funpig

So my 7-day cruise for four in two balcony cabins with free wifi and $300 OBC was a bad deal?

It depends upon price you paid for the room compared to price you could have gotten from some other source whether it be a TA, Costco or some discount cruise website. The freebies are usually well advertised and usually available from all sources especially before the cancellation date.

We accepted that the DSC is an included cost of the cruise. We had an OBC which we did not use. We went to the service desk and signed a form transferring the OBC money to our room steward who was a nice guy and deserved a little extra.

I compare prices from all sources befor booking anything whether it is for flights, hotels, car rentals, etc.

For our NCL Western Med cruise, I checked out NCL website, phoning NCL direct, and various cruise websites like cheapcruises.com. In each case, we obtained price quote for the exact same suites. In the end, we got the best deal using a local travel agent with a website called ucruising.com that specialized in cruises. The agent was able to combine our booking with other people and obtain a significant group discount. After our booking, the travel agent was able to ontain the same additional last minute promotions or OBC. My friends who have much more cruising experience than me recommended them. Their strategy is to book the cheapest room with the TA and then get free last minute upgrades to better rooms. We had 3 couples and wanted our 3 suites on same floor so we wanted specific rooms. After booking, I followed the various website prices up to departure and found that we got the best prices and freebies using the TA. It does not hurt to check out a travel agent. YMMV.

Update to my post #61 above, i just read the recent posts on: http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2215730&page=19

It does appear that refunds were being made in USD, so there was a real opportunity to make a windfall. It appears that NCL is adjusting their exchange rates more frequently to prevent any abuse.

1. Definitely do not have to deal with immigrations or customs on disembarkation.

2. No experience with Marseilles, but based upon our experience, NCL disembarkation is very fast and efficient. Take your flight departure time, add in 2 hrs airport checkin, time to transport from port and about an hour to disembark would give you the latest comfortable time to disembark. Epic will give you a written notice the night before for you scheduled disembarkation. You can go to customer service to get earlier time.

3. I would suggest you book a private transfer so you do not have to wait for a taxi.

4. Agree with Keith's comment. If all the nice suites are reserved booked up at the major ports, they will not be available for upgrade at the minor ports.

I am curious how OBC is normally refunded at the end of the trip. I know if you get OBC as promotion, you use it or lose it (we bought a few things but tipped the unused balance to our room steward). If you buy OBC and do not use all of it, does NCL refund any unpaid balance, and in what currency, CAD or USD?

In our cruise last year, i know that we could make pre-cruise purchases thru NCL using the NCL exchange of $1.11 which was a great deal when the real world exchange was about $1.25. Huge savings. Now if you could buy $8,000 to $10,000 using the NCL rate, not use the OBC on the trip and then get the refund in USD, you Would get a huge windfall from this. If true, this was very sharp on the OP's part and could have realy cost NCL a lot of money.

I do not say that that was the OP's intent. I was just wondering if it could be done. It may well be that the OP saw a good deal and wanted to take advantage because he was going to spend the money anyways so why not at the best available rate.

Now that the CAD is really dropping, NCL obviously does not want to suffer a huge loss on the exchange so has reversed the tranactions. Anyways, if NCL unilaterally cancelled the OBC and refunded the original CAD to the OP, what did the OP lose? For example, he exchanged CAD$10,000 and got back the same amount. What can he sue for? The OBC was set up to make it easier for cruisers to spend money and NCL offered a generous exchange rate to Canadian customers. It was not intended to be a money maker for Canadians or a major money loser for NCL.

In any event, even if there is a right to claim against NCL for the lost windfall in the exchange, what can the OP do? Hire a lawyer and start a lawsuit. I hope the money difference will justify the legal costs.

When we went in May, the online USD-CDN rate was the best rate, so we saved a lot by prepaying in CDN. Once you are on the ship everything is in USD. So if you pay with a credit card, you will pay at the prevailing credit card rate.

Check out our old Dailies from May to get an idea what you can do each day (post 10 onwards):

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2212365

Here our scanned dailies from 2 months ago starting at post 10:

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2212365

One way is to form or join a group of six to eight people to hire a private driver and van. Check out the roll call on CC to find people who are literally in the same boat as you. In May we hired Joe Bananas Limo for six people for €420. We did Sorrento, Positano and Pompeii.

The premium seats are both the 1st level floor seats AND the 2nd level balcony seats. Your choice, if you show up early enough. If you sit on the floor, the show is right in front and above you. If you are in the balcony, you look down on the action. Both views are unobstructed. We had the balconey and liked it a lot. If you are on the floor, you and your food may get sprayed by water and man sweat when the man in the bathtub does his trapese routine.

