canadian_cheap

We just got back from a family cruise on the NCL Escape and my sister called saying that now that she was home she was checking her credit card and there where nearly $800 in weird charges (all double digits but different amounts like $13.55, $67.70, $54.18) on her credit card saying "NORWEGIAN ESCAPE MIAMI FL"... so I went and checked mine and it too is full of weird charges, although less than hers, but mine also includes a refund that is greater than the total charges (she does not yet have any refund). My family stayed in our own cabin, under our own reservation number, while hers stayed in 2 cabins under a different reservation. I pulled up the email from Norwegian with my final invoice and not a single one of these charges, nor the refund, are mentioned on it... it's almost like the entire time we where sailing Norwegian was randomly charging amounts to our credit cards and then is refunding them later for some reason, which seems odd to me. Has anyone seen anything like this before? I want to give it a few days for everything to hit the credit card (the actual final invoice amount is not on the credit card yet) before making sure the numbers balance or having to contact Norwegian but at the same time it's concerning me.

On Saturday my daughter and I embark on our first ever cruise... with a scheduled stop in George Town, Grand Cayman arriving at 10am and departing at 6pm. I'm looking at a private excursion to swim with the sting rays (because when will I get to do that again?) but am unsure if the time frames work with the ship (the tour operator is confident they do but I'm not so sure). The tour says it's 3 hours long and departs at either 11:15am or 1:45pm but both seem problematic to me as the 11:15am one doesn't seem like it leaves a lot of time to get on a tender and get to the meetup point while the 1:45pm one returning at 4:45pm seems like I would be cutting it tight to tender back to the ship in time. If you've visited George Town recently hopefully you can answer some of these questions for me (the more answers the better since I expect there will be considerable variance in peoples experiences) 1) We have an inside stateroom (so no privileges) so what time should we expect to be able to get off the ship and onto shore? 2) What time will all aboard be? and what time should we be back at the tender dock realistically? If it matters I'm looking at a tour booked through Shore Excursions Group who do have a guarantee to get you back on time (I'm just worried that 'back on time' means back with enough time to sprint for the ship)