alwalaska

I haven't read through the whole thread, so I am sorry if this is a duplicate; I really strongly recommend for anyone with food sensitivities to have the allergies added to their reservation and ask who you should talk to at the main dining room if you go there for your first lunch. For meals where I know I am ordering something "safe" for me, I won't mention the allergy. The really good thing both for you and for the kitchen staff is that you can look at the menu for the next evening and order anything that you want specially made without what bothers you. Another thing I have found on some ships is that my waiter doesn't speak English well enough to convey that I can't have anything with citrus fruits, be it lemons, limes, oranges, etc. The staff are all so busy, that having to take your food back, or even having to go to send someone to the kitchen to see if there are things you can't eat in a particular item is a lot of extra work. It is different from a land-based restaurant where they feed significantly fewer people and typically have a kitchen that is very close and easy to get to.

I booked with my TA, then called the number earlier in this thread to do the upgrade. Just be sure to book the highest category interior and make sure there are numerous categories of balconies left to upgrade to since there is no clear documentation of which category interior on each ship maps to which category balcony. Our cruise was way in the future, so there were plenty of cabins to pick from, but it wasn't in the category I had originally been expecting to be offered to me. As far as price drops go, it seems from others that it is hit or miss and mostly miss. I would still do the upgrade now if the balcony is important to you because balconies frequently start to sell out before the interior prices start to drop. Good luck.

I was able to get 25k earlier this year. If you don't have anything immediate in mind, I would wait and see if it comes back. We used the points for an upgrade that ended up worth a lot more than the OBC would be. If you like sailing in an interior, that it really doesn't matter, but if you would like to sail in an ocean view or balcony, you might want to compare the value of the OBC as compared to an upgrade.

I would call again and see if a different person can get you into another cabin. What I did was search on NCL's site and found an available balcony in 2 different categories that I would like that were still available and when I called, I asked if I could have that specific balcony. I would think an O4 would get you a BA, but you never know.

Most banks have a limit across all cards. When I ran into that with BofA many years ago, they were able to lower the limit on one and increase the limit on the other. Although it is too late now, I would have kept the card for the signup bonus, used it enough to hit the points for an upgrade, used the points, and then canceled the card. I do understand though getting irritated and acting on it because I do that sometimes as well.

Good to know it happens sometimes. I didn't realize you could still bid on higher upgrades. That is interesting and something to think about when the time comes.

On the Dawn recently and really, not that much of interest to do. Unless you want to get there way early and stay all night, most of the venues for evening and night music were completely full. Plus, we travel for the ports and sometimes at night we just want to chillax and hang in the cabin. Out of 17 cruises I have never been bored until our most recent Dawn cruise.

I'm a semi-newie too, but here are some ideas. I think Clay was correct when he said BA is probably the highest that you can upgrade to, but you can call the number on the redemption page and ask them. Depending on the itinerary would help me decide whether or not a balcony would be worth the points and possibly extra cost. I had hubbie get the NCL card as well which gave us another 25k sign-up bonus and then we put charges from our previous cruise on it to get us the rest of the way to 60k to upgrade from interior to balcony. We booked an IA on the Spirit and were told we were eligible to upgrade to BB. Not sure what would have happened if we had booked an I3 or I4. You can definitely go from an oceanview to a balcony, but maybe not an aft balcony. One thing to be aware of, if you do the upgrade and prices decrease, you will be, according to everything I have read, locked into the price and NCL will not even give a future cruise credit for any price decreases.

