clojacks

Now I’m curious. I know for a fact that NCL and Celebrity handle most OBC received by a passenger from a TA as REFUNDABLE OBC. Can anyone else confirm what Bwana Tom is saying.

We will be taking our first Princess cruise in a number of years this fall and have a pretty substantial amount of OBC from our TA....way more than we would choose to spend. I am assuming that TA OBC is almost always handled as refundable? At least I am basing that assumption on it being handled that way on Celebrity, who we sail with 90% of the time. You mention Princess cutting you a check? Doesn't Princess just refund your credit card on file the amount of the refundable unspent OBC?

For you regular followers of NCL, which I admittedly am not, but have recently decided to give them a few tries over the next few years after buying 6 CruiseNext certificates on our recent return to NCL after about 8 years with another line, I am wondering when I could expect to see the bulk of NCL's 2025 itineraries and sailings released. We are pretty committed to the rest of '23 and '24, but would like to look at what fits or interests beyond that.

Thanks JB. We arrive back on Celebrity at Berth 101 of City Terminal and board Princess at Berth 46 of Ocean Terminal. keeping in mind we will have luggage for about 3-4 weeks of travel, walking/dragging isn't top on our list of things to do. On the other hand, I feel guilty asking a taxi/Uber to take us less than a mile. But considering I will be only 4 months post total knee surgery, that sounds like the best options?

I've noticed I didn't get any response on this in the past month so I thought I would bring it back up to a more recent point.

Does anyone have any experience at the Premier Inn Southampton City Center WestQuay?

Does anyone have any experience at the Premier Inn Southampton City Center WestQuay?

Does anyone have any experience at the Premier Inn Southampton City Center WestQuay?

So, does anyone have any suggestions for finding out what the Star is actually doing in the time period I mentioned? NCL can't/won't tell me? I can't find any dry dock/refurb schedules mentioning the Star in that time period?

Appreciate the insight, except the sailing I mentioned is in Q4 2024, which wouldn’t explain Star missing in the period I’m looking.

Thank you for the insight. Definitely need to see where I can find more info on what is happening to the Star in the time frame I mentioned before I would book.

We are looking at a Star sailing of Ireland in Oct, 2024 that returns to Southampton on Oct. 20. I've been looking at cruise TA's sites and chatting with Norwegian CS agents, but nobody shows the Star after Oct. 20, 2024 until Nov. 12, 2024. We'd consider a B2B on the back end of the Oct. 10th one we are considering, but??? It seems like often times, sleuths in here have better access to what is happening with missing ships schedules. Anyone have an idea?

You're 100% correct AK...I should have been clearer that I was using your experience as the basis for my hypothetical, not that you actually withheld any DSC. Kudo's for you for clarifying that. I should have mentioned I was more curious how someone who felt it was warranted would determine how much to withhold. We sailed the Joy through the Panama Canal the first week the changes were implemented and I think it had more of an impact on our steward than it did on us. We are extremely low maintenance and one of the reasons we don't bid on a Suite upgrade is because we wouldn't know what the hell to do with a Butler! Our Steward must have thought about these changes for a while to try to make it the least impactful, because he developed a reverse room order rotation for every other day. That way, no room was the last room done every day. 1 day he started at 1 end of his 22 rooms, and the next day he started at the opposite end. At the end of the day, when the daily's were available for distribution, rather than just stick them in the mail slot, he knocked on the doors to hand them to each room and see if anything was needed. I saw absolutely NOTHING that we couldn't manage by not having a second service.

I have a reasonable, I believe question. In this scenario, you feel you are justified in reducing or withdrawing the DSC? By how much? Am I mistaken that the DSC's are shared among multiple crew departments? So if your beverage service has been phenomenal, and steward has been noticeably below that "standard", but you withdraw the DSC, does that not affect the other departments that you may have been extremely satisfied with? Am just curious if you can withhold, JUST the portion that may be shared with your steward, or if there is a way to even find out what that amount is? I freely admit I don't know the answer, so I am seriously posing a question, not presenting a hypothetical argument.

So, are you saying you cash tip more than $40 per day or more than what the Stewards share of the $40 DSC is. It the latter, how do know what portion of each cabins DSC goes to the stewards, as I believe the DSC is a shared amount isn't it?

We are doing a TP on the Jewel next spring from Japan to Alaska. We will have 4 sea days mid-cruise, and never having done a trans on NCL, we're wondering if they do any enrichment stuff on the ocean crossing sea days?

I'll ask again....what in the second cleaning is so important as to make it a "must have", even at a lower price.

What is strange, is that I'm at an appt right now and while I was waiting, I thought I'd check on my phone to see if the same thing happens. So, 20 miles from home, on a different device, and it did the same thing. I don't know if this is something unique to my account or to my sailing. I have used FBC before, when it was ChoiceAir, and they were a life saver when we got sent home from Dubai during the first cancellations of COVID. I just don't get it? I'm not even sure if I should contact Celebrity IT or FBC customer service. Neither appears to be extremely competent.

I understand that, but part of the convenience of a travel search engine is NOT having to call and have someone read to you.

We recently got off of Celebrity Apex and NCL Joy in B2B cruises. Celebrity was still doing twice daily in-room service, but had dramatically cut back on the food service for our cruise. NCL went to single in-room service for our cruise, but their food service was fantastic. I'm curious how many people who are complaining about eliminating twice daily service, do it at home?? I'm curious why they feel it should be expected on a cruise, just because that has been the norm? What do you get out of the second service that you can't live without, or that you couldn't get with a phone call to your attendant? Our NCL attendant said they have recently gone from 15 rooms per attendant to 22 rooms. I'm not sure it is physically possible to do that many twice a day, and still have some time off to eat mid-day.

I'm still having problems with FBC. I've cleared my cache, tried multiple devices ( other devices I tried...1 IPad, 1 Samsung phone) both returned "account locked" messages. As before, I can search and populate the outbound list, there is no way to check return flights, because I can't click select on any single originating flight. Any ideas of any other solutions that don't involve calling and having them walk me through every flight option and pricing would be helpful. The outbound flights give the appearance of being a few hundred less per ticket on an international flight, but I would like to see return options to know I am comparing apples to apples without having someone read me the flights and prices. That's what a search engine is supposed to do!

Or bottled water, or specialty coffee's...

You can not do only 1 in a room on the package. 1 consideration on the drink package, is that NCL's is ONLY for alcohol drinks. Other lines include, soft drinks, waters, coffees, etc, but NCL's is just "drinks" (beers, liquor drinks, wines, etc). That for us made a difference too, as the other lines we sail include EVERYTHING. Before our recent cruise, I think I roughly figured I would need to drink between 3 and 4 drinks a day in order for the gratuities on the drinks to offset paying for an individual drink when I wanted it. By no means am I a teetotaler, but I also don't need to drink 3 drinks a day. It's just my personal viewpoint. I'll sail NCL again, but IMHO they have the worst beverage packages on the high seas.

I hope you come back on to complete your comments about disembarkation. We recently had a horrible, terrible, disaster of a disembarkation at LA, to the point that after filling out my survey, i sent in a Guest Services comment email. Just curious if your experience mirrors ours. I would not sail into or out of LA again until I was convinced they addressed their terminal there, and Miami for that matter.

I did this on a recent NCL cruise as it wasn't cost effective with my wife not drinking. I do have a question though. If I want to restore it to my FAS perks on a currently booked cruise that we again removed it from, will I be charged the cost of a beverage package or only the cost of the gratuities?