drjochen

If you have already booked a 2019 Norwegian British Isles cruise - make sure you received the Distinctive Voyages perks.

 

 

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What would that be? Never heard of it.

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We were on the Epic in 2016 and got way overcharged for drinks although we had the ubp. Same thing, they wanted us to provide a proof. I argued that with the ubp, there should be any charges for a glass of regular wine for dinner etc. also, they could not provide signed slips or anything so they finally removed the charges. But it was first and immediately my fault......

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Driving down attendance and not sending out invites drives down the cost. And that's all that matters these days. More profit for NCL.

I had wrong information provided to me on multiple occasions. Training is expensive so it's not done. I don't trust any rep on the phone anymore.

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I am currently on the solstice and the Internet is absolutely terrible. Speeds are pre 1990s and it frequently disconnects devices. Can't even connect to my outlook server properly.

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No email received so far. The concierge also has not contacted us. Sailing June 3.

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Global entry is really helpful. Often, in certain airports 2-3 out of 20 per more immigration stations have actual immigration officers. I don't know why they build so many stations if they never staff them.

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Same thing here. Shows remaining balance. Phone agent says to ignore it. The incompetence of the web page designers and programmers is unbelievable.

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We will sail on June 2 and have not heard from a concierge. Not like NCL haven, where they contacted us over a month prior to departure to make sure we get the restaurant reservations at the times we want.

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Thanks for all the responses. We like to try different restaurants. I just don't want to be in the situation that some other poster reported where all was booked when they saw the on board concierge for reservations on the first evening.

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We will be in a Royal Suite on the equinox in early June 2016. In the haven on NCl, we could easily make restaurant reservations months ahead through the NCl web page. We were also contacted via email by a concierge about 6 weeks before the cruise and that email was also provided to us by NCl. On x, the webpage makes us pay for the reservations, although specialty dining is included. Also, no information about a concierge. What am I missing?

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Their web page really sucks. I wanted to make reservations in restaurants. We will be in a suite with specialty dining included, yet the web page insists on charging me for the restaurants. Also, the web page shows a different on board credit than the cruise booklet.

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There was a period in Dec 2015 when they offered double OBC and it was not well advertised. We have $600 from Celebrity for our upcoming cruise to Bermuda. I thought it was a mistake when our TA sent us the invoice, but it was correct.

Correct, that's when I booked.

Did you call the main Celebrity number or did you call the Captains Club about the discrepancy?

 

If you didn't call the CC, I would suggest you call them @ 1-800-760-0654.

 

I also have never heard of $300 per person OBC but if it is showing on your confirmation you should get it.

I called the main number. Thanks for the tip, I'll try the CC number.

Never heard o$300 pp credit...it's always been $300 per stateroom. Is the daughter the third person in the stateroom? Sometimes 3rd doesn't get any perks.

 

What paperwork do you have showing the perks? Booking confirmation?

 

Did you book on line, on board or with a Travel agent? If a TA, I'm afraid you may have been misled

I booked directly. When I pull up the reservation on the Celebrity web page, it still shows the total on board credit of $600 for the stateroom, which is what i was told when I reserved our suite. The booklet they sent us, however, shows $300. Daughter is third person and I was told during the reservation proves with the Celebrity rep that she would get the non-alcoholic beverage package. The confirmation they sent me states:

Promotions Applied

GOBETTER OBCGRT

EXTRA SALE

Whatever that means.....

I assume the bev package and Internet are included because we are in a suite:

•Complimentary Premium Beverage Package for all guests in suite. Minors will automatically receive a Premium-Non-Alcoholic Beverage Package

•Complimentary unlimited Internet access

But the agent I just spoke with told me its not included for minors....only for adults.

We are booked on a Solstice Alaska cruise in June. When we booked the cruise, we were told we would get $300 per adult in on-board credits, free wifi, and all passengers would receive the premium beverage package (for the adults and a non-alcoholic four our dd). This is also reflected online. However, the cruise booklet now shows $150 credit per person and no bev package for my daughter. I called X and the consultant was really lost and gave me conflicting information. Bottom line was it doesn't matter at all what I was told during the reservation process but what is written in the booklet.

Has this happened to other cruisers before? Any ideas on how to resolve this?

mmm interesting information and very shabby to hear, i doubt very much they close all the other bars down at 9pm :rolleyes: so why the one that guests have paid a premium to access ?

 

i wonder how it works for those wishing to dine in the epic club, say at 9pm ? surely you would have drinks with dinner, it does seem a little ridiculous :(

The Haven dining room closes around 9 pm. They get the drinks form the bar that also closes then.

