I booked a cruise reading on their site "all tips and gratuities are included" And now my wife has heard that they are changing 15% on a drinks order?

What gives can anyone tell me?

1st cruise being planned for August around greek islands but slightly concerned about the heat that time of year for the available tours. I know that the ship has air-conditioning so that will be ok. What are your views from those who have been that time of year in eastern Europe?

I have the last 2 weeks of Dec 2024 off and I'm trying to go on my first cruise experience but I can't find anything that departs from San Francisco. I'm open to departing from Los Angeles as well.

Genuine questions, not shade. A few times I’ve stayed in port towns while one of the bigger ships were docked. Most recently, in Lisbon with the NCL Viva. The music and announcements playing from the top deck vibrated through the entire Alfama district for about 3-4 hours. I enjoy cruising, but from land it was pretty obnoxious (and now I can see why locals hate having cruise ships in port). My questions are:

Do port cities generally have noise / volume restrictions, and if so why might some cities not do this?

Does having it be that loud actually make it more fun onboard, or does it feel a bit too loud there, too?

Hey folks, I have a very weird corner case and I couldn't find any helpful information and decided to just ask reddit.

I am a Turkish national US permanent resident. Normally, I have a green card but it was recalled by USCIS due to a misprint on their part. I sent it but my new one will not be in my hand by the time of our planned cruise. We will be boarding from Miami and visiting, Mexico, Jamaica, and Bahamas. I am actually back in Turkey right now and I have a boarding foil to be allowed entry into the US. Now the question is will I be allowed to get on/off the cruise? The boarding foil is a 1 time use document. None of these countries request a visa from Turkey if we are coming from the US. At the end of the day I am a permanent legal resident but it is still very murky to me. Even the consular employee interviewing me for the boarding foil could answer this issue. He suggested calling USCIS but it takes forever trying to reach a human being there. I even went to the field office in Boston once and they turned me back to call the number.

Thanks a lot in advance, I know this wall of text is very boring and I would greatly appreciate any help. Happy cruising to you all!

We’re a group of 6 adults and 3 kids. What’s the best way to get around? I’d like to visit Maho Beach, Marigot and Friars Bay Beach or Grand Case. I’m thinking of renting a car (probably will need 2) but worry about traffic. How feasible (and pricey) is it to negotiate with a taxi (or two) to stay with us for the day?

We looked at Bernard’s custom tours but they’re a bit too expensive for us and the set tours don’t hit all the spots I wanted to visit. Thanks for any advice!

Hello! My group of friends and I (18M 18M 18F 17F 17M) want to go on a cruise for our high school grad trip in May or June 2025. However, we're not sure which cruise line or ship is the best for a group around our age, so we'd like your suggestions. Here are some things we would like (obviously we know not all can be achieved):

1. Not extremely bankbreaking! We're very open to sharing interior rooms as well.
2. With something fun and energetic on board. We liked RC's utopia as it seemed like it had a lot of different on board activities to do. We're also a pretty diverse group so the more activities the better.
3. On-land docks aren't all beaches or all cityscapes. We're open to any region though!
4. Good food! We're all a bunch of foodies.
5. 5-7 nights preferred.

Please let us know your experiences and thoughts, we're open to any suggestions. Thank you in advance!

Looking to book a cruise for next summer, most likely June. We want to go to Europe, specifically the Mediterranean (Italy, Greece, Spain, or Frnace). I have been on Carnival and Norwegian and had a good experience with both. It’s myself, husband, and two teenagers. I don’t want surprise fees and add ons. I want it to be as all inclusive as possible and anything we pay to be up front. I understand soda, alcohol, etc are extra on most cruises, as well as a few specialty restaurants. I don’t care about that, as long as the free food options are good and we can still access water, coffee, juice, tea for free.

Please offer your thoughts on the various cruise lines.

First time cruiser here! We are leaving later this week on a Virgin cruise out to Puerto Rico (visiting St Lucia, St Kitts,Martinique etc etc). Wifi package is included with cruise but we are curious how well it works with 2500 people on board. Thanks!

What is something that you wish that you brought (or are glad you did)?

What is something that you wish you didn't bring, are glad you didn't, or just didn't need?

First time cruiser! We're disembarking in Nassau in March and I want to spend some time at the beach. My girls will be 2.5 and 6.5. It seems like we could splurge for Margaritaville but I'm not sure this is what we want entirely, but I do want it to be easy to relax at the beach for a few hours. Thanks in advance!

Hey guys!

I am think about booking an NCL cruise to Alaska. I have never booked with a travel agent before but have read about cruisecompete.com. Does anyone have experience booking with them?

You have some travel agent youtubers actually confirming it..

https://youtu.be/ola4ll4_4x0?si=NaJ7E0xJigqh7-d_

As soon as you get off the boat they don't give a shit about you. They cut 300m from their budget and it's showing.

Hi! I'm hoping this alright to post here. Last year I finished college and since starting my career I've saved up around $2k specifically to send my parents on a cruise as a massive thank you. I've been doing research but I'm struggling with navigating logistics having never been on a cruise myself. My parents are both in their early 50s. They are both active but my mom has bad knees meaning she can walk but can't run or climb safely. The things I'm looking for include: 5 days or less, few children or adult-only spaces, drink packages (an absolute must), comedy shows/karaoke/entertainment in the evening that can be enjoyed sitting so my mom can participate after day time excursions. I thought about just giving them the money to purchase the cruise on their own, but I know they'll just use the money to cover bills. I'd also like to do the emotional labor of organizing everything and just leave my parents to showing up.

