European_CruiseGirl

When our DD was 15 months old we took our first NCL cruise. Looking back do I think we were crazy to do it - yes. Did we have a lot of fun - also yes. Mind you for us going on the cruise meant a 4 hour flight so it wasn’t so easy to begin with. In any case we ended up having a fantastic time. We however realized that we were not comfortable to let our young daughter go to the splash type of pool area. Even with us of course with her. The area was swamped with kids aged 2-3,5’ish and they were just so big and quick in running around etc that it just didnt feel comfortable putting a 15 month old there with them as we thought she might get run over by the bigger small kids. But…we had bought a small inflatable pool and brought that with us. We of course asked the room steward if it is ok for us to use it at the balcony. It was, no problem. And our DD had the most fun time spashing around at that pool. I mean a pool like this with only 1/3 height of water in it: https://www.amazon.com/Intex-Sunset-Glow-Baby-Pool Other than that our DD was at the ”exploring” age and she loved just to walk around and check what is where. At that age everything is new and exciting for them. We had my husband’s parents cruising with us so were able to have a couple of date nights and one shore excursion for ”mom and dad time”. Overall we did splurge though and take a suite (non-Haven) so we could have some of the dinners and breakfasts inside our suite too. If at all possible I highly recommend this. So what I guess I am trying to say is that even though the ship wouldn’t have any bells and whistles for a toddler you can still have a very fun cruise with the young one.

We have done this several times. Not worth it tbh. You are told a place where you meet the concierge who will escort you off the ship up until the gangway. There is a small advantage in it as the concierge brings you down with the service elevators so you can access the gangway more easily. However in our experience the concierge rarely is there at the meeting point at the exact time when you want to leave (he is escorting a previous group of people out) so you are waiting there for him to come back and then possibly for a group to again gather that he will escort out. So you usually end up waiting anyway. Now if the concierge would escort you off the ship and all the way past passport/customs via a priority route - that would truly be a good perk. However this has not been our experience ever.

Wow it was reported preliminarily by several CC users that it is $4.95 for all room service orders now when the change was implemented. I guess NCL realized another money making machine and quickly changed it to $9.95 for other times than breakfast...

Actually nowadays it is only $4.95 for room service delivery. And yes you can order as much as you want with that one set price. Some people are happy, some are not. Because even though $4.95 is lower than the previous $9.95 at the same time as NCL lowered the price for room service delivery NCL removed the free continental room service breakfast completely. So want to have a pot of coffee or tea and croissants in the morning in your cabin? It's $4.95. Want to get pizza, salad, dessert, drinks, whatever to your cabin during the day or in the evening? It's the same $4.95.

Beer is around $7 + tax. I haven't seen buckets of beer in the last few'ish years. A glass of wine is in minimum $9 + tax, soft drinks $3 + tax, many cocktails $11-$14 + tax. Remember the drinks package gives you also soda so it might (or might not) be important for you to factor in. I drink coke/pepsi around 4-5 glasses/cans per day so just soft drinks could be around $12-15 + tax /day without the package. I also drink club soda during dinner and that is included in the package also so around $6 + tax /day for that daily too. Add to that just one glass of wine or a cocktail (or similar) daily and it already makes sense to take the package.

Have you checked they both really went through? Usually when you try to book the same restaurant for the second time all seems to go well and the system even says that the second reservation is added to cart but when you then check out the second reservation never made it there. It is a well and widely known fact here at CC that you cannot make more than one reservation per restaurant online so if you indeed were able to successfully make more than one reservation for one restaurant online it would be completely new. Hence check that you truly have all those reservations confirmed.

I 100% agree.

What I suspect it that NCL’s insurance company has forbid NCL for going to Taino Bay with their large ships after their 2022 ”incident”. Most likely NCL at that time claimed that the conditions of that port were so difficult that their ship got stuck because of that (and not because of ”human error”). Most likely human error would have meant a lesser compensation from the insurance company for NCL than blaming the conditions of the port as human error can be seen as NCL’s own fault whereas port conditions are not something that NCL has authority to. Because NCL went with the route of stating port conditions as the reason of the 2022 incident their insurance company has said ”ok, as long as that port is not improved we don’t insure your big ships if they go there”. So NCL mega ships go don’t go there. Even though, as op mentions, other cruiselines much bigger ships go. And as other cruiselines big ships can go there the local port authorities at DR Taino Bay do not really see why they should do anything about that port’s conditions.

You do not lose any promotions. That sentence however means that if the new category would have better promotions you don't get the better perks just by upgrading into it. For example a higher cabin category might mean more speciality dinners but if you just upgrade into it you won't get more speciality dinners. You keep what you originally had.

If it doesn't say "premium wifi with streaming" it is not. I cannot give you an exact value for 250mins of wifi but 100min is around $55 and unlimited wifi (not premium with streaming) is around $230 on my cruise. So 250min is somewhere in between. Your son can purchase a three meal speciality dining package for a cost of around $150. So most likely those two perks have quite a similar value. Now the question in my mind is as follows: would your son want to go to three speciality restaurants also? You already told he wants the wifi anyway. If he does want to go to speciality restaurants too then he could take either one of the perks and in the end he would pay approx the same total amount for the cruise taking into consideration all the add ons that he would buy either before the cruise or while cruising. However if the speciality dining would be just a nice add on but he could just as well also skip it then he should definitely take the wifi. Btw there are usually possibilities to upgrade the standard wifi package (in his case 250mins) to an unlimited wifi package or an unlimited streaming package if he wants to take the wifi as the perk and would want to upgrade. He should just be prepared that wifi is spotty at times (oftentimes) on a cruiseship.

