. I’m not going to bore with many details, this was a typical Delta flight. I find the service to be consistent from the Seattle crews, and it’s very seldom I have a poor experience in-flight. 

SkyClub

We are currently relaxing in the SkyClub, which is practically empty. Food is fresh, and actually pretty good! Should be boarding here in about 25 minutes or so. 

Remnants of my charcuterie plate (need to catch up on the Rosè 😁)

2 more sleeps!

Until tomorrow!

So the packing is going, about 75% of the way done. I had ordered two new medium sized spinner suitcases (needed to replace two that had worn out), and those arrived today. Also purchased some new bag straps, and some pretty nifty cruise luggage tags. 

These tags are great! Extremely sturdy, and they are guaranteed to fit the printable cruise luggage tags. And they fit like a glove!

I won't bore you with anymore details of packing, but I feel I certainly won't be without options! Plus, with the uncertainty of the AK weather, I figure it better to be safe than sorry. As far as shore excursions go, I typically avoid booking them through the cruise line (there are exceptions to this rule). I love scoring deals and finding a good price is a thrill. For this sailing, I spent hours researching. I asked my husband, James, what he was interested in but got the "I'm good with whatever, why can't we plan it the day of?"

Silly boy. We can't do that because my mind won't stop thinking about what we could and would be missing out on! Obviously. You should know me by now! Trust me, I love to relax and take a leisurely path at times, but there is WAY too much cool stuff to miss in AK, and I'll be d@!$%# if we do!

Ultimately, I settled on:

Haines- Self-guided bike tour/hiking (no firm plans yet) and of course visiting Haines Brewing Company

Juneau- Harv and Marv's Whale Watching Tour (6 person, 4-hour tour)

Ketchikan- Orcas Cove Sea Kayaking

As for the rest, we can make it up as we go. I assume most days will be spent relaxing on the verandah...and unfortunately for me some work (extremely hard for me to get away from my job, but I can work anywhere and we travel a lot...so I guess you could say we take advantage of the flexibility). 

Oh, look what popped up! Time to check-in:

I'll be back with more tomorrow or Saturday, thanks for staying with me thus far!

41 minutes ago, DeeniEncinitas said:

Oops!!!🙄 The forbidden word was wiped out!! How stupid. Your doggies are adorable!

Denise😊

Thank you! They are quite the pair!

Happy Friday Eve everyone... what a week. 

I have some wonderful new to report. Yesterday afternoon, I received an email...

$270 for a Verandah? Do you have to ask twice? SOLD! I immediately called the 888 number, and after a brief hold, was connected to Travis. I explained I had received an upgrade offer, and a few seconds later we were going over cabin choices. Initially, all he offered were starboard VA category cabins. I had my deck plans ready, and asked if there was anything on the port side. He then offered 5106, which I accepted without hesitation. 

So there you have it. This is my first upsell in 15 years of cruising #score

Packing is underway, I think it's going to be a long night...catching up on work and getting the house ready for our dogsitter, who will be watching our Miniature Daschund and Chiweenie, Paxil and P-R-O-Z-A-C (yes, those are their names...for real. And apparently that is a forbidden word on this site. Ooops!) 😂

We want to go!

3 hours ago, CruiserBruce said:

Agree...discussing prices paid for your cruise is considered a bit tacky..

So it's tacky, yet everyone seems to discuss upsell offers and cruise fares on a regular basis? Got it. 

3 hours ago, taxmantoo said:

Not really that interested in how much other people paid for their cruise.  

There are many more variables than the ones you are suggesting that could affect the price. 

The beautiful thing about a forum is, you don't have to read the posts you're not interested in. Amazing.

Is there any interest in a pinned thread, where everyone can share their upgrade offers? Include:

Sailing: 

Ship: 

Category Booked:

Upgrade Category Offered:

Accepted: Y or N

I'll start

Sailing: 7-night Alaska Southbound

Ship: Noordam

Category Booked: HH (guarantee - assigned 4113, a fully obstructed OV)

Upgrade Category Offered: C or F OV for $49pp or VA Verandah for $139pp

Accepted: Yes - was able to select 5106. Cost was $270 for the entire cruise 

Originally paid $1248 including taxes/port charges. Wound up being $1248 + $270. This category was selling for $1696pp when I looked the other day while checking for price drops. Score!

I booked an Alaska sailing about 30 days ago, we sail on Sunday from Anchorage. Last minute pricing was very inexpensive (in my opinion). $1200 including taxes/port charges in an Oceanview. 

Thank you!

Hi all...we are booked on the 5-night out of Miami on March 15th. We have a bunch of family going as well, and everyone has booked separately, save for my parents. Now, Explorer has completely disappeared from the March/April calendar. I know the drydock was scheduled for March 21-April 20th (I think), but I'm wondering if they pushed it up? My SIL called to change her family from two balcony cabins to a panoramic oceanview suite, and they said it was sold out and that the ship is going into drydock and that they will have to get back to her with some options.