The regular/cheap seats are on the first level and underneath the balconey and behind the premium floor seats. Your view will be obstructed by the premium floor people and the balcony. If you have to pay, it is worth it to pay extra for premium.

It might be if you are Canadian!

If you are Canadian, NCL's pre-cruise online prices are converted into CAD$ using a very favorable exchange rate (at least before our May cruise). Once you are on board, the prices are in US$ and you have to use the normal market conversion rate which was much higher than the NCL online rate.

There is more than enough storage for the luggage. But it would be unpleasant for 4 adults to spend any time or sleep together. Even with two people, there is a sense of smallness. The sink is the size of a salad bowl. And the toilet and shower are semi-transparent. Even with a drawn curtain, I would feel a bit self-conscious if other people other than family was in the room.

We got the UDP as part of the promotion and really enjoyed it.

If I had to pay, I probably would not. You have to book a specialty dinner almost every night in order to break even on the cost (You need to do the math).

The fact is that the food in the complimentary Garden Cafe buffet and the Manhattan dining room is very good. We would not have minded eating just at these free venues.

Cagney serves a big steak, but I don't know if the $30 charge is worth it. We thought Le Bistro was the best of the bunch. I would not mind paying th3 $20 for this one.

Le Bistro was our favourite. The dishes sounded and looked fancy French and were very good.

Manhattan is a complimentary restaurant, but the menu was very good. I liked the decor and the big band and dance floor. If we did not have the UDP, we would book here for sure and would have no probelm with just eating here and at the Garden Cafe buffet the rest of the time.

Cagney's would be second. Pretty hard to screw up steak and the portion is large.

Cirque Dinner for the entertainment. Food was okay

Moderna was good but there was already so much meat on the cruise that the endless meat thing was actually kind of boring. A lot of the selections were kind of dry. Only the lamb was really tender and it was better at Le Bistro.

Teppenaki just because it was kind of fun to watch the cook. Food was so so.

La Cucina was on the bottom for us because we already spent more than 10 days eating in Italy. Yes, nice view, but you can bring your food from Garden Cafe down here at lunch or breakfast.

You have to pay a mandatory Daily Service Charge for your room and there is a mandatory 18% gratuity on drinks and special meals. So further tipping is not necessary, but up to you.

I believe room service is $7.95.

We did the same Med cruise starting in Rome and liked it.

I would not want to do two back to back cruises. We only had the one day day in Barcelona and wish we had 3 days. Doing 7 days on land in Spain would give you a nice variety of things to do. Even though there are a lot of specialty restaurants, 14 days on the same ship will start to be boring.

I never compared the menus on the same day. But when comparing one day to the next, I thought Manhattan had the better menu. We were able to reserve online for Manhattan, but not for Taste (maybe because we had already filled our dinner schedule for the week). We popped into Taste just to have dessert and coffee and to check out the menu and decor.

Manhattan is nicer. As far as being dressier, with the freestyle dining, there was always somebody in shorts and sneakers in every restaurant we were at. When we were there, the live band only played from 6:30 to 7:30PM, so book accordingly.

Hello to fellow Canadian posters above.

We were on May 13 Rome Epic Med cruise (I posted a review earlier).

The embarkation and disembarkation was a breeze. There is a giant tent-like building where you check-in and where you pick up the luggage. We are talking minutes to get on or off the ship. You can disembark early if you want and should be able to easily make a 12 PM flight. (We got bumped up to an 11:45 am flight to go home to Vancouver via Heathrow, see my post above for full description). FCO was not too bad. Checking in with British Airways was reasonably quick even though we had to deal with changing our flights. The only slow part was lining up to go through security, which seemed very disorganized, to get to our boarding gate. But we made it through and even had time for a small lunch before boarding our plane. Note that we went through FCO about ten days after the big fire. We could still smell the smoke, but I could not see where the damage was and I do not think it created any additional delays.

If you want to stay longer on the ship, I do not think that is a problem. The luggage is placed in the big tent and there should be staff around. I suggest that you call NCL or just talk to guest services on the ship to verify that the staff will be there. Please note that the luggage is just freely picked up by the passengers as they walk off the ship. There really is nothing stopping people from just grabbing other people's luggage at anytime. So I would not put any real valuables in the luggage anyways. If you are worried about that, just keep the luggage with you until you decide to disembark.

I would not worry about the LAST group of Barcelona people booking all shows or special dinners before you get on the ship. The way to look at it is that you can book all the shows or special dinners before the NEXT group of the Barcelona people get on the ship. With this continuous loop, it really is a chicken or egg question. But the best advice is to log on to NCL.com and you can pre-book almost everything in advance. We did and we saw all the available shows and had all the prime reservation times (for us) for each of the special restaurants available under the UDP. There is a chance to get seats at sold out shows. Our sold out shows had a number of empty seats. Long shore days really tire you out and people just bail to go to bed.

