JandC_Cruising

There is a bar in the Buffet that can pour you a glass of wine.. They will likely have only a few choices. BEWARE OF THE SELF DISPENSING WINE KIOSK IN THE BUFFET. IT IS NOT INCLUDED IN ANY DRINK PACKAGE (And it specifically states this on the machines).

We have been on the Escape, Joy, Epic, and Encore. As many have told you the Haven restaurant is wonderful. However, we always use our specialty meals from the F@S program outside the Haven. We are recently off the Encore and Ocean Blue and Le Bistro were wonderful. Yes, there are a couple of upcharge items on the menu, but we just avoided them. Frankly, we are no longer fans of Cagney's as we have had too many "fails" there and the Filet and Lobster tail or NY strip in the Haven are both great. But we enjoy getting out and experiencing the meals in the other specialties at least a couple of times on a 7-day cruise.

Here's a map of the Taino Bay port area. https://www.porttainobay.com/en/map We were there last March. We just walked around a bit and purchased some Rum. Didn't try any of the food or drinks there.

@BirdTravelscould not have answered this any better!

Wow! A bit of an exaggeration here! Two weeks ago on the Encore, we were delayed boarding as well. Honestly, we saw passengers disembarking as late as 10:30 or so. So a delay wasn't really surprising. It didn't start until 12:15 or so.. And yes, by then the terminal becomes SRO. I woudl hardly would call this delay "UNHEARD OF"....

When we've had non-haven proper cabins (Haven Spa Cabin for example), we've packed up, said our good-byes to our Steward and Butler at our room, and then gone upstairs for one last Haven Breakfast (my favorite meal up there). We are then up there, ready for disembarkation. It also provides us with the chance to say additional farewells to additional staff or even some fellow cruisers we've met along the way.

So the craziness continues to another day!. This morning our fully paid March cruise is showing a balance due of $1,022.67! What a complete cluster!

Thanks for the notice. This has been happening to us for over three weeks. Our next cruise is in 64 days and this morning there is a mysterious $224 balance on our account!. Last week I had to call on two separate occasions to get some phantom balance removed that had been sitting there for over a week. We are still waiting for our Air confirmation and so now I check each day to see if they have assigned those yet I am fearful that if the system shows a "balance due" , even though we are fully paid, that they may not book our flights.

To try to connect from the terminal, do the following: 1. Turn on Airplane mode on your phone and be sure WiFi is turned on. 2. Connect to the Ship's WiFi (this is the key step and, depending upon your location in terminal v. ship, may or may not work). 3. Open up the NCL App on your device. 4. As long as the ship has "initiated" your cruise on the app, you will be good to go. You will be able to make reservations for shows, restaurants, etc. If you try this too early, the ship may still think it's the previous cruise. In that case, you will need to wait .

Yes, If you get upgraded into a "Spa" Cabin, you get access to the Thermal spa.

It is refunded onto the on-board account as a Refundable OBC. Just be sure, as you mentioned, to cancel more than 48hrs in advance.

As others have said, the deckplan on the NCL site for the Vibe is inaccurate. Here is a video on Youtube that is a fly-over of the Joy. You can see the Vibe area clearly.

Gary, I agree with this particular sentiment. We were not impressed with the "available" Chardonnay or as they call them "Bold Reds" on the Encore last week. Additionally, with the change to only offering bottles of wines that are already available by the glass, they have diminished the value of this package on the 'Wine" side of the program. They used to have a very nice Lois Jadot Pouilly-Fuisse but that was missing and several others I know we've ordered before by bottle were blocked from our choices because they were not offered by the glass. I know you have mentioned your wife likes to take the bottle back to the room. While we did not test this "NEW" restriction, last week, I'm suspect if they would really enforce it. If they think they can leave a bottle on one party's table and then re-circulate it to others by the glass if it is left unfinished, there are sanitary issues at play. it would be like re-serving un-eaten dinner rolls to another table. We do a lot of whisky drinking and felt well served by the package on that front this past week. My wife and I drank plenty of Aqua Pana and SIL with us was drinking San Pellegrino like it was going out of style. Again, all valuable benefits of the program. We are definitely going to "test" taking unfinished bottles back to our room in March. There will be 3 of us dining and we will all have the Plus package, so plan on ordering 3 bottles at each dinner. There will definitely be left-overs. Best wishes and happy NY!

I fully agree it is the right process. but we've seen cabins disappear for nearly 1/2 of the day in the past. Even if the category wasn't sold out. (Mock booking on a cabin...change mind...then come back and want to select that original cabin again and it's gone....re-appears later in the day) Could someone else have gone into it and done the same as us exactly 15 minutes later? I suppose so. I was just using "mysterious" as code for the fact that I don't know "EXACTLY" how long before it would re-appear. I've seen it take longer than 15 minutes though....

