Wondering if this is the cruise line for us

[hydro1570]

So we have sailed both Carnival & Royal... we have stuck with Royal for the most part. Don't think I could even drag my hubby on another Carnival cruise. I kind of got him hooked on Royal. Although are last sailing on the Oasis was not all that. So we are looking to try another to see if we like it. I notice they are running a good deal now for 3rd & 4th guest free, but then I am also reading reviews of people not happy lately because they are charging for things other lines do not change for. Can anyone explain this?

 

We do like to order room service a lot to eat on the balcony, so is this something we would be charged for? I am looking at the Getaway or Escape because close to home port. I know NOTHING about Norwegian ships though. Do a lot of families with children travel on this line?

 

Thanks in advance!

Edited April 5, 2015 by hydro1570

[Loucat]

These are turbulent times for NCL. New CEO and unexpected upcharges that apply even though people booked with the understanding room service was free. From those just off Breakaway/Getaway they are charged either $4.95 or $7.95 plus 18% gratuity.

NCL claims this is a "test".

We have sailed RCI and NCL. We stopped RCI due to the decline in food overall.

We have had good experiences with NCL but I am in a holding pattern to see what other changes are in store.

We may look elsewhere if this all continues.

Yes, there are many kids on the ships and there is a kids program but I am no expert on that area.

[glittergal1]

Ive sailed with RCI twice I enjoyed both cruises , the ships were great as were the staff, cabins and food Ive sailed with NCL once and that was not such a great experience sadly :( I had booked NCL for a May sailing with the idea it would hopefully be a better experience this time ............... I have not even sailed yet and I am now wishing I had not booked ..........too many negative changes . I am trying to be positive Its my birthday while on board and I truly hope for a great cruise experience fingers crossed .

[NLH Arizona]

So we have sailed both Carnival & Royal... we have stuck with Royal for the most part. Don't think I could even drag my hubby on another Carnival cruise. I kind of got him hooked on Royal. Although are last sailing on the Oasis was not all that. So we are looking to try another to see if we like it. I notice they are running a good deal now for 3rd & 4th guest free, but then I am also reading reviews of people not happy lately because they are charging for things other lines do not change for. Can anyone explain this?

 

We do like to order room service a lot to eat on the balcony, so is this something we would be charged for? I am looking at the Getaway or Escape because close to home port. I know NOTHING about Norwegian ships though. Do a lot of families with children travel on this line?

 

Thanks in advance!

You might want to take a look at these threads and a few others.

 

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2189329

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2191843

 

On all my cruises, there have been a lot of families and children and from what I've read on here, their children's programs are really good.

 

Before you read the other threads, I must say that all of the people I've met onboard the NCL ships have been fantastic, unlike what seem like based on their posts on these threads.

Edited April 5, 2015 by NLH Arizona

[maywell]

I think you should wait until the dust settles regarding the pricing of room service because they haven't set a final price for it yet. After it made official, then decide if NCL is the right fit for you. Whatever you choose (Royal, Carnival, NCL or any others), have fun and enjoy!!

 

 

Like NLH Arizona said - the forums do not represent the actual NCL passengers who are more kind-hearted, good-nature and calmer than what's posted in NCL threads on CC.

[LakeWobegon]

I don't think these are turbulent times for NCL in the least. They are 10X that for the NCL cruise critic forum users, though. Take that with a grain of salt. Sure, Norwegian may have goofed in how they announced and/or instituted those changes. But people aren't running around worrying about the line's future at headquarters. And are you really going to let a $7.95 convenience fee on an expanded room service menu (i.e. they are giving you numerous more choices than in the past) dictate whether you cruise with them? I will be a second time cruiser next spring and have no real opinion on NCL yet as our first cruise was RCCL and we loved it. But I'm willing to give them a try based on the Escape and all the other positives, like great reviews of the Breakaway class ships and a lower price point. Actually in goofing around last night, I saw we could cruise RCCL on Oasis or Allure for about the same price as Escape in a similar room set up the exact same week, but we've heard good things about NCL. We're going to give them a shot. Good luck in whatever you decide!

[crkdad]

So we have sailed both Carnival & Royal... we have stuck with Royal for the most part. Don't think I could even drag my hubby on another Carnival cruise. I kind of got him hooked on Royal. Although are last sailing on the Oasis was not all that. So we are looking to try another to see if we like it. I notice they are running a good deal now for 3rd & 4th guest free, but then I am also reading reviews of people not happy lately because they are charging for things other lines do not change for. Can anyone explain this?

 

We do like to order room service a lot to eat on the balcony, so is this something we would be charged for? I am looking at the Getaway or Escape because close to home port. I know NOTHING about Norwegian ships though. Do a lot of families with children travel on this line?

 

Thanks in advance!

