JandC_Cruising

I would also suggest your son reaching out directly to his professors. As a sophomore he likely already has his classes and perhaps knows who the profs are, or will know before final payment. 

If nothing else, if he does it right, he will immediately come off to his upcoming professors as a responsible and thoughtful young man for looking ahead and planning. 

I wouldn’t be surprised if they respond by saying “thanks for asking so far ahead and no problem”. 

I would trust the professor’s words over a random NCL rep. 😜

Thanks JL for confirming what I was seeing.  And yes, that's good your existing booking still looks fine...I'm sure it's one in their series of glitches since their update.  

I'll let the IT wizards at the "mother ship" fix their issues and wait for the weekend...I shouldn't be doing this from the office anyways! LOL.

To add....you cannot select the Breakaway, Encore, or Epic from March through July of 2020 any longer...those months are "grayed out" regardless of destination.

Is anyone else having a problem doing mock bookings for June-August 2020 for the Caribbean?

I was pricing cruises last night on the Breakaway for June 2020 (Western Caribbean - Honduras, Belize, Costa Maya, Cozumel) and this morning the cruises are missing!

Searched for Caribbean cruises for those months and nothing comes up.

Searched for Miami departures for those months and only the Sky - Bahama's itineraries show up.

Searched for the Breakaway cruises and the ship isn't showing sailings during those months now.

Did one of you fellow NCL fans charter the ship for the full three months?????? 😉

1 hour ago, AK Dreaming said:

I just got an email regarding my June 30th cruise.  It says that due to a change in my reservation my upgrade bids were canceled.  I checked my reservation and it still says OV with no room assignment.  Any idea why I was canceled even though no changes were made.  I did add the $25.00 insurance yesterday?

 

 

We just had the same exact thing happen to us for the second time in a week.

The first time made sense because we had changed our room assignment.

However, this morning our new bids got cancelled again "because of a change in our reservation".

For some reason all our dining reservations, pre-paid shows (like Supper Club and Wine Lovers) were cancelled and the value was credited back to our TA!

I called them this morning and at least resolved those cancellations, but now we needed to go back in to place new upgrade bids.

On 6/2/2019 at 10:28 PM, Tammyd549 said:

I apologize in advance if this has been discussed before, I've searched and could not find it.

 

I'm currently in a balcony with 2 perks, 35 days out and fully paid, if I call in and pay the difference to upgrade to a spa balcony, do I get the 4 perks that are

currently offered? 

I'll call tomorrow and find out but, just wondering if anyone here knows ... thanks.

We did this exact same thing yesterday for our August Bermuda cruise which has been fully paid since April.

We figured we would just pay outright for a Spa Balcony, and called.  While it took three attempts, it was ultimately successful and YES...We went from just 2 perks (SDP and UDP) to all four (they added the shore excursion and Wifi pkg)!  Frankly that was a surprise.  We were just trying to move cabins and pay a nominal up-charge to do so.

Word of warning - the two of us both spent a total of 2 hrs on the phone between three calls and a lot of "on-hold" time.  Be patient and if you do not succeed the first time, just say thank you, hang up and try again.  ALWAYS be happy and courteous with the rep on the line.  If you do that, eventually you will get the right rep on the line and they will get it done.

I will also mention that once they finished the change, all our previously made dinner and excursion reservations disappeared 😲.  

This morning, they have slowly been re-appearing on the MyNCL page for us, so someone must be doing some clean-up.  

We are waiting a day or two for the dust to settle and then, if any pre-paid reservations are still missing we will call back.

Good Luck!

20 minutes ago, andychris said:

We have the $50 per port shore excursion promo. We are going to be in Bermuda for 3 days. I was told that I will be entitled to $150 towards shore excursions.

Is it $50 PER PORT 

OR

$50 PER PORT PER DAY?

I did not select that promo yet I took it quite literal that it was per port.  Despite being in Bermuda for three days, it is only one port, so you get only $50, not $150.

If I am wrong, then great!   As I said, I selected other perks for my Bermuda cruise so I admit I am not speaking from experience. 

There are many on the board who can chime in with that answer.😊

Hi All,

I'm currently booked in a balcony and bidding on Haven cabins.  I do not expect to hear about that for quite some time as it is still a couple of months out.  In the meantime, I am thinking of upgrading to another balcony and/or mini-suite outright at a minimal upcharge to my original booking while picking up the additional perks.

Is it true that if I successfully pay to upgrade now, that I will still be able to bid on the Haven cabins?

I do not wish to lose that opportunity.

Thanks!

7 minutes ago, flaminog said:

Ok, so yesterday when I went to look at prices for balconies on my sailing the lowest category (that wasn't a sailaway) was $949. This morning all of them said "not available" for a few minutes and now they all read sold out. Is this NCL screwing with it so they can play with it for upgrades? HIGHLY doubt a group bought up 150 balcony cabins or so 4 days before sail.

