The Traveling Man

The primary advantage to booking on board is that you pay for the least expensive stateroom in your chosen category but receive the best available room in that category. Pay for the cheapest Balcony, for example, and get the best, i.e. most expensive, Balcony.

I’m with you on this one, Chief. I’d rather arrive three hours early for a flight than one minute late. Right now I’m sitting in the boarding lounge at LAX and figure to be here for at least another hour before my flight begins boarding. I might even have time to explore the terminal to find the best looking sandwich to take on the plane.

We have been to Quebec several times with NCL. Usually they dock in town near the Château Frontenac, but once we were around the bend at the industrial pier. I don’t know if they have confirmed yet where your ship will dock.

We have done that before and it worked out great.

Agree.

It’s been a while since I had a whole lobster on an NCL ship, but as I recall it was served with the shell split open but with the meat still in the shell. You had to dig it out. Things may be different now.

NCL has always been very tight lipped about what goes into the decision making process for bids. The best guess that I have seen, however, is that it’s based on whatever brings in the most revenue to NCL. If the two highest bids are the same, but one is made by someone booked in a Balcony and the other is from someone in an Inside, the Balcony bid wins. NCL can then sell that Balcony to someone else for more than they could the Inside. Even if the bid from the Balcony guest is a little less than that from the Inside, the net total is likely more for NCL if it frees up a Balcony for another paying passenger. As I said, NCL isn’t talking about the tricks of the trade.

When we have had a conflict between DWO and a previous reservation, we have gone to the restaurant reservations desk for assistance. Before we cancelled our current reservation, we asked about other possibilities. Once we found something acceptable, we asked the hostess to book that and at the same time to delete our previous reservation. We sometimes had to dine either earlier or later than we would have liked. Sometimes we even accepted a restaurant that we might not have chosen were it not for the conflict, but we always have been able to work out something.

You’re probably correct. It’s been a few years since we’ve sailed on one of NCL’s big ships. Smoking was allowed on the Waterfront near the bar at that time. It was not allowed anywhere else on the Waterfront at that time.

Welcome to Cruise Critic. Virtually the entire Waterfront is designated as a smoke free environment. Smoking is only permitted near the bar.

I've always tried to live by the philosophy that a stranger is just a friend you haven't yet had the chance to spend some time getting to know.

Only won a bid for the Haven once, on the Breakaway in January 2016. We did not get any additional Latitude points, just the one per night that we rated for booking a Balcony. It certainly is possible that things have changed since then.

We were on the Joy in Alaska in June 2019. There were over 4000 passengers on board, but over 3000 of them were first time cruisers with NCL. There was a total of hundreds of Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Platinum, of course, but only four Platinum Plus members who would be eligible for DWO. We always are up for DWO, but the other couple showed no interest, so the GM arranged for dinner for us, him, and the CN Manager in Le Bistro one night. It was another of our most favorite dinners with an officer. I suppose the fact that we had sailed with the GM several times before and that the CN Manager recognized us from our one cruise with him 3-1/2 years earlier and called us by name as we approached the CN office might have had something to do with them giving us the royal treatment. I think, however, that all you should need to do is ask for your DWO and most GMs would be very accommodating.

Our absolutely most favorite DWO was with the Chief Environmental Officer on the Spirit in May 2018. We met her on the BTS tour and were enthralled by her enthusiasm for her chosen field of environmental engineering. She was a real hoot! That evening, several of us who had been on the tour were enjoying our DWO with GM Armando Silva. We all were praising the wonderful job she did in describing the recycling operations on the ship. Armando said "You should have dinner with her." We all looked at each other, dumbfounded. I'm sure everyone else at the table was thinking the same thing that I was, that as Platinum Plus Latitudes members (the old name for Sapphire) we were entitled to one DWO per cruise, and there we were, already having our DWO with the GM. "No reason you can't have dinner with a officer more than once per cruise" he said. "I'll arrange it." Well, okey dokey, we said. Set us up! Two nights later, the six of us had dinner with Eszter from Hungary. We sat down in the MDR at 6:00 PM. About 6:30 Armando arrived with another group of Platinum + folks and sat at a table near us. Eszter started talking, telling us about her family, her university days in Budapest, how she had to balance the off-loading of one type of recycling material at this port which pays more per pound than that port, and how some ports demand a certain number of pounds of recyclables based upon how much fresh food, etc. is loaded onto the ship there. Trust me, she made it sound fascinating. Several times our waiters came by to see if we had finished one course so they could bring the next, only to find that we had barely touched our food. Eszter had us enthralled with talk of garbage! At one point, about 8:00 PM I guess, I noticed that Armando and his group had finished and left the restaurant. A little after 9:00 PM, the conversation at our table finally reached a pause. We looked around the room to see only a couple of occupied tables. The wait staff were standing around, nervously checking their watches, obviously wondering when we were going to finish so they could close up. We spent well over three hours engaged in the most delightful and entertaining conversation imaginable, all with an officer who likely had not been above Deck 4 in weeks.

