Casino Voucher - Upgrade from Inside to OV or Balcony when booking

[cmrvancouver]

HI. I'm trying to understand how they determine the cost to upgrade from the Inside cabin voucher I received to an OV or balcony. I thought I would get approx the cost of the inside cabin off the price for the OV or balcony. However, when we booked, the agent said that was incorrect and that the rooms had determined casino cost. We were quoted $200 each for the upgrade to OV and about $550 each for the balcony. It just seems a bit much as when I do a mock booking the balcony is costed out at about $150 each more for the balcony. Does that seem right? Any comments/advice would be appreciated. TIA. CMR

[esm54687]

This is correct..... casino upgrades when using a voucher are a set price.  We go from an IA to B1 every trip (about 8 of them 😎) it's 550 per person. 

Edited November 18, 2018 by esm54687

[cmrvancouver]

To be clear, they quoted $1020 more which includes cancellation, bev gratuitity, port fees and admin fees. of that about $550 is for the upgrade itself. Is that similar to yours? or did the $550 you quote include any of the extra fees? Thanks. I'm a little confused as this is different than on Royal.

[esm54687]

21 minutes ago, cmrvancouver said:

To be clear, they quoted $1020 more which includes cancellation, bev gratuitity, port fees and admin fees. of that about $550 is for the upgrade itself. Is that similar to yours? or did the $550 you quote include any of the extra fees? Thanks. I'm a little confused as this is different than on Royal.

$550 was just the upgrade

[cmrvancouver]

K. Then its more or less the same. Thanks. I had gotten different information from a previous agent, so just wasn't sure... I might try to call back and get someone else who might apply the upgrade differently... 

[esm54687]

1 hour ago, cmrvancouver said:

K. Then its more or less the same. Thanks. I had gotten different information from a previous agent, so just wasn't sure... I might try to call back and get someone else who might apply the upgrade differently... 

That's always a possibility with NCL

[gooch47]

A little off subject, but I get free cruises with my tier level at both Pinnacle's Mychoice and Hollywood's Marquee players clubs.  The problem I have is that they are for 5 day cruises and I have been unable to upgrade them to 7-day.  Whenever I try that they claim it can't be done.  You'd think that the 5-day would have a set dollar value that could be applied to the 7-day, but nooooo.  Can't do it.

[Stlcardsfan79]

29 minutes ago, gooch47 said:

A little off subject, but I get free cruises with my tier level at both Pinnacle's Mychoice and Hollywood's Marquee players clubs.  The problem I have is that they are for 5 day cruises and I have been unable to upgrade them to 7-day.  Whenever I try that they claim it can't be done.  You'd think that the 5-day would have a set dollar value that could be applied to the 7-day, but nooooo.  Can't do it.

The cruise we took last Nov was through Hollywood casino and it was a 7 day. The one we are going on in Jan is through Harrah's and it's 10 days. We didn't have to pay extra for either of them. I know there are some cruises that you can't use the vouchers for. Did you call NCL or go through TA? 

[gooch47]

We went directly to NCL on the phone number we were told to use for our free cruises.   We are DIamond on Total Rewards and Executive Producer for Hollywood.  I can't remember which one we were trying to use.  We ended up just getting the percentage off from our Diamond card.

 

My husband isn't home so I can't verify, but now that I think about it we were trying to use an offer for a 7-day cruise toward an 11-day one.

 

Maybe we should drop this until I can verify which it was.

Edited November 18, 2018 by gooch47

[Stlcardsfan79]

Yes probably not able to use on the 11 day, I was surprised when the lady I talked to said we could use it on the 10 day, I thought 8 or 9 day was the max. Before we have paid extra to be in ocean view   But this time we stuck with the inside and will try our luck with bidding for upgrade. 

[gooch47]

OK.  Sorry.  Total senior moment.

 

We were trying to upgrade a free 5-day on Royal Caribbean through our Pinnacle MyChoice card to a 7-day, nothing to do with NCL.

[Stlcardsfan79]

11 minutes ago, gooch47 said:

OK.  Sorry.  Total senior moment.

 

We were trying to upgrade a free 5-day on Royal Caribbean through our Pinnacle MyChoice card to a 7-day, nothing to do with NCL.

Totally understand, happens to me too 😊

[Nola26]

My land based casino offers are for insides with a specific list of cruises. Duration can be 3,4, 5 and 7 night, maybe there have been 11 nights too. When I call to book sometimes the agent has other options to check.

 

Inside to Balcony with those certificates can be pricey. We would like to upgrade on our family cruise, but I decided we will try the bidding process. If we lose we will just have to deal with the tighter space for the week. A sacrifice I will suffer through for a week in the Caribbean in February, lol.

