Nipo

On 2/23/2024 at 11:35 PM, graphicguy said:

Just had an eye popping realization-3,500 Euros for a solo cabin?  No wonder they included the tips on FAS.

Well, that's a 18-night Cruise from Tahiti to Melbourne 😄 .

But I called the travel agent and they said that everything is really included in that price, so no extra gratuities for the drinks or special restaurants. Do the Free at Sea really is 150 € / 200 € for the whole cruise (cruises lengths 14 nights and 18 nights).

This is from NCL page

9 minutes ago, D_And_K_gocruising said:

so the price is the same, they are just including them now?  Again wonder if this is a no US thing.. 

Well, the price is only € 150 more for one person for a 13 night cruise with the Free at Sea than without it. € 200 difference for a 18 night cruise... So I think it's worth the drinks, special dining and internet package if it's true. 

Well, I checked NCL home page as well as ***** and Smartcruiser (European travel agent pages I often use) and it's the same thing in every one of them, it doesn't add gratuities as it used to do. Those rules I enclosed are from NCL home page... and it clearly says " 20% gratuities on the retail value of the dining and beverage package are included "

I tested cruise booking last time like a month ago and it added me the gratuities for the Free at Sea packages which made them not worth purchasing. Now I tried again and it says nothing about the gratuities and really looks like they are included, so the price of the package seems reasonable.

Even more confusing this becames with the Free at Sea rules which first says that the gratuities are additional and then states that they are included. So which is the case at the moment? (And yes, I know they were additional still a month ago or so, but now it seems different).

INCLUDED COMPONENTS
Government taxes, port expenses & fees, discretionary onboard service charges and/or gratuities are additional
Cancellation Fees also apply based on the booking/sailing date; therefore, Norwegian Cruise Line strongly recommends the purchase of travel protection on all bookings
This is a cruise only offer. This promotion is not applicable on the land portion of cruise tours
Components included in this offer have no monetary value, are non-refundable and non-transferable
20% gratuities on the retail value of the dining and beverage package are included
Offer and combinability with other promotional offers is subject to change at any time per Norwegian Cruise Line's discretion. Other restrictions may apply

I can't find anywhere the information about what time you have to board the ship in Gran Canaria for a 7 day Canary islands cruise. The ship departs at 10 pm, my flight should arrive in Gran Canaria airport at 1 pm. The distance is 30 km / 30 minutes according to Googlemaps. Will I make it?

I’m so disappointed with our previous cruise with Carnival – it was just about impossible to eat healthy onboard. I would like my food to have a lot of proteins and fibres and I like to eat fruit and vegetables as well as low fat meat, mostly fish and chicken. So, at Carnival the breakfast I ate only orange and cottage cheese - all the bread was white wheat and there was no fibre rich cereal choices. The cold cuts were very salty and wet, not good at all. At lunch buffet there was never fish and the only chicken laid in ugly greasy sauce.Salad choices were very narrow, no meat or protein there, no low fat cooked vegetables either. Only at dinner was I able to order fish – only one choice each night. For the side I had to order separate broccoli every night except one night they had beans and asparagus - other nights only potatoes, rice and pasta (and once pumpkin).

Previously my experiences with NCL and Royal Caribbean are not as bad, bud not good either. At Norwegian they had pretty good choices at the beginning, but ran out of all heathy food by the end of the cruise and at the end they were trying to force us on pastries, because nothing else was left. At Royal Caribbean all the fruit were served whole so that if you wanted fruit you had to peel it yourself– not very comfortable. Also the salad choices were quite narrow.

So I’m looking for a cruise line where it would be easy to eat healthy and have multiple tasty choices. Especially looking for fish and chicken breast as well as lot of vegetables and fruit ready to eat in tasty serving.

Oh yes! When we travel, one point of the whole thing is to get away from home and NOT see other finns around. That's the reason I never book thru finnish travel agencies. Once the cruise line had got a not-so-great idea to seat us in the same table with an other finnish family that happened to be on the same ship! Oh ****, they were terrible, nasty and did not talk to us, we literally tried to sit as far from each other as possible and not recognize each other at all.

Much later did I found out that the couple was my husbands previous clients (he's not allowed to talk about his clients and they didn't mention the matter) that hadn't had so pleasant experience with his employee. So actually I was the only adult in the table not knowing why no-one talked to each other and felt so annoyed.

Not traveling with that cruise line anymore.

Forgive me for jumping in on this thread, but as it is pretty much the same as my query, it's probably not worth me starting a new one.

 

Anyhow, I'm a novice cruiser and am thinking about booking a med cruise tomorrow on the Epic for next June. NCL are currently doing a promotion of free items for ocean view and above bookings ... http://www.ncl.co.uk/offers/freestyle-choice/

 

The terms and conditions state that "Ultimate beverage package option includes 18% gratuity on the package" so I assume that we will not have to pay this ourselves???

 

However, another explanation isn't as transparent (to me at least!) when it states "An 18% gratuity and beverage service charge will be added to all package purchases". ... https://www.ncl.com/terms/ultimate-beverage-package

 

Finally, I gather that an additional 15% VAT is also chargeable for sailings from Spanish ports, which in our case is from Barcelona. Is this also included and covered in the "free" UBP or do we need to pay this ourselves?

 

Pardon my query, which may seem trivial to some, but I'm unsure whether we will in fact have to pay 18% + 15% (total 33%) for each "free" drink!

