3catnight

Norwegian and others announced today that cruises from today into April are cancelled. Everyone might want to check with their TA. 

Oops, thanks 1st4our25th! Our first cruise was also for our 25th. This one is for our 39th. 

Thanks, jdepetris and tandemcruzr. I’ll have to appear human each morning before I have coffee then. 😂

Hi Mouche! Great review and I admit I didn’t read every entry so I may have missed some important things.  I’m booked for 2/17 on Sunshine for the first time but we’ve cruised with NCL, Carnival and Royal Caribbean many times -  this is our 25th cruise. You sound like us - Bahamas has been done to death! 😆 We booked with a last minute casino deal and chose a balcony cabin. Do you know if there are coffee makers in balcony cabins? Looks like you got a sweet deal.  Hope my casino deal is as full of nice perks...I’m not quite sure. Thanks!

12 minutes ago, debgreg said:

Thanks, I have looked at the deck plans and there doesn’t seem to be very many insides on the Getaway. We have booked three IX cabins so does that mean we might not be together anyway ?

 

Not the end of the world as we are three couples  but I think it would be bad if two got the offer accepted and one didn’t, looks like lots of cabins available at present at just over 80 days out  🧐

Last year, we booked a December cruise with two other couples. We each bid for a balcony from inside cabins. The other two couples bid $300 and $250 per person and received aft facing balconies at about 40-45 days prior. We bid a bit lower at $225  pp and got our family balcony cabin at 30 days out. I think we probably all bid higher than necessary but that’s beside the point. Just saying if the bids are right, it’s very possible all three will receive the upgrade, depending of course on availability and what others are bidding and whatever other criteria NCL uses. 

None.  We’re also platinum and have won our bid once and lost twice. It’s all about the $$. 😊

We got our denials about 2:15 this afternoon.  Sailing Sunday (3/17) on the Pearl. Bid mid to upper poor range so we didn’t expect to get upgraded but we’re happy with the ocean view anyway. Cruise disappeared from the site weeks ago so I guess it really was sold out. Ready for serious R and R!

So my cruise (3/17 on Pearl from Tampa) disappeared from NCL’s site last night after first showing all balcony cabins sold out.  A few hours earlier, there were 16 family balconies and a few others in the various categories.  Then the cruise appeared again this morning, with only Obstructed View and Sail Away OV available.  Now some inside, ocean view and mini suites are available (mostly as “guarantee”). Any ideas on what’s going on?  My bids still appear so I’m still hoping to snag an upgrade. 

Somewhere back about 30 pages in this thread, I posted our experience from December ‘18 but I’ll do it again for those who joined the conversation more recently.

Our cruise was December 5, ten days on Epic.  The other two couples bid pretty high, $250 and $300 pp, I believe very close to the maximum.  They were upgraded to aft-facing balconies from inside cabins on October 23. We bid slightly lower ($225 pp) just after their bids were accepted, maybe in the mid range of “Good” and got our upgrade exactly 30 days out. That day was when the price dropped to its lowest point, so no surprise they locked in our bid then.  

My personal feeling about this whole process is that it depends entirely on how many cabins are available and how much people are bidding and nothing else.  If the cabins are selling well, I think bids will be on hold much longer.  And I think very low bids won’t get accepted unless there are still openings at the end of the booking period.  If bookings are slow, higher bids might be accepted sooner, such as we experienced.  With a cruise that was just before Christmas, I think our sailing was not a big seller.  We’re platinum, but one of the other couples is fairly new to NCL.  We don’t spend a lot onboard, rarely do shore excursions, I spend a little in the casino but I’m not a high roller by any stretch of the imagination, so I don’t think your prior cruises or spending have any bearing.  I think it all comes down to supply/demand and dollars/cents.  NCL,  in the past anyway, will sell remaining cabins to employees like the people who do check in etc. at the pier. Their number one priority is having a full ship.

Currently, we’re booked for March 17 on the Pearl with bids in the mid-poor range for both balcony and mini suite cabins.  We’ll see how it goes and I’ll report our results when we hear.  Not expecting to be upgraded but I can live with my ocean-view cabin!

Ours changed to “Not eligible for upgrade” just before we were notified that we had been upgraded.  Good luck!

Ceilidh1...the Epic has no ocean view cabins, so you can bid up from inside to balcony and mini suite (regular or spa).

Robinsilver—I’d say “probably”!  It’s pretty much a crapshoot and nobody knows exactly how NCL  determines who gets the upgrades.  For our December 5, 2018 cruise, one our friends bid $25 and $75 more pp than we did to upgrade to a balcony from inside (on the Epic which has no ocean view cabins). They received their upgrade (aft facing balconies) in late October, about six weeks prior to departure. We placed our balcony bid at that point. Over the following week, we upped the bid a few times.  We got our upgrade notice within a week, at thirty days out - not aft facing, but a “family” balcony. These bids were mid “good” range.