Sad to say after sailing over 15yrs with NCl I am done. Sailed on the Dawn out of Boston last month. The service fees had gone up almost $3.00 since my last cruise 3yrs prior. The service fee on the drinks also increased to 18 percent when it use to be 15 percent. Would not mind it but service has dropped and is horrible. No bar service around the pool. Twenty minutes to get a drink at the pool bars. Only good bar service we had all week was at the Gabsy bar. If you did get service was at least half hour for your drink.

When I got home I wish I had taken part of the tips off and gave my room steward the money in cash himself. He was great best one I had in years.

They are saving money wherever they can.

Hopefully you gave these individuals extra tips.

We sure did. Got additional cash in the last port for that purpose. We even wrote a thank you note for the butler and the cabin attendant.

Thanks for your review. We recently booked a Haven suite for May 2016, on this same itinerary. I did not know that drinks from Butler are not included in the beverage package. That's disappointing!

NCL rules state that "The Ultimate Beverage Package does not include room service". The butler was nice about softdrinks, but wanted to charge us for anything else. Not his fault though.

Thank you for the candid review. I have only sailed on the jewel class ships and am debating the Haven on the Epic. The mega ships have such mixed reviews and I would certainly be disappointed spending that kind of money for a substandard cruise.

We all very much liked the Haven on a Jewel class ship. I felt there we received special treatment and had some exclusivity (which we paid for...).

The Haven on the Epic was simply too big for us.

par·a·graph

ˈperəˌɡraf/

noun

1.

a distinct section of a piece of writing, usually dealing with a single theme and indicated by a new line, indentation, or numbering.

I do sincerely apologize for not being up to your standards and I thank you profoundly for your very kind act of teaching me the basics of a paragraph.

thank you for this review it is very informative

 

I did read about a tour of the haven in another persons review (it was something along the lines of them being at the back and not being able to hear) and I have already decided that it's something we won't be doing when we sail in January

 

I just wanted to ask one thing, were you told the bar in the Haven would close at 9pm or was this information included in any literature at all ?

 

I am sure I read somewhere that it only closes if there is little to no demand

 

their online information says the following

 

"From preferred seating at our award-winning shows on board to hot action at the casino to hip DJ house music at our nightclubs, you'll find that when the stars come out, the excitement begins. It's all there for you to enjoy should you wish. But if you simply want to unwind with a cocktail under the stars, you can do so within the privacy and exclusivity of The Haven. "

 

Personally i was planning on having a quiet drink or two or three in the epic club lounge towards the end of a evening whilst my older kids settle themselves in the suite, the poor butler will be less than impressed running and getting us drinks because the bar staff have all but clocked off !

No, they did not tell us. We went there at about 9.20 pm. The bartender was still there with a few guests around. However, he told us no drinks since he was already closed and just doing his inventory. He then informed us that the bar closes every evening at 9 pm.

This is a brief review of our seven day Mediterranean cruise from Barcelona on the Norwegian epic. We had done several cruises on other Norwegian ships, and I will try to compare this cruise to the Eastern Mediterranean cruise we did last summer on the Norwegian Jade. Both cruises were done in a Haven family suite.

The cruise on the epic was during the same time than the Jade cruise last year, but it was almost 30% more expensive. We still went for the Haven, because we had really enjoyed the quiet surroundings and the extra attention on the Norwegian Jade. We stayed two days before the cruise in Barcelona and then took a taxi to the cruise port. We arrived there around 1 PM and, after dropping off our bags outside the terminal building, went into the big check in hall. A representative looked at our cruise tickets and then send us to the regular check-in line. We told her that we have Haven cabins and are NCL Gold, but she insisted on us going into the regular line, which had hundreds and hundreds of people. We then went to the representative standing right next to her, he immediately escorted us to the Haven line. Unfortunately, there’s only one check in counter for the Haven, and we had about 30 people ahead of us in line. We waited for over 30 minutes before it was our turn. Then, a group of us was taken to the ship. This was already a first indication that the Haven is nowhere near as exclusive on the Epic as it was on the Jade. Once on the ship, about 15 of us were placed in the Haven lounge and we had to wait for about 10 min to go on a tour off the Haven, which pretty much ended up being a sales pitch for their photography studio and for the spa. I really hate when you’re not even for 30 min on the ship and they’re already trying to sell you all these extra services. After the sales pitch, we were finally allowed to proceed to our cabin. We had a family suite on deck 17 looking out over the front of the ship (17001). The cabin was very spacious and in good condition. There were only two problems. Throughout the entire week, the toilet in the master bath worked on and off. We had maintenance come twice and they basically told us that there is nothing they can do and we have to live with it. If it won’t flush, he told us to wait 10 to 15 minutes and then try again until it finally flshes. The much bigger issue we had with the cabin was the incredible amount of noise we got from the sundeck above. If you would like to sleep longer than 7 AM, do not take this cabin! Every morning at 7 AM sharp, we were woken up by huge bangs and dragging noises from above. It was to the point where the ceiling was shaking and the lamps were shuddering. No way can anyone sleep through this. We also had noises from the sundeck in the early morning hours, supposedly from teenagers that sneak up there and use the sundeck for whatever… This sun area on deck 18 is supposed to be for the Haven guest only, but the ship obviously decided to open up the area to all guests. During the day, it was also not possible to take a nap in the cabin, because of the constant noise of steps and people dragging deck chairs around from above. This was by far the noisiest cabin we ever had on any of our 10+ cruises.

