clojacks

I’m reading that some cruise lines provide shuttle service from South Queensferry into Edinburgh, but sometimes don’t advertise until on board so as to not reduce excursion sales. Does anyone in here who has done British Isles on Princess know if they operate a shuttle only to Edinburgh? We are interested in touring on our own once we get to Edinburgh.

4 minutes ago, Thrak said:

Any OBC that shows under the "Payments" section of the Personalizer can be used to book shore excursions in advance. People have reported problems with the Princess site today so that may be your issue.

It was the issue. After waiting a couple of hours, I logged back in and was able to complete the reservation. 

43 minutes ago, Steelers36 said:

Best to call early in the morning as lines are less busy.  You have not explained what the OBC is from.  If it is a TA rebate of some sort - since you mentioned "healthy" - it may not be available until you board the ship.  Princess OBC can be used towards excursions ahead of the cruise.

Sorry, we have both refundable and non-refundable. We easily have enough from Princess to pay for the excursions. I don’t know if their website just isn’t cooperating, or what is up. They did do a call back to us, but we couldn’t hear anybody on the other end. So we had to call back again.

We recently booked a cruise with Princess for the first time in many many years. We have a pretty healthy bank of OBC to use, and have started to line up Shore Excursions. The cruise is this coming August, and Final Payment is due in May. My question is can we book Shore excursions this far out and use our OBC to pay for it? We have been trying this morning and keep getting a message that says "there is an error with our request" to pay, and it tells us to call Princess. Any ideas if it is jst acting wonky and we should try again? We were on hold with Princess for almost an hour, and decided to hang up.

4 hours ago, debenson0723 said:

Wednesday - sea day (part 2)

First off, let me say these reviews are a lot more work than I thought (and I am not even adding attachments). I love reading them and have an even greater appreciation going forward.

 

After dinner we had reservations for the Elements show at 9:30. The theater was full but we had gotten there about 25 minutes early so had good seats. I don't mind sitting and people watching. I have seen many of the Cirque shows and enjoy this type of entertainment but for some reason, this just didn't do it for me. I think I was expecting more singing and more of a plot. But I appreciate the time and effort the entertainers put into the performance. Some of them were amazing. TC really enjoyed it and couldn't understand why I didn't but to each their own. I love Choir of Man and know some people don't. It is what makes us all unique.

 

Just prior to the show I noticed that the barf bags had been put out around the ship. It was definitely rocky but I didn't think that bad. I went to my cabin around 11:30 and the wind was really howling and the ship creaking. It was more of a front to back, than side to side rolling. The most motion I have felt in a long time...but I still slept like a log all night.

 

Rewind back (I really should have kept notes): on Monday evening we went to Guest Services and bought transfers to LAX for Friday. We departed from Port 92 (usual port) but are disembarking at Pier 50 (no idea where this is). Though we usually take private transportation, to alleviate any stress we decided to go this route. $25 each, meet on deck 7 tomorrow at 8:15...gonna be a rude awakening back to reality. Weather prediction is rain and for the first time ever, I did not pack an umbrella. Let's see...Friday morning, LA traffic, rain...what could possibly go wrong?

Just an FYI, we disembarked Joy after a Canal crossing on Feb 5, and it was a nightmare. It took us 2 hours after leaving the ship to exit the terminal. At that disembarkation, there were 2 lines of passengers leaving the luggage corral and doing a slowww death walk to customs. We chose the left line, and watched as passengers next to us kept getting further and further ahead of us. Signs said that they were using face recognition, but the 7 customs agents must not have been aware of that. So, basically, 7 customs agents for 3800 passengers, didn’t work real well. We had transfers, and we barely made our LAX flights. NCL disembarks by transfer time, but that is the last time that your transfer time has any baring on how quick you board a bus. You don’t enter a line assigned to your color, you don’t get on a bus assigned to your color; it is the most disorganized disembarkation over ever seen. 
 

By the way, the Buffalo machine in the Casino was hot during our cruise if you have time. It is in the hallway through the Casino.

Was finally able to get in pretty seamlessly. Not sure if it is going to be the same for everyone, but at least I'm hopefully done dealing with the endless "processing" message.

Thanks for the confirmation. I've been trying to get into EZ Air and it just spins and spins and spins...

I don't know what it is about Cruise lines IT departments, but the  are ALL horrible, Celebrity, NCL, now Princess. 

Is anyone else having issues with the Princess website this morning? Specifically the EZ Air portal?