I called twice, and got two different answers, but both basically stating that it's not cancelled. However, it's "sold out", and I cannot switch to a suite, but may be able to in a couple days. Weird.

I suspect they are planning to cancel? Just the other day, my in-laws booked and there was wide open availability for all cabins. Just seems weird, and I can't get a straight answer, and now the rest of our family cannot book!

We are also on Oasis tomorrow, in a JS on deck 8!

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This ship does Great Lakes cruises, seems she was getting some work done. There was all sorts of cleaning, pressure washing, painting, etc going on. I looked up the ship, and the sailings aren't cheap...accommodations seem a bit spartan too.

Ahhhh, first drink of the day. We have purchased the drink package, most recently on our Cuba cruise on Empress last July. We just find it's really not a good deal for us. We're pretty healthy, and on that cruise I just drank and drank to get my money's worth...and by the end of the cruise I think I gained 12-15 pounds....moreso from the alcohol. I looked GROSS! Yikes.

James doesn't drink much, not his thing. But we do enjoy nice wines (I'm a wine connoisseur), and sometimes a cocktail before. I think for both of us, we spent maybe $150 on individual drinks? We do bring two nice bottles of wine onboard as well.

Not the greatest weather day, it was chilly and windy. We wound up being last to sail out of the port, so it was neat watching all the other ships leave.

I'm on the left in the red hat, James is on the right :)

Let me just say, LOVE having an actual shower door. The bathroom is certainly nothing to write home about, looking forward to comparing it to our JS on Oasis next week :D Might never be able to go back to a regular balcony cabin!

We were on Deck 7, Cabin 7518. As you can see, two down from the very front. We liked the location, it was quiet and easy to get around. Seas were calm, so we didn't feel too much movement

Now I will say, Indy was showing her age here...which is sad because she's not THAT old. I would say well-used is a good way to describe it. Things looked worn and tired, but I didn't find any part of the ship unkempt or overly dirty. She just needed some TLC...which hopefully she got at drydock. I'm curious to see all the places they put in extra cabins.

Hi everyone, sorry for the lack of follow through. In any case, here we go: CRUISE DAY :cool:

After grabbing a coffee and breakfast in the hotel restaurant, I ordered an UBER and we waited in the lobby until it arrived. From the Marriott, I would say it was maybe a 12-15 minute drive? Not bad at all. However, Port Everglades seems to be a mess...like I remember from 2012. Our UBER driver could not have been more disinterested in life, and she was on the phone WITH HEADPHONES! Twice I said, "we are on Independence of the Seas, Terminal 29". Did she listen? Of course not :loudcry: So here we are sitting in line for Terminal 18 as Harmony was also sailing that day. Took me at least a minute to get her to stop talking and hear me out...WE ARE IN THE WRONG LINE!!!

Now that we are heading in the right direction, I can relax a bit! We pull up at around 10:15AM, and of course there are still folks getting off of the previous 5-nighter. This Terminal is atrocious. No signage, no one directing anyone (yes the terminal was open for check-in and they were letting people in). We ended up waiting 5-minutes in the airport transfer line until some behind asked if this was the line to get in the terminal, and then we figured out we were in the wrong line DOH. Security was pretty quick, thankfully we arrived early because the line got SO LONG. I would say we were through security within 5 minutes of getting into the correct line? Check-in was also super quick, and before we knew it we were sitting and waiting. They made us wait a while, at least an 45 minutes on the lower level of the terminal, and then another 30-35 minutes on the upper level. Oh well. Talked to a few folks and had some laughs.

I will say this: People, listen to the boarding announcements. Don't get up unless you are called. There were hoards of folks blocking the way and no one could get through. Then a port employee started yelling and that seemed to work. Ha.

I'm going to post a bunch of pics for now, and I'll let those do the talking. We headed to the windjammer and had no issue finding a table. Food was meh.

Tomorrow everyone, promise. I just got back from a biz trip to Portland. Stay tuned

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LOL, I've tried. Apparently most people can't just pick up and leave at a moments notice.

 

 

 

What I'm trying to understand is, what's the point of "cancel for any reason" insurance?

 

 

 

I'm going to have her ask her boss if he'd be willing to give her something in writing saying she can't have those days off. This is what they said "You or Your Traveling Companion, neither of whom is a company owner or partner, are required to work during the scheduled Trip, as attested in writing by an unrelated company official and/or the company’s Human Resources Department;"

 

 

 

Is there any benefit to canceling her vs not canceling her?

I would say get the letter. Because work related issues are usually covered even if you don’t have cancel for any reason.

Submit that letter and I would think you’ll be good to go to get her fare refunded. You shouldn’t have to pay a single supplement since you already paid for two.

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