bluesea777

@Bandit2301 Do you have the Latitude numbers? I understand it's your first NCL cruise, but when you booked the cruise you received the confirmation email (the one with pdf attached), right? You'll find the latitude numbers there, send an email to pricedrop@ncl.com with the latitude numbers, reservation number, details of the sailing (dates, ship, destination), and ask for the one time price drop FCC. And, in future, when you see a cruise you like, go ahead and book it no matter how far ahead and pay the deposit. Then watch it go up or down! When it goes down call NCL to re-price the cruise, as long as it's before the final payment date. Do you have a PCC or someone with NCL that you can contact? If not, best to get someone. We just completed our 29th cruise with NCL, and have just made final payment for our 30th one coming up in November. This cruise had several price drops since we booked it back in early Sept 2022, and we saved $3800. I contacted our PCC about 6 times! On the other hand, last year's cruise that we went on had vast price increases in the 2 years between the time we booked (yep, 2 years in advance) and the sailing ... prices tripled! So it pays to book cruises far in advance and watch the space!

Portland, Maine is not a tender port. You will dock. Newport, RI and Bar Harbor, ME are tender ports.

Wait a month or so .... methinks the Port St. Maarten may need to update their port schedule for March 2024. NCL, Cruisemapper and Cruisetimetables have the Viva in St. Maarten on March 15th 2024 (not 12th or 14th).

If you can, go up to top of Hallgrimskirkja tomorrow morning to enjoy the bird’s eye views and the Star. Make sure you are at the top when the hour strikes (like at 9 or 10am). 🤭

On Joy until early Jan 2024, and it is removed during dry dock and replaced with Vibe sun deck. The Escape has 3-levels high Ropes Course with walk on plank!

that would be a good tour! Warning: do not ask the Sami ppl how many reindeer they have … it’s like asking them how much money they have. 🤷‍♀️

I did see that post, and now it’s gone. @YVRteacher safe flight to Keflavik. Icelandair Saga class is lovely 😉. Upon arrival in Keflavik you can buy booze duty free upon exit … you can buy a few bottles of wine there to take on ship and pay $15 corkage fee … wait … you don’t drink wine …. looking forward to reading more!!!

NCL no longer credit the refundable OB credits back to passengers' credit cards. They give out cash instead. Call NCL again and hopefully you'll speak to another rep.

@ontheweb it looks like you're giving NCL a hard time! When a port is cancelled, the NCL excursions are cancelled and refunded to your on board account as refundable OBC!! Last year NCL cancelled all 3 Greenland ports and we went to Norway instead. All our Greenland excursions booked thru NCL were cancelled and refunded to our OBA as refundable OBC. At the end of the cruise I was refunded in cash for the credit remaining on our OBA. Remember the ppl you speak to over the phone are land-based and they prolly have no idea what's going on when a port is cancelled and that ppl have their NCL excursions booked for the cancelled port cancelled and refunded to their OBA as refundable credit.

If it were us, we’d take 5581 over the other 3 (5521, 5021, 5081) because it’s by mid-ship elevators. 5081 is below the public bathrooms that are used a lot.

Methinks you’ve got the star/port mixed up. The Joy is having the port side part converted to balcony cabins.

NCL needs to change the OL from sleeping/napping lounge to proper OL by getting rid of those chaise loungers and replacing them with 3-4 nice contemporary chairs each. That would allow more people in the OL and still have seating for viewing. On Spirit last month during Alaskan cruises the OL (aka Spinnaker’s) was quite filled up during the Hubbard Glacier cruising - quite a lot of ppl were in there and were able to get seats. There were no chaise loungers, maybe there were a couple or so but they were in far corners. JMHO.

Galaxy Pavilion: we have been in that on two different ships: Encore and Joy - been there done that and we would not go again. Also, our DS and his gf were on the Joy with us and they also went there. Fun, but once is enough. Not like the Arcade that is used a lot. Laser Tag: we didn't bother as we're too fat and unfit. I suspect this would also be a once is enough thing. Observation lounge ... we didn't use it much on Joy as we were in the Caribbean, meaning we're out on the deck. Also, the lounge seem to be used more for sleeping than observing! On smaller ships their OL, aka Spinnaker, are used more during the day AND in the evenings .... why? ... because they are also used for some game shows (like Trivia, Bingo, Not so Newly-weds, Perfect Couple, etc), and dancing, bands, etc. On the mega-ships (Joy, Encore, Bliss) these are held in the Atrium that is so small and over-flowing.

The main pool on the Star is heated!! Not sure about the Prima.

Ittoqqortoormiit (wow, many double letters!) is on the east coast of Greenland, whereas the ports that are on Star's Iceland & Greenland itineraries are on the west coast.

