rtkenmore

No you cannot book onboard, there is a dedicated phone # for TR discounts. The onboard crew cannot see your Total Rewards tier. Here is the phone #. 877-742-9519

 

As an FYI, you can now use total rewards gift cards for your onboard spending, details are on the TR alliance website.

I know the 800 number and that's not really my question. My question was, is there a way to book while on board using the TR discount AND Cruise Next Ultimate to get the additional bonus for booking onboard during a current sailing.

The CNU gives you an additional choice when you book your cruise while onboard a current sailing and that's what I'm trying to figure out... To combine with TR Diamond discount.

Total Rewards platinum members only receive 10% discount. You must book with CAS to receive the discount.

Diamond, sorry.

Quick question and if it has been asked before, I apologize. I haven't found anything that addresses this specific question.

I'm a Platinum Total Rewards member that comes with a 20% discount when booked through NCL Casino Booking / CAS directly. If I want to purchase a Cruise Next Cert and book while on board in order to get the bonus offer for booking on board, can I still obtain the 20% discount offered through Total Rewards / CAS if I book on board? Or is that discount ONLY available when booking through the CAS 800 number?

The shore excursion is $50/port; not per person/per port. At least that is the way it's been explained to me.

Is it just me or does this change really not save all that much in the end? It's my understanding that the TR discount isn't applied on the total cruise fare but on the remainder after deducting the admin fee...

So, for example, we have an Escape cruise booked for Thankgiving. The original cruise fare was $1229 and the $200 admin fee was deducted for a before discount fare of $1029. The 20% was then deducted from this figure for a fare of $823.20+$200 = $1023.20 for the final cruise fare.

With the new admin fee, it would have been $1229-$140 for $1089 before discount. With the 20% would be $871.20+$140 = $1011.20.

So the bottom line difference would only be $12. Am I missing something?

NCL is setting themselves up for still greater criticism of 'nickel-and-diming" their customers. Many hotels (worldwide), with much more at risk, don't require 24 hours notice. So a few what-ifs:

 

• You are on an NCL excursion that returns late causing you to miss your reservation, do they slam you with this charge?
  
• If another cruiser is there to take the time-slot, do they still hit the first party with this fine? (Note: NCL lost nothing in this case.)
  
• So $15pp - I don't think there are any (or very few) single person tables in these restaurants, so its really a $30 minimum hit for a couple. Will cruisers start booking for one, but show up as a couple?
  
• If, god forbid, you take ill after lunch, do you get hit with this fine?
  

If the objective is to maximize the availability of specialty restaurant seating (a reasonable goal), there are more rational approaches. This is an unnecessary policy, fraught with issues, that will only earn NCL a bad name for "customer service."

No, many hotels now require 48-96 hours notice to cancel reservations. The majority have gotten away from same day or 24 hour cancellation policies.

I don't think this thread went the way OP thought it would... :-/

I agree, it doesn't make sense to me. Not to mention if you put 2 people in a cabin with perks- NCL gives away double the perks, 2 UBP and 2 dining packages. It seems like it would cost them more in the long run with 2 people drinking for free and an extra set of free specialty meals versus 1 person. I faced this same dilemma and booked the Sail away rate. I was debating between paying for drinks as I go or buying one of the beverage packages. Since the price was so good on the cruise, I felt I could justify paying for the package. They could at least lower the cost of the BF category, which was a guaranty with perks when I last booked. This would avoid the potential situation others described above (2 people booking 2 cabins). It is definitely a head scratcher on how they come up with this stuff.

Two people are more likely to spend more money on board, i.e. spa services, gambling, shopping, etc. They expect to make more money on discretionary spending from two people than they do from one person.

Booking 2 cabins for 2 people rather than 1 cabin for 2 people will never be cheaper, and it's not what i'm advocating at all.

 

A Balcony cabin in this instance is $1,798 for 1 or 2 people. It doesn't make a difference. That includes the perks. The balcony guarantee is $649 without the perks. I can go and buy the beverage package for $550 so that brings the cost to $1,200 for a balcony guarantee with the beverage package. So essentially the difference between a balcony guarantee ($1,200) with the beverage package bought and a standard balcony with the perks ($1,798) is $600...that's a 50% increase. That's what doesn't make sense to me. A standard balcony where you choose your room and you get the perks for 1 person should be $1,200-1,300...not $1,798. I'm not expecting a handout but one can see how the pricing doesn't make any sense. It's like those people that have reported getting upgrade offers with a minimum bid that is HIGHER then what it would actually cost them to upgrade at full price.

You're missing the point... Two people paying $1798 would get TWO beverage packages and TWO additional of something else for that price.

You, booking as a single person on a guarantee rate, get nothing and will pay for the beverage package $550. So you're right, you're up to $1200 at that point but the full fare cabin gets another beverage package ($550) and two more perks (either free dinners, wifi, shore excursion). The free shore excursion is worth $150-$200 depending on the itinerary. The free dinners is worth about $200 as well.

