the_scarecrow_in_oz

3 hours ago, Kariz said:

 Its would be nice to be able to walk to the beach.

Just to be clear......if you're looking to walk to the beach from your hotel, then you are looking for a hotel in Miami Beach, not Miami. Even from a downtown Miami hotel it is still a 15 - 20 minute Uber/taxi ride to get your toes into the sand of Miami Beach. There are many art deco hotels along Ocean Drive across the street from South Miami Beach, which is the main public beach people imagine when they think of Miami Beach. There are also multiple hotels in the South Miami Beach area that are within a 1-5 block walk of the beach. During the covid fiasco years we made several attempts to do a NCL Panama Canal cruise, and with each of 4 re-bookings we made reservations at the Avalon Hotel along Ocean Drive which is right in the middle of the art deco region. Unfortunately, with the final re-booking we opted for a downtown Miami hotel via NCL. However, we arrived 2 nights before our cruise and were able to take an Uber to Miami Beach and spend a day (New Year's Day) exploring South Beach and Ocean Drive. We visited the Avalon and it appeared to be a clean, comfortable hotel.

On that New Years weekend, the city of Miami Beach closed off Ocean Drive to vehicular traffic from about 6th St to 14th St, making that entire stretch a pedestrian mall. I don't know if that would be the case for Thanksgiving weekend, but be aware that although a hotel along Ocean Drive will provide for great access to the beach and great people-watching, its placement along Ocean Drive may also prove to be relatively crowded and active well into the night on a holiday weekend. The area around a hotel 2-5 blocks further inland will likely be less crowded and noisy.

The purpose of my post was to suggest that there might be something that has been put on hold for you and has not expired yet.

And, by the way......

GO PACK GO!!!!!

I once called the excursion desk to:

a) purchase 2 excursions for my wife and I, and

b) inquire about some details on 2 other excursions.

When I checked my NCL invoice three days later, I noticed that the correct paid charge for the 2 excursions we wanted was there, AND an unpaid charge for the 2 excursions I had inquired about was also there.

I immediately called the excursion desk back and was assured that there was nothing on their end indicating I owed for the 2 "inquired about" excursions. After digging some more with the excursion rep, she found that the "system" had placed a temporary 10-day hold for me on these 2 "popular" "inquired about" excursions as a means of holding a place for us should we decide within the next ten days to actually purchase the excursions. She assured me that the charges would automatically drop from my account within 10 days if I did nothing to "confirm" that I actually wanted the excursions. She said she could drop them now, or I could wait for the 10 day expiration.

Since we were still a month away from final payment, I decided to test the system and wait to see if the phantom charges would actually disappear. Sure enough, six days later the charges were no longer there.

In Jan, 2023 we had rooms 11610 and 11612. Port side. No noise issues.

Is the table-side guac prepared per person, or for the whole table? There will be 4 of us dining at our table.

Thanks again. The discourse about Los Lobos intrigues me, though. For those of you who love/like Los Lobos, I'd like to know what dish(es) you had there that were so exceptional. Were they the more traditional taco/burrito/enchilada/fajita stuff, or the grilled dishes (seafood, steak) or the specialties like mussels or braised pork.

Looks like Onda and Los Lobos for starters. Thanks. I might have to be more convinced about Los Lobos as neither of us are really big fans of tacos, enchiladas and other standard Mexican. I HAVE had some great Mexican on visits to Mexico, but those were dishes that were things you didn't get in Mexican or Tex-Mex restaurants in the U.S.

I see that there's seafood (mussels, yum), pork and a steak on the Los Lobos sample menu, but not sure that's enough to break away from the tacos/enchiladas atmosphere. Now...if they had a great mole', that would be different!!!

An upcoming cruise will be our first on the Prima. We get 3 free specialty dining choices with our stateroom and duration. Which specialty dining restaurants on the Prima would be your top 3 to reserve first? Then, if you were to purchase the additional 2 restaurant upgrade, which 2 others would you pick?