From our experience and what I’ve seen here, high bids get the upgrade sooner than low bids, which sometimes get the upgrade, but not until much closer to the sailing date.  I’m sure NCL accepts high bids quicker and holds out as long as possible on low bids, only granting those upgrades at the last minute.   Are you a gambler?  You can stick with the low bid and try to be patient or you can bid higher and hope you hear quickly.

Right now we have a seven day March 17 sailing booked in an ocean view and have bids in the mid-poor range ($40 for balcony, $105 for mini suite with balcony). We’ll see what happens!

Good luck!

“My priority is the itinerary .... if I have good service, good food and good entertainment as well,  what a bonus!  If those things stink, who cares, I still had that great itinerary and was able to see and do the things i wanted.l

in response, your last point may have hit on the big difference in perceptions between various people.  For us, the itinerary is secondary.  After so many cruises, we’ve seen most of the Caribbean so for us, cruising has been about the excellent onboard experiences - food, entertainment, activities, service.  When those are lower quality than our past experiences, we notice.  If we have an outstanding experience, we always let the cruise line know that, as was the case last year on the Sun. Maybe having such a great cruise that trip made the issues on this one worse.  Nothing was horrible, but the overall feeling was that standards have been relaxed and service has suffered. Crazy things happened that we’ve never seen before like broken equipment not being repaired or replaced, no half and half until day six (you can’t believe how upset some people got that they didn’t have cream for their coffee, lol), bathrooms running out of paper towels and such. Nothing we couldn’t handle, but not NCL’s best performance.  As for reviews, I always take them with a grain of salt since everybody has different standards and some people just like to complain!  I hope our recent experience is a fluke and everybody booked or considering booking an NCL cruise has a great trip!

And not everyone finds a bargain price! 😊 Maybe NCL will realize they need to step up the service. Our experience in the past has been a much better cruise following a bad cruise.  Perhaps they really do pay attention when people complain.  Just got my survey email from them - they may regret asking! 😆 Hope your next NCL cruise is one of the great ones!

2 minutes ago, CruisingNole said:

 

Are the recent reports of meals in the dining room taking 2.5 - 3 hours accurate? And how long did you have to wait for a drink at the bars? Were servers good about walking around the pool deck / theaters to take drink orders?

 

NCL Epic is really sounding like an Epic fail. 

Dinners took a long time in the MDR and once in Manhattan we actually were given our appetizers and salads together which made eating them awkward with so many plates on the table.  I’d estimate most dinners took 1 1/2 to 2 hours. We didn’t spend much time by the main pool so I don’t know what the bar service was like there, but we sat in Spice H2O and rarely saw a server. We played cards in the same area of the Maltings bar most days and didn’t see servers there most times. Most times we just went up to the bar ourselves and usually waited ten or fifteen minutes to order. In the theater was another story and also at the Latitudes cocktail party. There were plenty of servers at both. NCL also changed that cocktail party so that all levels were at one party. It was much too crowded that way. They should have left it so there were two separate parties as in the past. All in all, our group of friends had a good time as we always do.  But I’d say that the numerous small missteps and larger issues made this cruise a fail for NCL. 

We just sailed the Epic for the second time (our 12th NCL cruise). I won’t go into a long, detailed story of how bad things were but the level of service is definitely reduced.  I believe they’ve reduced the crew.  Broken down coffee and juice machines weren’t repaired for ten days, service was slow (but on the plus side, photographers weren’t hounding us in the dining rooms), didn’t see as many crew members repairing, cleaning and polishing as we have in the past.  I think they reduced bar servers purposely so all the people on the UBP couldn’t drink as much! 😁

The service issues need to be addressed by NCL. Hope they kept enough staff so that some are monitoring sites like Cruise Critic and they get the message.  The only thing giving us hope for our booked-and-paid-for March cruise on the Pearl is that this was the third not-so-good cruise out of 12 on NCL and we always found the next time was much improved. Last year we had an amazingly good cruise on the Sun (which was the same ship we’d had one of our amazingly bad trips on back in 2011). On the first Sun cruise, we experienced similar staff shortages and encountered lots of issues.  The next year, we had one of our best cruises on the same ship.  So NCL, shape up again please!   And stop cheaping out on little things like mints in the cabins. Maybe the corporate people do listen to passengers??  We can only hope.

4 minutes ago, TT1992 said:

Has anyone been upgraded on Epic for 12/5?

