Haole

So, just curious, why is it that the art auctions are always standing room only, with PAX bidding and buying the art.

Maybe be the free champagne.

We've done the Epic TA and, because it is one of the larger ships, we made reservations for the nightly shows. Not absolutely necessary, but if you didn't you had to stand in line and entered after those ticketed.

No problem booking shows on the ship. Better to book specialty dining before boarding.

On NCL smaller ships, no reservation system for the shows. Even more important to do dining reservations before boarding.

FWIW, our tour guide with Discover Hawaii Tours told our group that the Honolulu Zoo was small and not worth a visit. Obviously her opinion but we got the impression it was nothing special. She did say the Honolulu Aquarium was good and worth it.

Skip the zoo. It lost accreditation in 2016. The Aquarium is, however, a gem

Any information on the Jade? We're headed TA from Tampa-> Southampton next week and we're wondering.

Ditto to comments about Captain Lars (though there may be more than one). I still remember him from 4-5 years ago updating us about all the "little chickadees" who were late "coming home to roost" after their time on shore. Great listening to him comment and watching the passengers scurrying up the ramp to the ship.

The attitude of the staff is a direct reflection of the attitude of the Hotel Director and to some degree the Cruise Director.

We last sailed on the ill-fated Star that lost propulsion in Asia and cancelled half of the cruise ports. Passengers were outraged at the Senior Staff's dismissive response. See video (

The dismay of the crew was evident as they were worried about their tips. Clearly they wanted to talk to passengers, but were instructed otherwise.

NCL has not suffered as much in the media as United Airlines, but they have some work to do on their corporate attitude.

The speciality dinners are assigned to a specific person and can not be shared amongst your friends and family.

Adherence to this policy is spotty. We used our UDP to treat friends on the Star in January. The just removed it from our total package.

Also Do you leave An Extra Tip after meals for the freestyle Dining?

No, the NCL Freestyle dining is buffet style with seating where you find it. No tipping because no waiters, only table bussing staff.

In the specialty restaurants you can tip or not - personal preference. An 18% gratuity is automatically included, but some add more for exceptional service.

If you are not averse to flying, I recommend the NCL Pride of America cruise [despite reservations -- read on]. We took this cruise last October, DW and I plus adult DD. Booked a Suite with 2 bedrooms, butler service, unlimited dining, all the amenities. Even with all that, NCL is crap. The butler wasn't trained, the specialty restaurants aren't as good as Celebrity MDR. BUT -

This is because of the Jones Act that requires employees to Have U.S. citizenship. Sad that say, but most Americans do not have the same work ethic as foreign crew members.

We flew back from a TA in First on BA using AA miles and had a similarly comfortable experience. Six passengers in the cabin with 3 stewards. The only issue is the fuel surcharge from BA.

We try to opt for Iberia if we are going TA. They have a combined Business/First though it resembles First more than Business in all respects. I could lie flat and still had a foot of space between me and the next seat. In addition, the food was wonderful and never stopped. Best of all, no additional fuel charges.

We were leaving Helsinki on an NCL Baltic cruise heading to Stockholm. About 10 minutes after departure we notice a pilot boat hightailing after us. As it nears, the ship slows to a stop of a couple of minutes, then resumes its speed. The pilot boat turns around and leaves.

We later found out that 16 passengers had missed the departure and some of them were on the pilot boat. The Captain, however, refused to let them board.

To make matters worse, weather issues later that evening forced us to skip Stockholm and proceed to our final port of Copenhagen.

Rumor was that these stranded passengers went to Stockholm, found out about the detour and had to reroute to Copenhagen.

The morals of the story have been well discussed below.

Online reservations are easy to do and better yet you avoid the lines at the guest services desk. The one draw back is that they do not transfer over to the NCL on-board app.

The Platinum benefit rules seem to in flux. I have seen that you need to make reservations at the CruiseNext desk on the first day as you have to for the behind the scenes tour and the cocktail party), but a look at the rewards today (see below) no longer has that stipulation.

5 Benefit entitles each guest to one appetizer, one entrée and one dessert of your choice. Entrée items up to $20 are covered. For items over this amount, an upcharge will be added to your onboard account. Entrée item Côte De Boeuf Pour Deux in Le Bistro, is a shared dish and will be treated as two entrées.

And we do not like NCL at all! We have been on over 100 cruises, have 4 booked at the moment!

Yes, we were on the N. Star out of Hong Kong at the beginning of the year. They had propulsion problems that they had kept quiet and one azipod failed. They had to cancel 5/10 ports and originally offered little in compensation. Passengers nearly rioted! Great video at

Our best cruise experience was on the Coral Princess (now Coral Expeditions) a smaller company in Australia. We cruised the Great Barrier Reef on 3 occasions with them. Small boat, of about 75 passengers, informal single seating dining and superior staff. Much of the dining fare was fresh seafood, but did offer other options.