Has anyone ever posted a list of the balcony staterooms on the Prima with views that are fully or partially obstructed by the slides down the side of the ship? I've searched all different configurations of "Prima stateroom obstructed" etc but nothing that appears to list these staterooms. I remember when the Prima first arrived that this was a big issue for some. I'm considering my first Prima cruise next winter, and I'd like to avoid choosing a stateroom with a balcony that is obstructed by a slide with screaming people coming down all day long.

On 8/28/2023 at 6:26 AM, LadyBerard said:

I can wholeheartedly recommend asking for "Red" to be your server in the main aft dining room.  We were fortunate to get him as our server the very first night,

Here's another shout out to having Red as your server. Actually 4 enthusiastic shouts. Like you, our gregarious group of 4 was fortunate to have him as our server in the Summer Palace MDR the first evening of our 11 day Panama Canal cruise on the Pearl in January and we immediately bonded. He's been with NCL for something like 20 years and is probably the most pleasant and personable server we've ever encountered on a cruise ship. We also requested him for every meal we ate in the Palace dining room. We also saw him up at the entrance to the Garden Cafe buffet enthusiastically singing. Glad to see that someone else appreciated him.

Thanks everyone.

On my cruise with Norwegian Cruise Lines out of Miami earlier this year there was an added tax on drinks when in the port of Miami or U.S. territorial waters - even if you had a drinks package. Is there a similar added tax on drinks with a drinks package that applies on Celebrity when in Alaskan ports of call or U.S. territorial waters??

We have flights arranged through NCL Air, arriving at, and departing from, Fort Lauderdale Airport (FLL) for a cruise from the port of Miami. NCL has scheduled us with United Airlines with a transfer from the Miami cruise port back to FLL after our cruise ends. Our flight home doesn't leave until 6:45 pm however. That leaves us at least 6 hours to maybe explore Fort Lauderdale. While researching luggage storage at the airport, I read that "for cruise passengers, some airlines offer baggage check-in at the port for their return flight". Has anyone ever seen or used an airline baggage check-in at the cruise port of Miami for your flight back home? If so, is United one of the airlines, and are flights leaving from FLL one of the options?

Thanks. I wasn't sure if the price had risen, or what the quality was that I could expect.

Is it worth it?

I'm wondering if NCL ships still offer the on-board package that allows you to use your cellphone to contact other passenger's cellphones. You supposedly access the package through the NCL app once onboard the ship and pay $10 per device to use the package for the entire trip. If they still offer it, has the price increased?

Call NCL's Shore Excursion Desk at 866-625-1167.

Yes. FCC can be used for excursions. I've never had a problem doing this. Call the NCL Shore Excursion Desk at 866-625-1167. Tell them you want to schedule some excursions using your FCC. Give them your cruise reservation number. They will ask you what port and what excursion you want. Easy Schmeezy.

A litany of my NCL-cancelled cruises to the Panama Canal and FAS specialty dining offers at the time. All 11 days long. All on the same ship. All on the same itinerary:

4/8/2020: balcony.................5 specialty dining nights

11/29/2020: club balcony.....5 specialty dining nights

1/17/2022:   club balcony.....4 specialty dining nights

1/16/2023:   club balcony.....2 specialty dining nights

1/2/2023:     club balcony.....2 specialty dining nights (this cruise has not been cancelled....yet)

I"m a bronze latitudes member and the last time I tried booking specialty dining reservations for our club balcony suite reservation, my reservation online also kept telling me that I had to wait until 120 days away. Yet when I reached 125 days out I logged on and found that I could now make reservations!!

On 4/25/2022 at 8:45 PM, geleisen said:

For Med, I don't find the need to book excursions. The public transport is generally high quality and affordable enough, so we just usually go see the places/things we want to see on our own. We always plan to get back to ship 60-90 minutes early to ensure we have enough padding in case of some delay.  