 

 

We have sailed on RCCL, CCL, Celebrity and NCL. Each cruise line has their own opponents and proponents. Recently, NCL has made a few changes that long-time NCL cruisers are not used to, and frankly, NCL could have handled it a little better. However, none of these fees are new and the increases represent less 1-3% of most people's overall cruise fare cost. I would not let these recent posts influence you either for or against any cruise line.

 

Having sailed on the four cruise lines, we would not hesitate to return to any of the four, if the itinerary, time of year and price were right.

 

As far as comparisons go, RCCL, CCL and NCL all attract a LOT of kids. Of course the time of year affects how many kids will be on board. If you or your DH are wowed by the ships, in my opinion, RCCL ships are stunning marvels of engineering at its finest. Don't get me wrong, CCL and NCl have nice ships and NCL's Breakaway class are beautiful ships, but they do not have the same WOW factor.

 

Food is very subjective and you can asked 100 people and get a 100 different answers. IMHO, I give NCl the slight nod in this department. NCL seems to have more alternative dining venues, albeit some are extra charge, but the shear mention of CCL chocolate melting cake makes my mouth water. I cannot recall a memorable meal (good or bad) on RCCL.

 

Entertainment- all excel in different areas. CCL seems to be focusing on piano bars and comedy clubs on their ships as an emphasis. I was quite impressed with the illusinarium (sp) on the Getaway and the legally Blond show was also good. Ice skating and the Oasis outdoor show is also quite impressive.

 

If you have the opportunity and the itinerary, price and timing suits your needs, then give another cruise line a try. Go in with an open mind and the recognition that each cruise line does things slightly differently and you will have a wonderful vacation. After the cruise you will either like what you experienced and have opened up a whole new avenue of cruising choices or it will confirm that RCCL is the cruise line that best suits your interest.

[Sand and Seas]

We've been on RCCL, Carnival and Costa, but we love NCL and 'freestyle' cruising the most. It's a more relaxing way to cruise for us. We enjoy the food and entertainment. We usually eat 3 times in a Specialty and remaining meals in the MDRs. Although we are not excited about some of the fee increases, they won't stop us from enjoying the next 3 cruises we have booked for May, August and January (Escape!). For each of them we got the free UBP and although we aren't big drinkers, it makes it fun for us to order the different drinks and try out a frozen something or other:D

[em-sk]

Look at it this way. For room service, lets assume you use it every day worse case it costs $8 x 1.18 x 7 days aprox. $75.00 Instead of charging you those $75 up front at time of booking (as part of the fare) NCL is going to do it when you are on board each day a few minutes after the room service delivery occurs. Depending on the ship you are in it might be $50 or $0.

 

Good news, free Chinese Speciality Restaurant was introduced at the same time.

Edited April 5, 2015 by em-sk

[Love2Cruz2015]

Be advised that their partnership with Nickelodean is ending next year...don't know if they plan on bringing another child friendly partnership in it's place as they just announced this "break up"

 

 

I booked the Getaway to try out another Cruise line other than CCL and Disney but cancelled after the storm started and the pile on of added fees...

[Loucat]

I don't think these are turbulent times for NCL in the least. They are 10X that for the NCL cruise critic forum users, though. Take that with a grain of salt. Sure, Norwegian may have goofed in how they announced and/or instituted those changes. But people aren't running around worrying about the line's future at headquarters. And are you really going to let a $7.95 convenience fee on an expanded room service menu (i.e. they are giving you numerous more choices than in the past) dictate whether you cruise with them? I will be a second time cruiser next spring and have no real opinion on NCL yet as our first cruise was RCCL and we loved it. But I'm willing to give them a try based on the Escape and all the other positives, like great reviews of the Breakaway class ships and a lower price point. Actually in goofing around last night, I saw we could cruise RCCL on Oasis or Allure for about the same price as Escape in a similar room set up the exact same week, but we've heard good things about NCL. We're going to give them a shot. Good luck in whatever you decide!

When you have a new CEO whose bottom line is to raise money, I need to look at what they are doing.

I have given NCL, RCL, HAL, Azamara, Princess and Celebrity a shot but have not experienced so much change in such a short period of time.

I am on hold with NCL until the dust settles.

Good luck with your sailings too.

[DrNora]

Be advised that their partnership with Nickelodean is ending next year...don't know if they plan on bringing another child friendly partnership in it's place as they just announced this "break up"

 

 

I booked the Getaway to try out another Cruise line other than CCL and Disney but cancelled after the storm started and the pile on of added fees...

 

just because the partnership is allegedly ending doesn't mean too much. They certainly are not going to tear down the spongebob pool or,rip,down the Dora wallpaper. If you are only taking your kids for a one minute handshake with Patrick, thenWait and see.

