MeHeartCruising

You will pass thru passport control as you leave London. First you pass thru UK passport control to properly exit the country. Then a few steps further you will pass thru French passport control. You will need to show any required documentation (visas, etc) at that point. There is also a full X-ray scan of your luggage done at this point. So you will need to lift each bag up on to a conveyor belt. The X-ray is large enough for large suitcases. After all that you go to the waiting area until boarding. In Paris, you simply exit the train and walk out of the station to go where you want. There are no passport/customs formalities upon arrival.

These type of cruises are quite common in the Mediterranean. NCL, Royal, and MSC all do them. It is called interporting. NCL started doing it 3-5 years ago, I believe. And enjoy the Epic. I’ve been on her twice and enjoyed it a lot.

I buy my Eurostar tickets directly on eurostar.com from the United States with no issues. I also download the Eurostar app on to my iPhone and access my ticket from there to board the train. I've ridden it twice (Paris to London and Amsterdam to London). I will always use it for similar distances. The only downside for the OP, as they have mentioned, is their luggage. There will be room for the luggage on the train. But you will need to deal with it yourself for the most part.

Excellent! Thanks.

Sailing in 3 weeks. Do any recent Joy passengers know whether it is a Coke or Pepsi ship at this point in time? Thanks.

I don't think any cruise line in any port has an "official" time that you can check in. You could call your cruise line and ask them what to expect. Generally, they start the process once the personnel are in place and ready with all their setup they need to do. This can vary somewhat. If the ship was late arriving that morning, that definitely impacts things. But yes, it generally is between 9:30 and 10:30 for most locations, but it could be later if the stars don't align. Actual boarding will not start until all the passengers from the previous cruise have left the ship. Sometimes there are a few stragglers that delay boarding. But this doesn't usually impact the ability to check-in. In my multiple European cruises (including a couple from Rome), check-in and boarding times were very similar to what you are familiar with in the USA. If 10:30 works for you, I would arrive at 10:30. You may or may not have a short wait outside the building while they get ready for you. Unless told otherwise, I would probably be there by 10:00, since I like to arrive early. I don't mind waiting if I need to.

Agreed. Use a credit card (get one with no international transaction fees, such as from Capital One) for most purchases. Then use an ATM to get what cash you need as needed, just like at home. Notify your bank in advance about international travel. If you’re uncomfortable arriving with no euros, get a hundred or 2 in advance from your own bank. They may need to order it for you. I usually show up with less than 20 euros that were left over from a previous trip. First stop is an ATM.

As a solo traveler, I’ve always made reservations for 2 when I wanted to do so in advance of the cruise. On my most recent cruise, I thought I’d be nice and notify them on the first day of the cruise that I was just one person, in case that mattered to them. All that did was get my entire first reservation cancelled because the person didn’t know how to modify a reservation. After she fumbled with it, she just told me it didn’t matter. She thought she had fixed the first reservation, but when I later checked it on the tv, it was gone. I had to reschedule it. I just tell them that I am dining alone when I arrive. No big deal.

Thanks @cruisemom42, this is helpful to me too. I’m looking forward to seeing them. Did you take the Celebrity shuttle into the city center? If so, did you have to buy it as a post-cruise excursion? Or just go to guest services and pay for it?

Different cruise lines and even some ships on the same cruise line can do B2B processes slightly different. But they are generally pretty similar. You will likely get your ship pass card for the second cruise delivered to your cabin a day or two before turnaround day. That usually will have a letter with instructions on what to do on turnaround day. Some times, the ship pass cards are not distributed until the morning of the turnaround. In most cases, I think they ask all B2B passengers to gather at one location on the ship at a specific time. It seems it's usually 8:30 or 9:00 am or so. They then process you "off" the first cruise. When I did this in Rome, they took us to the gangway and used the same computer to process us off as was being used by the other disembarking passengers. But they did us all as a group. However, we had to wait until ALL the other disembarking passengers were off the ship. They wanted to zero out the count of passengers ON the ship. This took us until after 10 am in my case due to some stragglers on the ship. Once everyone else was off the ship, we were taken to the gangway and we used our old cards to get "off" the ship. Then if we wished to return to the ship for the second cruise, we used our new cards to get "on" the ship again. If we wished to go ashore, we were free to do that. They processed us "off" the first cruise and also gave us an "Thru Passenger" pass. This pass could be shown to shore personnel upon return to the ship so that we could bypass the check-in process and proceed directly to boarding the ship. Unfortunately for you, I think the timing and any delays is one thing that will vary from ship to ship and cruise to cruise. I'm hoping to do the same thing you are wanting to do in May on my own B2B. Except I don't plan on using any sort of guided tour. I haven't fully vetted out my plans, but I believe Royal Caribbean might offer a post-cruise shuttle to the Ravenna train station (perhaps for a fee) -- designed for disembarking passengers. I may look into taking that, if I can, because the mosaic walking tours that I've seen seem to be in that same area. I also may just get off the ship and take a taxi into mosaic area. I most likely will use a taxi to get back to the ship later in the day. I'll start formulating a better plan here in the coming weeks.

