Room Service No Longer Free - NCL Starts $7.95 Charge Per Order

[NYteacher]

The DSC increases finally make sense!

 

Waiters used to get cash tips from room service. Since NCL knew they were going to start charging this outrageous fee they knew the orders would be severely cut down--probably why NCL is doing this. With no income from room service tips, they needed to make up the base so--voila! Room service tips down but income steady from DSC and specialty restaurants gratuities up.

[dobiemom]

Sorry if the pictures are illegible, ship wifi.

Thank you for trying. When you get back, could you please post bigger pictures? Thanks, and enjoy your cruise.

[maywell]

The DSC increases finally make sense!

 

Waiters used to get cash tips from room service. Since NCL knew they were going to start charging this outrageous fee they knew the orders would be severely cut down--probably why NCL is doing this. With no income from room service tips, they needed to make up the base so--voila! Room service tips down but income steady from DSC and specialty restaurants gratuities up.

 

You might be right - with the $7.95 room service charge, who's going to tip on top of that now?

 

Regarding the getting food from the buffet and eating it in the rooms, people have always done that. But my intuition tells me, they change the way or going to eventually, how to access that floor by making it so we have to swipe the sail card to open the doors. So if someone wants to reduce the DSC, all guest services has to do is pull up how many times someone went to the buffet / sundeck and be like " We can only reduced it by x, due to you using the buffet and/or the sundeck...". No one believe me when I said that Guest Services was making it hard to take it off or reducing the DSC. I honestly think they are going to do that with the doors...

[Cruisingal22]

Well, this is our first cruise coming up in two weeks. Booked last July as a celebration for our 25th anniversary. Since we have booked, all the great things we had looked forward to on our first cruise have disappeared....Blue Man Group...gone. DSC...increased. Planned dining in specialty restaurant for our celebration...cost increased by 18%, planned on Cirque, increased by 18%, planned on coffee delivered with light breakfast to enjoy on our balcony...now we have to pay extra for that too! All added we now have to spend quite a bit more than we had originally planned/budgeted for. Looks like our first cruise will now sadly, most likely, be our last. :(

[sfaaa]

Sorry to crash the party but I predict there won't be much outrage over this. Most passengers prefer to go to buffet or restaurants for their meals and seldom use room service. NCL knew and decided to phase out this underused service to reduce op costs.

[princess di44]

Will be on my first norwegian cruise in a few weeks. We rarely use room service, but would really be already disappointed in a cruise line that wouldn't notify their passengers (esp on scheduled cruises) of this. The website still says it's included. Maybe it's just Norwegians April fool joke??

[camper06]

I am on Breakaway today. Starting this sailing, all room service charges regardless of time receive a $7.95 charge!:mad: Will upload a picture of the new menu when I get back.

 

I am very upset about this. We love breakfast on the balcony some days before tours and late night snacks. I can't wait for the NCL apologists to defend this one. We received no notice of this increase prior to the cruise and I believe (although may be mistaken) that room service was always listed in the complimnetary dining section on the website.

 

This does shed some light on what happened to us last week - we got off the Gem on Friday. When we arrived, there were no room service menus in the room. When I asked the room steward if he could bring us one and some breakfast order cards, he said they didn't have them yet because they were in the process of changing them. Later in the week, he brought us a printed sheet like the one you showed, but not any breakfast cards. We never ended up using it, cause I just normally use it to order coffee and pastries before breakfast and didn't feel like asking him again.

 

I don't blame you OP for being upset. When changes are being implemented, there should always be a lead time and notice given. Unacceptable on NCL's part!

 

Hope you have a great cruise despite this bump in the road!

[maywell]

Sorry to crash the party but I predict there won't be much outrage over this. Most passengers prefer to go to buffet or restaurants for their meals and seldom use room service. NCL knew and decided to phase out this underused service to reduce op costs.

 

Going to miss the BLT sandwiches from Room Service and rethink about what to do for breakfast on disembark day - But, yeah the buffet has more choices than the room service even for soups.....

[sfaaa]

Most 3 star hotels on land have limited or no room service for guests. That hasn't affected their business at all. NCL is clearly following this business model to cut out an non revenue generating center to trim costs. But I'd agree communication could have been handled better. May have something to do with recent downsizing of its PR department.

[princess di44]

I heard Ncl stands for "no cash left". Guess this will stand true

[NYteacher]

We use room service everyday for breakfast and sometimes for either lunch or dinner as well. This is a really big deal to us. I can totally understand a service charge between midnight and six am, but not $7.95 on every order.

[maywell]

I heard Ncl stands for "no cash left". Guess this will stand true

 

Its only 'no cash left' if you didn't prepay everything you thought wasn't important or expensive like DSC, UDP and UBP for 4 people - those combined daily is enough to kill anyone's wallet.

[spookyfudge]

This is why I stoped cruising on NCL.

