POA sailing questions

[Mic101680]

Has anyone booked Pride of America and used both NCL's air and hotel add ons? Customer service wasn't able to answer these questions and I was curious is anyone had any experience with this:

I was able to add the desired air deviation to my reservation, but does anyone know how early you can add the hotel? If I book a hotel on my own, will NCL's transport still do the pickup/drop off at the hotel (for at least from the airport and from the cruise ship?), or do I need to arrange different transportation?

Also, we have 4-5 cabins of people going as a group/not an official group - is there any reason we should link the reservations together? None of us have sailed NCL before, so everything is weird and new to us!