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As an update, I finally received the refund from NCL. Thank you all who commented!!!

41 minutes ago, thistimeplease said:

It amazes me that people try and defend NCL regarding the OP's refund.  The timeline is inexcusable and if I were the OP I would cancel the cruise completely and try another cruiseline at this point.

 

Trust me, I'm seriously considering it. I have a group (10 cabins) booked for my daughter's quinceanera on the Encore and another cabin booked for June 2020. 

56 minutes ago, BirdTravels said:

This is a uninformed, incorrect statement. 
 

The OP’s biggest problem is that they are trying to get a partial refund. It would have been infinitely easier to cancel the cruise and rebook.  The system is set up to process cancellations almost immediately. The OP is trying to get a partial refund. Those types of manual transactions

typically take up to 3 months. I am not defending this timeline, but a lot of people have to review the transaction before money is sent out. 
 

I would have just left the full payment in place. Alternately I would have cancelled and rebooked. 

I agree with your comment. However, they should have told me to cancel instead of attempting to do a partial refund. It was the choice of the representative when I called originally to notify them of the issue. I have been given exacts date when the refund is going to be processed a couple of times now. I have been confirmed that the refund request is in their system and I'm starting to think it is not just me, they must have a lot of frustrated clients waiting for a refund. 

39 minutes ago, www3traveler said:

Norwegian is in the process of refunding hundreds and hundreds of requests at the moment from canceled cruises and cruises with huge itinerary changes. Another huge one just happened yesterday.  Everything takes time.  Added to the complications, is the holidays with staff having time off.  Will take a bit to play catch up.

At this point, I will wait till I come back from vacation and see what happens. I haven't cancelled the cruise because I didn't know how it was going to affect the refund. The whole issue started at the beginning of November well before the holidays. 

Hi, I hope somebody can point me in the right direction. I have sailed many many times with NCL including a Baltic cruise this year in June (btw it was amazing). In November, I booked a Mediterranean and Greece cruise for July 2021. I made a mistake and paid the entire $6500 instead of the $200 deposit. I called NCL about 3 days later when I realized the mistake (booking was done directly with NCL). NCL said there was no problem and they will going to refund the money. That's when the waiting game started. Initially, they told me it was going to be 2 weeks to get the money which, to me, is unacceptable as it is. Long story short and after at least 5 phone calls to NCL, I was transfered to their refund team today. There is a recording that says they are delayed with processing refunds by 2 weeks. I requested to speak to an agent who using the worst customer services skills possible, told me that he was taking time of his day to try to help me (said what? I thought that he was getting paid to help me) and that they only process refunds on Tuesdays and for me to keep waiting. I got no answer to the question of why was my refund not refunded in all Tuesdays from beginning of November to the end of December. At this point, I cant trust I'm getting the money specially when Tuesday is New Years Eve. It makes me lose my trust in NCL and specially worried because I have several thousands on their hands for future bookings. 

Is this an isolated issue or have other people experience similar situation? Is it any other team/person that I should contact if I dont get the refund on Tuesday ( well, I will be enjoying the Navigator of the Seas New Year's sailing next week). I dont want to put a charge back to my credit card as I feel that I will have to cancel all my bookings with NCL out of dignity (dont really want to do that as I really like NCL). 

We will be on the Navigator for New Year's eve. I got the UDP and apparently we can use if for Specialty Dinning except for Chops that will have the Holiday dinner for $89 per person. I have a question: Do they have party favors in the Specialty Restaurants on New Year's eve like they do in the MDR? Is it a festive atmosphere in the Specialty Restaurants or it is only in MDR? I really want to have the feeling of New Year's eve but I haven't been that lucky with the food in MDR lately. 

Thank you!!!!

We have been in several cruise lines as well. We are Diamond with RCL and Gold with NCL. We mainly choose by itinerary and the ship combined. We tend to like NCL in Europe and RCL in the Caribbean. However, the live music and entertainment in NCL is way above RCL. The new Rock and Roll bar in NCL is amazing while Boleros in RCL gets worse with each sailing (I was born in Cuba so I know about latin music). Boleros is a shame specially for the sailings out of Miami where there is so much Latin talent. The District Bar in NCL has not competition. Another aspect that NCL wins for me is the teens club. My daughter gets really bored in the teens club in Royal Caribbean. However, we love RCL and their enormous ships and there is nothing like the Royal Promenade or Boardwalk in any other cruise line. Just for research purposes,  I'll be in the Navigator for New Year's eve this year and NCL Breakway in June 2020 😃.

Hi, 

We will be in the Navigator of the Seas for the New Year's Eve cruise and purchased the Unlimited dining package. I was wondering if one can take food to go with the package. I'm thinking about something like taking Sushi from Izumi and eating it by the pool or maybe a Lobster Roll from Hooked. I'm not planning to do it for dinner but some times my kids might not want to be at a sit down restaurant for lunch. Or maybe we want an early appetizer in the balcony while we go to dinner later.  Actually, thinking about it, wine, sushi, balcony and sunset don't sound bad in the same sentence (Kids Club, please). 😉  

Just curious. Thank you!!

On 6/18/2019 at 12:37 PM, Albinroo said:

 Thanks, this is so great!! Looking forward to your review. Did you notice if there was a lot of young children onboard? And also, did you ever stay onboard during the port days, did most people get off? We are doing this cruise next month and hoping the ship will be somewhat empty and relaxing during port days as we have already been to most ports. Even lived in one of them! 

