WhiteRockMike

Okay, once again I stand totally corrected on Oceania, and NCL in general. The shareholder OBC has been applied to all three Oceania cruises this year, all of which were booked through a travel agent. Thank you Oceania, you remain our favorite cruise line! So Regent is the lone NCL problem child who withheld Shareholder OBC.

Well, I stand corrected on Oceania; I received an email from them this morning and they have provided our $100 OBC for our March cruise. Thank you Oceania! I have just applied for our two Oceania cruises in November and will post if we get these. Our experience with Regent, however, is history and our applications were both firmly denied.

I know this is an older thread but I suspect that over the past few months NCL's shareholder benefit policy has changed. It certainly has for us. We haven't had this problem before until our 2024 cruises. These are not on Norwegian Cruise Line but are on NCL's other two lines, Oceania and Regent. Our two Regent cruises were in January and February 2024, and we have three upcoming Oceania cruises in March and November, 2024. They are All booked through TA's. All rejected with the reason given being that the fare was a "sale" fare. For the two Regent cruises I applied to the listed shareholder benefit email and at least received a reply that they didn't qualify. For the March Oceania, I have now sent the initial and two reminder emails and didn't receive the basic courtesy of any reply at all. I Just got off the phone with Oceania customer service and the very helpful lady (on another issue) looked up all three cruises and said none of them will qualify as they are "sale" fares. I said that the last two were exactly priced at the Oceania website fares, not some special TA fare and she said it doesn't matter, as the Oceania website fare is usually a sale fare! I asked, so unless you are paying full fare you aren't getting the benefit, and she said yes. Does anyone actually pay the "full fare"? There is always some sale or other on a cruise. I don't know if this suspected new policy will apply to Norwegian cruise line as well, but it does to the two sister cruise lines. This was disappointing and I think a very poor corporate move. We will be selling our NCL stock; at least it stock jumped about 20% today after their latest earnings report, which will make it easier to do. Not looking to get into an argument, just wanted to report what happened to us.

As promised, here was our experience. we are currently on Seabourn Encore and visited Safaga Egypt yesterday. As Seabourn had promised, they cleared the ship into Egypt early yesterday morning, and we picked up our passports from them at 6:30am, complete with Egyptian stamp, to start our excursion to Luxor. No fuss and no cost.

Thank you Oceanlovertoo for your encouraging news! Hoping you can also answer Tirpitzz's first question - whether you asked specifically about Canadian passport holders of non Egyptian origin?

Yes, will do. But a couple of caveats: 1. This will be after November 19th (when we board), so by that time it will be too late to get the $25 eVisa that you can now purchase up to October 1st. 2. As we’ve seen from responses on this thread, some cruise lines will get transit visas for their Canadian guests and some won’t. So you still need to check if your cruise line says they will or won’t.

Thank you so much for that info sparkly pink! Although I am sure that Seaborn will be able to get us a transit visa as they have stated multiple times, I will go for the belt and suspenders approach, and sleep much better between now and November 19th when we board!

I guess what they told you is technically correct, as Seabourn will get us a "transit visa". The question is, for passengers arriving by cruise ship (for visits within Egypt of less than 72 hours), can the cruise ship still obtain these upon arrival? Three cruise lines Seabourn, Celebrity and Silversea) have confirmed yes, but unfortunately Azamara appears to be not able or willing to do this.

We've been told the same (TA talked to them today) for our Seabourn cruise in November.

Wow, this is just a fantastic review, thank you!! it is very timely and useful to us as we are doing the same cruise on August 25th, and will do many of the same things that you have done. Your excellent review is a great guide for us, Thank you!!

Oh, I guess I could have expanded your signature and figured that out! Actually, the same thing happened to us - we originally booked for our Fiji and NZ B2B cruises in January/February 2023 on the Royal Princess; until they decided to pull the Royal out of the area and re-deployed it to California for that period. We were able to transfer and rebook similar cruises on the Majestic Princess, although I would have preferred the original Royal bookings.

Which cruise? We are booked on a NZ Princess cruise in January 2023 on Majestic Princess and it has not been cancelled.

Thank you so much, Guernseycruiser for the great information. We will be there on August 26th on Emerald Princess, and have booked a scooter from Millards for the day. Weather depending, it should be a good way to get around the whole island and see many of the sights. We just need a good map and self-guided tour information.