NCL Hawaii cruises for May and June are gone from the web site.

[BDL]

We are on the May 24th 2008 Pride of America. If you go onto the NCL site and do a search, May and June do not come up at all for Hawaii. I called and spoke to someone who told me they are removing one ship (Pride of Hawaii). I told her I knew about that but how would that affect the other two ships in May or June. She said they were changing the itineraries. I asked her if the sailing dates would be the same as I already have airline tickets. She said 'probably' but I should call back on Tuesday.

 

Has anyone else spoken to NCL on this? What did they tell you? I may call back and see if I get a different story.

 

Barb

[CC Help Michell]

We are on the May 24th 2008 Pride of America. If you go onto the NCL site and do a search, May and June do not come up at all for Hawaii. I called and spoke to someone who told me they are removing one ship (Pride of Hawaii). I told her I knew about that but how would that affect the other two ships in May or June. She said they were changing the itineraries. I asked her if the sailing dates would be the same as I already have airline tickets. She said 'probably' but I should call back on Tuesday.

 

Has anyone else spoken to NCL on this? What did they tell you? I may call back and see if I get a different story.

 

Barb

 

Give it a couple of days; their website has been wonky all weekend -- I just tried it and can't pull up cruises to any region at the moment. For some reason NCL (which already has a fairly suspect website in terms of convenience, ease of use, and reliability) also tends to use weekends (rather than overnights during the week) to do maintenance. I can almost guarantee that if you call back you'll get a different story -- NCL's customer service is pretty consistently inconsistent in that regard. :)

[BDL]

I just called NCL back to see if I got a different story from a different person and sure enough, this person told me (after putting me on hold for 5 minutes) that all of the Hawaii sailiing in May and June are totally sold out. That is so unlikely when there were so many cabins available in all categories just two days ago on our sailing. Besides, wouldn't the sailing show, with 'sold out' under the categories?

 

Now I go back onto the web site and see "Excuse us for a little while.. Our site is temporarily down. We are working to fix this problem. Please try back soon!"

 

MichellP - I think you're right - their web site is wonky! I'll try back later and see what happens.

Thanks,

Barb

[watsup]

I think you need to just relax a bit and give it a couple of days. The folks who answer the phone are usually pretty far down on the totem pole, so they may not yet have accurate information as to why the site is down for May and June. And it is the weekend, so the programmers are probably not around. What do you think could possibly happen? They are not going to do away with two months of sailing. I would say to leave the phone folks alone and yet it work itself out for a couple of days.

[BDL]

Thanks for the sensible advice Watsup :) - I'm not really too worried about them doing away with the cruises completely. Since its still several months away, I'm sure it will all work out. I'm more curious than anything - will they change the length of the cruises? Will they change the departure days from Saturdays to another day?

 

Since we're using points for the 3 hotel days and frequent flyer miles for the flights I believe I'll be able to change them with no penalties if the dates change. We don't really care the sequence of ports.... just looking forward to the cruise and will try to deal with any changes with a smile. Any week on a cruise is better than being at work! We've saved so much on the transportation and hotels, we splurged on the cabin, so are very much looking forward to our first NCL cruise.

Barb

[shemo]

I would check with your airline and ask about changing dates. In my last experience there was a change fee involved.

Frequent flyer seats are hard to get out of Honolulu so I would also ask if there are seats available on the dates that you MIGHT have to change to.

I don't want to frighten you, but I'd have a plan "B".

[watsup]

I don't think a "plan B" is necessary. They are not going to make any drastic changes. There are literally tens of thousands of people on the sum of those cruises, and they are NOT going to cause widespread problems. What we all need to do is to RELAX and quit "supposing" and come back in a couple of days and see what sort of minor changes, if any, have been made. Deal?

[BDL]

watsup is the voice of reason and I totally agree. May and June is so far off still, and they're probably only changing the order of ports or the length of stay in each port. I'm going to wait and see what happens later in the week.