You're right. They have some rules and regulations listed in multiple locations on their website and within the cruise contract. It's not hard to find examples of where they change or update the rules, but only post the new info in one place, leaving conflicting statements in other places. For example, the rules about prohibited items.

Mike, My wife and I were supposed to be on that cruise, albeit the originally planned route was a bit more direct path around the Cape and then on to Singapore, then Tokyo. Those cruises, of course, succumbed to COVID, hence sailing in circles while searching for "any port in a storm." Thanks for the reminder, though. I recall that you had it tough for a while there in South Africa. James

@Middleager The info shared by mking8288 is quite extensive. Our experience has been a bit different. We have enjoyed dinner with a total of 34 different NCL officers, including 26 senior officers (three stripes or above) and only eight junior officers. Sometimes we were with just a single officer, but frequently there were two. One dinner included four officers and eight guests at a very large table. Our dinners were usually called for 6:00 or 6:30. Once we were asked to meet at 5:30 so that any who wanted to attend the early show in the theater would be able to do so. They even reserved seats in the theater for us and provided an escort to slip us in just before the show began. Unfortunately, you can only guess which night your DWO will be scheduled. We usually try to leave open the second and third nights on a week long cruise. On longer cruises such as yours, we try not to schedule any specialty dinners on the third through sixth night. Despite our best efforts, we frequently have had to rearrange our restaurant reservations to fit the DWO into our agenda. Since your Latitudes level is high enough for DWO, the GM's Secretary or the CN Manager should be willing to assist you with rearranging your specialty dinning schedule if there is a conflict with DWO. There often will be DWOs scheduled for several different nights. Depending on the number of available officers, some senior officers may be called upon to dine with two or three groups of passengers on different nights. The dinner frequently is held in the MDR, but about one-third of ours have been in one of the secondary dining rooms. Many GMs, Captains, and other senior officers prefer to host their DWO in a specialty restaurant such as Le Bistro or Cagney's. About one-third of our DWOs have been in one of those. It is possible that Ambassador and Diamond members are more likely to be matched with the Captain or GM, while Sapphire members may more frequently be paired with a junior officer. Typically when a junior officer is at the table, NCL also will assign a senior officer as a mentor to the junior officer. In those cases you can expect a table to be set for a dozen or more persons. It sometimes is difficult to carry on a conversation at such a large table, especially when you are in the noisy part of the MDR. The conversation can break down into two or more smaller groups, so you may not actually be able to converse much with the officer. On recent cruises, most of our DWO have been just the two of us and one or two senior officers in Le Bistro. Those are truly enjoyable and rewarding experiences. We have been paired with officers having a vast array of backgrounds and shipboard responsibilities. There have been 6 GMs, 4 CN Managers, 2 Captains, 2 Chief Engineers, 2 Chief Medical Officers, 2 Guest Services Managers, 2 Assistant Executive Housekeepers, and one each Staff Chief Engineer, Security Chief, F&B Director, Chief Environmental Officer, Beverage Manager, and Shore Excursion Manager. The junior officers were an Electrical Engineer, Group Coordinator, GM's Secretary, Asst. Accountant, Asst. IT Manager, Asst. Environmental Officer, Casino Pit Boss, and Shop Manager. Virtually every one of them had interesting stories to tell and we had a wonderful time getting to know them. I hope you take advantage of this opportunity which NCL provides to meet and share experiences with others who may have a unique background and have led a completely different life from your own. Bon voyage.

