dolfan1980

Sounds like people giving made up answers to get people to stop asking questions. I'd be shocked if a sailing that far out is 50% booked at this point unless there was a large group. Many of the folks here book a year or more in advance, many of us book within 30-90 days and I can count on one hand how many sailings I see officially sold out even a week before sailing. I usually track prices on a site that shows all sailings including those that are sold out.

Why do you think YUL would be better? I pre-cleared in Montreal three weeks ago and the US customs hall was an utter mess and long lines.

All of those departures from SJU were the problem I came up against, nothing that works for a departure from a cruise. We ended up booking Southwest to FLL and Flair to Ottawa coming home. A risk, but I have AC status so as long as we get to Florida I can get last minute tickets on AC from there without too much trouble.

The answer is sometimes the price drops and maybe you'll get a better price. It's also possible the sailing sells out. It's such a weird time right now that nobody seems to know where/where things will be busy.

You can probably also blame Liz Truss for your tanking currency contributing to the increase as well. I am Canadian and was shocked going to Europe two weeks ago at how much the Euro and Pound Sterling have fallen compared to the Canada/US dollars.

I recently booked my flights for San Juan in January from Ottawa and also can't easily get there either and am overnighting in Montreal unfortuantely. I think if you're checking bags and want to stay with the same airline at least, then perhaps book a daytime flight to YYZ or YUL and then onwards in the morning. You could always do a red-eye, but I agree that those are brutal. At least if you lose your luggage you can get it sent the next day perhaps. I'm a never check luggage under any circumstances person, so I understand your dilemma. You could probably do the same thing with United/AA/Delta too who fly to YVR and do an overnight stop in Atlanta/Houston/Fort Lauderdale/Dallas, etc.

Currently $114/day CAD right now for my upcoming 5 day which is about $83/day USD. Plus tax plus gratuity. If it got to $68 perhaps we could stomach it. It's currently more than we paid for the balcony with tax and gratuity added.

I fly 60-70 segments a year within Canada and being Ottawa based that now requires me to go through Montreal and Toronto fairly frequently post-covid...I wouldn't say Montreal is that much better than Toronto, certainly not better enough to justifying a train to Montreal to get a flight that probably is an incoming plane from Toronto anyways.

Which makes little sense as you'd think the further away from a departure / arrival of the ship the less strain there would be on available seats. I am surprised that they allow cancellation of their ground transportation though as I suspect they make a good profit there.

Even better, only two days to go, thanks for that info. It just says they'll e-mail me when it's available, didn't say when. My last few sailings have been on NCL where it's 21 days before. Nice! Thanks again.

That's what I thought, but was confused by some folks saying they were looking 5+ weeks out from their cruise. Thanks for the reply, was making sure I didn't miss something and seems I didn't. Can check in for mine soon and will use this trick when I do, thanks.

My experience is certainly true, but I appreciate that yours has been different and I also continue to compare prices over time too. I'm sure for every time of year and ship the pricing models are different and it pays to price out your specific circumstances and desires. In your case it doesn't look like you value the drink package which is really, really expensive on Royal. For my upcoming 5 day Navigator cruise it's currently $1000 for the drink package (which I won't buy at that price) and we only paid $1050 all in for the balcony room. EDIT: I see you did get the beverage package for that price which is impressive!

For me it really comes down to if you value the drink package and other free at sea items like the dinners and wifi. For me, the drink package I love to have to take the stress out of extra costs in particular. Royal is quite expensive to add that on top of the cruise fare. Good luck deciding, there are worse problems to have 🙂

How does one do this before the check in period opens? I've been on RCCL many times, but not since 2019. Thanks.

I have sailed both, though my Oasis experience was when the ship was brand new. If you could get both ships and packages for the exact same price I would go with the Oasis, there's just so much to do and so many options. That said, I sailed the Joy last fall and it was probably my favourite cruise so far, especially love the Observation Deck. My experience with pricing is that for what I value, the NCL prices are significantly less than the equivalent thing on RCCL. To get an outside balcony (not central park) mid-ship on the Oasis, plus a drink package, specialty meal and wifi, it would cost significantly more on RCCL than NCL. That's what has drawn me to NCL in recent cruises. I do have a RCCL cruise coming up in a few weeks though, so I'm not completely biased! That said, if you're getting the equivalent cabin on Oasis, she's an amazing ship.

I'm sailing Epic Jan 22nd and it has dropped $250 Canadian since the payment date two weeks ago if that gives you any useful data point (anecdotal at best!). We are booked in a balcony. My 10% off code also would have expired at the end of Sept., so technically it was cheaper for me prior to the final payment date.

I haven't done it for many of the answers to the questions you have in your post. They book you day of unless you request a deviation which has to be done a certain time in advance (want to say 75 days but that might be wrong). They also charge you for the local transportation if you book air through NCL. They also have full control of flights and seem to not care about putting you on red eyes, long stopovers, long waits after the cruise to depart, etc. In order to deviate I think you have to call them before the deadline to deviate and there may also be a fee for that.

I just booked a SJU cruise for January and also had a really hard time with flights from Ottawa. We are flying through Montreal with an overnight on Friday night and then down Saturday morning direct from Montreal (sail on Sunday). Coming back I booked Southwest to Fort Lauderdale and Flair home (which if they go belly up will figure something out lol. I also wasn't expecting it to be so hard, the last time we did YOW-IAD-SJU no problem at all. Good luck.

Use a credit card. While most Canadians are happy to take USD, they basically charge a 15% exchange rate giving you around 1.20 CA to 1.00 US.

Hi folks, I've been reading up on all the positive and negative reviews of NCL Air. I'm trying to get set up for an Epic sailing the winter, but struggling to book a flight that's halfway reasonable/affordable. If we go the NCL Air option, what are the odds they will have us on one of the 4am arrivals in San Juan and departures in the middle of the night (e.g. 2am departure from San Juan)? Has anyone recently gotten flights from NCL (last winter I guess is recent at this point) to Canada and had good luck with them? There's basically one option on Air Canada mid-day that gets us home same day, would they book this, or is an overnight stop in Toronto or otherwise something we could get stuck with as well? Also curious if the transfers that automatically get added to the booking are required or if we can decline those? No reason to spend over $200 on transfers when we could get a taxi or uber for far less, especially since we would definitely be arriving a day before the cruise given limited flight options if something was to go wrong. Thank you in advance, I know there are lots of posts on this general topic, but I didn't find anything specific to San Juan which seems to be particularly difficult to access from Canada now that it seems Sprit/Jetblue dominiate most routes from San Juan and United which are the usual link to Canada have far fewer flights than the used to it seems.

It is nice for sure, cruise next cert and 10% takes my balcony ABC cruise under 3k Canadian for January which is pretty good.

Does anyone have experience with the expiry of these codes? What I'm specifically wondering is if the 10% off I have that expires the end of September if it will likely disappear or if it will likely just be replaced with another one just like the "sales" that keep churning. I know it's a gamble, but curious if anyone has first hand experience. Have a cruise to book, but ideally would wait until my next visa cycle until my work bonus is paid.

When The Local had hundreds of Americans on a sailing out of Miami wanting to see it (It was the first bowl game of the championship now that I think of it) and they're playing a soccer game on TV that was clearly not live given it was 3am in Europe, it just goes to show they're a little out of touch with what people want and they could pretty easily offer.

Isn't this what cell phone camera lights were invented for? 😛

I wish I had that one, I don't see any coupons on my account, when I go to pay for a cruise I see the 10% one unless the 20% is new today.