It is interesting yes on why they are not informing pax. Too much work? Afraid of cancellations? Afraid people will not book their shorex at the substitute port but book something by themselves? I don’t know. But I know that although they have the legal right to do it, it sucks. What is legally right is not always morally right.

No they don’t. No take out from restaurants or doggy bags.

The table for two is the smallest size table they have. So even if you’d book the table for one while on the ship they will still seat you at a table for two. Btw if some crazy person would try to charge you double then at least on a la carte restaurants the solution would be easy. ”Ah my ghost friend here is ordering just a glass of ice water as he is not really hungry just know”. Nobody says that you need to order xyz amount of food at a restaurant.

What you were told is complete nonsense. You will not be charged more if you book a table for two and then go there alone.

I am happy to report that Regent was able to adjust my reservations so that I have now the promotion price included in them. It didn't even require cancelling and rebooking 😊 It seems that at least for those who have booked during late 2022 it might make sense to call and ask for a reprice.

Thank you @pingpong1 for letting us know. Would anyone have time to explain to me how pricing changes work at RSSC? I know some cruise lines let you re price (effectively I guess cancel and rebook) your reservation if there is a price drop and some cruise lines don't. And some cruise lines allow re pricing but only for US/CA customers and not for EU/UK customers as the terms and conditions of the bookings can be different. I booked during last December a longer RSSC cruise (3 suites) and checked that the prices are now quite much lower for that cruise than when I booked. If it makes any difference we are booked through RSSC EU office and our price includes only the cruise, not flights. Cancellation of the reservation is possible for us with a 100e/pp penalty as well is change of the cruise to another one. I am now wondering if there is any point to try to call and get a re pricing for our booking. Of course I could just call them but not really wanting to make me sound cheap if it is a known fact that this is not possible with RSSC ☺️ If this is not possible at RSSC it is completely fine. I am able to make lemonade out of lemons in this situation by the fact that we got exactly those suites that we wanted when we booked and had we waited until today perhaps those three suites side-by-side at the exact location that we wanted would not have been available anymore. So I can find peace and happiness in my mind in this fact alone. However it would feel stupid if I just expected "oh well, nothing that I can do about it" and then would find out later that there would have been a possibility to re price the bookings ☺️ Edit: Ah, I will answer to myself but won't delete this post if someone wonders about the same. I checked the promotion details and it clearly states that it applies to new bookings only. So I guess no way to get this promotion. In any case I will be happy that I have a lovely RSSC cruise booked even though it is around 4000€/suite more expensive than I could have gotten now. If any of you seasoned RSSC cruisers disagree with my understanding feel free to correct me if you think a cancellation and rebooking could be done 🙂

For this I would suggest chatting or calling NCL. They can book dining (and excursions etc) very easily for you 😊 Though I am sorry to hear of your IT system problems 😔

They will change the itinerary only on those cruises where in Puerto Plata the Amber Cove port has already two Carnival Corp ships the day that NCL is supposed to be there too and hence an NCL ship cannot dock there (Amber Cove has space only for two ships and as it is a Carnival Corp built port Carnival Corp ships always have first grabs there). So what you need to check is how many other ships are at Puerto Plata/Amber Cove port on the day when you are supposed to be there. 0-1 = you’ll most likely go to Amber Cove/Puerto Plata. 2 = you will go somewhere else. Sometimes the substitute is a sea day, sometimes Nassau (the next day), sometimes GSC. The above is valid for NCL’s big ships. It seems Sky (and recently also Dawn) do go to Puerto Plata using Taino Bay port.

The problem for most is that they don’t want to eat 1-1-1-1. They want to eat for example 2-0-1-1 or 0-2-1-0 or whatever. So it’s not about eating more - it’s about being able to choose what you want to eat. My dear father for example never eats dessert and rarely an appetizer at a restaurant. He however always, and I mean always, wants to eat a soup and a salad at a restaurant. This is the main gripe for people I suspect. They want to decide what to include. NCL would have been wiser to say ”your meal includes 4 courses (1 main max) + sides” and then each pax could choose which four those are.

It’s even worse than you think. This below seems to be the newest Cagney’s menu. Not able to eat fish or seafood? Too bad, no appetizer for you then and with the 1-1-1-1 you cannot take a soup and salad instead of the 1-1-1-1 rule’s appetizer + soup or salad.

Ahahaha, got to love NCL IT 🤣 Well at least I am in 😂

Dear god, that worked! Thank you so so much @ChiefMateJRK! 😍 I just registered again using my latitudes number and voila, I am in and my email address is now my username. This shows once again the power of cruisecritic 🤩 And @MagnoliaBlossom I did chat (and phone) with NCL on Friday and this problem began for me on Saturday so your message is spot on too 🙏 Also @Buckett I guess this change is what you were told when you called NCL but my NCL reps 1) didn’t mention this to me (you had a better one than me 😅) and 2) something went wrong at NCL IT as my username was not automatically changed to be my email address (I tried logging in with that too several times yesterday but it didnt work, only after registering again it started to work). Thank you for sharing your insights 🙏

Thanks! So they have definitely changed something related to the sign in but unfortunately at the same time screwed up some of our accounts and we cannot get in at all. Not with our email addresses or the usernames we have had. I guess it can be as easy thing as vlookup problem. For every persons account change the current username to be the email address of that person…and well things didn’t go as planned and some username fields became empty. Old username deleted but email address not vlookup’d into that field.

Wow I guess I need to do that too if this situation doesn’t resolve soon. Thanks ChiefMateJRK! This is exactly my situation! There is no point or help in resetting the pw when there isn’t a username 🤦🏼‍♀️🤣 Could you use the same email address or did you need to use another one? I guess another one but just making sure 😊

I would definitely do this if you absolutely want to tour the city too. Just use your $50 towards the snorkeling excursion and you won’t lose anything moneywise.