sarahwalker2007

my kids are passengers #2 in each of our rooms and my PCC confirmed that they do infact get the 3 free meals that are part of the package.

I have repriced 5 times since booking in January of 2023 for our November 2023 cruise. we have 3 balcony rooms booked for 7 people and I have received a total of $4400 in savings.

sorry for the delayed response - life has been crazy busy the last little bit. The app I used "Equal Eats" as it was one of the few that existed in 2019. There are lots of free ones now. I haven't checked any of them out yet as we don't travel until the fall.

Depending on where you are traveling you may want to consider foreign language allergy cards. Our youngest has peanut, tree nut, egg and kiwi allergies and I was worried about being in foreign ports and for things to be lost in translation. I researched online and downloaded an app that you can use that offers translations in lots of languages. You can also print out the cards to carry with you:)

I just text my NCL rep when I notice a price drop, she does all the work and then sends me new confirmations with the new pricing. Have done it 4 times since I booked in early January for a fall cruise. Have 3 cabins booked and in total have reduced our total fare by about $3200.

We have sailed with HAL for 2 TA's, one pre covid (november 2019) and one post (spring 2022) both were at about 70% capacity. 2019 cruise there were 13 kids including my 3. In 2022 there were 4 kids including my 3. My kids LOVED it! they had the pool to themselves most of the time and they felt like little celebrities because everyone knew them! The crew knew them by name all over the ship by day 2. Most of the passengers during the first trip were retired even my husband and I felt young on that trip! in 2022 there were lots more that were "working remotely" but still was heavily on the retired age side. We are doing our first NCL cruise in the fall and have chosen another TA. hoping for a under capacity cruise but know that it is likely going to be full as more people return to travelling!

They have recently stopped linking reservations.

Are your friends in the same room as you?

same cabin, same reservation#, same flight different cabin, different reservation #, possibly different flights. We are a family of 7, when I called to book 3 cabins, 2 will be connecting, I was given 3 reservation numbers. I have to log in with a different email for each reservation/cabin, even the connecting ones. We have decided we don't want to risk flying on separate flights so we are booking our flights independently of NCL.

I wouldn’t say the outdoors is inhospitable. We have done two Transatlantics one 12 days (fall sailing) and one 14 day (spring sailing) and for both we spent a lot of the days at sea outside. Maybe we got lucky but the weather was beautiful and being out on deck with nothing but open water was amazing!

We have only sailed Holland America so far but both times they were TA's and they were only 1/2 capacity. the first one had 11 kids, including our 3 and this was pre-covid. The 2nd one our 3 were the only kids on board and we sailed spring of 2022. I would suspect now that more people can "work remotely" we may see these TA cruises be a bit more full but still under the shorter round trip cruises. Plus they tend to be off season and not during major holidays.

we just went through the booking of several rooms, we have 2 connecting balcony rooms for our family of 5 and my father in law. My husband wanted the FAS drink package but I don't drink so we put my husband and son in one room and me and my father- in-law (who also doesn't drink) and our 2 daughters in the other room. My husband has the beverage package and my son was automatically given the soda package.

our two TA's on Holland didn't have starlink but wifi was good and steady. my husband had to work most days for several hours in the early morning and had 3 nights of zoom calls in the very middle of the Atlantic. he kept his mic and video off and typed his answers/responses/ideas but the video and audio for everyone else was just fine. There was only one afternoon where he had trouble downloading a large PDF but it came through eventually.

This sounds similar to Holland America, we are nervous about NCL and it's more party atmosphere but couldn't pass up this itinerary of 8 port days with the TA.

we love the TA's because of the mix of sea days and port days. We have only sailed Holland America and have only done TA's. our 3 kids love sea days! lots of reading and playing in the pool. We usually hit up the games room and play games for a few hours. we also sleep in those days and have a later breakfast. Holland America offers Pickle ball which we spend hours playing with the kids. My girls loved the origami classes that Holland offered on sea days. They also spent about an hour doing school work in the crow's nest/observation lounge on sea days. We are booked for our first NCL cruise this fall and it's a TA, the kids are excited to have the water slides and ropes course and arcade none of which Holland has so I suspect that sea days will actually be pretty busy for us this go around compared to our previous 2.