hawkeyetlse

It was ridiculous how much we had to fight for champagne on the TA! And once it was gone, it was gone. Except that they somehow found one or two more bottles the next day. But that was it, no more! Until the next day… It got to be a joke with some of the bartenders, which could have been fun, except the joke was on me.

In my experience, although they said dining would also be taxed, I did a couple of specialty meals in Spanish waters (using dining package, vouchers, whatever) and the food was not taxed. Only the drinks. Maybe people who actually paid à la carte or ordered upcharge items had additional tax added, I don't know. (Or it could be that by the time they rang up our food bill, we were out of Spanish waters, whereas the drinks were charged earlier. If you were actually charged tax on food, I would be interested to hear about it.)

Sorry, I checked the itinerary and it's mostly Irish ports. The only other UK port is Belfast. We'll see if they put up signs again that day. And if Ireland has decided to demand taxes, too!

For excursions booked on board, the $50 credit applies after you do the excursion. Either that night or sometime the next day. So I wouldn't bother standing in line for that now (and anyway they would probably send you back to the Shore Excursions Desk for this question). Sorry to hear about Malta!

I'm sure it is local/national regulations (whether old or new) seeking to tax on-board sales, but it seems like there are different ways that a cruise line can satisfy these regulations (paying the tax themselves, passing it along to guests, or agreeing to simply stop sales in port). And while I like many things about NCL, it would not surprise me to learn they have chosen the solution that costs them the least, even if it severely degrades the cruise experience for their guests. Not only do they avoid paying tax, but they also have a convenient excuse to prevent people from using their beverage packages (which costs them money every time someone orders a drink). This is the very beginning of the Star cruise with lots of UK ports. I'm confident that the passengers won't just take this lying down. See the General Manager? Confront them. See the F&B Manager? Confront them. See the Guest Services Director? Confront them. But be very very nice to the bar staff, please!

The Diamond and Ambassador benefits that you mention are great, once, but then I guess those tiers also go down to "None" until you die. Personally, I do value some of the other perks like dinner with officers, but I also have the impression that people get a lot of stuff at Platinum, which is a relatively easy tier to attain, whereas the higher tiers require significantly more cruising but don't come with many additional (published) benefits. I'm pretty sure Ambassadors get special treatment in many unofficial ways, though.

Breakaway left Livorno at 8pm last Friday, but the “port of Livorno” rules stayed in effect all night long until the bars closed. So don’t expect things to necessarily get better even hours after sailaway. Please keep us posted.

Ooh I was excited to try to get one of these power banks as one of the activity prizes, but on my sailing they only had beach bags, t-shirts, and coffee mugs. Oh well. There are thousands of people on board that have this cable, and many of them travel with multiples. And every single one of them is familiar with this situation! Next time your friend is at a bar and sees someone using an iPhone next to them, I would strike up a conversation and see what happens.

I agree, people with the Premium Plus package got hit especially hard. The tax on one bottle of champagne shouldn’t be $30 though, since the menu price of the included brand (Veuve Clicquot) is $120, and I doubt any port is asking for 25% in taxes (yet). When something like this happened to me, I asked for the detailed receipt and it turned out that they had charged me for 10 glasses instead of one bottle! Maybe they do that all the time for whatever reason, but since it almost tripled the taxes, I got them to redo the ticket.

Yes the casino also stayed closed for the entire last night, so many people were left with chips and tickets that they were unable to cash out before disembarking. Before that we had 4 ports in Spain where they charged 10% tax on all drinks, and most nights this continued all through the night long after sailaway, because we were sailing too close to shore. But the shops and casino opened up right away, so that didn’t make any sense.

Yeah, lots of weirdness on this sailing and probably all Med sailings for the foreseeable future. When we docked in Civi today the rules had changed again, and we will soon hear what the various Greek ports have come up with to screw around with NCL. I can also confirm that the beer & wine thing wasn’t just in the port of Livorno. They never started serving liquor again for the entire last evening, even hours after we left Livorno. At least we didn’t crash into Giglio Island and sink, but it sucked nevertheless.

TAs will always be a little different, because they are generally longer cruises, not in high season (kids have to be in school), lots of sea days (doesn't appeal to everyone), and they require atypical travel arrangements (one-way airfare). For all of these reasons they can be hard to fill and even with deep price cuts, zero single supplement, etc. they are still often under capacity and I don't see that changing in the future. Even if all staterooms are sold out, compared to your average cruise, the occupancy is lower (more solo travelers, fewer families with 3 or 4 in a cabin). Everyone is on board all the time, for the sea days, so there is always the potential for crowds, but the vibe is usually relaxed and not "fill every minute with activities". I wouldn't say that the daily program is that much different from a sea day on a non-TA sailing.

If there was no indication from the TA that this was a perk for booking with them, then what you are seeing on the invoice (as KeithJenner suggested) is the confirmation that you yourself pre-paid the the service charges on April 1. Do you have any booking documents from NCL or your TA from before April 1 so that you can see if the code was already there from the start? The fact that you are seeing a code in one place and a more detailed description of the amenity in another place (or places) is normal. It doesn’t mean that this amenity has been added to your booking multiples times.

I suppose if you talk to the right people on board in the right way, anything can be discounted… The only reliable reduction I am aware of is that the unlimited wifi gets cheaper with each passing day if you hold off on purchasing it during the cruise. Maybe that’s just logical, but they don’t do the same thing for beverage packages or the spa pass.

