NCL Gluten Free + Amex Question

[kdlonglegs]

Hey y'all, 

 

Travelling with NCL soon and have two questions -

 

1. How are the gluten free options on board? Any specialty restaurants you recommend going to/avoiding? I can't find GF menus online anywhere, so some help is greatly appreciated!

 

2. I booked directly with NCL and tried to have them release it to Amex to get the perks, but they said they won't do that because I paid in full. Any work around to that or suggestions? I don't want to miss out on the Amex offers - I didn't even realize there were Amex offers before booking. Certainly won't make that mistake again!

 

Thanks in advance!

[julig22]

1. Put in a special needs request before you sail.  They will make sure you are well fed.  It does help to put in special requests a day ahead of time if you want something specific.  They are very well equipped to provide GF meals but there won't necessarily be much on the menus, you have to ask.

 

2. When is your cruise? If you are within 120 days, not much you can do. Otherwise, you could cancel and rebook.  They will give you a refund if you are not past the actual payment due date.  Then you'd have to start over, rebooking everything you had.

[janice2348]

Contact special needs department before sailing to let them know.  You will be assigned a dietary coordinator once onboard who will help you to choose your meals in advance.  Just ask to see them. I was able to eat at almost every restaurant with advance planning.  They are really good at making just about everything gluten free.They will work with you and give you suggestions.  I avoided the buffet due to cross-contamination but if you choose to go there let the chef know and they can prepare fresh food for you or can walk you through the buffet and tell you what is safe. I wouldn’t trust just winging it.  Be careful of untrained staff. Always tell the server that your pre-prepared meal is waiting for you once seated.  If there is an issue, ask to speak to your coordinator. I had Jocelyn on my last cruise in 2018. She was awesome!

[kdlonglegs]

25 minutes ago, julig22 said:

1. Put in a special needs request before you sail.  They will make sure you are well fed.  It does help to put in special requests a day ahead of time if you want something specific.  They are very well equipped to provide GF meals but there won't necessarily be much on the menus, you have to ask.

 

2. When is your cruise? If you are within 120 days, not much you can do. Otherwise, you could cancel and rebook.  They will give you a refund if you are not past the actual payment due date.  Then you'd have to start over, rebooking everything you had.

Thanks for your quick response!!

 

I’ve filled out the special needs form now. 

 

My cruise is mid-October, so just over 30 days away. I called NCL and they said no to releasing it, called Amex and they said they couldn’t do anything at this point. I read somewhere that there’s a form I could fill out, but can’t find it anywhere. 

[lapid001]

I sailed on the Getaway back in April and had no problem eating GF. On the first day the specialty restaurants had staff outside of the restaurants with their menus and were assisting guests with making reservations. I stopped by to see if Le Bistro had any GF options since that was one of the restaurants DH and I had booked. The staff at the Le Bistro put in a call to Irwin, the dietary coordinator for my cruise, and he met up with my husband and I and explained how the process worked. He went over the main dining room menu with me for that night and I placed my order. When I arrived at the restaurant I always gave the hostess my card to scan instead of my husbands. A second slip of paper would print out that the person seating us would then give to the server to alert them of my allergy. They would immediately confirm the allergy and ask if I had pre-ordered my meal. Each night at the conclusion of our dinner Irwin would come over with the menus for the next day and I would order breakfast, lunch (if not in port), and dinner for the next day. When we weren't in the main dining room we ate at Le Bistro, Teppanyaki, O'Sheehan's, and Shanghai Noodle with no issues. Like someone previously stated we avoided the buffet for the most part. I did ask Irwin one day if pizza was available for lunch and he told me to go to the buffet and ask at the pizza area to make a GF pizza. It was no issue and the GF pizza was some of the best I've had. They had a pizza oven, but put the GF pizza on a pan to eliminate cross contamination. I was a little worried going into our cruise that I would be eating grilled chicken and broccoli the entire cruise, but I was pleasantly surprised! 

[julig22]

23 minutes ago, kdlonglegs said:

Thanks for your quick response!!

 

I’ve filled out the special needs form now. 

 

My cruise is mid-October, so just over 30 days away. I called NCL and they said no to releasing it, called Amex and they said they couldn’t do anything at this point. I read somewhere that there’s a form I could fill out, but can’t find it anywhere. 