Mike, NCL may be splitting hairs (or is it hares?), but the current language in the T&C is correct. The OP booked a Balcony. They won an upgrade bid to the Haven. They may get lucky and receive extra Latitude points, but the T&C for upgrades are sufficiently straightforward that NCL does not owe them anything more than just moving up to a nicer room. James

Los Lobos is our favorite restaurant on ships which feature it. We were saddened to learn that NCL plans to remove it from the Joy at its next dry dock in favor of expanding Cagney's. Le Bistro is our favorite on all other NCL ships. Teppanyaki can be a lot of fun for the show, so your children might really enjoy it. The food is very good there, especially the seafood, although they have down graded the steak option at Teppanyaki recently and there have been several complaints on CC about that. Last year we were on the Sky, a sister ship to the Sun, and really enjoyed the Sushi restaurant. The food was outstanding and the design of the space and its atmosphere were perfect. Cagney's has been hit or miss for us lately, but since the menu in Le Bistro was changed to eliminate the rack of lamb, we usually have included a dinner in Cagney's on each of our cruises so I can have their lamb chops.

Unfortunately, no. The terms of the upgrade program indicate that although you get to enjoy the more desirable room, you do not receive either the extra Latitudes points, any additional specialty restaurant nights, or certain other perks that would apply if you had originally booked the Haven room instead of winning an upgrade.

We were on the Getaway on a Trans Atlantic crossing in April 2019, just before a dry dock. Our scheduled 12 day cruise was cut to just ten days so the ship could enter dry dock earlier. The reports from passengers on the first cruise after the dry dock were that their cruise was delayed by a few days as well. NCL did offer some compensation, including a few hundred dollars to help cover the cost of hotel rooms and meals for the two extra days we spent in Southampton before continuing our journey. I think they also offered some compensation to those who had to pay to change their plane tickets. Not for nothing, but we were credited with 12 Latitude points instead of being cut to ten.

We were on the Pr1ma for its very first visit to Southampton on 23 September 2022. To say that the debarkation process was a bit disorganized and chaotic would be a great understatement. It has been reported since then that things have improved at Southampton, but our experience was terrible. We had arranged to travel by bus to Heathrow, departing Southampton at 9:00 AM for a mid-afternoon flight. We left our Pr1ma stateroom and walked to the elevator, luggage in hand, at 7:00 AM. We then joined the line in the atrium to pass through the security checkpoint. I would estimate that approximately half of the 3000+ passengers on board were already in line when we got there. At least 1000 more joined in behind us before we managed to exit the ship more than 90 minutes later. The holdup was that the British Customs / Immigration / Border Patrol assigned only one agent to our ship. He stationed himself on board, just prior to the ship's security checkpoint. He examined the documents of each passenger. Although he spent only a few seconds with each passenger, it took him about an hour per 1000 persons. We had allowed two hours to exit the ship, get through Customs, find a taxi to take us to the bus station, and board our bus. It took us two hours and one minute, so we missed our bus. There were no seats available on the next scheduled bus, so we had to take a taxi all the way to the airport, a very expensive trip. As I said, it seems that things have improved at the Southampton Cruise Terminal in the past two years, but that's our story. I would recommend adding an extra hour to your anticipated debarkation time, then taking an interesting book to read if you should find yourself waiting that extra hour at the bus stop. Good luck and bon voyage.

We had a great time at the Sail and Sustain Cocktail event on the Pr1ma on her second voyage after launching. As you might expect, lots of Ambassador and Diamond Latitudes members were on board the first few cruises of the new ship. The cocktail event is available as a perk to Diamond and Ambassador members only, so we all spent more time chatting and getting to know each other than we did paying attention to what our bartender, Clarence the Chocolate Cowboy, had to say about the drinks he was pouring.

It would be a very tight connection. It is possible to do, but as others have indicated, I think you would find it much less stressful if you could schedule a later time. Assuming you are flying from San Juan to somewhere in the USA, you probably would need to be at the airport by 9:20. If you are flying to another country, however, you would be expected to arrive by about 8:20. Assuming you are able to exit the ship and make it through the cruise terminal to your waiting ride by 8:00, that leaves very little transit time.

Close, but no cigar. If there are two or more shore excursions available at a port which do not conflict with each other, e.g one in the morning and one in the afternoon, you may book both and the person listed as the primary guest in the stateroom will receive a $50.00 credit on each shore excursion tour.