To the OP- we, too will not ever go on CCl again, have been on many DCL and RCL and several Greek lines, Costa and X.

 

We ditched NCL at one point after a bad experience with staff but got over it as we like to stay in suites with our 3 kids and NCL does suites and the Haven better than any of the more family- friendly lines.

 

getaway is absolutely our favorite ship. Better than the big RCL ships- unimpressed with Oasis , we did love Freedom- but there is so much more to do onGetaway than on our last 3 RCl trips. Our kids are now teens and they didn't use the teen club because we were doing so many other things. It was the first ship on which we didn't actually feel the need to have the extra pampering included in staying in a suite .

 

As for the new charges-I do not feel that a gratuity on specialty dining or a charge for room service should be grounds fo canceling a cruise. We're talking an extra MAYBE $100 bucks if you are on Breakaway and have daily RS.

 

A big plus with a family is not having to dress up..eating when we want..we do travel at peak times except never ever during spring break( we don't have one here on the Mason Dixon line!) and have not felt overrun with children. Yes, we have 3, but sometimes other people's kids.........

 

Also- for us the price is better on NCL than Royal and especially better than Disney.

[Ready to Sail!]

I found you question interesting because I had been thinking the same thing this last week after reading so many posts on this board. We have cruised NCL before along with Carnival, Princess and a couple of lines no longer in service (we do go back a ways!) We enjoyed our last experience with NCL which was about 10 years ago.

 

We decided that the new charges were not a deal breaker for us. NCL has the itinerary we want for the Med and that is our priority. Don't use room service a lot and certainly don't have to if we don't want to pay. The gratuity on the specialty restaurants doesn't really matter that much as we will probably only do 2-3 times at most.

 

We are getting the itinerary we want at a good fare and extra perks promotion for booking right now so we did so today.

 

We all have to decide for ourselves what our priorities are and base our decisions accordingly.

[LakeWobegon]

I am not looking to get into a debate and do not want to hijack this post as such. But I will just say that Del Rio taking over is much a matter of happenstance as anything else. When one company acquires another and you have two strong leaders, typically one goes. And in the business world, it's typically not personal. Sheehan likely was ready to go, as our most Fortune 500 CEOs after approximately 5 years. In fact, Del Rio is continuing what Sheehan started. He's not doing anything revolutionary just yet. I have a point, its that its business as usual for NCL. Sure they're recording better bookings and revenues than 2014. But the objective isn't to drastically change the business model or do anything different than Sheehan had set in motion. Del Rio has said as much many times over. They have NCL and the luxury brands. They're not looking to push NCL into that category just yet. They're just exploring options like enhanced services for customers and charging for it because, more options cost NCL money and if they didn't pass the cost on they'd lose money and go out of business.

 

I agree NCL seems like it has a lot of fees compared to the other lines but look at the base prices of most of those lines sans Carnival. Much higher in most circumstances. So all of a sudden, those "free" services or items really aren't. We looked at Disney and NCL for March 2016 cruise. Disney was nearly twice as much for a family verandah with less space versus the connecting large balcony rooms we booked on the Escape for the same week. I'd rather pay hundreds in fees and extras than thousands more to get that same stuff, and then not even. I don't get UBP on Disney, etc. Granted, Disney and NCL are apples to oranges. But I'd compare what you get on each line and total costs versus the fees. NCL is just using a different fee-based model to administer the charges the other lines have worked into their base price already.

[LakeWobegon]

Also, from looking at the old room service menu compared to the new one, it looks like you have many, many more options now for that $7.95 per order. If I enjoyed breakfast on my balcony each morning, I'd really want a number of options over the course of the week versus just one or two like the old menu. So this move is a good one in my opinion on NCL's behalf.

[maywell]

Also, from looking at the old room service menu compared to the new one, it looks like you have many, many more options now for that $7.95 per order. If I enjoyed breakfast on my balcony each morning, I'd really want a number of options over the course of the week versus just one or two like the old menu. So this move is a good one in my opinion on NCL's behalf.

 

And when you compare the costs of the Carnival new Room service menu prices, NCL doesn't seem so bad for getting hot items - If you order 3 items or less from NCL room service, then it's not cost effective. But if you order the hot items from Carnival that actually more expensive than NCL overall room service fee (if you order just the free items from Carnival than its cheaper than NCL's).

[DreamingBig1]

The fun part is the only way your ever going to find out whether you like NCL is for you to give it a go.

 

It's always fun to try to new things.

 

I say go for it. We are trying NCL for the first time this December, and we are very excited!

[SteelMagnolia9]

I've been on the NCL Dawn and the Sky. I am booked on the Escape later this year. I like NCL's product and their casual atmosphere on their ships. The cruise line is family friendly. Only you can decide if a room service charge is a deal breaker for your cruise.

