Booking Shows?

[uneamie]

It was my understanding that they opened up booking shows online if it was at least 21 days before your cruise. What happened to that ability? I wish they would be more consistant with all this. I dread the thought of racing to the box office to get in line to book a show. And we would not have to race to do that on PRIMA  if we were not competing for seating. Since I've never been on this ship all I have to go by is other peoples experience....too many complaints of not being able to reserve a seat a few hours after boarding. Never had that problem on any othe ship.  

[BirdTravels]

4 minutes ago, uneamie said:

It was my understanding that they opened up booking shows online if it was at least 21 days before your cruise. What happened to that ability? I wish they would be more consistant with all this. I dread the thought of racing to the box office to get in line to book a show. And we would not have to race to do that on PRIMA  if we were not competing for seating. Since I've never been on this ship all I have to go by is other peoples experience....too many complaints of not being able to reserve a seat a few hours after boarding. Never had that problem on any othe ship.  

For regular passengers, it is exactly 21 days prior to departure, 12 midnight eastern time. The same time you need to do your online check in and get a check in time. You will be able to book Donna Summer. Once onboard, race to the box office to book comedy shows and Athe Price is Right. 

[laudergayle]

15 minutes ago, uneamie said:

It was my understanding that they opened up booking shows online if it was at least 21 days before your cruise. What happened to that ability? I wish they would be more consistant with all this. I dread the thought of racing to the box office to get in line to book a show. And we would not have to race to do that on PRIMA  if we were not competing for seating. Since I've never been on this ship all I have to go by is other peoples experience....too many complaints of not being able to reserve a seat a few hours after boarding. Never had that problem on any othe ship.  

If I recall correctly you are on the 5/7 sailing. Try logging out and back in both website and app. I had to do that last week.  And, I was able to book Donna Summer on website and PIR on app. You might be a little late since as the Bird said it opened at midnight.  Good luck.

[uneamie]

1 hour ago, laudergayle said:

If I recall correctly you are on the 5/7 sailing. Try logging out and back in both website and app. I had to do that last week.  And, I was able to book Donna Summer on website and PIR on app. You might be a little late since as the Bird said it opened at midnight.  Good luck.

Thanks.....I tried it at midnight and it was not letting me reserve. ugh!

[uneamie]

I still could not book online after logging out,  so I called and they had 1 available for Donna Summers on the 8th at 6:30. That conflicts with dinning reservations. That is not a good time for a show for us because we'd be eating dinner way too late.  And they had 1 available for the Price is right at 7pm on the 12th that also conflicts with dining. Ugh. I wish they would open up the restaurants earlier than 5:30, like 4 or 4:30,  so one could make it to the early shows. I don't want to eat at 8 or 9 o'clock at night. Oh well....I will see what they have available once on board. Thanks for all your advise. I appreciate it. 

Edited April 16, 2023 by uneamie

[uneamie]

Boy does it ever pay to "call back" if you want "different answers". I called right back and got better show hours for those 2days. 9:30 for the Price is Right and 10PM for Donna Summer. So bottom line.......if it didnt work the first time, try try again! LOL 

[laudergayle]

Yay…happy for you. I stressed for weeks about getting entertainment reservations.  We sail in two weeks…sure hope the charter group on this weeks sailing leave the ship intact!!! (Jk folks).

[cruiseny4life]

On 4/16/2023 at 12:08 PM, uneamie said:

Boy does it ever pay to "call back" if you want "different answers". I called right back and got better show hours for those 2days. 9:30 for the Price is Right and 10PM for Donna Summer. So bottom line.......if it didnt work the first time, try try again! LOL 

Holy bed time show times! I'm glad you got your shows though. 

[uneamie]

3 hours ago, cruiseny4life said:

Holy bed time show times! I'm glad you got your shows though. 

LOL...with most all restaurants not opening until 5:30 there were no compatible times left for the shows unless we wanted to schedule our dining late and the shows early. We don't like eating that late. They don't have the shows every night just certain days. In any event, we generally don't go to bed until around 11, 11:30 when at home so it's not to bad for us. 

[HappyTvlr]

I am crazy upset with this whole booking process.  I am 21 days out and jumped online to book shows.  After countless error messages I called to get the reservations.  I was told that I can't book Burn the Floor at 7:30 or 9:30 which is advertised as a 45 minute show because I have an 8:30 dinner reservation and the "system" has a conflict because the show has a run time of 1 hour.  I asked to move the dinner reservation at Ocean Blue, but that is now completely booked for the entire duration of the cruise.  I have the same conflict with MDQ on a different day.  I booked my dinner reservations long ago before I even knew the show times.  The NCL agent told me to just head to book the show as soon as I board.  Give me a break.  We are slapped in the face with the pressure to prebook everything only to be told to do it in person.   This is my first NCL cruise, and I am not looking forward to it now.  Too much hassle and too many errors with prebooking.  

