Great NCL cruise next trick.

[Szt]

Just wanted to share an NCl experience. Twice we have purchased $1000 in cruise next credits. Both times we took advantage of the double your money offer. We got 4 cruise next certs worth $250 each for $500. 
First I want to say- NCL makes them super easy to use. No blackout dates or restrictions, except they have to be used within 2 years of purchase. Having worked in the vacation industry I can attest to the fact, sometimes we all need a nudge to plan vacations. Having $1000 of the next cruise and a use it or loose it policy helped us get over that hump. 
But we also found a little trick if you can’t use them. 
We had $1000 in certs that would expire spring 2019. So we booked a cruise for March. Then my mother in law got sick and we had to use our vacation time to see her. Ncl said “no problem”. Just transfer your booking for another cruise up to 18 mo out. So we booked a cruise for spring 2020. We all know that one didn’t happen. Neither did the one for 2021. (Covid). By the time we could travel again my mom, who was using two certs, passed away. Then my husband and I both lost our jobs. But since we had already purchased plane tickets and had that $1000 credit we were still able to afford to travel one last time. We finally took that cruise in 10/22. They let us transfer her certs to our (adult) kids and we had a wonderful European family cruise in my moms memory. Th “trick is that you can keep extending the certs as long as you have something booked before they expire. So if you are in danger of loosing them, book than next cruise. If you can’t take it, cancel and book another one, etc. I don’t know how long they would let that go. But it will buy you more time. 

Thank you NCL, for being so flexible and understanding. No matter how much you want to travel, sometimes life gets in the way. We are loyal NCL cruisers because of the way they handled everything. 
Shout out to American Airlines who let us transfer my mom’s plane ticket to another destination which we used for the kids. 

[hallux]

1 hour ago, Szt said:

they have to be used within 2 years of purchase.

Did they reduce it?  It used to be 4 years, and the T&C's say 4 years still.

 

1 hour ago, Szt said:

Th “trick is that you can keep extending the certs as long as you have something booked before they expire. So if you are in danger of loosing them, book than next cruise. If you can’t take it, cancel and book another one, etc. I don’t know how long they would let that go

It used to be you could get one courtesy extension for one year if you were in the process of booking a cruise that sailed outside that 4 year expiration and if you cancelled the cruise the applied CND would instantly expire...

[Asawi]

19 minutes ago, hallux said:

Did they reduce it?  It used to be 4 years, and the T&C's say 4 years still.

No. It's still 4 years. (Bought two onboard a couple of weeks ago)

[Szt]

15 minutes ago, hallux said:

Did they reduce it?  It used to be 4 years, and the T&C's say 4 years still.

 

It used to be you could get one courtesy extension for one year if you were in the process of booking a cruise that sailed outside that 4 year expiration and if you cancelled the cruise the applied CND would instantly expire...

Maybe it is 4. I just remember ours was about to expire. You are correct that if you cancel your cruise they expire. The trick is to “change” your cruise to a date further out. Some of their leniency may have been due to Covid. But our travel agent is the one who told us not to cancel but rebook. We booked a Caribbean cruise in March 2019. In Jan 2019 we changed that to a Caribbean cruise in 2020. Several months before that cruise would have been, we rescheduled to do a Northern Europe cruise in the Spring of 2021, since that was cancelled due to Covid, we pushed it out a year to Spring 2022. Then my mom passed in Jan 2022, so we changed it to a Mediterranean cruise in Oct 2022. We did actually take that one. 

[slavetoabunny]

I had purchased four $250 certificates on our last cruise in March 2020 (we were on the Dawn and got back to Tampa on March 15th - the port was a ghost town!).  They were due to expire in 2024 and NCL extended them until 2026 without me even asking.  We are using two of them on our December 2023 cruise.  I also had a 10% off credit in my account that I guess I got when for a cruise that was cancelled.

[julig22]

Yes, moving a reservation does have its advantages, as some things do go by "booking" date.  However, with respect to keeping an expired CN on a reservation, YMMV.  I say this because they now remove double-up CN's if you make changes to a reservation and your reservation no longer qualifies. And I believe this is a fairly new development.  Pretty sure they used to stay on, just ran into this issue a few months ago.

[latebuyer]

I'm wondering if thats the same thing with cruise first certificates. 3 years seems like a long time, but things happen.

[ggTexasGal]

15 hours ago, latebuyer said:

I'm wondering if thats the same thing with cruise first certificates. 3 years seems like a long time, but things happen.

Cruise First Certificates have some very specific rules that are different from Cruise Next.

This is most recent (yet expired dates!)...

https://www.ncl.com/about/terms-and-conditions/promotions#cruisefirst