[rklemay]

I heard from my travel agent today who had spoken with someone at NCL about our 5/31 cruise on Pride of America. The NCL person indicated that the ship was going to be in drydock. That makes sense since I recall reading a thread where ohioNCLcruiser (who is a crewmember on Pride of America) indicated several weeks ago that Pride of America was going to drydock at the end of April.

 

Could it be that all of the May and June cruises have disappeared from the NCL website because the drydock will take longer? Would NCL try to move already booked passengers to Pride of Aloha thereby filling up that ship and leaving no vacancies for May and June?

[ohioNCLcruiser]

Dry dock wouldn't take that long but I always thought they would have to cancel one or two cruises if they were doing the 2 week dock in San Fran. Who knows until they make an announcement. Its probably just a small website glitch and will be fixed soon.

 

edit and a side note: They had a two week period without cruises on the schedule online for a while now so maybe they are changing the dry dock time.

[Kelownacruiser]

OK, I don't want to add fuel to the fire for no reason, but we just returned from the POAl on Jan 2nd and was told by a crew member that all the crew had just received blank documents for claiming unemployment insurance (or whatever it's called in the US) from NCL that they might or might not need in the near future. Take it for what its worth, he didn't elaborate on it. My only thought is, if NCL was looking at discontinuing its Hawaii cruises, they wouldn't want it to leak out prematurely by tipping off their employees, would they?

[ohioNCLcruiser]

OK, I don't want to add fuel to the fire for no reason, but we just returned from the POAl on Jan 2nd and was told by a crew member that all the crew had just received blank documents for claiming unemployment insurance (or whatever it's called in the US) from NCL that they might or might not need in the near future. Take it for what its worth, he didn't elaborate on it. My only thought is, if NCL was looking at discontinuing its Hawaii cruises, they wouldn't want it to leak out prematurely by tipping off their employees, would they?

 

I work on the Pride of America and I'm sure if that was true I would of heard about it. I'm not saying I think your making that up I just think the crew member who told you that wasn't true OR he was confused about collecting unemployment while on his/her 5 week vacation while off the ship. Also the crew would have the option to go to the international fleet.

[Kelownacruiser]

That would make sense. He must have got confused or read more into it than he should have.

Thanks for clarifying this.

[TSUmom]

I just checked my ncl account and it still shows us booked on the PofAm on 5/17. I have not heard anything from ncl so I am hoping it is just something being updated - I know the itieraries are being changed. You would think that if they are canceling my cruise I would hear from them before they change the website!!! Right now I will try not worry but I might try calling my ncl ta tomorrow.

[ohioNCLcruiser]

I really am curious now what the change is if any. It will prob just turn out to be a web issue though!:p

[BDL]

Hi James - would a web site problem at NCL cause other travel booking sites to not be able to show these sailings either?

 

When I called over the weekend, they told me to call back Tuesday. I am hoping they are just changing up the order of ports or times. I'm really looking forward to this cruise (May 24th Pride of America), although if they change them to longer itineraries I guess that would be ok! ;) Either way, we still have plenty of time so if we had to change plans we could still find something.

[ohioNCLcruiser]

Hi James - would a web site problem at NCL cause other travel booking sites to not be able to show these sailings either?

 

When I called over the weekend, they told me to call back Tuesday. I am hoping they are just changing up the order of ports or times. I'm really looking forward to this cruise (May 24th Pride of America), although if they change them to longer itineraries I guess that would be ok! ;) Either way, we still have plenty of time so if we had to change plans we could still find something.

 

I really don't know how online travel booking sites work but when you do a search request I would guess some signal is sent to NCL to get the sailing info. Who knows though.

[BDL]

I called NCL back a while ago and was told that all of the sailings in May and June are sold out. The rep did not know why I would have been told over the weekend that they were temporarily off the web site due to itinerary changes. I was told to call back by Tuesday. He insisted May and June are prime months in Hawaii and must have sold out. Amazing that they the Pride of America showed availability in almost all categories just the day before. I guess anything is possible, however unlikely.

 

I see other sailings where some of the categories are sold out and they say 'not available' under that category. So, when the last category (Suites) is sold out, the sailing would disappear from the web site?