[fstuff1]

On 11/17/2018 at 11:33 PM, cmrvancouver said:

HI. I'm trying to understand how they determine the cost to upgrade from the Inside cabin voucher I received to an OV or balcony. I thought I would get approx the cost of the inside cabin off the price for the OV or balcony. However, when we booked, the agent said that was incorrect and that the rooms had determined casino cost. We were quoted $200 each for the upgrade to OV and about $550 each for the balcony. It just seems a bit much as when I do a mock booking the balcony is costed out at about $150 each more for the balcony. Does that seem right? Any comments/advice would be appreciated. TIA. CMR

in dec 2017, i upgraded my inside on the Oct 2018 bliss to balcony for $400.

i went solo.

if it was 2 people, it would have been $800.

 

yeah, upgrades SUCK big time now on these free casino cruise offers.

used to be cheap.

3 years ago, inside to OV was just +$80/person 😞

Edited November 24, 2018 by fstuff1

[K_e_short]

On 11/23/2018 at 8:36 PM, Nola26 said:

My land based casino offers are for insides with a specific list of cruises. Duration can be 3,4, 5 and 7 night, maybe there have been 11 nights too. When I call to book sometimes the agent has other options to check.

 

Inside to Balcony with those certificates can be pricey. We would like to upgrade on our family cruise, but I decided we will try the bidding process. If we lose we will just have to deal with the tighter space for the week. A sacrifice I will suffer through for a week in the Caribbean in February, lol.

I am doing the exact same thing. My son and I are doing an Alaskan cruise and we booked an inside cabin. I would like a balcony but the price difference was way too much. 

[jessykaw]

Same thing here. The price for the upgrade at booking feels like I am paying full price for the cruise. We always book the interior room to keep the deal. However, with NCL, you may still be offered the chance to bid for an upgrade. That’s what happened for our next upcoming cruise.

[surfone]

Yep,  use to be so reasonable to get the upgrade to OV to Balcony, but seems with the newer bidding upgrade program they changed how they calculated the cost.  We also just booked Alaska and wanted the balcony but WOW huge difference, even the OV was over $500 pp from the inside cabin.  We're getting use to the insides, lol and hoping for the upgrade bid to be awarded.  Still cruising so all good! 

[kathy884]

This is the second time we have done a casino certificate and upgrade (Penn gaming).  Last time (two years ago) the deal was much better.  The deal then was a cruise for two with balcony (seven nights) and the casino paid air for two also.  We upgraded to a large balcony which wasn't too much more and had three NCL perks with that free at sea offer.

 

This time the deal is just for just for an inside for two (seven nights) with one free at sea perk, and we upgraded to a mini suite with large balcony (doing the Getaway -- seven night in late January and used the third person free perk for our son (22) - part of the reason we wanted the slightly larger room and large balcony with three of us).  To get this room (last march -- certificate required booking by the end of that month), we had to pay $1967 including taxes, etc.  What the certificate amounted to was about a $1000 savings over what the cabin would have cost on it's own or really less of a savings than that because we just got one perk instead of three, but really we were mostly interested in the third person perk -- we're not drinkers, will maybe do one specialty restaurant on our own but that's about it.  As we have extended family, a group of 11 going on this cruise, we all wanted to be together, next to each other in similar cabins.  Being together is a big deal to us (like having cabins close), so upgrades that could put you anywhere etc., aren't something we would consider or try on this one.  It's really my son who wanted to cruise and talked DH into using his certificate.  Then we mentioned it to other family in case they wanted to come, and eight others joined.  The other family members were keen on the larger balconies offered by a mini suite, so we decided to go with that too.  It is nice for multiple people socializing on your balcony, which we will have a lot of.

 

All and all a cruise vacation would cost me about 5K for three of us for the kind of room we'd want with no casino deal, everything included from air, hotel before, excursions, misc. spending, dog kennel etc. and in this case is will cost me about 4K, maybe just $3400 as the deal may cover two airfares (had to book before free air was an NCL perk and any changes mean loosing the casino discount).  I think this is probably the last time we'll do a cruise vacation for a while.  While cruising is a perfectly nice way to spend a week and fun with extended family, it's really not my preferred type of vacation.  Most land based vacations we do cost between 4K and 5K too, so a cruise trip is right in the ballpark for vacation budgeting purposes.

[kollegekreed]

I am on the Epic now for an 11 day. The inside cabin was free, and the upgrade pp was $400. We ended up with 3 in a room so another $36 pp per day made sense. I’m sure the prices are per ship and per cruise and per demand.