Trying to compare FBC with other search vehicles. FBC will produce results, but won't let me Select" a choice on the outbound flight. Anyone else having FBC search problems today? Any suggestions? I'm logged in, I've provided all the requested info, it gives me options to select flights from, but nothing happens when I try to select to get to the return flights.

We are sailing into and out of Southampton on the same day, but on 2 different lines. Cruising into Southampton Celebrity, disembarking and then embarking on Princess. Any suggestions for getting from Terminal to Terminal?

On 2/14/2023 at 11:34 AM, seachelt said:

We cruised on the Island last year to Iceland and Greenland. We requested to be moved to a different cabin due to extreme noise in our origingal cabin. Moved to a premium balcony and were very happy with the ship, food and service etc. We have booked again for this coming fall.

Can I ask what cabin or location you were in and where you moved to.

13 minutes ago, mking8288 said:

Nah, NCL isn't going to and what can they do, short of a major dry dock and given their finances lately - simply cannot easily re-configure some of the venue to jam in more live souls.  As for the Prima & Viva, etc. - that's a different conversation themselves.   Space usage as is now, is equally bad on the Getaway, Breakaway, Escape and not "exclusive" to the Joy (on her twice in 2022) in many of the public area, IMHO.  

 

Speaking of petri dishes, we simply wasn't going to squeeze into those overcrowded clubs & lounges ... some of them probably exceeded occupancy limits with live performance going on, standing room only - elbows to elbows, impossible to social distance or not practical to mask up.  Glad that we didn't bother trying - more than a few came down with not just Covid but also noroviruses on our sailing last month.  

Not to take this in a different direction, but hadn't heard of the Noro issue. Our sailing started out really symptom free. You couldn't hear a single sneeze or cough the first week. However, the second week, the coughing, sneezing, and hacking was EVERYWHERE. We masked everywhere, but still have come down with upper respiratory junk within the 7 days of getting off of Joy. Is it that difficult for someone coughing every 2 minutes to remove themselves from a public area or take measures to reduce the spread of their cough?

Sorry....

40 minutes ago, Raleigh Traveler said:

They are playing to the demographics. At 68, I felt like one of the younger cruisers on our recent trip. Footloose, Divas and Beatles align with the older group. Not geared to a younger audience for sure.

We were on the same cruise, and at 69, I expected to hear "young fella" every time I got in an elevator. As it is, the Joy probably wasn't the best ship for that cruise, even if it was full. A number of venues/activities went virtually unused for 2 weeks, forcing a lot of people into the spaces that were more, um age appropriate. A ship full of 70+ year olds probably isn't going to see much traffic in the Lazer Tag, VR galaxy, Water slides, Go Karts genre. 

But, back to the Beatle's, we didn't go to see the Beatlestory in the Cavern Club since the ship was already becoming a petri dish, and that Venue is so tiny, it is ridiculous. However, their show in the theater was very good. NCL really needs to address space usage, as it is terrible on the Joy.

We were on the Jan 21 sailing of Joy to LA and both the embarkation and disembarkation were the worst I’ve ever experienced in approximately 20 cruises, most on Celebrity. The embarkation was a disaster with probably 2500 or more passengers crowded into a space with 1 toilet for each gender…not 1 bathroom, 1 room with 1 toilet in it! And this was a piece of cake compared to disembarkation. That is a different kind of disaster. If you were lucky enough to pick the “right” side line in the luggage terminal, you have no idea what I am referring to. If you picked the left, I feel your pain. We had Pink1 tags, which were designed for the first transfers to LAX. We entered the terminal at a little before 9. We left it AFTER 11! People with luggage tags 5 transfer periods later than ours strolled by us in the right line. There was 1 elderly gentleman who dropped in the left line..possibly from fatigue, or exhaustion, or a medical situation, but the response inside the terminal was atrocious . We barely reached LAX in time to make our 1:30 plane after expecting to be the first non- self disembarking group out of the terminal. NCL and CPB need to cooperatively get their ***** together in there or they are going to have an incident they will greatly regret.

I'm  guessing someone in here will have been in the disembarkation terminal at LA during the 2 lines debacle. Worst disembarkation experience in almost 20 years of cruising, that almost also had a terrible situation involving an elderly gentleman who appeared to go down from possibly exhaution, fatigue, or whatever. I don't think I would sail through that port again if this is how CPB and NCL cooperate on a disembarkation process.

Celebrity plays around with pricing. Sometimes, you can only book All Inclusive...other times they offer cruise only pricing. We booked a short Caribbean cruise back in the summer for early January, and at the time they only had All Inclusive. Now, they offer the same cruise as a Cruise only price, and our AI is actually lower than the Cruise only price right now. 

