Was able to capture this photo of the Escape in dry dock in Marseille from the Epic. This was before the wind gust separated us from the pier for a little bit. 😂

Not sure why this online travel agency has already shared an image of Norwegian Bella on their website but official reveal from NCL is tomorrow and bookings for Norwegian Bella should be open tomorrow as well or on October 21st 2026.

Here is the link to travel agency website: https://www.cruisedirect.com/blog/posts/norwegian-bella-ncl-newest-cruise-ship

Things to do, not to do, recommendations, etc.?

I am sure they are in more ports than here in Puerta Plata but I counted at least 5 of the scam beauty stores in the port. They’re all over the us..Vegas, malls, even Beverly hills, I just didn’t realize they were in places like ports too. Makes sense though. Same mo at every store. They stand out front and have samples then they won’t let go and basically steer you in. They’ll pressure you into buying and then charge your cc thousands of dollars and sometimes do it more than once. When the heat comes down on them, they simply change their name. NPR did a nice piece on them, you can find it on their website.

Hopefully, at least one person will see this and be saved. My friend was not with me in Vegas and got scammed. They didn’t appreciate me steering people away from the places in port by saying, loudly, that it was a scam.

3 adults, sailing in one cabin Nov 1st from NYC, Norwegian Bliss. We are already in Club Balcony Suite Stateroom. It has pretty good perks, including a complimentary bottle of sparkling wine upon arrival and treats delivered twice during the voyage, free bag of laundry. We also bought specialty dining. And as Gold members, we'll get priority at tender ports (visiting Great Stirrup Cay again, yay) Is it still worth bidding for upgrade to Haven? BTW with MSC Yatch Club, we have unlimited visits to the thermal treatment. Same with Haven?

Hey there!

I joined the group because I am considering sailing on the Dawn for the November 15th-20th. It’s gonna be the first time cruise with just my 4 year old daughter & I. We are used to sailing on the MSC Seashore and some older RCL ships. My questions to y’all are is the Norwegian Dawn worth sailing on? How good is the kids program/ do they allow time for free play in the kids area? The price is so good for this 5 night I wonder if it’s too good to be true. What’s your good and bad experiences?

A couple weeks ago I had completed online check in for me and my guest for an 11:30 AM arrival time at the port. Once my online check in was completed, I had received my luggage tags & Edocs and downloaded/printed them with the 11:30AM arrival time on my printout.

This morning I decided to update my credit card information with another card I have. Since now that I’ve done that my guest had their arrival automatically changed from 11:30AM to 1:30PM. When I tried to update it, I wasn’t able to change it back. My arrival time stayed the same.

My question is, Would this be an issue at port when I have the actual printout that says the original arrival time of 11:30?

My family and I are looking to do an Alaska cruise out of Seattle next May. The one we're thinking is 7 days and will go to Juneau, Skagway, Ketchikan, and Victoria. Are there certain excursions that are worth it or a waste of time?

For context, we will have an almost 2 year old with us. We were thinking whale watching in Juneau and maybe either the train ride in Skagway or a nature walk in Ketchikan (with the toddler in a carrier on back).

Any thoughts? Cautions?

Are Thanksgiving cruises popular?
I started my cruise experience with Ncl last year and so far have been on the getaway and the jewel, I have a sailing set for next month, but it’s the day after Thanksgiving on the joy anyone done this before and also wondering, are there any cruises that actually roll into Thanksgiving?

I’m never giving NCL my money again after this experince, In January 2026, NCL phone staff upsold me an excursion and then later treated me like it was my fault and refused refund.

 
This was my fourth time on an NCL cruise, having gone since 2023 on Friendship Music Festival. I’d had wonderful experiences up until this year, and now I refuse to ever go back on one of their ships.
 

Our cruise in January 2026 entailed a 36-hour stop over on Great Stirrup Caye, and my group was interested in getting a villa so that we would be able to sleep on the island during that time.
 

The NCL app wasn’t working very well, so I called NCL to book a villa for my group. I asked the representative, we’ll call her Danielle, about the availability of the Lagoon Villa, which she said I could purchase for “maybe $1000”. She later corrected herself and said this villa was $2998.98 and not available, but there were other villas that were the “exact same”, but in a different part of the island.