[redmomof4]

6 hours ago, HappyTvlr said:

I am crazy upset with this whole booking process.  I am 21 days out and jumped online to book shows.  After countless error messages I called to get the reservations.  I was told that I can't book Burn the Floor at 7:30 or 9:30 which is advertised as a 45 minute show because I have an 8:30 dinner reservation and the "system" has a conflict because the show has a run time of 1 hour.  I asked to move the dinner reservation at Ocean Blue, but that is now completely booked for the entire duration of the cruise.  I have the same conflict with MDQ on a different day.  I booked my dinner reservations long ago before I even knew the show times.  The NCL agent told me to just head to book the show as soon as I board.  Give me a break.  We are slapped in the face with the pressure to prebook everything only to be told to do it in person.   This is my first NCL cruise, and I am not looking forward to it now.  Too much hassle and too many errors with prebooking.  

I would cancel dinner and rebook once on board. They don’t release all the dinner reservations ahead of time 

[uneamie]

8 hours ago, HappyTvlr said:

I am crazy upset with this whole booking process.  I am 21 days out and jumped online to book shows.  After countless error messages I called to get the reservations.  I was told that I can't book Burn the Floor at 7:30 or 9:30 which is advertised as a 45 minute show because I have an 8:30 dinner reservation and the "system" has a conflict because the show has a run time of 1 hour.  I asked to move the dinner reservation at Ocean Blue, but that is now completely booked for the entire duration of the cruise.  I have the same conflict with MDQ on a different day.  I booked my dinner reservations long ago before I even knew the show times.  The NCL agent told me to just head to book the show as soon as I board.  Give me a break.  We are slapped in the face with the pressure to prebook everything only to be told to do it in person.   This is my first NCL cruise, and I am not looking forward to it now.  Too much hassle and too many errors with prebooking.  

I feel your pain! Freestyle does not feel like freestyle anymore to me. Too many people for too little available seating on these ships...leaving us very stressed trying to coordinate diners with shows. There is no list of show times so we can co-ordinate our reservations if booking them online. Not to mention that dining reservations open up earlier then show time reservations so what's up with that.....how can we figure it all out? 3000 people are not ALL going to be happy. 

[HappyTvlr]

No resolution after a couple more lengthy phone calls.  It got really frustrating when the helpful agent said her system froze and she was unable to cancel a dinner reservation that would remove the time conflict and allow her to book the show.  She said they are doing a system upgrade over the weekend so things "should" be better Monday.  Another general problem with all the reservations is that a vast majority no show without penalty.  We spent Christmas at a very nice AI resort in Mexico that we previously visited.  On this visit they had implemented a reservation system and we stuggled constantly to secure reservations for specialty restaurants only to find most empty.  The staff were disgusted because the tables went empty and there was significant food waste. They acknowledged that it was horrilble having to turn away walk ups only to hold a table for yet another no show.  I get that plans change or people don't have the energy or appetite for an evening meal, but this could be easily solved by going with the first come first served system.  I have cruised extensively on Celebrity and dined "anytime" without an issue.  We would enjoy a martini before heading to the show and then off to dinner.  As I said, this is my first NCL cruise and I am not optimistic.  

[kjdj]

I have a dining reservation for 5:30 and it would not allow me to book a 7:30 show. The error message just said 'We've encountered an error. Please log out and try again later.' After trying for several hours I finally did an online chat and found out you have to have 2.5 hours in between (we have a party of 8). Would have been nice if the error message would have said that.

 

[HappyTvlr]

I thought NCL couldn't mess things up any worse than they had, but they went to a new low.  I followed up after the weekend reboot as advised.  The first agent told me I had to call the warehouse "travel agent" I booked with.  I tried to explain that most of what I needed done had been done directly with NCL.  She hung up on me.  I called back and a different agent said the same thing and that the people from NCL that assisted me last week "shouldn't have". Wow.  I called my warehouse "travel agent", and the amazing rep had to act as a middle man and put me on hold to relay my requests to NCL.  The warehouse TA was told I had nothing booked (dinners or shows), and the TA got very frustrated because she could see all the bookings that I could see in the app.  The TA lost it when NCL agent hung up on her.  She eventually got through to someone at NCL and all was made right.  This took over an hour just to cancel a dinner and book a show.  KJDJ, how insane you were told you have to have 2.5hrs.  I was told 30 minutes which meant I would need a 5:30 dinner for a 7pm show.  I ended up with a 5:30 dinner for a 7:30 show.  I am done with all the reservations, and now want to forget about the frustration and try to reset my mind to try to enjoy my first NCL cruise.  I am going to pop over to the Celebrity boards to see if Celebrity has the same issues with reservations.  I haven't been on an ocean cruise since 2018 and I am wondering if things changed with them.

[uneamie]

On 4/25/2023 at 10:24 AM, kjdj said:

I have a dining reservation for 5:30 and it would not allow me to book a 7:30 show. The error message just said 'We've encountered an error. Please log out and try again later.' After trying for several hours I finally did an online chat and found out you have to have 2.5 hours in between (we have a party of 8). Would have been nice if the error message would have said that.

 

Which means it is very difficult to book restaurant and show reservations on the same night unless you want to eat at 9 or 10PM.....I think they need to have these restaurants open earlier.