Jade itineraries changed

[dalgirl]

Well this has put a kink in my plans. We already have a cruise planned for June and so the September cruise out of Hamburg fit in nicely. Now they have canceled the September cruises, but their new "itinerary" doesn't address the full month of September!

 

I guess I will have to take a look and see what else they will have for that month - we have already done the Baltic cruise and we have visited Norway, so I am not sure what we are going to do:mad:

[dalgirl]

Reviewed the September 2017 list of Jade cruises and it looks like we will be going to Iceland. Always wanted to see the Northern lights☺

[KeithJenner]

Reviewed the September 2017 list of Jade cruises and it looks like we will be going to Iceland. Always wanted to see the Northern lights☺

 

 

 

I believe that September is right at the very start of the period when the Northern lights may be seen.

 

It's possible at that time, but quite unlikely.

[geogal]

KeithJenner, I believe you might be on the sailing we booked on for Aug. 9th 2017 out of Hamburg. We were really looking forward to this itinerary, as it included the port of Kirkwall, Scotland. That has been dropped now that the ship is round-trip from Southampton.

 

Hmmmm. What to do. Will probably stick with the revised itinerary, maybe fly into a different gateway city (Amsterdam??) pre-cruise for a few days, then get ourselves to Southampton instead of Hamburg, Germany.

 

Oh, well. Although I don't like surprises, what are you going to do about it?

Edited July 27, 2016 by geogal
typo

[KeithJenner]

I'm still not sure what we are going to do. The Iceland itinerary is more appealing to us, and if they had both been available when booking then we would have gone for that.

 

However, we do still keep coming round to the possibility of doing them both, but 25 days is a long time and Iceland certainly won't be cheap. It's a nice idea, but probably not sensible.

 

I'm tempted to keep my reservation on the current cruise and just book Iceland when they are available. We can then decide later on which one to do. The downside of moving the current booking and then deciding that we do actually want to do it (rebooking would likely we at a much higher rate) outweighs the cost of keeping the current booking and then cancelling it at a later date.

 

I wish I could get former information regarding costs and availability for the Iceland trip though.

[insidecabin]

KeithJenner, I believe you might be on the sailing we booked on for Aug. 9th 2017 out of Hamburg. We were really looking forward to this itinerary, as it included the port of Kirkwall, Scotland. That has been dropped now that the ship is round-trip from Southampton.

 

Hmmmm. What to do. Will probably stick with the revised itinerary, maybe fly into a different gateway city (Amsterdam??) pre-cruise for a few days, then get ourselves to Southampton instead of Hamburg, Germany.

 

Oh, well. Although I don't like surprises, what are you going to do about it?

 

There are a few option with flights to Southampton.

Paris,Amsterdam,Munich

 

Amsterdam 10:15->10.35 €93 with 23kg bag Flybe this Aug 9 as an example.

Edited July 27, 2016 by insidecabin

[ireashmott]

What?!? I am booked on a Jade summer 2017 itinerary and have received no notice. I checked the PDF you helpfully posted and two of the ports have been changed. My NCL account is no longer showing the itinerary for the booking.

 

I guess I should call NCL today to see what is going on.

[dalgirl]

Why Keith, thanks for your incite into Iceland. Northern lights are best between September and April. We will be the end of September. I prefer to be positive...

[All-ready2cruise]

As far as the Aurora Borealis is concerned, darkest time of the year, between November and February gives you the best chance to see them. Also, from what I've read, some end up never seeing them.

 

They are quite spectacular sight. IMHO, I don't base any cruise on one specific thing.

[dalgirl]

Neither do I - I never saw whales in Alaska, those are the breaks. But I will remain positive since my original cruise was canceled and I prefer to go in September. But if I do happen to see the Northern lights - by chance - I will consider it an early Christmas miracle:rolleyes:

 

And yes, I am cranky this morning :p

[KeithJenner]

Why Keith, thanks for your incite into Iceland.

 

 

 

Pleased to be of assistance. :)

[Regguy]

July Jade cruises are back up on NCL.com. I guess because they didn't change.

 

For those considering the 2 new Iceland cruises, you can get a sense of pricing.

[dalgirl]

My TA said the September Iceland cruise will be up on the 8th. And Ncl promised to still honor the rebook credit. We will see...

[Single Cruiser]

Glad to see the change and that my Jade June 11th is unaffected :D

 

My only decision now is which of the Iceland cruises to do.. I think I'm erring towards the Sept 11th sailing as I've got a gap in my schedule ;)

[bluesea777]

I wonder if the TA will be cancelled since the drydock is in Bermuda on the way to Southampton according to the article linked above. Or will you have to embark in Bermuda? :confused:

 

"The 2,402-passenger ship will homeport in Southampton after a two-week overhaul in Bermuda, the first time NCL has based a ship in the UK since 2010.

 

 

Of course I had to laugh at that!! Dry dock in Bermuda????!!!! There is NO place here for dry dock for that size of vessel!

 

Also, the UK newspapers often mix up Bermuda with Bahamas. Many years ago we were on holiday in the UK and my BIL excitedly showed off The Sun's front page with article and photos about a Royal Family member's (can't remember which one) marriage proposal in Bermuda. I peered at the article and photos and announced Not Bermuda, but Nassau Bahamas.

 

So ... the dry dock must be taking place in the Bahamas, not Bermuda.