So as several people have pointed out... Be happy you can get a sail-away rate so inexpensive and if the perk you want is ultimate drinks, then add it and you still get off cheaper than paying double fare single supplement.

Saw that too and we are slotted for Falmouth Jamaica on Tuesday now.

 

Looks like it will be

 

Sat - Sail away

Sun (11/19)- Sea Day

Mon (11/20) - Sea Day

Tues (11/210 - Falmouth

Wednesday (11/22) - Grand Cayman

Thursday (11/23) - Sea day

Friday (11/24) GSC

Sat (11/25) - Port Canaveral

 

Hoping Monday turns into a port day somewhere :-)

 

I think that we might hear this afternoon as NCL informed Escape passengers last Friday afternoon of their itinerary changes.

I can confirm Escape's changes for the 18th and we are shown in port at Falmouth on Monday. At one time, Port Jamaica site was showing Epic & Escape both in port the same day but I see now Epic is showing as Tuesday which Is actually nice so the port won't be slammed with two mega ships at once.

It probably depends on who the players are too... my first time was Steve, Steve and Rhonda and they were awesome... jokes, sing along and all... one of them even sang that n th voice of Kermit th Frog. The later shows are probably better because people are more intoxicated and all... but we would stay from beginning to end for every show.

I loved your review as well. I've been on Epic twice now... an east and west Caribbean cruise from Miami. I def agree with a lot of your comments..

Quick note, I think the reason the epic theatre is smaller is because they would do each of the two shows three nights a piece (at least on my cruises). So each show was performed six times (twice a night) to accommodate all the passengers...

Hmmm, an interesting first post from you but I'll answer it anyway.

 

No, I thought it would be comedy because the land-based dueling piano bars I’ve been to ranged from hilarious to insanely funny. They also actually dueled, one would stop the other in the middle of a tune and tell him/her how crappy they were and take over the song. It also included lots of banter with the audience and a lot of jokes.

 

The night we went to Howl at the Moon it was just two piano players singing and playing tunes requested by the audience. The show was hardly what I call dueling pianos. Perhaps the show was better later in the evening but I wasn’t impressed.

Did you think there was comedy because it was in the Headliners Comedy Club? Just curious...

I've done Epic twice now and Howl At The Moon is by far my favorite part of the cruise!!!

EMBARKATION DAY CONTINUED

 

Muster was at 3:30 PM and our station was in the theater, B5 if I remember correctly. We headed down early to avoid the mad rush for the elevators when the call to muster was sounded.

 

 

When muster ended we exited on deck 5 and once again, getting an elevator was a nightmare. As I remember we took the stairs up to deck 6 and into O’Sheehan’s for a drink while we waited for the other 4000 people to get where they wanted via the elevators.

 

In hindsight, I think it would have been smarter to skip the muster drill on the first day and attend the mandatory muster the next day. If I ever cruise a mega-ship again I’ll do exactly that.

 

Getting elevators on this sold out cruise was a major aggravation for me. Embarkation day and debarkation day were ridiculous. Also, the first two days at sea we experienced light rain and extremely strong winds and some of the upper decks were closed as were the pools, slides, and other water features because of the winds. So with most passengers inside, the elevators were slow and crowded. There were many times that even though the elevator stopped at your floor, there wasn’t any room for more passengers. There were always a lot of people using the stairs to get between decks on this cruise.

 

We were back in our cabin and sitting on our balcony in time for the sail away. From our balcony we had a view of the three other ships in port, the Disney Fantasy, the Carnival Magic, and the Carnival Sunshine. The Carnival Magic was the first ship to leave port and we followed soon after.

 

 

The sun was low in the sky and the skies were partly cloudy as we departed the pier. The wind was really starting to pick up as we left Port Canaveral.

 

 

Both the Sheriff’s Department and the Coast Guard followed our ship out to the ocean. Probably looking for my brother-in-law, the smuggler.

 

 

 

 

As planned, we met up with J & M a pre-dinner drink at O’Sheehan’s and then went to dinner at the complimentary Taste Restaurant. We had no trouble getting seated at Taste. Even though this was a sold out cruise we only had two occasions when we had to wait to be seated for dinner and as I remember the wait was less than 10 minutes both times. I ordered a shrimp pasta dish that night that was quite good. Overall I thought the food was good on the Epic but not great. In my opinion, the food we had on the Jade in January was much better. Sorry, no food pictures in this report.

 

At 9 PM the four of us went to Howl at the Moon Dueling Pianos in the Headliners Comedy Club. I was looking forward to this since I’ve been to other land based dueling piano bars and they are so much fun. This was a real disappointment for me. Instead of two very funny people interacting with the audience and each other, it was just two people alternately playing tunes that had been requested by the audience. Perhaps it was just an off night for them because they weren’t funny but they were very good piano players. After listening and waiting 45 minutes for some comedy we left the club and called it a night.

 

 

As we walked back to our cabin we could feel the motion of the ship going side to side but it wasn’t all that bad.