We will sail with them on an over the top Kimberly cruise in the future. (Well its on our bucket list, anyway.)

Oceania was bought out by NCL and is suffering as a result.

We have mostly cruised NCL but are becoming disenchanted by the progressive "nickel and dime" mentality of the line. Other cruise lines appear to bundle drinks, excursions, etc and charge one price.

How do the two approaches compare with respect to overall cost, customer satisfaction and options? We're ready for a change.

Sorry for your accident. NCL is very stubborn about their no refund policy. We just asked a question about rescheduling because of a death in the family and our reservation was cancelled. All was resolved in the end, but it was a shock and a major hassle to restore the booking.

Haven't learned my lesson and only buy the insurance sporadically.

We've stayed at the Copenhagen Admiral just outside central Copenhagen (near the Palace). Lovely accommodations, but just over your $200 range. Also stayed at the First Hotel 27 near Tivoli Gardens. Austere Danish look, no A/C about $150 a nite. A bit of a ruckus one night at 3 am when the bars closed, but would stay again.

Our preference is to take the train to Malmo, Sweden which is just a short distance away and much less crowded. Recommend the Master Johan, a very short walk from the station and about $125 a nite. Great hotel in central Malmo and very safe.

Do you get commission from NCL for telling everyone who will listen to remove or dispute the DSC charge?

Why would he get a commission? These extra charges are money makers for NCL. They probably take a "service fee" to pay these gratuities to the employees or at the least use the money to avoid paying them a descent wage..

I told ncl in an email once that I was going to dispute the charge on my credit card if I didn't get an immediate response to my question

 

So...72 hours later I disputed the charge....10 days later a refund from ncl came thru

 

You need play hardball with them

 

My wife got thru to NCL yesterday and we have an "internal credit" on the NCL books for the cost of the cruise (less taxes, fees, gratuities, etc). NCL to not sending written confirmation out according to their agent. In other words, you have only NCL's word about the credit. I saw how good their weird was when the senior staff lied to us daily about the ship's functionality.

We were on the 5th January cruise which missed Thailand out completly and got a very poor extra stop in some dirty grubby vietnam 'berth' in the middle of nowhere !!

We have only been offered 20% cruise discount and that's all so out of every sailing we have been offered the leased which i have sent email to every possible NCL email addresses i could find including two CEO's before and after the cruise and still have had no replies ??

We have still not even been issued with the 20% cruise discount offered ?? I WILL NEVER SAIL WITH NCL AGAIN OR RECOMMEND THEM.....THE LACK OF CUSTOMER SERVICE IS APPALING !!:mad:

We were also on that cruise and wrote to the CEO, President of NCL Holdings, the head of Guest Relations AND the twit VP from Sydney who came to the ship in Darwin. Similar response, NONE.

I was on the ship here is a snapshot I took.

 

 

Nice picture of a bad situation. We got off the Star before our cruise ended in Sydney.

 

BTW, we called NCL and found out that we had an "internal credit" which shows only on their accounting. Not going to get anything on paper to document a refund.

Was 30 minutes on the Star this month, but it doesn't matter how long, the staff doesn't want to enforce the rules.

If you need wifi access to check in back home then do take the free wifi promo but dont think you can use the wifi like you do at home because you won't be able to. Also you MUST log in and THEN logout at each usage or you will immediately burn thru

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Regarding the WiFi logout: we routinely took a screen shot of our remaining minutes after logout after two episodes of the NCL software not actually completing the logout process.

Surprisingly, we were told that the "logout" button doesn't always work and you should type in "logout.com" to securely log off.

Even so, the Internet cafe administrator was able to see that we had nearly 90 minutes logged in without any activity and he restored the lost time.

You can easily make all of your connections via train. The limiting factor is how much luggage you will have to drag along with you. Have you considered a luggage service to transfer most of the bags to the ship and for you to just take a small rollaway?

Trains to the port can become VERY crowded at peak boarding and traveling excursion times with standing room only even from Roma Termini.

Because of the expensive airport gate charge per person for train travel, it would be cheaper to take a taxi or a shuttle to the airport, for 6 people. Rail ticket would be $17.90 (inc gate pass) x 6 passengers.

Definitely a better deal for 6 to get a van rather than the taxi. I thought only 2 were traveling back the next morning, but even with 2 people the taxi is less of a hassle if you are willing to spend just a few dollars more.

Realistically, getting off of the azipod challenged Norwegian Star after 15 sea days on a 21 day cruise.

More positive, singing with the dueling pianos at Howl at the Moon