I've only done transfers prior to final payment and I believe those have to be done within 14 days. 7 days if after final payment due date.

 

Direct_Guest_Reservation_Transfer_Form.pdf (ncl.com)

[hallux]

There was discussion of the GF situation earlier in the day - 

 

[Ladyshopper23]

If you have a look at my signature, you can find the link to my travel blog with our experience on Star in November. We had the special diets coordinator, and the experience was great.

HOWEVER, we've just got back from the Dawn, and they have no such position onboard. I'm in the process of writing this cruise up, so blog won't be available for a few days. It definitely impacted in a negative way though on our GF dining experience.

I'm pleased to see someone has mentioned there being a special diets coordinator on Getaway back in April. I hope they still have someone doing this role, as we're cruising on her next month. It really did make life a lot easier having that one person doing all the pre-orders.

[mjkacmom]

35 minutes ago, Ladyshopper23 said:

If you have a look at my signature, you can find the link to my travel blog with our experience on Star in November. We had the special diets coordinator, and the experience was great.

HOWEVER, we've just got back from the Dawn, and they have no such position onboard. I'm in the process of writing this cruise up, so blog won't be available for a few days. It definitely impacted in a negative way though on our GF dining experience.

I'm pleased to see someone has mentioned there being a special diets coordinator on Getaway back in April. I hope they still have someone doing this role, as we're cruising on her next month. It really did make life a lot easier having that one person doing all the pre-orders.

Wow that stinks, they were amazing on the jewel, gem and breakaway, my daughter loved everything. We even ate in the buffet for breakfast, hee tray was delivered to our table.

[Ladyshopper23]

1 hour ago, mjkacmom said:

Wow that stinks, they were amazing on the jewel, gem and breakaway, my daughter loved everything. We even ate in the buffet for breakfast, hee tray was delivered to our table.

We were so disappointed. I'd been raving to everyone about how good our experience had been in November with the special diets coordinator, and everything I've read suggests that every ship has one.

Definitely not on Dawn though. I even wrote a letter to the food and beverage director to ask the question, and to provide some constructive feedback about other GF issues we were experiencing onboard. She very kindly came and found us, and had a long chat. She totally understood, as she is gluten intolerant herself. However, she's fairly new to NCL, and had never heard of a special diets coordinator. She brought the restaurant manager to the chat, and he said that prior to covid they'd had them, but since then not so much.

To be honest, it didn't sound he really knew much, but I found it very odd that the sister ship of the one we were on had one, but not this one. 

Our eating experience on Dawn was not great, in fact it was quite hard work. We found one maitre d who was very good with special diets and pre-orders, so we stuck to the one restaurant he was in. Our best meal of the cruise was in Los Lobos, the speciality mexican restaurant. The maitre d in there really knew his stuff including about cross contamination, and pretty much everything on the menu was either already GF, or could be adapted quite easily. The food in there was gorgeous.

If I'd been a first time cruiser, especially on NCL, I would have found the whole eating experience really hard work, as no-one was particularly forthcoming about things. It's only through our own knowledge of cruising NCL before that we knew you could ask for GF pizza and pasta in the buffet for example, and GF bagels, toast, cookies and muffins at breakfast. 

They must have had supply issues, as there was no individual wrapped portions of butter in the buffet until day 8 of the cruise. Before that it was in a big bowl right next to the bread, a huge no no. When we finally got a member of staff to understand why we needed fresh butter, it took 15 minutes, and the poor guy had to go all the way down to deck 3 to get it. We remedied this by buying our own butter and jam at a port stop, which definitely made life easier!

We've gone from really looking forward to our Getaway cruise in October to be wary of it, and this is all down to the lack of special diets coordinator and poor gluten free dining experience on Dawn as a result. Having the special diets coordinator is something that really sets NCL apart from other cruise lines (something I put in my blog write up and also in my letter to the food and beverage director).

I'm really hoping that our experience on Dawn was unusual, and it will be back to having fab dining on the Getaway. Fingers crossed!

[janice2348]

6 hours ago, Ladyshopper23 said:

We were so disappointed. I'd been raving to everyone about how good our experience had been in November with the special diets coordinator, and everything I've read suggests that every ship has one.