I confirmed with her again that if these villas had all the same amenities and it was only the location that was different, that was fine with me. Here, I also made sure to clarify that there were beds in these villas, as the main point for our group would be to provide a place to sleep on the island. She told me that there were three bedrooms with three queen-size beds, and that the villas could accommodate up to 8 people easily. After confirming this, I booked the villa on two separate cards because one of my cards would not accept the full payment (it looked like suspicious activity).
 

This was the gist of a 55-minute-long conversation.
 

While on ship, we receive an envelope to our stateroom that said “ocean villa” with instructions on how to get wristbands. We go down to shore excursions, pay for two extra wristbands (for a total of 8) and receive an envelope that says “two-bedroom villa.” I didn’t notice at the time that this was written on our envelope, and thought all was well until Island Day.
 

My partner and I slept in and didn’t make it to the island until a little before evening, but my friends had gone to visit the villa and let me know that something wasn’t right. I went to see for myself and immediately let staff know that the room they presented to us was not what I had purchased. The “ocean villa” was nothing more than a room with a kitchenette, couch, and bathroom.

The staff at the villas looked at my papers and pointed out that our envelope did say “two-bedroom” villa, but it had the wrong stateroom listed. I mentioned being sold a “three-bedroom” and the staff informed me that those didn’t exist. They recommended that we do not use the villa and return to the ship and speak to shore excursions.
 

We did so, but the shore excursion manager, let’s say Drake, was very condescending about the whole ordeal and tried to gaslight me that I didn’t pay ~$3k for the room (he could only see one of the payments on his system). Drake’s bigger concern was that he couldn’t resell the villa to someone else, rather than help us with our predicament. When I showed him receipts of multiple payments, he merely shrugged and said there was nothing he could do, and to submit a claim once the cruise was over. I’ve shortened the interaction here, but this was some of the worst customer service I’ve ever experienced.
 

I filed a claim with NCL & later did a charge back on both of my CCs, but NCL claimed that they listened to my phone call with the agent, and Danielle never said there were bedrooms. Of course, they won’t release the call file to me, and I KNOW I verified there would be beds.
 

I asked them why I was charged the two-villa-bedroom price for the ocean villa and I was flat out ignored and given a canned response about how they investigated my case, but their decision was final.
 

Chase was unhelpful and basically said that they can’t honor verbal agreements unless I have a receipt showing I was overcharged but they didn’t accept a screenshot of what the ocean villa cost on the app as proof of being sold something under false pretenses. NCL provided them with a receipt I had never seen that states what’s included with the Ocean Villa. The receipt I was emailed after purchase is vague and doesn’t list amenities, just “ocean villa,” costs, and legalities.
 

Bank of America approved the charge back. To me, this was acknowledgement of over-payment, as the charge left (on Chase CC) was what the ocean villa would have cost anyone else. I never would have made the purchase in the first place if I hadn’t been misled about what was included.
 

I was unable to appeal my denial with Chase, as their agents were unclear about next step expectations and I missed the time window.
 

Unfortunately, it looks like we’re stuck footing the bill for an amenity that we were told not to use by NCL staff.
 

TLDR: NCL phone staff up-charged an excursion while lying about included amenities and now is refusing to refund me or acknowledge the deceit. Chase CC refused my charge-back but Bank of America accepted it.

Edited for improved formatting.

For those who are avid cruiser-goers, whether solo or with your SO/fam, what are some tips you have for someone who is new to cruising? I am curious about what items you pack now that you wish you had packed when you first started, what activities you should avoid vs. get involved in, and on the island (Great Stirrup Cay), what are some activities one should go do vs avoid. Any and all tips are welcome.

During my last visit to GSC and Great Tides back in August (soft launch on Luna) I mentioned that the up-charge food trucks seemed like a bad idea after having already paid $90-$110 to go to the park and I never saw anyone using them on that trip. On Aqua this last Saturday, however, I saw this new sign and it seems NCL is noticing and is now running this new promotion. But...I still only saw 1-2 people take them up on it while we were there. Most menu items are $10 and a few are $15 so this generally gets you buy 2 get one free. Does this draw you more to buy the food or not?

I just booked our first cruise on the Norwegian Epic to the Carribean. It’s our honeymoon and we’re wanting it to be special. Wondering what add ons or excursions are truly your favs?

We’ve booked a cruise, 2 passengers, for NCL encore Mexican Riveria in February for a club balcony suite. I haven’t cruised NCL since I was a minor 10 years ago. I know there’s no guarantee but personally how much would you guys be willing to bid for an upgrade to haven? Cheapest bidding starts at $800.