 

NCL is definitely marketing its new ships to families.

 

There is a lack of civility in the NCL forum with name calling and insults. It's a bit shocking to me that this is permitted on a travel board. I've participated on other travel boards for independent travelers when I'm doing research for a trip and it's always been civil. It's a mixed bag on the information one receives in this forum and it appears to be a landmine to comment or ask a question.

 

If you like the itinerary, ship features and it's within your budget, I would recommend it.

[sfaaa]

 

There is a lack of civility in the NCL forum with name calling and insults. It's a bit shocking to me that this is permitted on a travel board. I've participated on other travel boards for independent travelers when I'm doing research for a trip and it's always been civil. It's a mixed bag on the information one receives in this forum and it appears to be a landmine to comment or ask a question.

.

 

C'mon now. If a little bit of rough play on internet bothers you, how do you deal with adversities in the real world? There are two ways to deal with name calling and insults. You can either push back or simply shrug and laugh it off. Nothing to it.

[maywell]

C'mon now. If a little bit of rough play on internet bothers you, how do you deal with adversities in the real world? There are two ways to deal with name calling and insults. You can either push back or simply shrug and laugh it off. Nothing to it.

 

Or report and add them to the ignore list especially when they across the line into personal attacks. That's what the moderators are for - handling the name calling and insults.

[nbsjcruiser]

So we have sailed both Carnival & Royal... we have stuck with Royal for the most part. Don't think I could even drag my hubby on another Carnival cruise. I kind of got him hooked on Royal. Although are last sailing on the Oasis was not all that. So we are looking to try another to see if we like it. I notice they are running a good deal now for 3rd & 4th guest free, but then I am also reading reviews of people not happy lately because they are charging for things other lines do not change for. Can anyone explain this?

 

We do like to order room service a lot to eat on the balcony, so is this something we would be charged for? I am looking at the Getaway or Escape because close to home port. I know NOTHING about Norwegian ships though. Do a lot of families with children travel on this line?

 

Thanks in advance!

 

We are just like you folks. A few Carnival cruises and lots of RCI cruises. We've done 2 NCL cruises and after the fall of this year it looks like we'll be sticking with NCL for a bit starting with the Getaway next February.

 

I think you'll find NCL really something you'll enjoy. The entertainment is top notch and the food selections with all the different restaurants is something I really enjoy. NCL really has the my time dining down to a science so if you're like us and you do MTD, you won't run into the issues we've run into on RCI. RCI tries to do both MTD and Traditional and it results in some issues from time to time. As far as charges go, everythign you do on RCI will probably be similarly priced on NCL. Yes they brought in a service charge for room service but it works out to like $5 or something. I don't know about you but when I get room service (not very often) I give at least a $5 tip anyway.

 

You'll find the NCL future cruise credit is actually a good program, unlike RCI. NCL you pay $250 and they give you $100 right them to spend on the cruise. So you end up with a credit to book a cruise and it cost $150. Great deal.

 

You'll find the ships are quite similar in the respect that there's plenty to do, lots of activities and IMO, service on NCL is better than RCI. Its been my experience that service on RCI has gone down hill over the last few years.

 

Long story short, do it. Book NCL you wont regret it. Check out a few videos on youtube on the newer ships of NCL. They are quite nice looking.

[ColinIllinois]

O.P, NCL is a fun and affordable cruise line with a lot to offer. Don't be too deterred by a lot of what you read here. There is a core of regulars who obsessively argue over things that most people don't worry about and tend to have an Armageddon view of things.

 

NCL offers lots of different types of ships for everyone. Are they perfect? No, of course not but if you can't have fun on one of their cruises that's on you. If you do your research on what is included and what isn't then you won't be "nickel and dimed to death". You'll know what to expect and what is within your budget. As of late they are also offering incredible specials.

[SteelMagnolia9]

C'mon now. If a little bit of rough play on internet bothers you, how do you deal with adversities in the real world? There are two ways to deal with name calling and insults. You can either push back or simply shrug and laugh it off. Nothing to it.

 

The third way is for one to leave the forum. It's very off-putting when seeking some information. It's not a 'welcoming' forum in which to seek information. The moderation on this forum is poor.

[LadySpoilt]

If you do your research on what is included and what isn't then you won't be "nickel and dimed to death". You'll know what to expect

 

I would have agreed with you a month ago regarding your statement above.....however that does not seem to be the case any longer.

"Doing your research in regards to what is included......" is subject to be changed at a moments notice now it seems.

[ColinIllinois]

I would have agreed with you a month ago regarding your statement above.....however that does not seem to be the case any longer.

"Doing your research in regards to what is included......" is subject to be changed at a moments notice now it seems.

 

 

Recent events were handled poorly. Hopefully NCL got enough feedback from cruisers on social media that they will change that practice.