Definitely not on Dawn though. I even wrote a letter to the food and beverage director to ask the question, and to provide some constructive feedback about other GF issues we were experiencing onboard. She very kindly came and found us, and had a long chat. She totally understood, as she is gluten intolerant herself. However, she's fairly new to NCL, and had never heard of a special diets coordinator. She brought the restaurant manager to the chat, and he said that prior to covid they'd had them, but since then not so much.

To be honest, it didn't sound he really knew much, but I found it very odd that the sister ship of the one we were on had one, but not this one. 

Our eating experience on Dawn was not great, in fact it was quite hard work. We found one maitre d who was very good with special diets and pre-orders, so we stuck to the one restaurant he was in. Our best meal of the cruise was in Los Lobos, the speciality mexican restaurant. The maitre d in there really knew his stuff including about cross contamination, and pretty much everything on the menu was either already GF, or could be adapted quite easily. The food in there was gorgeous.

If I'd been a first time cruiser, especially on NCL, I would have found the whole eating experience really hard work, as no-one was particularly forthcoming about things. It's only through our own knowledge of cruising NCL before that we knew you could ask for GF pizza and pasta in the buffet for example, and GF bagels, toast, cookies and muffins at breakfast. 

They must have had supply issues, as there was no individual wrapped portions of butter in the buffet until day 8 of the cruise. Before that it was in a big bowl right next to the bread, a huge no no. When we finally got a member of staff to understand why we needed fresh butter, it took 15 minutes, and the poor guy had to go all the way down to deck 3 to get it. We remedied this by buying our own butter and jam at a port stop, which definitely made life easier!

We've gone from really looking forward to our Getaway cruise in October to be wary of it, and this is all down to the lack of special diets coordinator and poor gluten free dining experience on Dawn as a result. Having the special diets coordinator is something that really sets NCL apart from other cruise lines (something I put in my blog write up and also in my letter to the food and beverage director).

I'm really hoping that our experience on Dawn was unusual, and it will be back to having fab dining on the Getaway. Fingers crossed!

Im really sorry to hear this.  I sailed on Jade and POA and they were both awesome. I’m guessing they are understaffed since the pandemic.  I hope NCL remedies this.  In a situation like this, it pays to do your research on what foods you can and can’t eat. When I first became gluten intolerant, I googled everything ( is it gluten free?). Some if the answers surprised me- like soy sauce has gluten, but buckwheat doesn’t??  I used to write a blog on being gluten intolerant.  I did an extensive write up on my experience with NCL.  I’ve since found a way to be able to eat gluten ( I am not celiac) but I still try to help others whenever I can who are going through the same struggles.  Ask questions about everything. Mistakes in communication or lack of staff knowledge in can result in unpleasant digestive symptoms.  Mistakes happen. 
Don’t be afraid to speak up.  If something feels or looks wrong, don’t eat it.  Most things can be made gluten free. You just have to ask.  I’m hoping your cruise on the Getaway goes much better for you!

[cmph]

On 9/6/2023 at 7:15 AM, Ladyshopper23 said:

We were so disappointed. I'd been raving to everyone about how good our experience had been in November with the special diets coordinator, and everything I've read suggests that every ship has one.

Definitely not on Dawn though. I even wrote a letter to the food and beverage director to ask the question, and to provide some constructive feedback about other GF issues we were experiencing onboard. She very kindly came and found us, and had a long chat. She totally understood, as she is gluten intolerant herself. However, she's fairly new to NCL, and had never heard of a special diets coordinator. She brought the restaurant manager to the chat, and he said that prior to covid they'd had them, but since then not so much.

To be honest, it didn't sound he really knew much, but I found it very odd that the sister ship of the one we were on had one, but not this one. 

Our eating experience on Dawn was not great, in fact it was quite hard work. We found one maitre d who was very good with special diets and pre-orders, so we stuck to the one restaurant he was in. Our best meal of the cruise was in Los Lobos, the speciality mexican restaurant. The maitre d in there really knew his stuff including about cross contamination, and pretty much everything on the menu was either already GF, or could be adapted quite easily. The food in there was gorgeous.

If I'd been a first time cruiser, especially on NCL, I would have found the whole eating experience really hard work, as no-one was particularly forthcoming about things. It's only through our own knowledge of cruising NCL before that we knew you could ask for GF pizza and pasta in the buffet for example, and GF bagels, toast, cookies and muffins at breakfast. 