Hello all, I figured I would report back to this very detailed thread based on our most recent experience. We have upgraded to the Plus package on 4 of our past 5 cruises. We just got off the Encore on Sunday and here are a few observations/experiences: 1. The wine lists throughout the ship no longer had any indicators of what bottles were included in the plus package. On our past cruises, all the lists that either indicated "Premium Plus", had an "*", or were in bold print . We were simply told that we could get a bottle at dinner (1 for each passenger with the plus package) of ANY wine that was sold by the glass. We did not ask for a wine and find that it was no on board. There were three of us dining each night and we typically had 2 bottles. Only one night did we get three bottles and that was because the waiter brought and opened a White (of the same vineyard) by accident. He left the extra bottle and we only drank 1/2 of it. We had other plans so we didn't try to leave with the left overs. 2. Veuve Champagne was surprisingly listed prominently at Ocean Blue, but not at Le Bistro...We had it at OB without any issue. Le Bistro was promoting the Pommery Brut Royal ($120 without package but free with the Plus), even though the napkin ties still had the Veuve cards attached. 3. We had Aqua Pana and San Pellegrino at every dinner and most lunches (even in the Buffet) and easily got that from a couple of random bars to have a bottle in our room each night. 4. Starbucks was included, but we didn't take as great advantage of it as we should have. (oh...and this was our fault as DW didn't see the clear words on the Starbucks machine in the buffet that self-service machines ARE NOT INCLUDED IN ANY BEVERAGE PACKAGE...fair warning) 5. Maltings had a good selection of Whiskey's and Scotches (Whistle Pig Rye, Gentleman Jack, Woodford Reserve, Macallan Quest, and others) We also saw these in the Vibe, Observation lounge, Alist Bar, and even the Social for the Comedy Show. 6. As always, CHECK YOUR ONBOARD ACCOUNT EVERY DAY! We had two bottles (one at Manhattan Room and one at Ocean Blue) accidently charged to us. The Manhattan room one was because we had three of us at the table (we all had the Plus package) but they attached the 3rd bottle to my card rather than the single person from the other cabin. The Ocean Blue one was because they sent a runner to "Onda" to pick up the wine and they ran the card there without realizing it was for our dinner). I got both corrected at Guest Services without issue. So, in short, for us the package is still worth it. We drink a bunch of premium whisky and have a lot of bottled water throughout the cruise. The biggest disappointment for us was that they were clear that only wines by the glass qualified for the free bottles. I know there were several bottles from past cruises sill on the wine lists, but we could not select them because our waiters claimed they were no longer included since they were not offered by the glass. We made the most of it however and still enjoyed all but one bottle we had selected. Hope this report provides some recent insight and value to others. Happy Cruising All!

COMPLETLY AGREE! I understand some who feel it is not worth it for them. For US, a couple in our 50's, the more comfortable chairs, dedicated service and honestly a more quite retreat for sunning and reading is exactly what we want. We just got off the Encore but had pre-purchased the passes. We met several who purchased on day 1 once on-board. I believe they got them at the Social but not 100% sure. If it isn't there, then you will just be steps from Guest Services and they can confirm where to go to get them. Our one criticism of the Encore Vibe is that the chaises do not have full cushions (yes...first world problems 🙂 ). However the bartending staff was great! Leo took fantastic care of us, being sure to add a very nice rum float on every one of my Pina Coladas!

It will be interesting. Since we are only a couple, the bed "turn down" is honestly a minor issue. We can easily toss any throw pillows and sham onto the sofa each night 😴 I could imagine some customers having a problem (perhaps even difficulty) dealing with a pullman or other sofa setup each evening themselves if that is left to the passenger to do. Our next cruise is March on the Joy (standard balcony since they don't have the spa) so we will see how the announced changes flow through the fleet/organization.

That is definietly true. I'd still then be worried about the mess in the hallways as flyer after flyer is flopping around and wantonly discarded by lazy passengers

Exactly....whether it's a laundry special, gift shop sale, art auction or other revenue generator, they rely upon the Stewards to drop those off each evening. In doing that, I would suspect that many Stewards would continue to pick-up discarded towels or other objects and maybe some other tasks. After all, those Stewards know that most of us would not respond well (tip wise) if the time was taken to give us the mountain of promotional material but not replace an overused towel from the day if left on the floor as they ask.

We just disembarked the Encore on Sunday (5-day out of Miami). We were in Cabin 15866 - Spa Balcony Cabin Our Room Steward was Putu and he provided us with 2 services each day. Once sometime in the morning to remake the room and then in the evening to turn down the bed, replace any towels/robes and leave the next Daily and other flyers on our bed. I know that the scale back of services is reported to be slowly rolling out, so perhaps the Encore was not implemented yet. I suspect they will still have to come into the room later in the day for to at least leave the Daily and other marketing materials.

Here is something we have noticed. If there is say only one room available in a particular category and you go into NCL.com and do a mock booking, that specific room is then "held" for some mysterious amount of time. This can happen easily when looking at Haven rooms as there can be very limited numbers in each category as you get closer to the cruise date. Even if you back out of the mock-booking, clear your cache, or try "incognito mode" in the browser, NCL has that room locked for a while.

No. Any passenger 21+ in the cabin is given the FAS alcohol package. Even if they are #3.

It worked for us yesterday. We had two cruises previously booked (July '23 and March '24) with two CN's already applied to each. Plunked another CN onto each and got confirmation emails within the hour.

"You" don't apply codes anywhere in the booking process. It's not like ordering merchandise online and entering a special code to get "free shipping" or extra discount at Macy's. The variety of codes are applied based upon the fare programs, perks, Latitude status, purchased upgrades, etc. which you book. It is how NCL (and you) can identify all the benefits you have on your reservation.

We just applied a 3rd CN to two separate cruises we had already booked a while ago. Just went online and selected from our available certs. One cruise is for this summer and one for next March. Just confirmed that our promotions all remained the same.