[Single Cruiser]

Think they should sack whoever updates the NCL UK website. In addition to still having the brochure which says Epic is sailing Europe year round until next April they are now promoting the 2016/17 brochure which has the old Jade itineraries which appear still bookable! Lol

 

 

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[KeithJenner]

Craig, my PCC didn't know for sure when the itineraries will be available to book. Just that they will allocate the changes requested by people in the next week or so. I'd guess they will be available some time next week.

[Single Cruiser]

The website latest offers page is good. Just need a time machine!

 

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Edited August 2, 2016 by Single Cruiser

[old nutter]

Think they should sack whoever updates the NCL UK website. In addition to still having the brochure which says Epic is sailing Europe year round until next April they are now promoting the 2016/17 brochure which has the old Jade itineraries which appear still bookable! Lol

 

Not sure it is just the UK website that is in another mess following yet another "seems like a good idea" edict from on high to the IT team.

 

Our 11 Jun Norway trip on the Jade is apparently unchanged, but it had disappeared from all of the world web pages when they first announced the changes. At that point, our My NCL pages for that cruise also went into meltdown and I updated some of my log-in details that had gone walkabout in the mess-up. The My NCL pages have slowly come back, but interestingly, the changes didn't. I suspect that someone had deleted all of the Jade pages for the summer 2017 cruises. The recovery on the 11 Jun cruise in My NCL had all of the information from before the changes but didn't have any of the changes made while things were in a mess.

 

I suspect that either the IT guys were not given the right story when the Management did another of their sudden changes or they did something really stupid when trying to sort things out and lost loads of data. My updates bore all of the hallmarks of a database recovery from old data to correct an IT SNAFU.

 

Getting all of the new itineraries into the databases seems to be taking the usually long lead time that we are having to get used to in this new world of sudden managerial panic lurches. And getting them into the UK website will again take the longest lead time for some reason.

 

Like many others I never thought for a minute that the cross channel ferry cruises with that ludicrous spin that the Jade was docking in or near the European capitals would attract enough cruisers to make them viable all summer. I suppose we should be grateful that someone has seen sense and added some decent itineraries in their place (unless of course you had booked one of those oddball cruises).

[Single Cruiser]

Odd. I'm booked on the 11th June Jade and nothing changed on my account. Just double checked and everything still there..

 

 

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[Shawnino]

Our MyNCL is back where it was (no more "Default Itinerary Name" stuff) before this shake-upas our July cruises haven't changed... but the back half of our B2B remains undisplayed...

[insidecabin]

There does seem to be real disconnect between IT and the company almost as if there is no one that understands both in the middle.

 

Celebrity made changes for the Turkish situation and relocated a ship to Caribbean from Europe web fixed and itinerary on line in a few days.

[Shawnino]

There does seem to be real disconnect between IT and the company almost as if there is no one that understands both in the middle.

 

 

I once held a job where roughly half of of what I did was exactly that, "translating" back and forth between the business side and IT. We were transitioning from being a 100% phone-based business to taking 98%+ of our orders online, so there was a need.

 

At this point, I'm not sure NCLH sees the need for such a person. It'd only take one, and it might not even be a full-time gig.

Edited August 3, 2016 by Shawnino

[soaddictive]

Anyone sailing on the August 27th, 2016 cruise from Venice?

[old nutter]

During my many years in management information and process software I have discovered how good software behaves in relation to badly managed process change.

 

When a large company software package is designed, it fits the range of management processes in being at the time. The best the software is designed to provide everything the management wants and the designers will unconsciously build in a lot of features that support those management processes. I have often found that enhancements to large software packages will be a lot easier to implement when the enhancements are in line with the original management processes. Even major changes can be accommodated in these systems as long as they are based on the original business process thinking. The down side to this unconscious intelligence in good software is that if major changes are made that are contrary to the original processes, the software will actually fight the designers all the way.

 

A few years ago, NCL had very good customer facing software and users had to face very little disruption and things stayed where they were. From the way the current management software support is clearly falling apart, it seems to me that recent changes to the way the company is being run are not in line with the way it was run before and whenever the IT people try to implement sudden lurches in the business, the system is fighting the designers all of the way.

 

The other way in which software and management diverge is if changes are being made by designers who cannot see how it was built in the first place because the corporate process memory has been destroyed by staffing reductions or redeployment over time.

 

The NCL software suite is very complex having to deal with multi-national consumer regulations and pricing that has to deal with all sorts of different currencies and a very wide range of different product offerings. I recall that it used to be quite nicely balanced and always seemed to give us what we needed as customers at the same time as obviously feeding management with all they needed to run the company.

 

Something has gone seriously wrong with the balance over the past few years. I am not sure if it is the personnel changes around the upper echelons or the fact that it is now a public company, but it certainly looks as though the management and the software have lost touch with one another. I am not sure that the upper management fully understand just how much damage they are inflicting to NCL software and what this is doing to their company image. They seem hell-bent making changes that the software clearly cannot support without any thought to how it looks from the customer's end when it all falls to bits every time they throw the navigation system to a new course. Management seems to put out PR releases with unrealistic promises and then lay down outrageous deadlines to the IT people that they constantly fail to meet. Why on earth these poor communications issues keep happening is beyond most of us, but I wish they would sort them out pretty quickly so that we can get back to booking cruises that actually happen when are where they are supposed to. If nothing else, the savings in the number and frequency of customer service contacts would prove most cost-effective!