Confirmation of Reduced Capacity for 1st Month of Sailing?

[CruisinCorey2525]

In a NCL Joy group I am in, a TA said that Norwegian will be sailing at 60% capacity for the first month of each ships sailing. Whether it be July or December, all ships will sail reduced for the first month. 

 

This may not even be Covid related and will allow a "training period" for the staff who have been gone for so long. 

Has anyone else heard or read about this? If it's true, I am excited to be on the first sailing of Joy! No Kids! (Reduced) No Crowds!

Thanks!

[GA Dave]

16 minutes ago, CruisinCorey2525 said:

In a NCL Joy group I am in, a TA said that Norwegian will be sailing at 60% capacity for the first month of each ships sailing. Whether it be July or December, all ships will sail reduced for the first month. 

 

This may not even be Covid related and will allow a "training period" for the staff who have been gone for so long. 

Has anyone else heard or read about this? If it's true, I am excited to be on the first sailing of Joy! No Kids! (Reduced) No Crowds!

Thanks!

Not sure about NCL, but RCCL has their first ship sailing right now (Bird is doing a live report on the RCCL section of this site).  They are at about 25-30% of capacity.  The pictures Bird has posted make it look like a ghost ship!!  Glorious!

[JamieLogical]

We don't have any concrete information on this. Del Rio originally proposed that ships would sail at 60% capacity the first month and increase by 20% every 30 days until reaching full capacity. But that was in his letter to the CDC, before the CDC released their return to sailing framework. It is unclear if that was an attempt to appease the CDC and they no longer plan on doing that with the new framework in place.

[coastcat]

Nerd alert… so I compared cabin availability (using an online TA site) to cabin numbers for the August 7 sailing of Encore, which is now a week past final payment date.

 

In rounded numbers, here are the percentage of cabins booked:

• 50% Studios
• 50% inside
• 70% ocean view
• 75% balcony
• 60% club balcony
• 80% Haven
• 70% overall occupancy

This doesn’t include booking numbers for spa cabins. Those are showing as sold out for all August sailings but I suspect that’s an NCL-created booking barrier and not a genuine sellout. 
 

I cannot vouch for the complete accuracy of these numbers since my source isn’t necessarily 100% accurate. We’ll see what NCL announces about capacity, if anything.

[JamieLogical]

4 minutes ago, coastcat said:

Nerd alert… so I compared cabin availability (using an online TA site) to cabin numbers for the August 7 sailing of Encore, which is now a week past final payment date.

 

In rounded numbers, here are the percentage of cabins booked:

• 50% Studios
• 50% inside
• 70% ocean view
• 75% balcony
• 60% club balcony
• 80% Haven
• 70% overall occupancy

This doesn’t include booking numbers for spa cabins. Those are showing as sold out for all August sailings but I suspect that’s an NCL-created booking barrier and not a genuine sellout. 
 

I cannot vouch for the complete accuracy of these numbers since my source isn’t necessarily 100% accurate. We’ll see what NCL announces about capacity, if anything.

 

That is pretty awesome for you to have done. It does only give us percentage of CABINS and not percentage of people. It's unclear if "capacity limits" will be based on double occupancy or actual lifeboat capacity.

[coastcat]

6 minutes ago, JamieLogical said:

 

That is pretty awesome for you to have done. It does only give us percentage of CABINS and not percentage of people. It's unclear if "capacity limits" will be based on double occupancy or actual lifeboat capacity.

What, you mean not everyone sails solo? lol

The overall percentage might be the same, more or less, when you factor in solos vs families sharing the larger cabins (lots of the larger types are booked across all categories).

 

No surprise that aft balconies are sold out, but BFs are almost sold out as well (I think there was 1 left).

 

[JamieLogical]

2 minutes ago, coastcat said:

What, you mean not everyone sails solo? lol

The overall percentage might be the same, more or less, when you factor in solos vs families sharing the larger cabins (lots of the larger types are booked across all categories).

 

No surprise that aft balconies are sold out, but BFs are almost sold out as well (I think there was 1 left).

 

 

I think the lifeboat capacity would be under 70% if only 70% of rooms sell, because there will be significantly fewer children on board with the 100% vaccination requirement. So 70% of rooms sold might be closer to 60% (or less) of lifeboat capacity.