I used my points for an upgrade. What I do with most cards is look at the value of the different options. As MagnoliaBlossom (who has helped me out a ton on this thread) said, you can look at all of the options on the Rewards tab, but what wasn't clear to me was that once you click on the Rewards tab, you then click on Redeem Rewards Points. Once you do that, what wasn't clear to me was the next step is to click the colorful Learn More on the Reward Yourself Box rather than the other options. So for me, the double meta upgrade saved me just over $4,000 and cost me 60,000 points. In contrast to that, 60,000 points equal $600 in Amazon or similar gift cards or $600 worth of cruise discounts or OBC. I'm not sure how the free cruise thing works, but it looks like you need 80,000 points for a 3 or 4-day Bahamas cruise interior cabin and those really aren't that expensive right now. I'd be curious to know what 7-day Mexican Riviera or Caribbean cruise options work, but those look like they are around 180k, so again, for me, not as good of a deal as my upgrade, but every situation will be different for people. Good luck and have fun picking something fun to work towards.

Hello all. I thought that since I had so many questions that people helped me with in the Credit Card Sticky thread, I would write this mini-review of my upgrade process. I know I "pulled the trigger" too soon and upgraded our 2025 Spirit cruise since we won't be able to get price adjustments now, but, I wanted a particular cabin (only 2 like it on the whole ship) and for being almost 2 years out, the available cabins seem to be dropping fairly quickly. This was my first time doing anything other than shopping with the NCL/Bank of America World Points card. Overall, the process was quite painless. I first logged into both mine and my husband’s accounts on the BoA website to double-check our points. Between us, we had the required 60,000 points for a double-meta upgrade. While checking, I noticed a box on the rewards tab to transfer points between friends and family. I clicked there on my husband’s account and put in the credit card number for my account, read the notice, and clicked OK and that was it. As soon as I logged into my account the points were there and ready to use. It was almost too easy. Just one more reason to protect your credit card number and login information. I then clicked on the Learn More button on what looked like an NCL ad on the rewards page. Finding out where to click was probably the hardest part of the whole process. I read the fine print on the meta and double meta upgrade options and decided to call because I wanted to pick a specific cabin. After posting on Cruise Critic and with what I saw on the website, it seemed clear that you get an assigned cabin if you do it online. I called the 866 number on the page with the upgrade options on the BofA WP site. The answering system welcome said something to the effect of thank you for calling the World Points NCL line or something similar. They then asked for people who booked through a partner travel agency to push 1 and everyone to push 2. I booked through a TA, so I pushed one. After a short wait (less than 10 minutes, probably less than 5, not long enough that I started a timer), a gentleman picked up and thanked me for calling NCL. I explained that I wanted to do a double-meta upgrade with NCL points and he put me on a very short hold while he logged into the BofA website. He came back, verified what I wanted to do, and again put me on a very brief hold while he entered everything into the system. He came back and said that my originally booked cabin level (cabin 9051, which is an IA according to my confirmation and the deck maps on NCL) mapped to a cabin on deck 10 (BB) and he gave me a number of the “best available” cabin according to the software’s algorithm. He mentioned that he could also check another cabin for me if I would like. I asked for my pick and it was available. He booked it, thanked me, and that was that. When I checked online about 2 hours later, my new cabin was reported on my reservation information. Luckily, I really wanted a cabin on Deck 10 (BB level) because I thought that the IA would map to a BA, but it didn’t. I guess the I3 or I4 is required to map to a BA. I guess, there are 5 levels of interior cabins (IX, IF, IB, IA, I3, and I4) and Balconies also have 5 (BX, BF, BC, BB, and BA), but the I3 and I4 have special names with “Family” in the name and also, I was able to go from an IA to a BB, so it isn’t straight across, so I’m still not sure what cabin you would have to book to get a BA cabin if that is what you really want. I hope this helps someone else. Although no one knows what will happen in the future with prices, I am comfortable with what we paid for this trip and at this point in time, the points saved us over $4,000.

Please tell me why there was smoke at Spice H2O. Maybe it was the location on a specific ship? We booked a cabin not far from Spice H2O and I was hoping to use the outside stairs for each access to buffet and other locations, but I get migraines from cigarette smoke. We'll be on the Spirit and I thought the only outside smoking location was Bier Garten which is closer to the main pool than the Spice H2O pool.

