KeithJenner

Kotor isn’t a Greek port, so that should be fine anyway. But you are right about Greek ports being late. We had a 9pm departure from Volos as well as the 10pm from Santorini on our Jade cruise. Other than Hawaii I struggle to think of another itinerary which would be as impacted as these ones.

Not in the UK. We pay a fixed fee for free at sea. If you pay the fee you get them all, if you don't then you get none. Those are your two options.

Yes, they don't seem to be applying the $35 restriction since the recent price rise. We were specifically told to ignore it on the Jade, and I have heard lots of other similar reports. I've not heard of anyone being restricted lately.

We booked the Jade (2nd cruise of the season and one where there was no bar service in Athens) on 31st May last year. I don't know how long it had been on sale before that, but it certainly wasn't a short notice deployment.

I’ve not been directing any ire at anyone, and we don’t know what the real reason is, but to just close the bars, put a little note in the daily and hope that will be the end of it is just crazy. How did they ever think that would work out?

That is just spectacularly bad management. Did they think they could really just not serve, put something in the dailies, and it would just go away. This needed managing, and instead they have just made a bad situation worse, annoyed people even more, and highlighted the situation due to the amount of speculation about what is going on. Add to that the shore staff lying to people (whether knowingly or not) and basically calling their customers liars it’s difficult to see how they could have handled it worse. Perhaps they will manage it by resisting calls for refunds on packages that people were unable to use.

Someone else has just said that on the Dawn in Liverpool last cruise they were only serving beer and wine (no spirits). Obviously this isn’t as bad as the situation on the Gem, but it isn’t something I’ve ever heard of before. If that is true I do wonder whether NCL are trying to cut corners on the duty side to save some money.

There are a few on Facebook. Apparently one person spoke to the HD on the Gem and asked why the Escape and Jade were serving but the Gem wasn’t. He told her that the other ships were breaking the law and he wasn’t going to do that. Someone else on the Escape confirmed they were serving.

In the UK sailaway qualifies for free at sea.

Do you get enough benefit from the other free at sea items to justify paying the free at sea fee? I'd have thought it is difficult to unless you take a lot of excursions, especially with the recent price increase.

I assume they are talking about the way UK customers are charged, rather than what happens on UK cruises. We don’t pay the gratuities on the free at sea beverage package. However, we do pay a fixed fee to get the free at sea offers, so unless they really get good value from the dining package/internet/excursions then they probably should decline. It currently costs £149 per person for a 7 day cruise.

We aren’t charged the gratuities on the free at sea beverage package. We pay a fixed fee for the packages instead, which is the £149 that was mentioned in the first post.

That sounds the same as was reported just above. Thanks for confirming.

That's interesting. I would imagine that a port like Santorini could cause a problem in that case as someone who just has a glass of wine with a meal, so therefore doesn't get the beverage package, could run into a problem if that is what they are doing.

Send them the copy of the freestyle daily that clearly states they aren’t serving alcohol.

I honestly don’t think that it is a cost cutting move, or anything like that. I’m quite sure that there is a reason for this (my guess a licensing issue). The fact that it was sorted on the Jade suggests that it is something fixable. They need to fix it quick though.

It could be interesting in Santorini today. Both the Escape (serving alcohol) and Gem (not serving alcohol) are there today.

Moderno and Teppanyaki have a set cover charge is you don’t have the dining package whereas the other restaurants have a la carte pricing. This is why they are displayed differently, but both are covered under the dining package (except for a couple of upcharge items in the a la carte places - see the menus for details). There is a 20% gratuity added to any charge you incur, but as you have the dining package that charge will be zero unless you get an upcharge item. If you do get an upcharge then you pay 20% gratuity on that.

There isn't really all that much which will go there as the supports for the ropes course are in the way. I think they are probably leaving the area as deck space.

My guess is that it is some sort of licensing issue. If so then you would have thought they would have learned their lesson from the Jade and made sure it didn’t happen again.

This is from today's daily, posted on a different thread.

I'm not seeing much, if any, discrepancy in what people are posting. The confusion is that people are reporting that they haven't had any problem on ships where nobody is claiming that there should be. For example, on the Jade it was literally just an issue for two days (embarkation day on the first two cruises from Athens). Lots of people are saying that they haven't had a problem on the Jade since then, which is no surprise. I haven't seen anyone contradicting the reports from the Gem last week (or today). For me, it looks like a specific NCL issue. Purely speculating, but I think that there has been some problem behind the scenes on the Jade and Gem, which meant that they shouldn't serve until those were resolved. It's odd though that the Jade was just Athens whereas the Gem is every port. I suspect (and hope for this cruising soon) that they get the Gem sorted soon.

Escape doesn't appear to have been affected so far.

One of the problems is that this isn't just a few hours in the afternoon. They tend to stay late in Greek ports (Santorini, Athens etc), and in those ports people won't even be able to get a drink with their evening meal. On our recent cruise the times for leaving port were 6pm, 9pm, 6pm and 9.30pm. If there had been no bar service at every Greek port then that would have had a major impact, especially as we paid paid to upgrade to Premium Plus.

This is certainly true. There were two sailings on the Jade back in April (the first two sailings of the year in Greece) where there was no bar service on embarkation day until after sail away. Since then the Jade has been operating as normal. The Escape has recently visited Greece with no problems as far as I can tell. The Gem made its first visit to Greece last week on a Rom-Venice cruise, and there was no bar service whilst in Greek ports. This even included whilst tethering in Santorini. They are now on the return trip to Rome and had their first Greek stop today in Corfu where there was no bar service. Apparently the bars have opened now they have left. They are going to Santorini tomorrow. It is notable that this seems to be a problem on the first cruises of the year. The fact that this has been resolved on the Jade suggests that they will also get things sorted on the Jade, but you don't know for sure.