In my opinion, which I really am not here to argue, Celebrity's AI value is far above and beyond NCL's FAS. Celebrity's wifi is unlimited, I believe, gratuities are covered, and drink package is much better. However, NCL does offer the dining offer, and shore excursion offer, but neither would break it for me as I almost always have way to much OBC from Celebrity and our TA to use for specialty dining on Celebrity. Just one persons viewpoint, to be fair.

4 minutes ago, Liljo22 said:

The breakeven on the gratuities on NCL is an average of 2 drinks a day so if your wife didn't drink all week it would be just 4 drinks a day for you.  Carnival an Royal both add gratuity to their packages when you purchase them pre-cruise but they also charge a lot more for the package.  I know Celebrity does not charge additional for gratuities on their drink package but they are pulling it out of the cruise fare(hopefully).  If a Celebrity cruise for 2 is $2,400 and a comparable NCL cruise is $2,100 plus $300 for the gratuities, I don't see the difference.  

Check what Celebrity's even basic package includes...bottled water, soft drinks, special coffees, juice, none of which are covered in NCL's FAS base program. In addition, on Celebrity, if you want to upgrade a particular drink, you pay the difference in the cost, not for the entire drink. The comparison isn't even close IMHO...

On 11/21/2022 at 8:38 PM, Bxc53 said:

We are looking at our first NCL cruise next year.  Past cruises have been mostly Celebrity and RCL. 
Wondering what the “ Free at Sea” package includes, drink wise. We usually only have 2-3 drinks/day, but do like decent brands. A typical day in warm climates might be a Vodka tonic in the afternoon, then a bourbon rocks or two in the evening. What would be some of the “ included “ brands vs premium at, I assume, extra cost. 
 

Thanks for any insights .

We are frequent Celebrity cruisers and recently booked our first NCL in about 10 years. Our booking included the FAS drinks package also, but after comparing what was included and what was not, that we had become used to on Celebrity, we decided to opt out of the Drink package and have the gratuities for the drinks removed from our cost. Ours was a 15 day cruise, and the gratuities alone for the drinks was almost $700. Considering my wife rarely drinks, I couldn't see myself getting $700 of value on drinks that I would frequently be upgrading on anyway. I hadn't heard of any line having you pay the gratuities up front for your drink package, but I'm not that familiar with what others, like Princess, RCL, etc do. Maybe Celebrity just has the best drinks package. 

We are taking our first NCL cruise in a long time in January, and we are curious if there is an advantage to booking under current, or upcoming "sales" offers or is there a benefit to having something in mind and booking on board? It feels like the "sales" are starting to become like your current furniture stores, "best Sale of the Year" type promo, that doesn't end up being anymore of a sale than last weeks, "wont ever see prices lower than this" sale. Lower deposits don't matter to us, as that is often part of a Sales on the line we usually sail. We usually have a cruise in mind to book onboard when we sale Celebrity, as it usually means about $300 or more in OBC, which often gets matched or beaten by our TA. Any experiences are appreciated.

This is our first time sailing Norwegian in years. We recently booked a Club Balcony "Suite", and recently got the upgrade bid offer. We would be interested in trying a Haven Balcony Suite, which I believe is the lowest Haven Suites. There are only a couple left for a sailing in January. Is there anyplace to find guidance on reasonable bids or unreasonable bids? Bids that have been excepted, etc, without scrolling through the 97 pages of this thread?

If I choose the "pay at final cruise payment option", can I select seats today? Or can I only choose seats if I pay for the flight now?

Did the proctor have to stay online until the results were completed at 10/15/20 minutes for whatever kit you are using? It sounds like a dumb question probably, but I'm just curious as we will be out of the country when we have to do the test for our cruise, and just wondering if they do if I can't find a WIFI service and have to use international minutes.

14 hours ago, jelayne said:

Since you will be moving to NCL maybe they can provide the test so you can board their ship.

If the cruises were reverse, do you think Celebrity would help me? I'm not asking any of the cruises to provide help, but rather have been asking for suggestions on how to accomplish what I need to get done. The suggestions of virtual proctoring, which I hadn't considered, appears to be a reasonable option.

2 minutes ago, airhose said:

Clojacks,  not cloaks,  sorry!

No worry's...

3 minutes ago, Oceangoer2 said:

Perhaps NCL will test you prior to boarding??

Doesn't look like it...

https://www.ncl.com/sail-safe