 

Unfortunately, being a very impatient soul, I want to know ASAP, and the NCL offices are now closed until tomorrow!

 

Thanks in advance for any responses.

Yep, this is how it is and how I learned it to be recently :) So, your first quote is from uk site and the next one is from us site. If you book from Europe, you don't have to pay the gratuities but if you book from America, you have to pay them. So, be a happy European :cool:

Hi!

We're cruising Valparaiso to Buenos Aires with Norwegian Sun on December and want to see some king penguins We're also a family of five, so those per person prices make readymade excursions very expensive for us. Previously in most of the ports we've taken a taxi or rented a car to travel cheaper, but I have no idea what are the chances over there. So, two questions:

1) What are the best places to see king penguins on our itinerary? and

2) What would be a cost effective way for five people to do this excursion?

Thanks!

I just did this...Adults gets UDP and the gratuities are added to the total cost of your cruise. You don't HAVE to buy soda packages for the kids. But they are not included in your free UDP. You will still have to pay for those.

Sure, of course, but the thing is that our kids are competing athletes and will be going strictly thru their training program also when cruising so they are not going to drink very many sodas during the cruise. That was also the point in my question since probably the only drinks we will have with the package will be one glass of wine for me and my husband for the dinner. But gladly thru out TA we don't need to pay the gratuities for the package so we will take it. With the gratuities it wouldn't be worth the price.

Okay, they are quite strict here... I posted an answer yesterday, but I quess since I mentioned our TA by name the whole message has been removed...

So, the TA is german, and i booked thru Internet.

I asked the TA and the answer was: "If guests book the Ultimate Beverage Package before the cruise starts, they do not need to pay anymore else. Only with the booking on board, NCL charges the gratuities of 18% for the drinks."

So, I still don't know if this is only the situation with this TA, but I'll take the UBC:s :)

Norwegian gives a free drinking package in new bookings for two adults per cabin. Does this include the 18% service charge too or do they charge that from your account? How about when having kids in the same cabin - do you have to buy soda packages for the kids if adults are getting this drinking package?

Thanks a lot! That Cruise Compass will be for great use.

However the answer to my question wasn't so pleasant: They only have one Advanced skating session on day 3 for half an hour and it even says they require the use of helmet so really no reason to bring our own skates. Pity, since the kids would really need to skate a little bit since they have competitions coming after the cruise... At our first cruise in 2007 they had something like 3 to 4 Advanced skating HOURs that really lasted an hour.

So, how many skating sessions are there nowadays in a 8-day cruise (Independence of the Seas)? I also read from somewhere that they would nowadays require helmets also in advanced sessions, is that true?

Having two competing figure skaters in the family I'm just trying to figure out if it's worth bringing skates to get at least some practice during the week.

We're a family of five with the father having different last name from the mother and the kids (he kept his maiden name). The kids are boys aged 12 and 14 and a girl aged 8.

We've cruised RCCL twice before without questions from the different last name, but those times we were all in the same cabin and in two cabins with a door in between.

Now we have booked two cabins and booking late we didn't get adjacent ones, but there are two other cabins between our two cabins. Since we booked on-line we had to put an adult to both cabins so the other one is booked for the father and the boys and the other one for me and our daughter. There are two reservation numbers too, but the reservations are connected.

So, my questions:

1) Is it possible for the boys to sleep together in the twin stateroom and us parents with our daughter in the other? (Since the cabins are not next to each other.)

2) If not, does the father need some documets about his fatherhood since he has different last name from the boys and is staying alone in the cabin with them?

(In this case it's interesting what we'll come up with since in our country we don't have any birth certificates or any other that kind of documents but everything is only in computers...)

Wrong-read again. I just got mine and it states you are NOT allowed to bring non-alcoholic beverages on board with you. it's in the alcohol policy section.

 

Alcohol Policy

Guests are not allowed to bring beer, hard liquor or nonalcoholic

beverages onboard for consumption or any

other use. Guests may bring personal wine onboard only

on embarkation day, limited to two (2) 750 ml bottles per

stateroom. When consumed in any public area, each bottle

shall be subject to a corkage fee of $25.00. Additional

bottles of wine beyond two (2) bottles that are brought

onboard or any alcoholic beverages purchased in ports-ofcall

or from Shops On Board will be stored by the ship and

delivered to your stateroom on the last day of the sailing

That is VERY interesting, because that's not what our Independence documents say. I can't figure out how to copy paste the whole text here with this computer, but it starts:

Alcoholic Beverage Policy

Quests are now allowed to bring onboard on embarkation day only two botles of wine or champagne per stateroom... ... Security may inspect containers (water bottles, soda bottles, mouthwash, luggage, etc.) and will dispose of containers holding alcohol....

So either they have changed their policies or they now have different policies on different ships. Or then that thing you put there is somewhere else, but not in our cruise documents. There is not a word of nonalcoholic drinks in my documents besides that. Anyway what I think that text means is that you can bring soda and water freely, but it might be inspected to make sure it's not alcohol.

I just received cruise documents for our next cruise with Independent. In the documents there is not said anything about non-alcohol drink restrictions anymore. So reading the documents I would say that you can bring as much soft drinks and water as you want to. Besides that you are allowed to bring two botles of wine or sparkling wine per cabin, but only on embarkation day.