The Haven in general on the Epic is huge. There’s absolutely nothing exclusive about the Haven, since there are over 400 guests in those cabins. There are two bars, one outside and one insight. The outside bar for whatever reason closes at 6 PM, and on the first evening, we wanted to take a drink on the inside bar around 9:30 PM. That’s when we found out that even the inside bar on the Haven closes at 9 PM. So after 9 PM, there’s no way to get a drink in the Haven, unless you order through your butler, which then means that the ultimate drink package, that we had received as a promotion, does not apply and you have to pay for your drinks.

We use the Haven restaurant every morning for breakfast and twice for lunch. The food was all right, but certainly not outstanding or of very high quality. Overall, Norwegian Cruise lines probably has the lowest quality food of all the major cruise lines we have been on. Service in the restaurant was very good.

For dinner, since we had the ultimate dining package, we went to different specialty restaurants. By far our favorite place was the French place, which had good quality food and excellent service. We were very disappointed by the steakhouse, since all our steaks were done wrong and the service was slow. We also went to the Italian place, which is serving average “Italian” fare and certainly would not justify the additional fee for dining there.

The itinerary is very port heavy, with only one day at sea. We enjoyed this, because we like to see as many different places as possible. Of all the ports, our most favorite one was the stop in Rome. We did a NCL tour “off the beaten path”, which was just wonderful. Pisa / Florence was probably the worst stop, with a gazillion tourists everywhere. We had been to both places about 15 years ago, and it looks like the number of tourists, vendors, illegal vendors, etc. has increased by a factor of 10.

Back to the ship. We saw several shows on the ship, highly recommended is the Cirque du Soleil dinner show. We did it on the first night, and the show was half empty. The food is good, but the acrobatics more than makes up for it. Burn the floor was also a wonderful show and we ended up watching it twice. The comedian/magician was boring and successfully filled 50 minutes with three mediocre magic tricks.

In general, the staff was very good and was trying very hard on the ship. However, we felt an underlying unhappiness with many staff members. Throughout the week, we had frank conversations with several staff members and every single one of them indicated how unhappy they were with their employer and in particular with the new CEO that Norwegian Cruise Line has. They all claimed that they’re getting less pay now and in particular, some of the mandatory gratuity that is being charged to your onboard account, does not go to them anymore as it used to. Two of the people we talked to had worked for Norwegian for over 10 years and both said that this was their last time there were doing a rotation on that cruise line and they will switch to other cruise lines, because they’re being treated so poorly by the new management. I’m sure the new management can push their staff to a certain point, but these things usually backfire horribly after a while. I’d be curious to see how this develops in the future. Clearly, both staff and guests are being milked for every $$$ and new approaches to increase profit even more are being tried, such as the room service charge for non-Haven guests.

In summary, we like the Jade much better than the Epic. This was our first and also our last cruise on one of those monster ships. The Haven on the Epic is way too big to be exclusive and we will not return to that ship again.

We came off the Norwegian Epic today and had pre-booked a transfer from the port to the airport on booktaxibarcelona.com for 65 Euro prepaid.

We were supposed to have a driver with a sign wait for us at the port. After we gathered our luggage, we unsuccessfully searched for the driver. 10 min after the pre-arranged pick-up time, I finally called and after being on hold for ~ 10 min, I was told by a VERY rude British person that there will be no taxi for us. He said that we are on our own and he just hung up on me.

Since the taxi pick-up at the port is extremely chaotic and slow, we had to wait over 1 hour for a regular taxi and with the other time wasted and the LONG lines at Barcelona airport, we missed our flight.

Please do not use this company if you want to get picked up.