For my Sept 2022 trip, I purchased my train ticket from Waterloo Station to Southampton via https://www.thetrainline.com. I ordered from the USA. I paid $12.33 for one ticket and purchased it a little less than 3 weeks prior to the day of travel. I set up an account online and also downloaded their phone app. My ticket was then available in the phone app. I also had a printed copy, if I recall. I did not make a seat reservation. I'm not even sure it was available to get one. I thought I was directed to this site to purchase tickets by The Man in Seat 61 (look it up if you want a lot of good info on train travel). But now I can't seem to find any references to thetrainline.com on his site for UK travel. So I could be wrong where I heard of this site.

That is correct. Similar concept and end result. But one is purchased on the ship and one is not. Usage terms and $$ value amounts can vary too.

The new plan sounds perfect to me! Have fun.

Similar story here to the OP. I was cruising with 2 friends (Mark and Annette). We all flew in to Miami together from Pennsylvania. A 4th (Michelle) was flying in from the Florida Gulf Coast to meet us at the terminal. She was a friend of one of the 2 in my group. The other 2 of us hadn't met her yet. We easily found each other outside the terminal and got all the introductions done and were all excited as we headed into the building. As we're going up the escalator into the new terminal building I told everyone to have their passport handy, they were looking at them near the top of the escalator. Michelle says, "I just brought an old passport. I couldn't find the new one this morning. But don't worry, I gave Mark the passport number from the new one for online checkin." My jaw dropped and I told her that I didn't think that was going to work. She didn't understand why not. Sure enough, they sent us over to the "special people" desk. Like the OP, Michelle was lucky enough that her sister lived in her apartment building and was able to get into Michelle's apartment to look around for her birth certificate. She sent a photo of the BC and sent it over to Michelle. The whole process took us about an hour. The 3 of us from Pennsylvania were not pleased. We were going on that ship even if Michelle had to fly back home. But once we got on board, we moved on and started the vacation. At the end of the cruise, Michelle was able to get back into the country, apparently using her BC picture from her phone. She got off the ship before we did, so we don't know if there was any hassle. The 3 of use decided we won't be sailing with her again. Ha.

The difference is the size of the vehicle you will be in and how many people will be on the vehicle with you. There will be less people in your tour group in the more expensive version. The tour company gets to decide how many apparently.

I would take the OP's proposed itinerary in a heartbeat. It's a great itinerary as long as it gets you to ports you're interested in. As mentioned above, it's only part of the Mediterranean, but it offers so much else too. The northern half will give you a good feel for Norway and has some Fjords, but not all those stops are deep in the Fjords either. With 23 days aboard, I don't mind a few sea days now and then to recover from extensive port days. The second set of cruises on Holland America above would also be a fantastic trip if it is offered in the OP's time frame.

I agree with hallasm. You may need to put a day or 2 in between cruises and travel from Amsterdam to a different port for the second embarkation. One way to do this would be to ride the Eurostar train from Amsterdam to London (through the English Channel tunnel) and then on to Southampton. However, if I were to do this, I'd probably fly from Amsterdam to a more southern embarkation point such as Rome or Barcelona. It really depends on what ports in the Mediterranean you would like to visit most. If you're not married to the Mediterranean option, you could look at a Norwegian Fjords cruise back to back with a Baltic cruise. There are probably some of those out of Amsterdam.

They are a good deal. If you get past all the fancy sales pitch wording, and get past the funky way they put it on your cruise bill. Bottom line, You invest $250 and they give you $500 to use toward future cruises. If the sales rep isn’t explaining it in a manner that works out in this way, ask them to keep explaining it to you. And do it early in the cruise so you can verify the math on your account. Don’t wait till the last day.

There's quite a few recent threads about the Dawn. Here are a couple... and

I guess now that you say that, it could be. But I would suspect they just park the buses once for drop off and pickups. But, I suppose they might drop off closer to the north side of the Square so you can get right on the HOHO buses. But either way, as you say, super close.

I'm not Wendy, but... The bus stop in Edinburgh is South St David Street (Stop PL). This is just north of Waverley Train Station and very near St. Andrew Square. Details in the link below. Judging from what I see on Google maps, Stop PL is on the other side of the Square from the HOHO buses (you can see them on the satellite view in Google Maps) and down South St. David Street a little bit. Stop PL shows up on Google maps as well. https://www.lothianbuses.com/cruiselink-x99/

That would make sense. For TrumpyNor’s screen shots above, it seems that both of them depict a guarantee cabin (i.e letting NCL pick it). But I may be misinterpreting the graphics shown.

Out of curiosity, what is the "benefit" difference between a "Sail Away" rate and a "Just Cruise" rate. I don't see one. But maybe I'm missing it.

I definitely enjoyed the Vigeland sculpture park. I also enjoyed seeing the murals in the large City Hall building. I did not do a tour. I just walked in to the public areas. I also really enjoyed the Viking ship museum. You will need some form of transportation to get to the sculpture park and the Viking ship museum. I used city busses and the metro.

In the USA, the only way to totally avoid the Free At Sea options (and the price that goes with them) is the Sail Away rate, which like the OP said, isn't always available. If you are not willing to accept a Guarantee Cabin, then a Sail Away isn't for you either. It is a shortcoming of the NCL offering from a customer flexibility perspective. It is not necessarily a shortcoming from NCL's perspective since it gets them the revenue they apparently are looking for.