It's the very last detail at the bottom of the flyer: 40% discount on wine & spirit experiences, tastings and flights, Connoisseur Collection beverages and all other wines by the bottle.

Glad to hear it! Can you tell us who the Captain, General Manager, and Cruise Director are? (It’s to know if we have the same ones next week on the Transatlantic or if they take the opportunity to swap out a lot of officers and staff.)

They priced many of the most popular “martini” drinks over the $15 package limit several years ago. Espresso martini, chocolate martini, rum cake. It has very little to do with the actual cost of the ingredients and everything to do with what they think people are willing to pay on top of the package they already have. I don’t know the current price, but if it’s like $18 then you pay the $3 difference plus gratuity (plus local taxes if in or near certain ports).

It's not ideal. They throw out a lot of champagne/sparkling in the morning when people complain about being served flat wine from yesterday's bottle.

Yes, I should have not have suggested that anyone entering the CTA through the UK would automatically have the right to travel onward to Ireland. But in the OP's case, this is in fact the case, because the two countries align their entry requirements for tourists from the US and most other countries (in this sense, the CTA is relevant for visitors, although njhorseman is correct that the core provision is free movement for British and Irish citizens). The fact that this is a cruise entirely within the CTA will also simplify procedures for all passengers on board (they may do away with individual border checks altogether when the ship enters Ireland and later re-enters the UK).

I can’t really blame them for reserving the supplies they need to run the tastings (and keep in mind that they’re not just taking about the tasting on your sailing, but on who knows how many sailings after that until they finally get their next liquor shipment in). The point is that they shouldn’t let stocks get so low that they ever have to make this choice (which group of paying customers to screw over first). But they do. I suspect it’s the same thing with the magically appearing bottle of Veuve. They weren’t saying that the whole ship was out of Veuve, they were saying that they had gone through the allowance for your sailing. But if you make enough of a stink, they can decide to dip into the next cruise’s allowance and hope for the best.

I have seen those reports about sharing a bottle with others at the table that don’t have the P+ package, but I would not be surprised if they are cracking down on that (which honestly would be fair enough). I get the sense that NCL are really kicking themselves for giving away too much with this bottle service offer and they are steadily clawing it back. Next maybe they will say that it’s one bottle for two people on the package, and solos can’t have bottles at all… (again this is just a maybe!) Anyway we will soon see how it all works for solos on Breakaway. It’s usually an interesting dynamic with drinkers and non-drinkers (and then the drinkers who expect the rest of us to steal drinks for them for 16 days).

Yeah, don't worry, it doesn't automatically renew itself, or start charging you by the minute or anything like that (but as always, what has been true in the past may be different by the time you sail). They will make it very easy for you to purchase a new package, so be careful where you click if you want to avoid that.

I have already said that they should pursue emergency renewal. But if that doesn't work out, and they don't have some amazing insurance that allows them to cancel their flights and their cruise one month out for lack of travel documents, then yes, I think the best option is go ahead and fly to London and try their luck at the terminal. It will not escape the terminal staff's attention that this family has at that point already been admitted to the UK (and therefore to the Common Travel Area, which includes Ireland), so unless the cruise is 5 months long, NCL risks nothing by transporting these passengers. I don't want to get their hopes up too much, there are no guarantees here. Maybe they can channel the stress and uncertainty in the meantime into imagining how they might make the best of the situation if the ship does decide to sail without them. Spend a week in London? Rent a big car and tour around the UK? Take the train back and forth to Paris 20 times and fill up everyone's #*%@! passports with stamps?

Detroit-to-Texas flexible with 4 kids (I assume they'd all have to show up in person for the appointment), I don't know… What I would not do is call anyone at NCL and ask them what to do, or if there are more specific document requirements for this particular cruise, or anything at all. Pretty sure that can only lead to bad things, or at best a waste of time. One big question I have is whether the online check-in thing will throw up red flags when you put in the passport expiration dates for your kids. I guess we'll find out soon (please report back, OP, we are all crossing our fingers for you!)

It's a rule of thumb, but absolutely not true across the board whenever you fly or cruise. Easiest example for most in this forum: as an American citizen, you can fly back to the US with a passport that expires the day of your arrival. And for US round-trip cruises, if you travel with an American passport, NCL only requires it to be "valid", not "valid for 6 months after the end of the cruise". They only mention the 6 month thing for non-US citizens on all cruises, and for US citizens on non-US cruises. Carriers (airlines, cruise lines, etc.) can impose stricter rules than the actual authorities of the countries visited, but it is not in their commercial interest to do so. Sure, it costs them money if they transport passengers who are denied entry for invalid documents, but it is also a headache for them when they refuse boarding to passengers whose documents turn out to be completely valid for travel. For the OP, I don't know what the entry requirements are for the UK and Ireland. But if you are confident that your kids' passport are sufficient, then go to the terminal and be prepared to state your case. They don't just apply some blanket rule from the website and say "boarding denied, final answer". They know what's at stake for you financially (and to a lesser extent for them). They will look at your exact circumstances and make a determination based on whatever they see in Timatic or some similar database of current travel requirements. Of course, if you manage to get an emergency travel appointment before sailing, that's the best option, since it's time to renew those passports anyway. But I don't know if that's even a thing for child passports.