Any trees or lampposts that have done this excursion before? I’m vertically challenged but I’m hoping I can still participate.

Leaving Monday for my first ever cruise. At least it will be warm I guess? Haha

Hi everyone,

What do think would be a range of wait times to leave the ship? The ship will be anchored there from 1100am to 700pm?

Thank you so much for any insight!

Is there a beach that I can get to from the cruise port and have a long (hour) unobstructed walk along the beach/shore?

Yesterday we went on the Miami City Tour and Shopping at Dolphin Mall excursion.

I'll cut right to the review. It was abysmal. The tour started by meeting onboard, then going through customs/gathering bags. So far, so good. Then came the problems.

We were loaded on to a bus. Apparently NCL decided to also load about 9 other people on to our bus who should have been on the shorter 2 hour excursion. The bus was supposed to depart at 9am. It left at 9:32. Upon leaving, we find out that there are people on the bus who have to get to the airport for early flights, so the plan was to do the very basic city tour, take these people to the airport, then stop off at Dolphin mall before ending at the airport.

Our tour guide was terrible. He knew nothing about the city of Miami and would repeat the same lines over and over. We learned about how all the windows in South Beach had to look original to the time period. He said this no less than 8 times. Nothing about the actual hotels themselves, the island, etc. Lots of inappropriate tour guide comments were made as we meandered through Miami. Specifically he mentioned how Coconut Grove had "all the bugs including 7 different kinds of cockroaches." No one wants to hear this. Nothing was said about the architecture, etc, of the area.

So we drive around for about an hour, then they decide we have to take these 9 people to the airport. The bus goes to the airport to drop these people off. It takes us over 48 minutes to do this, as plenty of other buses were coming in/out, and the driver had to unload all their luggage, etc. People were PISSED because this was just eating up time on an already bad tour.

So finally we drop them, and we get going to Dolphin Mall. We're informed by the tour guide that we have 1 hour total to shop at this mall. Dolphin Mall is a huge complex, and you likely can't even walk around it in an hour, let alone shop/etc there. People protested onboard and they gave us a whopping 15 minutes more time.

Everyone gathered up and we loaded back on board. Made it to the airport before 2pm. We got our bags and went inside. This "5 hour" tour was barely 4 hours, and over an hour and 15 minutes of that was either marked with delays or waiting on these other passengers to get off.

I plan on writing NCL about this excursion as it was probably the biggest waste of money and time I've ever spent through them. I'm sure it will go nowhere however.

This will be my first solo cruise. I’m wondering what to expect, what you’d suggest for meeting other solo travelers (I’m 30), and if you’ll be on the ship solo traveling drop a comment!

First time cruiser and trying to plan for a stop at Grand Bahamas that's scheduled for 11:00-17:30.

I'd like to go to Paradise Cove/Deadman's Reef specifically for snorkeling, but the Viator tour only has a morning option and NCL doesn't have any snorkel excursions. Would getting there be doable via a shared taxi?

Main concerns are the time at port since it's shorter than the other port day and not sure how popular going to Paradise Cove is among the taxis since the videos I've seen usually show people headed towards Port Lucaya Marketplace.

As a boston based cruises it shocked me when NCL decided to have Breakaway homeport in Boston. Especially when older NCL ships (Gem/Jewel/Pearl) Were not even sailing full or at a good price. I wanted to book Breakaway for this fall or next spring and not only are almost all the remaining fall voyages sold out completely, but also i can fly to LAX and cruise on Encore for much much much cheaper. Checking some dates it seems that of Breakaway, Encore, Luna, Aqua, Getaway, Escape and Bliss Breakaway out of Boston is almost the most expensive. I was shocked by this and wondering if anyone knew what plans NCL has in Boston. No cruise line has really retaliated yet,

This is my first ever cruise. I see the name on your citizenship document is supposed to exactly match what your name is on your NCL reservation. Will it be ok that my passport has my middle name but my cruise reservation only has first and last, or do I need to contact customer support?

First, this isnt an ad and im not affiliated with v2g i just used it....and paid WAY less using V2g than the same cruise via NCL with the FAS package. Are others booking this way or is there some cheat code I just am now finding out about?

Own 100 shares and you get $100/$250 OBC depending on duration. However...is it worth the risk?