[coastcat]

10 minutes ago, JamieLogical said:

 

I think the lifeboat capacity would be under 70% if only 70% of rooms sell, because there will be significantly fewer children on board with the 100% vaccination requirement. So 70% of rooms sold might be closer to 60% (or less) of lifeboat capacity.

And there’s that weird thing with the spa rooms being unavailable. Hmm.

 

I just posted a new topic about Sail Safe because it looks like NCL just updated it. No capacity restrictions.

[saltsandknit]

9 minutes ago, coastcat said:

And there’s that weird thing with the spa rooms being unavailable. Hmm.

 

I just posted a new topic about Sail Safe because it looks like NCL just updated it. No capacity restrictions.

I took this to mean no capacity restrictions on board such as restaurants and entertainment not guest capacity 

[coastcat]

12 minutes ago, saltsandknit said:

I took this to mean no capacity restrictions on board such as restaurants and entertainment not guest capacity 

Maybe? That was my initial thought as well, but the statement is general enough that it could apply to individual venues or the ship as a whole. We may not know for sure until the first Encore and Jade passengers receive the final protocol details. 

[qdog123]

They are still showing this bit on the updated Sail Safe page:

 

[zerooveride]

3 hours ago, coastcat said:

Nerd alert… so I compared cabin availability (using an online TA site) to cabin numbers for the August 7 sailing of Encore, which is now a week past final payment date.

 

In rounded numbers, here are the percentage of cabins booked:

• 50% Studios
• 50% inside
• 70% ocean view
• 75% balcony
• 60% club balcony
• 80% Haven
• 70% overall occupancy

This doesn’t include booking numbers for spa cabins. Those are showing as sold out for all August sailings but I suspect that’s an NCL-created booking barrier and not a genuine sellout. 
 

I cannot vouch for the complete accuracy of these numbers since my source isn’t necessarily 100% accurate. We’ll see what NCL announces about capacity, if anything.

How does the 08/21 sailing look? Final Payment is coming up in a couple of days

[davencl]

1 hour ago, zerooveride said:

How does the 08/21 sailing look? Final Payment is coming up in a couple of days

I am on this cruise.  Haven't heard anything bad to date(except when Encore was switched for Bliss which didn't affect me since I hadn't booked yet).  I fully paid up last week.

[zerooveride]

3 minutes ago, davencl said:

I am on this cruise.  Haven't heard anything bad to date(except when Encore was switched for Bliss which didn't affect me since I hadn't booked yet).  I fully paid up last week.

I hope it sails too. The biggest thing that concerns me is the fact that they have not received CDC approval yet.

[coastcat]

1 hour ago, zerooveride said:

How does the 08/21 sailing look? Final Payment is coming up in a couple of days

I didn’t check all categories, but it looks like there are more available cabins on this sailing than on the August 7 one. Aft balconies were snapped up but there’s one left. We’ll see how many people make final payment.

 

I’ve noticed that the prices on the August 7 sailing have not dropped yet, as was common in the Before Times. Maybe they’re near the capacity level they wanted for the initial sailing so no need to discount.

[lepidoptera]

4 hours ago, coastcat said:

And there’s that weird thing with the spa rooms being unavailable. Hmm.

 

I just posted a new topic about Sail Safe because it looks like NCL just updated it. No capacity restrictions.

I wonder if they may not be opening the Spa right away? I was looking at Spa treatments for my September Alaska cruise and all the treatments said book on board. I know once upon a time that the Spa was staffed by contractors, so they might be still working things out with the company they contract with. Or they might think that they cannot provide an environment that meets the safety requirements. 

[coastcat]

23 minutes ago, lepidoptera said:

I wonder if they may not be opening the Spa right away? I was looking at Spa treatments for my September Alaska cruise and all the treatments said book on board. I know once upon a time that the Spa was staffed by contractors, so they might be still working things out with the company they contract with. Or they might think that they cannot provide an environment that meets the safety requirements. 

That’s a possibility. OneSpaWorld runs the spa services on multiple cruise lines including NCL (also including multiple Carnival and RC brands, Disney, and Virgin Voyages). They’d need to get their staffs ready.

 

They might offer a more limited number of appointments onboard at first. The Thermal Suite passes are being pre-sold, so I hope that’s running even if other parts of the spa are not! 

[Look4theLight]

Not sure how reliable the source is but the NCL Shore Excursion customer service rep I spoke with last week said she didn’t know the exact capacity for Encore specifically but that our sail date (Aug 28) falls in a time frame when all sailings are 60% capacity.