Question about funding on board accounts

[DScroggy5]

I am hoping someone here may know the answer to this. This will be our first cruise with NCL. When we cruised with Carnival I brought cash to put on our "accounts" as I did not want to tie up my cards. Anyways, I am online and it looks like if we do the cash option that the minimum is $100 per person, per day!

Here is what it says online:

Cash/Traveler's Checks Procedures You can deposit cash or US Traveler's Checks into your onboard account. To start, US$100 per person per day is required, although more can be deposited depending on what you plan to spend.

Is that true? That means if I wanted to use cash for our onboard account, that I would have to bring $2800!!! That can't be right, or is it?

[triptolemus]

Lots of posts about that.

 

Consensus is $100 pd/pp is not accurate. They are mostly concerned with covering the DSC. Either pre-pay it or cover it plus your intended expenses with cash and you will be fine.

 

Another option is to open the onboard account with a card and simply settle it with cash or travelers cheques.

 

Others will chime in with their cash experiences, or you could try searching for previous threads... lots of chatter on this topic here.

[mitsugirly]

It's super easy and we have done it almost every cruise.

 

You can either call NCL and pre-pay your daily service charge and then just set up a cash account when you board (and tell them that you have already prepaid the DSC charge). They have never questioned me (even though I have no actual "proof" that I paid it when I do) and just so you know, their computers at the port during check-in, are not (for some reason) hooked up with the computers to NCL or on the ship. Therefore, they won't be able to look it up and see that you paid. You simply have to "tell" them. :) Never had an issue with this.

 

Or, you can just wait until you check in at the terminal and just prepay your DSC then. That's all they're really worried about as a deposit (not the $100 pp per day). Then you can apply more cash by visiting the customer service desk once on board. Trust me, when your cash is gone on your account, they will just simply decline the use of it until more is put on the account.

 

Also, you can keep track of your spending during the cruise and visit the customer service desk at any time to get a print out of your balance. :)

[Prinycesa07]

Yeah, we never do the $100/day/person. Thats just insane to me. They've never questioned it either.