Yes.  We put in a bid for each of the categories we were offered and went from inside to balcony.  The other two couples traveling with us also bid on balconies and got them.  They bid earlier and were upgraded earlier than us, but ours was accepted within a week or so of placing the bids.  We got our upgrade about two weeks ago.  Counting the days...

20 minutes ago, StormiB said:

Does anyone know if the bids are only awarded once per cruise? Or if they award some and then closer to the sail date,  award more. Roughly translated to - if you hear bids have been processed for your cruise and yours isn’t, is there still another opportunity? 

Yes, they award them at various times. Our friends put in bids well before we did and got their upgrades a few months later, at which time we put in some bids and we got upgraded about a week later.

5 minutes ago, ohiocruisemom said:

I just went into my NCL and all the Upgrade information is gone.  I can pull up my offers on the email I received confirming my bid, and they still say pending.  However all the references to upgrades are gone from my NCL.

My guess is that the bids are being processed. Hope you get what you wanted!

37 minutes ago, xcell said:

I booked last night for a Dec 28th cruise-- is the bidding email random? Do you still get it booking so late in the game?

 

I didn't read all the pages but I think someone mentioned that they base the bids also on history of spending on cruises (which I don't) - so my question is: for those who have won their bids, do you spend a lot on board or gamble?

 

Thanks -- hoping to get the chance to bid!!! (I actually liked the call in process long time ago -- was able to get haven twice using that).

We don’t tend to spend a lot - we rarely book excursions, don’t use the spa or pay extra for specialty restaurants - but we’ve purchased cruise next rewards fairly often, always had a modest bar bill before they started giving UBP as a free perk and I gamble some (maybe an average of $30-50 per day). We’re not what you’d consider big spenders.  I’ve done bids on two cruises.  No luck the first time, but got upgraded from inside to balcony on Epic (12/5 sailing) with a bid of $225 pp.  I don’t know if you’ll get the opportunity to bid this close or not.  Never attempted that. Hope I’ve helped some!  Happy cruising!!

3 minutes ago, JamieLogical said:

 

Wait, how did you get additional perks when bidding through the Upgrade Advantage Program? You are supposed to retain only the perks you chose with your initial booking.

 

Edit: Nevermind. I think I understand now. The wording just confused me. You are saying that if you were to book that balcony room WITH all 5 perks directly, it would cost $1111. But since you got an inside and bid up to the balcony, you paid much less and don't really care about the other 4 perks anyway.

Yes, exactly.  Guess I didn’t make that clear.  Your edited comment has it the way I should have said it. 😏

1 hour ago, Phaedrus78 said:

Upgrade offers appear to have gone out for my Epic sailing on January 23.  I didn't get an email, but I did notice a new banner on My NCL, and I had a new message in my inbox there.  

 

We're currently in an interior room (not a Sail-Away, as the adult beverage promo option was important to us).  As expected, there were options for Balcony and Mini-Suites, as well as Spa Balcony and Spa Mini-Suites.  I placed bid offers on all four, though I won't say how much yet because I know there's competition out there, and I want to win one of these.  😉 

 

I will say we don't care about the spa so much, so while the spa offers are slightly higher, they're not as "good" according to the little bid rating dials.  

 

And now, we wait.

Sounds a lot like our situation. We booked inside with the UBP because we like the freedom it offers. Put in bids on all four of those same categories.  One month to the day before the cruise, we got a balcony that was $1111 pp with all five perks. Our total was much less with the one perk we really want.  Hope you have success as well. Good luck!

Actually, I just checked NCL’s site and in the B3 category (which is what we got with our upgrade), there are 15 cabins available at $1111 per person, so we definitely got a good deal. Our total cost with UBP was $2210 with all gratuities paid by our TA. Same cabin if booking now is over $3000 total plus daily gratuities.  Happy camper! 😃

23 minutes ago, amscene1 said:

What ship and sailing?

Epic on December 5

This morning, I added bids on spa balcony and spa mini suite at the minimum bid just for fun.  Got my confirmation of my bid at 9:03 am, one minute after getting an email with an offer of 20% off rates on select cruises, including ours.  Went back to the page showing our bids and it now said Not Eligible for Upgrade.  Checked the fares with the new offer and the rates were down considerably ($399 pp for inside including UBP). At 4:05, got an email stating our bid for a balcony at $225 pp had been accepted.  No aft-facing balcony for us ☹️ but we did get a balcony on deck 13 up from inside on deck 11! So after one week with one increase in our bid, we got our upgrade!  Definitely seems related to the drop in price. We paid a total of $894 pp for a balcony which would be $959 if booking now with more perks, but those aren’t important to us. 30 days to go!!😁