IMO, the Rome embarkation is still better. I still prefer having the relaxing sea day on our day 6 as opposed to day 2 for the Barca people. And of course, Rome makes a lot of sense if you plan to be in Italy before or after the cruise.

But Barca is clearly the "start" of the cruise. They get a big welcome cake at the buffet (at least I did not see one on our first night). And on the Barca embark night, when we went for dinner, it seemed like the whole ship was dressed up, not in tuxes or formalwear, but no flip flops or beachwear which was so common up to that point. I guess I did not read the memo because I was still dressed on the casual end of the spectrum. Also there were a lot of officers in their uniforms walking around the restaurants greeting guests.

If you organize your own shore excursion or join up with a group (check the Roll Call or some of the private tour websites), you will save a lot of money. Some cities like Barcelona, Cannes and Palma have a lot of touristy attractions and can easily be accessed by just taking local shuttle buses from the port. City ports like Livorno and Naples really require that you get out of the city and go somewhere else to see interesting attractions. Still doable on your own, but then you need to deal with trains or city to city buses or taxies. It is worth it to get a private tour. We used Joe Bananas.

There is no charge for the Cannes tender.

On our May 15 visit to Cannes, there were high winds and waves which caused the ship anchor to break. We were stuck on shore waiting for the crew to replace the anchor and reposition the ship which had drifted.

I don't think there is a cheaper without meal option. There is only two pricing $39 and $29 and both come with the meal. You can opt not to eat it if you want.

Regarding the seating. The lower price is on the first level, under the balconey and behind the front tables. Views are somewhat obscured. The premium price tickets are on the first level and up front OR up top on the balconey looking down.

We had the balconey seats and we thought they were excellent. You look down and see everything. One thing to keep in mind if you sit in the premium first level tables is that when the man in the bath tub act starts his trapeze act, man sweat and drippings are flying all over you and your food.

We just finished our May 13-20 Epic West Med cruise. This was our first real cruise. We had done a 3 day repositioning cruise more than 20 years ago. Frankly, I was kind of glad not to have to be subjected to the lecture by the cruise director at the end of the cruise about how important it is to tip and having a bunch of envelopes to pass around (like 20 years ago). For me, the DSC and the mandatory gratuities on the UDP made it simple.

During one of our private tours, our Italian driver told us he and his wife worked on a cruise ship years ago. Back in those days, he says that a good waiter made about $5000 a month by providing direct service and getting direct gratuities by working exclusively for the same guests during the cruise. Now with the whole freestyle and tip pooling/sharing system, the monthly income has dropped substantially. According to him, no self respecting Western European would work on a cruise ship. That is why most of the staff is Asian or Eastern European. Once again, according to hm. I am Asian so dont call me racist. Of course, he also told us how tough it is working in Southern Italy in the tourist industry. In the end, we proabaly ended up tipping him too much, LOL.

Anyways, back on the ship,we did feel a bit sheepish because it was clear that the restaurant wait staff and the cabin stewards were all being exra friendly in hopes of getting an additional tip. I had not planned on tipping extra, but, damn, those towel animals are so cute. Fortunately, we still had an OBC balance. We had booked our own private excursions, did not want to buy too much of the on board crap souvenirs or buy any alcohol (we were trying to drink our 2.8 sodas per person per day so we could break even on our soda pack, LOL). Anyways, I was able to transfer all of our remaining OBC balance to our cabin steward in the end. So he got a good tip with NCL's money.

Register on NCL.com.

We had UDP, ate at Moderno and the went to Taste afterwards just for dessert amd coffee. Our trip was winding down and we just wanted to try out Taste. We asked before being seated and they said it was no problem.

Luv2

We were able to reserve Legends and Manhattan online before the trip. For some reason we were not able to reserve Burn the Floor until we got on the ship. I don't know if they fixed the latter now.

I would recommend reserving to make sure you get in and to help you fill your itinerary and pace yourself. You have to time your diinners and shows. You cannot be in two places at the same time. Legends was only about half full. Burn the Floor was pretty packed but there were still some empty seats. But i would definitely reserve Burn and not take the chance to miss it. I really liked it and I am not a dance guy. These shows do not play every night. When our Burn was cancelled because of rough seas, we were scrambling to reset a reserved 7:45 pm dinner to catch the last available 8:00 pm Burn show the following night. Fortunately the cruise added another 10:00 pm Burn show on the following night and automatically booked us to make up for the cancellation

We only ate at the Manhattan on the first night and we had made a reservation. As far as I could see, the whole place was full up and busy. Why wait? Just reserve. Also keep in mind that the band only plays from 6:30 to 7:30 pm at least during our cruise.