They must have had supply issues, as there was no individual wrapped portions of butter in the buffet until day 8 of the cruise. Before that it was in a big bowl right next to the bread, a huge no no. When we finally got a member of staff to understand why we needed fresh butter, it took 15 minutes, and the poor guy had to go all the way down to deck 3 to get it. We remedied this by buying our own butter and jam at a port stop, which definitely made life easier!

We've gone from really looking forward to our Getaway cruise in October to be wary of it, and this is all down to the lack of special diets coordinator and poor gluten free dining experience on Dawn as a result. Having the special diets coordinator is something that really sets NCL apart from other cruise lines (something I put in my blog write up and also in my letter to the food and beverage director).

I'm really hoping that our experience on Dawn was unusual, and it will be back to having fab dining on the Getaway. Fingers crossed!

I'm really sorry to hear that you didn't have great luck on the Dawn. We chatted back and forth in a previous thread after my family went on the Dawn in June/July (with similar supply issues, etc.). So odd that it's just the Dawn, but I guess that's why our issues seemed so at odds with everything else we read up on. We *did* ask for (some) things, and it was still so difficult to get them!

 

I wonder if we also liked the same maitre'd? (I believe his name was Ernesto.) If it hadn't been for him, the entire experience would have been far more frustrating, as he did what he could with the limited tools at his disposal. At least for my husband and son - eating meat helped, b/c all the marked items seemed to be meat-based entrees. Being a vegetarian must have made it much harder.

[Ladyshopper23]

15 hours ago, cmph said:

I'm really sorry to hear that you didn't have great luck on the Dawn. We chatted back and forth in a previous thread after my family went on the Dawn in June/July (with similar supply issues, etc.). So odd that it's just the Dawn, but I guess that's why our issues seemed so at odds with everything else we read up on. We *did* ask for (some) things, and it was still so difficult to get them!

 

I wonder if we also liked the same maitre'd? (I believe his name was Ernesto.) If it hadn't been for him, the entire experience would have been far more frustrating, as he did what he could with the limited tools at his disposal. At least for my husband and son - eating meat helped, b/c all the marked items seemed to be meat-based entrees. Being a vegetarian must have made it much harder.

I'd forgotten about our chat (Hashimoto's disease gives me serious memory problems!) but remember now.

We did experience Ernesto, he was absolutely fantastic. He was based in Los Lobos every evening, so our meal in there was very good. We ate in there quite early on in the cruise, plus had gone up there the night before to check on things, so I think once he'd met us, he then kept an eye out for us, as we saw him a lot in the buffet at breakfast time and he helped us out.

There was also another great maitre'd based in Aqua, so we ate in there every night. He tended to be in the buffet at lunchtime, and it was him that told us about the waffles at breakfast, by bringing us some for lunch!  Without those 2 people, we'd have had a really hard time.

The veggie bit on top of being GF was a real headache. More so than usual, it seemed to really confuse them. Even though I repeatedly told them I eat cheese, it was missing off nearly every meal, and had to be sent back. The last night the veggie option was also GF (unusual) and it was filled pepper - the filling was spinach and ricotta. They brought mine out, and it was just pepper filled with spinach! 🤣

They also got very confused with my husband, who is gluten free but NOT vegetarian. He also had cheese missing on a couple of meals. For one meal, which was bacon wrapped shrimp (and marked as a GF option on the menu) it came without the bacon. When my husband questioned this, it was because the chef thought my husband was vegetarian (but clearly not vegetarian enough to not being eating shrimp). The other side of this was on the last morning, we'd pre-ordered sit down breakfast the night before. The order was read back to us, as per usual. At breakfast, my order also came with a great big pile of bacon, so not what I ordered, and not vegetarian.

We had a couple of isolated incidents of missing cheese on the Star,  but this was sorted by the special diets coordinator, and were relatively isolated incidents. It happened pretty much every day on Dawn, and it starts to make you wonder that if the special diets chefs can't get this right, what else is going wrong with the meal you don't know about?

 

We also were told at various times that cheese had gluten in it (not completely out of the realms of possibility if it was pre-shredded cheese and had a flour coating, but that's not particularly common any more so unlikely), butter had gluten in it (just no!), and various other nonsense things. 