Yes, there were tons of kids. My son is 9 and my daughter is 13. My son was in the Kid's Club every night until 11:00PM and he didn't want to leave. He even cried last night because he was going to miss his newly found international friends. I was really not expecting so many kids especially since we were in the first sailing of the season. It was difficult to manage my son always wanting to be in the Kid's club and waking up early next day to go to port. However, he had a wonderful time and the staff did an amazing job in keeping them entertained. Teen's Club was equally exciting since my teenager didn't use the word "boring" in the entire cruise. 

14 hours ago, BirdTravels said:

Really? Yes, you will have a lower look angle to the satellite so depending in where you are in the footprint, you may have a degraded signal. But the satellite is 23,000 miles in space (46,000 miles round trip). The difference in distance from Miami to the satellite and New York to the satellite is un-noticeable considering the speed of the transmitted signal. 

19 hours ago, finny2 said:

Where your cruise is will have a large effect on how fast/slow your internet is. Since the internet satellites usually orbit at or near the equator, the farther you are from the equator, the slower your speed will be.  I would imagine that internet access on a Baltic cruise would be agonizingly slow.

It was agonizingly slow in our sailing in the Getaway on the sailing of June 7th. My husband had to do some work and he couldn't get connection not even at 2:00AM in the Internet Cafe. I was able to connect with cellphone with some country's internet providers while on the ship but the WIFI on the ship wasn't working. You can imagine the long lines in the Internet Cafe as there were a lot of guest complaining. 

18 hours ago, perditax said:

 

One deck up from the buffet, Flamingo Grill was a fantastic, complimentary Cuban restaurant on the Getaway. It was the first meal I ever ate on a cruise ship. It did breakfast and lunch. For breakfast it was a traditional small buffet, but also had fantastic Cuban pastries (cheese and guava, for example). Lunch had amazing, fresh grilled chicken, black beans and rice, fried sweet plantains, fried yucca, and some other stuff I’m probably forgetting. Maybe ropa vieja or a pork dish. I can’t remember what they had for desserts because the plantains were always my dessert, but there was probably some tres leches cake or flan. 

 

I think it lasted 2-3 years after launch before it was converted to a paid venue. That was my first lesson in the Way of NCL. 

They had flan and 3 leches for dessert. I just came back from the 1st Baltic and Scandinavian sailing of the season. Margaritaville was empty the entire sailing. 

Great!! Feel free to ask me any questions and read my trip report since I’ve done it with that age group! I don’t know what cabin you e booked but if non-haven I recommend the family large window rooms....lots of space.

I booked a balcony cabin. Your trip report was big part of the decision. I will take your offer on helping with other questions!!!! Thank u

Thank you so much for all your answers. We have decided on the NCL Baltic cruise. My kids love nature and our vacations up to this point have always revolved around it but I think at their age is really important to introduce them to culture. We are all booked and excited and ready to start planning.

Starting to plan our next family summer vacations and I’mdebating between 2 Scandinavian Cruises

• MSC Meraviglia 7 nights - (Copenhagen, Day at Sea,Hellesylt/Geriranger,Norway, Flaam, Stavanger, Day at Sea, Kiel, Germany) . $4,819.00 balcony cabin including the AUREApackage (Includes access to Termal Suite, Beverage Package (need to pay extrato upgrade to premium), massage for 2, etc)
  

• NCL Getaway 9 nights – (Copenhagen, Berlin, At Sea,Tallin, St Petersburg (overnight), Helsinkin, Stockholm, At Sea). $6,199 Balcony Cabin including $200 onboardcredit, premium beverage package, 6 nights of specialty dinning)
  

As a little background, we are a family of 4 (kids will be13 and 9 year). Kids have traveled from South Florida to Hawaii so there is noissue with long flights. We have been exposing kids to traveling since theywere really, really young so they are very used to cruises/hotels/planes andthe wonders of traveling. We have never been on any of the ports so it all will be new to us. Wehave sailed with NCL many times in the Caribbean (Including Getaway), Mediterranean and Hawaii andlost count of Bahamas cruises but have never cruised with MSC. Kids are excitedabout both itineraries and couldn’t care less what ship as all they want is akids club (well daughter is too old for that these days). Please help medecide!

Depending on the year that she immigrated frim Cuba, she might need a cuban passport. I believe people who came from Cuba after 1971 need a cuban pasaport to go Cuba. Im not sure about the exact year. I came from Cuba in 1994 and has been naturalized from almost 20 years and still need a Cuban passport just to go to Cuba. I have to use the US passport to get back to the US or to travel to other countries. Royal Caribbean should be able to tell you exactly what she needs.

quote=MarciaD;55050197]Naturalized citizen of US but born in Cuba. Came with parents back in the 60’s. Can she cruise to Cuba as easily as someone not born in Cuba.

We are thinking about renting a dinghy from Captain Nautica in St Thomas. I rather do it in St John but I'm concerned with time. We will in port in June (NCL Escape) from 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM. We want to do just the dinghy rental and not the tour. My question is: what can we do with the dinghy in St Thomas? I think that the good beaches are really far away from the rental place (Oasis Cove Marina) . Also, are there any good restaurants that we can beach the dinghy at?

I asked Captain Nautica and they said that we could take the dinghy to St John but I don't think that is possible either. Done that in bigger boat before and the water seemed a little rough for a dinghy.

My kids are really excited with the idea of renting the dinghy but I need tons of helps with the logistics. Any help will be really appreciated.

Thanks