My wife and I did the same on our Med cruise. Never felt unsafe. Rick Steves has a great book (Mediterranean Cruise Ports) where he gives advice about getting around on your own, or, if you prefer he has suggestions for reliable local tour operators.

We were in Naples on the first Sunday of the month when entrance to the ruins of Pompeii and the Archaeological Museum are FREE. Had we not known this from reading Steves's book, we would have probably spent a lot of money on a ship-board excursion. As it turned out we used the local subway and rail service to get to Pompeii, then back to the Archaeological Museum, and enjoyed a pleasant walk back to the port - all for a fraction of the cost of what those on the excursions to these venues paid.

Use your credit card for big purchases, like rooms at major hotel chains (Hyatt, etc). Notify your credit card and debit card company that you are going to travel overseas and check your daily limit with each. Also, if you don't know your cards PIN, ask your credit/debit card provider for them well in advance of your trip - they can't give you the PIN over the phone, so you'll get it through the mail. Many places in Europe require you to enter your PIN (instead of scrawling your signature on a touchpad as we do in the U.S.) to complete your transaction.

Many smaller businesses and vendors will not accept credit cards. Get local cash (Euros) from an ATM (preferably a bank ATM) once you are in the country using a debit card (preferably) or your credit card. If any business or cash machine asks you if you want your purchase/withdrawal "converted" into dollars, decline that offer - there's a large fee usually associated with this minor convenience of seeing your withdrawal displayed in dollars instead of Euros. Try to use a bank ATM. It's safer to withdraw where there are security cameras around, and if something should happen to your card, you can always go in the bank to resolve the issue. Avoid "independent" ATM's such as Travelex, Euronet, Moneybox, Cardpoint, and Cashzone as they charge large commissions and have lousy exchange rates.

Rick Steves (who has built a dynasty around traveling through Europe safely and frugally) has great advice on how to prepare for and handle monetary transactions in Europe. Check out his website at Money Travel Tips: Traveling Smart with Cash and Credit Cards in Europe by Rick Steves, and ATM Tips: Using Cash Machines in Europe by Rick Steves.

Be careful not to confuse a "cruise credit" with a "cruise discount". They are not the same. A cruise credit is basically the money that you have already given NCL plus additional money that NCL gave you (25% of what you already gave them) out of the goodness of their heart for agreeing not to demand all your money back when your original March 2020 cruise was cancelled.

I also had a 2020 cruise cancelled and got the same deal you did. At the time they also offered me a one-time 20% discount off the going rate of any cruise cabin if I booked another cruise within a certain period of time. I took advantage of this and got a cabin that was regularly priced at $2000 per person for $1600 per person (2000 x 0.20 = 400).

When that 2nd cruise was cancelled, they put ALL the money that I had originally paid them PLUS the original extra 25% credit back into my Future Cruise Credit. But the one-time 20% cabin discount was gone. The discount was NOT a credit. The discount was not meant to be carried over to another cruise once it had been applied. This time they offered me only a 10% discount on the going rate for a cabin if I rebooked another cruise. I did this - a 10% discount may not be as good as a 20% discount, but it was still something. 

Although, like you, I have never been able to follow the math the way that NCL shows it on their confirmations (or gotten my consultant to logically explain it), I HAVE done the math the way I would do it and ended up with the same amount of FCC remaining in my account that NCL said should be there after paying for the new cruise. And that's all that matters to me.

Thanks!!

Just now found the Pullman on the NCL website. Took me a while to figure out where I had seen this before on the website. Reviews aren't glowing. Seems that the Pullman was once a rather nice place, but has deteriorated over the last several years. I ask because when I recently booked a cruise with my NCL personal cruise consultant for early 2023 (I opted for the 2nd guest flies free offer with them also arranging hotel) I was told that they didn't have a hotel for us yet. Was told they would have to get back to us on the hotel later. Just wondering if they are negotiating with new hotel(s) due to the Pullman's poor reviews.

Does anyone know what hotel(s) NCL is currently using/offering for travelers who are flying into Miami a day or two prior to embarkation?