From one car-sick person to another, I would rent a car and drive it. I'm not sure about now, but when we went, there were 2 rental car locations less than a mile from the port. There is no way I would want to do that road on a bus of any type.

Thank you for all of your help. I hope you had fun cruising. I just transferred the points this morning and did our double meta upgrade to a balcony. It was super easy after all of the great things I learned here on this thread.

Well, according to https://www.vicports.vic.gov.au/cruise-shipping/Pages/cruise-ship-schedule-1.aspx , Karaboudjan is correct. It looks like the March sailing will be there as well.

I had the same experience as you once in the past as well. My husband and I still laugh at it. I too had heard that the perk is gone, which is sad, but won't change things for me.

Hello all. I am looking to use World Points to upgrade our interior on the Spirit to a balcony. We have only sailed in interiors on the Spirit and the last time was way back in 2016. I have a bunch of questions. Is the depth of the balcony (door to railing) the same on decks 9,10, and 11? Do the 2 person balcony cabins still have a chair/small couch in them? Do you hear more noise through the door of the connecting cabins than you would normally hear through the wall? What types of activities are at Spice H2O and how late do they go? Is it typically loud enough to be heard in the cabins on deck 10 in the aft area? The deck plans make it look like the Splash club is gone, but when I was trying to do a fake booking to see what balcony cabins were available, the deck plan showed the Splash club and no cabins on that side. Are there balcony cabins going all the way aft on both the port and starboard sides? Where is the outside smoking area(s)? Which dining room requires long pants vs shorts? I know things change from one sailing to the next, but which main dining room typically opens at 5 instead of 5:30? Thanks all.

When we cruised earlier this month, the Dawn was still at twice daily, but the Hotel Manager said they were talking to other ships to try and get the process as smooth as possibly and they said the 3rd and 4th beds would be set up on embarkation day and stay set up until the cruise ended. Someone on a different ship reported that they were told they could call guest services each day and someone could come to put the bed up and take it back down, but the standard procedure was for it to stay down all the time.

@grozzy1 Thank you for all of your posts. I'm guessing you are back home and back into "Real life", but I hope you have time to post more about your cruise. The photos and the things that you did and saw are very helpful.

In Cagney's on the Dawn earlier this month, we were told we could pick 2 sides with the dining plan and people next to us were told 1 side with the platinum and above vouchers.

On the Dawn, we were told with the dining package we could have an app and either a soup or salad and 2 sides. The people next to us had a platinum voucher and were told 1 total for app, soup, or salad. Not one app and one soup/salad like your post, giving us on dining plan more than if we had used our voucher. Also, we were told we could have the 2 sides while the people next to us were limited to a single side. Maybe they are rolling out the changes one ship at a time??

Usually, your posts make a lot of sense and helpful, but now you are just sounding like an NCL cheerleader. The problem isn't with NCL moving cruises, like ours to Amber Cove, or changing ports all together, or changing it to a sea day because there was a problem with the Escape a year ago. The problem is, they are still selling these cruises as Taino Bay and waiting to tell people about the change until after final payment. We were notified of our change about 10 days out. We had booked a private tour because of the lack of transparency from NCL since we originally wanted to walk into and around town, which is not possible from Amber Cove. Others were left scrambling. For people who travel for the ships or the bars close to the port, it isn't a problem. For those with enough money to take multiple cruises a year, rather than saving for years to take one cruise, it isn't a problem. But for people who cruise for the itineraries and who make a significant sacrifice to pay for the cruise, these types of changes cause distress. Also, on the "what is an emergency", it isn't defined by what people like, but I'm sorry - the sustainability goals BS is not an emergency. I can't see how anyone can say it is. If the cruise was going to burn too much fuel, they knew that before final payments, no reason to wait until after.

Did you lose all of the sounds or just the one?

Do you know if there is a way to transfer points online or do we both need to be available to talk to someone to do the points transfer?

We had them on the Dawn earlier this month.

More likely, the higher they post the value at, the greater the service charge they can add to the "free" packages that they are giving away.