They probably just placed all the customers who had purchased "Sail Away" balconies over the prior months. Once they hit a tipping point and the number of SA's reach the quantity of open balconies, it's time to assign.

Found this in another topic that showed all the dailies from an April Escape to Bermuda Cruise.  Looks like they do the change forward on Monday night and the change back on Saturday night.

Here's the full topic where you can see all of the dailies for that trip.

3 minutes ago, amindu said:

5/26 sailing on Escape, upgrade to Haven H9, H5, H7, H6 all declined

 

 

Well you will still have a fantastic cruise no doubt! Care to share any of your bids? 😉

Thanks for the review! 

It sounds like you had a good time despite the spotty weather.

We are on this cruise in August and cannot wait.  We expect the "invitation to bid" on Thursday when we are 80 days out.  

Did you "tweak" your bid often or just that once? 

Did you forgo the Spa or did you invest another $200pp to get the Thermal suite access once you moved from the M9 to the H5?

We are trying to weigh those decisions as we prep our Haven bid.

We booked a March 2020 cruise last night.

I just got off the phone with NCL and they added the additional perks without any other changes to our reservations.

Simple as could be.

7 hours ago, amygutman said:

I reached out to my "guy"...works for a discount travel company that I use re: cruisenext certificates. He tells me that you cannot use cruise next on cruises you have already booked - that being said, when I have booked through him, he has been able to successfully apply these certificates on previously booked cruises. It's likely because he has an established relationship with NCL and knows a work-around. 

The average cruiser would not likely have this option. 

 

Aft balconies do sell quickly...perhaps book the room, go on your cruise, get your cruise next certificate and roll your dice on re-booking or actually working one-on-one with a cruise next staffer on the cruise ship - I will bet you that if you say to them "hey... I will happily buy a certificate if you can apply it to my aft balcony". Be charming...be polite...considering that the cruise next staff have sales numbers to meet, you may get lucky!

 

Have a great time! Amy

Thanks for doing that legwork!

We pulled the trigger last night and booked the trip (and an Aft balcony)!

What your "guy" said, I have seen confirmed on these boards.  But, I've also heard that once you have CN certs in your account, they appear as a payment option for existing bookings.  I guess we will see on that. 

I agree, the best approach will be to visit the CN salesperson on our upcoming cruise and let them do some magic at that point.  

Thanks again for your input. 

I will report back come August when we see how it all works!

Thanks Amy!

We are definitely excited and fully expect to love the cruise .

We are also considering an Aft balcony for the March trip the more we consider our options.

I'm nearly convinced to pull the trigger and book the March cruise now so i don't lose the free airfare promo.  I can secure this with only $100 total today!  As you said, "why not?"

The only thing holding be back at this point is this...

If I book my March cruise today and place my minimal deposit, can I buy Cruise Next certificates on my August cruise and then apply those to my March cruise even though it is already a "booked cruise"?  I will still be 7 months out and will not have paid in full at that time.

I have done quite a bit of searching on these boards and keep finding conflicting answers.  

Thanks!

1 hour ago, KeithJenner said:

If you book onboard then you may get an upgrade to a better category. In effect this is a discount, as you pay for a lower category than you want.

 

How much this is worth depends on current pricing and what type of cabin you are after. On some of our bookings there is no benefit at all (especially if you are booking a non standard category type (aft, large balcony etc), and sometimes it can be worth having. We saved a few hundred pounds on our last booking.

Thanks Keith!

We would likely be looking at a BD balcony for example, so perhaps a "free bump" to an Aft balcony could be out there...good to know!

Our very first NCL cruise is this August on the Escape.  If we have half as much fun on the cruise as we have had planning, we know we will want to plan another for next March.

Looking at options this weekend, we found we could get free airfare to a couple of potential departure cities.  Airfare in the “spring break” time frame can be brutal, so taking advantage of this benefit, when available, is a no-brainer for us.

Our questions, as rookies, are:

1.      Does anyone know how long they typically keep the “Free and reduced airfare” promo open before they peel it away? Do you think it will still be there as a benefit on a March 2020 cruise, come August?

2.      Assuming we love our cruise, we would purchase “Cruise next” certificates and use them for the March cruise.  If we book our cruise now, because we don’t wish to lose the free air benefit, can we still apply the CN certs we buy in August to that cruise we already booked with a minimal deposit?

3.      Is there any other benefit, extra perks, to doing the actual booking while on our August cruise?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

Here's some additional info:

https://cruiseradio.net/norwegian-cruise-line-rolls-out-new-drink-package-pricing/

Here's a link to a Bayamo menu, however it may be old.

http://www.beyondships2.com/uploads/8/2/4/5/8245255/249_bayamo.pdf

It can be part of your sdp however they tack on an  "up-charge" per this note on ncl website.

and...

Yes, Choir of Man is now the show instead of Brat Pack