 

Sent from my KFTHWI using Forums mobile app

[CubsFanRS23]

Look on the bright side -- since you are paying "extra" for it, if it's not 100% perfect demand a refund.

 

We used to like the novelty/convenience of it for breakfast or a late night snack; however, after repeatedly waiting an hour for cold/room-temp breakfast it was just easier for dad (i.e., me) to head to the buffet and load up a few plates of food. And this is staying in Haven or a GS+ on RCI.

 

Enjoy your cruise! If you don't like the fee then don't do it -- and then schlep the buffet breakfast back to your room like the rest of us do. :)

[crazy4cruzn]

This will make a big difference for us. We have room service breakfast on our balcony every morning, and completely love having coffee and pastries in the ocean air. Definitely do not want to take a shower and go to the buffet just to bring something back to our balcony.

[Annmeat]

The increased DSC didn't annoy me. The 18% grat in specialty restaurants didn't bother me.

But now the consistant LACK of info from NCL about many, many aspects of our upcoming cruise are really chafing my hide!

 

I had to call pre-concierge to get any answers about booking Levity, finding out where Cagney.s ressies went..

 

Ugh!

Charging for room service even for breakfast or a 3pm sammich?

 

The lack of communication is simply unacceptable at this point. Why are we reading about changes on Cruise Critic prior to seeing them on NCL.com?

 

This is not good at all for PR.

 

🚀🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚞🐖🐖🐽🐽🐽🚣⚠️🚖

[maywell]

This will make a big difference for us. We have room service breakfast on our balcony every morning, and completely love having coffee and pastries in the ocean air. Definitely do not want to take a shower and go to the buffet just to bring something back to our balcony.

 

There's people who go to the buffet in their pajamas or just looking tacky in the morning - You'll be okay.:p

[KyleClark]

Next week on the BA $5.95 per towel animal and the following week $2 per day for a beach towel unlimted exchanges per day. ;)

[jaja]

I cannot believe this is happening...:eek: NCL...you are really pis...g people off ....:mad:

[Cruisingal22]

This will make a big difference for us. We have room service breakfast on our balcony every morning, and completely love having coffee and pastries in the ocean air. Definitely do not want to take a shower and go to the buffet just to bring something back to our balcony.

 

This is exactly my disappointment. We aren't huge full breakfast eaters, but coffee is a must and something light would be nice. Being in aft balcony, having to get dressed and schlep the entire ship to get coffee to have on the balcony is a big deal. We've been talking about having coffee & pastry on the balcony early in the morning for months. Sadly, not at $7.95 a pop. And to those that say "no big deal"...for our particular cruise on the Epic in April, we've been hit right and left with added fees and no entertainment booking, no Blue Man Group. Each individually may be no bid deal, but one thing after the other, all of which happened after final payment, not like we could just cancel. We're just stuck paying for one thing and getting a whole lot less than we had planned.

[LrgPizza]

We've never used room service on NCL because the menu sucks, but this is just stupid. There isn't a single thing on that menu worth even a buck.

[mking8288]

To help Doggfan7 - the most current ones dated 2015 but without the Delivery Charge, but on the bottom, it noted the 18% gratuity charge on bottom of the legal sized paper stock (page 2 herein) ...

 

Here's the ("old") Room Service Menu - printed in micro-fonts, barely readable to yours truly with progressive & dedicated reading glasses on the Breakaway when I tried to order Room Service. "Fine" selections are LIMITED & further scaled back from 2014 (more items taken off the menu)

 

Link to dropbox - might need to d/l and zoom in to read it (18% gratuity charge) -

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/64025118/2015%20NCL%20BA/NCL-2015RSM1%20%281034x1280%29.jpg

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/64025118/2015%20NCL%20BA/NCL-2015RSM2%20%281074x1280%29.jpg

[SissasMomE]

I am on Breakaway today. Starting this sailing, all room service charges regardless of time receive a $7.95 charge!:mad: Will upload a picture of the new menu when I get back.

 

I am very upset about this. We love breakfast on the balcony some days before tours and late night snacks. I can't wait for the NCL apologists to defend this one. We received no notice of this increase prior to the cruise and I believe (although may be mistaken) that room service was always listed in the complimnetary dining section on the website.

 

I'm over it. I wasn't going to do anything because we have a group booking, but I'm going to look at other cruise lines now. If we can't switch, we can't ... but this will be our last on NCL. They can kiss my hiney.

[DreamingBig1]

This is a serious bummer! We enjoy coffee delivered to the room in the morning. We usually grab breakfast later.

 

They shouldn't charge a fee for coffee or other quick grab items in the morning.

 

The least they could do is offer a floor by floor place to pick up one of those little carafes of coffee quick.

[cruise4family]

We finally decided to give NCL a try and booked the Breakaway. Ever since then, there has been a constant flow of negative happenings -- no reservations for the shows, increased DSC, now the added charge for room service. This has been disappointing and I agree that NCL's communication about the changes is sorely lacking.