Tips on booking Aug. 20 POA Hawaii cruise?

[Middleager]

Hi. We did our first cruise on the NCL Wind in 2005, Hawaii and Fanning Island. It was a wonderful cruise. We had 3 couples at that time and I planned everything including van rentals everywhere.

 

So after 7 years my wife and I are coming back to Hawaii, and just booked our flights. Seven years ago we booked the cruise thru Travelocity where they had a special of giving you $250 in Target gift card. We then found a TA advertising a lower rate, and with that info Travelocity matched rate. We were also able to apply a $100 coupon from Entertainment book, for booking a oceanview cabin. That turned out really nice.

 

I read many pages of this forum just now to find info. But could you help us in the booking and planning.

• Did NCL now ban TAs to advertise lower rates, and therefore no price matching?
  
• Is there any more Entertainment book or other type of discount coupons that are possible?
  
• Some cruiselines gives shareholders OBC, and we've made good use of that on Carnival and Costa cruises. Does NCL has anything like that.
  
• We also saw that with some cruise lines, we could first book with the cruiseline, then have some TA take over. The TA can offer some discounts to us, with us making final payment thru them. (e.g. from cruise compete, or others) But some cruiselines also put rules to restrict that. What about NCL now?
  
• I saw that if you book 9 months in advance, you get more Latittude points. So too bad we already missed that.
  
• I see some TAs offering $50-75 OBC for booking now. Should we book fairly soon, or are there usually some specials that coming out around X-mas or early in the new year? We are thinking just the inside (economy) cabin.
  

Thanks a lot.

 

P.S. Last time we ordered a dozen pounds of Kona coffee from smithfarm. They met us at the Kona port around the time we were getting back to ship. They roasted the coffee and packaged that morning. So we got excellent fresh Kona coffee. Had suggested to our friends cruising to Hawaii to do the same. We'll do that again this time.

[spacepotatoes]

See answers in red below...

 

 

I read many pages of this forum just now to find info. But could you help us in the booking and planning.

• Did NCL now ban TAs to advertise lower rates, and therefore no price matching? Yes.
  
• Is there any more Entertainment book or other type of discount coupons that are possible? Yes, there is. Someone around here usually has a link for it if it's not available through your eDocs. Try a search of the forums or maybe someone will post it here.
  
• Some cruiselines gives shareholders OBC, and we've made good use of that on Carnival and Costa cruises. Does NCL has anything like that. NCL is not a publicly traded company (yet) so no shareholder benefits.
  
• We also saw that with some cruise lines, we could first book with the cruiseline, then have some TA take over. The TA can offer some discounts to us, with us making final payment thru them. (e.g. from cruise compete, or others) But some cruiselines also put rules to restrict that. What about NCL now? You can still transfer a booking to a TA, or from a TA to NCL.
  
• I saw that if you book 9 months in advance, you get more Latittude points. So too bad we already missed that.
  
• I see some TAs offering $50-75 OBC for booking now. Should we book fairly soon, or are there usually some specials that coming out around X-mas or early in the new year? We are thinking just the inside (economy) cabin. I don't know about specials but don't count on POA fares dropping before your cruise. That is the one ship that consistently sells out and can command high fares that only go up as the sail date approaches.
  

Thanks a lot.

 

 

Enjoy this cruise if/when you go! It was my honeymoon cruise and it was a trip of a lifetime.

[Middleager]

Thanks spacepotatoes.

 

In 2005 when we first sailed Hawaii, there were 4 NCL ships sailing Hawaii. I remember reading a bunch of bad reviews about the other ships that just sailed within Hawaii, with some of the comments attributed to the fact they had to hire all American crew. The Wind was the only one that hired multi-national crew, and had pretty good review. Now it's only one ship left, and so even with improved but still mixed reviews, because there's no competition, the prices are high and still sell out.

 

I guess I'll need to book soon. Just searching around for deals/OBC/discounts, including cruise compete.