 

Anyone else hear anything?

[northwestmom]

We are scheduled to sail on the POAm May 10, 2008. Obviously, we also became a little concerned when the sailings disappeared from the site. I tried to call our "personal cruise consultant" who is now on long term

leave:confused: . I then called the general NCL line and spoke with Angela. She told me that there had been a discrepency in the pricing on the May and June cruises, so they were working on that. She said that she was told the website should be fixed by this Friday. She reassured me that the sailings were indeed going as planned. My mother who is cruising with us called and she was told by a different rep that they had closed reservations on those dates for the time being. She was told that they may open up the reservations later on. I did notice that the price was nearly $600/person more on the July cruises (Balcony BE) than on our May cruise. My guess is that they are raising the prices of the May/June cruises and then they will open the reservations up once again...but who knows.

[BDL]

Last night, instead of just calling the general number and talking to just anyone, I called the NCL rep we booked with (found her extension in my paperwork). She is going with the 'sold out' story. I told her I'd also heard there were itinerary changes and pricing changes. She said she heard those rumors too, but that she was told they sold out very suddenly last Friday night. Can't imagine why I'm skeptical ;)

 

I see other cruises where categories are sold out and they say 'not available' under the categories. I would expect the sailing would still show up but would have 'not available' for all categories. I am very skeptical that two months worth of cruises do not sell out all categories all on the same exact evening, do they?

 

Anyway, I'm not going to worry about it for now.

[rklemay]

BDL,

I agree with you but what can you do? We're booked on the May 31st Pride of America. It would have been strange enough if 1 ship had sold out for 2 months all at the same time but to have 2 ships sell out........I'm sure we'll find out eventually but until then, we're just happy to be booked and looking forward to it.

[sleepy99]

Yes, I find it amazing that not only have May and June dissappeared overnight, but ALL inside AND oceanview cabins are sold out for all of July and August!! I am booked with my family for 7/26/08 in 2 adjoining OV cabins, but I check the price regularly. I think that NCL is up to something...they may be trying to sell out all balconies and suites first and then release the lower cost cabins.

This will be my first NCL cruise, I am only doing it for the Hawaiian itinerary. We have been on 9 cruises on Carnival, RCCL and Costa previously. NCL will really have to impress me to make me a repeat customer. They have very suspect practices. When I called to book my cruise I advised the res agent that I was dismayed at the small cabin size, she actually tried to book us in 2 handicapped cabins to take advantage of the larger cabins!! No one in my group is handicapped and i just think it's terrible to take these cabins for no reason other than more elbow room.

That and other things just have rubbed me the wrong way. But I'm sure I'll enjoy the cruise, just won't sail them again!

[ScarletKND]

My husband called NCL tonight to ask about this. The girl he talked to said that they don't know for sure what is going to happen with the cruises in May and June, but told him to watch his email for updates. Then if it is canceled, they would try to accommodate us and help us change our flights. Now I'm really worried that the cruise isn't going to happen. It doesn't make sense that they would pull two months of cruises just to change the prices, and I don't believe that both ships suddenly sold out overnight. We've already paid for our flights and our pre-cruise stay. I will be really upset if NCL backs out now.

[Beacher425]

If the absolute worst happens and NCLA cancels the cruises for May and June, I will just take the refund of my cruise deposit and scramble for hotel rooms to change to a land only vacation. The interisland travel shouldn't be to big a problem. I will spend more time in fewer islands and a lot lsee time at sea! Changing plans to fit situations can be viewed as a disaster or an oportunity. I choose to see it as an opportunity. I have been researching hotels on the islands as a backup. Better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it.

[watsup]

Geez people, calm down. What good does all this "supposing" do. NCL is NOT going to do anything drastic. Take a deep breath, have some patience, and wait until the months of May and June come back up on the website comes. I suspect that it is a quite minor change. I am on the May 10th sailing and I see no need to do all sort of "supposing" about what is going to happen. It's not going to be a big deal, whatever it is.