I think if we'd gone on Dawn first, and had the experience we did, we'd still have been fairly unimpressed, but would have put it down to that's what NCL being like. However, having been on Star and having the really good experience with the special diets coordinator, we had high expectation. We certainly didn't expect it to be so different!

I'm going to go and put an edit on the entry in my blog for the Star to give a warning that there might not be a special diets coordinator on every ship, and I'll link it to my Dawn blog post when I've finished it.

Next month we'll see how Getaway is - will it be similar to Star with a special diets coordinator, or will it be like the Dawn and not have anyone doing that role and subsequently a tricky experience? Who knows!

[cmph]

53 minutes ago, Ladyshopper23 said:

We had a couple of isolated incidents of missing cheese on the Star,  but this was sorted by the special diets coordinator, and were relatively isolated incidents. It happened pretty much every day on Dawn, and it starts to make you wonder that if the special diets chefs can't get this right, what else is going wrong with the meal you don't know about?

 

I'm laughing at the confusion about bacon and shrimp but not at all surprised!

 

But yes, this part that I quoted here - exactly!! It really makes you question what the heck is going on, very nerve-wracking. It was irritating when they seemed so put off that anyone would ask for something off-menu or altered, but it was down right weird when they got confused and/or changed things up without warning. There is a steak on the standing menu, labeled gf, that my son pre-ordered two different nights. He liked it just fine the first time, but also - there just weren't many options to choose from, and for a 10nt cruise, repeats were basically unavoidable for them. Anyway, when he got it the 2nd time, maybe 4 or 5 nights after the 1st time - it was missing the sauce. He hadn't gotten sick from the sauce, and it was on the menu as gf with that sauce, but did someone else think the sauce wasn't gf? Did someone accidentally gluten the sauce that night? who knows. 

 

In the end, neither of them got sick, but it was such an annoying experience, as a parent and spouse. I am sure my husband thought it was even more annoying than me, since he was experiencing it both personally and as a parent. Ironically, my son says he didn't think the food quality was as unimpressive as the rest of us thought. It's a good thing he isn't picky! But he also ate the entire large stash of protein bars we brought for the two of them, on top of eating in ports at safe places I found, b/c there are only so many O'Sheehans burgers on a gf bagel that a teenager can eat LOL.

[Ladyshopper23]

On 9/8/2023 at 8:21 PM, cmph said:

I'm laughing at the confusion about bacon and shrimp but not at all surprised!

 

But yes, this part that I quoted here - exactly!! It really makes you question what the heck is going on, very nerve-wracking. It was irritating when they seemed so put off that anyone would ask for something off-menu or altered, but it was down right weird when they got confused and/or changed things up without warning. There is a steak on the standing menu, labeled gf, that my son pre-ordered two different nights. He liked it just fine the first time, but also - there just weren't many options to choose from, and for a 10nt cruise, repeats were basically unavoidable for them. Anyway, when he got it the 2nd time, maybe 4 or 5 nights after the 1st time - it was missing the sauce. He hadn't gotten sick from the sauce, and it was on the menu as gf with that sauce, but did someone else think the sauce wasn't gf? Did someone accidentally gluten the sauce that night? who knows. 

 

In the end, neither of them got sick, but it was such an annoying experience, as a parent and spouse. I am sure my husband thought it was even more annoying than me, since he was experiencing it both personally and as a parent. Ironically, my son says he didn't think the food quality was as unimpressive as the rest of us thought. It's a good thing he isn't picky! But he also ate the entire large stash of protein bars we brought for the two of them, on top of eating in ports at safe places I found, b/c there are only so many O'Sheehans burgers on a gf bagel that a teenager can eat LOL.

Ironically O'Sheehan's was one of the places we had the most trouble, and the place that told us the butter had gluten in!

I won't bore you with all the details, as it turned into a complete farce. But I will also give a positive comment for O'Sheehan's in that it was somewhere where the fries were cooked separately in their own oil, so were completely safe (we did double check every single time). Was nice to be able to get french fries whenever we wanted, as sometimes this simple thing can actually be quite tricky to get on a cruise ship. For my husband that eats meat, he was also able to get the burger safely with the GF bun. Just fries for me, so specially made from scratch GF veggie burger like they did on Star (but to be fair, I absolutely wasn't expecting this, and realise I was extremely lucky to have that done for me on Star).