If you can, ask to move to deck 10 mid to aft starboard side, so it's an easy walk to aft Spice H2O.

The Local and O'Sheehan's are the same thing ... it's the name. When Kevin Sheehan was CEO, the ships that were current at the time had their 24-hour pub/restaurants named as O'Sheehan's. With KS gone they become The Local on new ships.

Spirit's casino is "non-smoking" 😁

Well, a crowd of ppl just exited from a bus outside terminal.

2 runners @ 2.59pm

@mking8288 the cast off time is actually 3.00pm, so there's 5 mins to go. Summit is at 4.00pm.

On disembarkation/embarkation days for both Spirit (Wednesdays) and Jewel (Mondays) in Seward NCL charters a train for the passengers, separate from the regular daily Anchorage-Seward train. The NCL chartered train leaves from right next to the ship at 6am (or so) and goes to Anchorage airport. This train is for passengers who book either Seward to airport or Seward to Hospitality Center. People who book the latter will be bussed from Airport train deport to the city when the train arrives at Airport before noon. The same chartered train leaves the Airport at 1pm for the embarking passengers, arriving at the ship at about 5:30pm. You booth either or both of the above chartered trains through NCL. The regular train leaves from Anchorage Railway Depot at 6:45 am daily for Seward and takes 4.5 hours. The return leaves from Seward at 6pm to arrive in Anchorage at 10:30pm. You book these trains via Alaska Railroad or some travel websites. These trains have GoldStar dome option at extra cost, but the NCL chartered trains do not have GoldStar dome carriages. "I called NCL, and they told me that I only needed to schedule a flight by noon (they said rule is 7 hours after ship arrives in port, or 5 AM)." The person you spoke with is INCORRECT!! They have no idea that the train takes 5 hours! I saw this at the bottom of the excursion detail page: You should be fine!

This one, hands down! You're familiar with the Joy, so you'll do fine!

Dear Yvonne, I am immensely enjoying reading your thread, very informative, and your writing style is so good! You are so good with your Dad and I'm so glad he is also enjoying himself on the Spirit! As you enter the second week on the Spirit I hope you'd consider trying out the Taste dining room, if you haven't been there. I don't know if you like lentil but the rosemary lentil as one of the vegetable side dishes in Onda is delicious - I don't particularly like lentils but this dish was so good. You might want to consider trying out Henry's Pub again one evening - not for the trivia, but after dinner and/or show when the pub isn't crowded/busy. Maybe during the 2nd show when the pub has emptied out. Since your Dad likes beer, you might ask Froilan to make him a mini beer for fun. The Pub has varieties of beer, whiskies and brandies. This pub remained untouched (except for floor and fresh paint) during Miss Spirit's dry-dock/refit. ENJOY the second week on Miss Spirit! P.S. some warning .... I think you already know this, but the Star is going to be a bit of a downgrade to the Spirit, but you'll enjoy the cruises regardless. The ports you're going to be visiting will be spectacular! The Garden Cafe on Star is different to the Spirit and Jewel - you queue up, you cannot walk up to the stations.

Well, we did SN on the Spirit in May/June. We arrived in Anchorage at noon 3 days before the cruise. Did a 30 mins sightseeing tour on the floatplane in the afternoon, took the early morning train (in the GoldStar dome) the following day and toured Seward and visited the Sea Life. The next day we went on Major Marine's 7.5 hour Kenai Fjords National Park cruise (saw wild life, went to 2 glaciers, sailed over ice, had a drink with ice from iceberg!), and then the next day's the embarkation day! We had a very enjoyable and fantastic 3 days pre-cruise and were so happy that we switched from NS to SN. We were going to do NS, but had trouble getting flights to Vancouver from Bermuda when AC operates 3 times a week to Bermuda, found hotels extremely expensive, got overwhelmed with the number (like a thousand or so) of AirBnBs, plus the fact we'd been to Vancouver before and it's a been there done that (sorry Yvonne). So I researched Anchorage/Seward and found it better for us, so we switched the first Van-Seward leg to Seward-Van leg. In Vancouver during the turnaround we opted to stay on the ship but had to leave the ship to go thru the US Border pre-clearance with our passports in the terminal. Took just 20 minutes (most was spent walking along the length of the terminal several times!). We ourselves were able to find and book reasonably priced flights between Bermuda & Anchorage with just 2 layovers each way. Seeing that you're in Michigan ... thought it might interest you that we overnighted in a Chicago O'Hare airport hotel on way out and caught the Alaska Air non-stop flight from O'Hare to Anchorage the next morning! We were faced with choice of overnighting in either Seattle or Chicago, and the latter won in hotel prices and flights from Bermuda. Sorry Yvonne to be off topic ...