I looked into Virgin Voyages for the adults only aspect but know I cannot afford from my brief overview. I was thinking either: Royal Caribbean because it leaves from Galveston, so it wouldn't require flying to the port which is super stressful for my mom; or Celebrities because I heard it has a good track record of being near child-free. Are these good options? If I did the RC cruise during the school year (September/October maybe) would children be an issue?

Are balconies or ocean view rooms worth it?

Will my parents need passports for cruises to the Caribbeans?

How much do drink packages typically cost? I can't seem to find out without actually purchasing tickets. Do you order drink packages/excursions beforehand or once you're on board?

Is there a way to link my card to on-ship purchases for room service and such? Or should I just send them with my debit card or cash?

Should I tell them to show up the day of, or should I rent a hotel room for them to stay in the night before? Similarly, should I rent a hotel room for them to stay in the day they get back?

Do any lines have first-responder or veteran discounts?

I'm sure I'm missing questions, but these are the questions I've run into in advance. I'd appreciate any direction I could get to make this happen for them!

I'm looking at booking an 11-14 day Alaskan Cruisetour (land + cruise package). Has anyone found a TA that has incentives in addition to what the cruise lines are currently offering? I know Costco is offering $230 Costco card, but wondering if anyone has seen anything else.

Not a fan of excursions, ideally I'd prefer sitting at the beach all day. These 2 ports do they have open access to the beach or would it be wise to get an excursion?

San Juan, Puerto Rico, Phillipsburg, St. Maarten,

We’re booked to depart from Le Havre in May & was looking into shopping in Paris beforehand. Does anyone have experience processing your VAT refund there / before embarkation?

Hi everyone! Looking for opinions. I’m getting married October 18th. We were hoping to do a cruise for our honeymoon but are very limited by embarkation days.

Our option is to take a 7 day cruise out the day after our wedding on October 19th, or a 6 day cruise on the 20th. If we did the better destinations, that means we’d have to fly in same day as embarkation (eek!). There’s lots of direct flights between us to FL, but still scary. But I just don’t love the Oct 20th destinations, even though it’d offer better security/peace of mind? I’ve heard Bimini isn’t worth getting off at, which leaves only two stops. Options are:

• RC Star of the Seas, Oct 19-Oct 26 out of Port Canaveral
  • CocoCay, St Thomas, St Kitts
• Norwegian Aqua, Oct 19-Oct 26 out of Miami
  • Puerto Plata, St Thomas, Tortola, Great Stirrup Cay
• Celebrity Silhouette, Oct 20 - Oct 26 out of Fort Lauderdale
  • Bimini, Cozumel, Grand Cayman

WWYD? Thanks in advance!

They have that countdown clock going saying you have 6 hours to secure your spot. It's Sunday today and I wonder if it's just a pressure tactic, or if after the 6 hours the price becomes more expensive.

I'm looking at RC's site, for April, for a family of 4.

Has anyone been? Can you tell me your experience? Do you recommend as just a group of 2?

Hey, so I’m going on a 7 day royal Caribbean cruise with my girlfriend and her mom and we’re stopping at. Cozumel Mexico, Roatan honduras, Belize city, and puerto costa maya mexico. I’ve been on one cruise to Cozumel and we did a beach day for like 80 something dollars and it didn’t seem worth it to me so I wanted to find other things to do. We are really interested in snorkeling and like cliff jumping or seeing some ruins but down for anything to be honest. And wasn’t sure if we should buy through cruise line or locally.

We're in our mid 30s and are looking to do a transatlantic cruise in 2026 (bucket list item for me). We're deciding between Virgin Voyages and Celebrity. I've never cruised with either company. Virgin is around 33% cheaper for a balcony stateroom. Is there any reason to not go with them? The Celebrity cruise is on one of their new ships (Ascent) while the Virgin cruise is on their first ship (Scarlet Lady). We would probably fit in better with Virgin's normal clientele, but I'm aware that transatlantic cruises skew a bit older. I am a bit worried about the MAGA presence making itself more known...

So this weekend I impulse booked a short Virgin cruise a few weeks from now that goes to Key West and Bimini. This will be our second cruise (just had our first cruise in Alaska a few months ago).

Anyway, I was wondering how crowded the beach at the "beach" club gets, particularly in mid/late January. I noticed that one of the "excursions" for this place is to rent a cabana all day but it's quite pricey. Will it be hard to find a place to just chill out on the beach for a while without renting something like that beforehand?

If anyone has anything else they loved about these places and have any good chill suggestions I'm all ears as well.

We have a return flight departing at a very suboptimal time, too late in the day for us (leaves at 8pm and wouldn't land until probably midnight).

Does anyone know how we can proceed with changing this flight time? We tried contacting our agent but since we are past final payment we cannot cancel the flight thru NCL. Their air department didn't have much help either, they said they may have the capability to alter later down the road but the gist of the convo was we're locked in.

Does anyone have experience on how to proceed? Can cancel thru the airline (american) to get a flight credit and then we get our own flight?

Anyone have any recommendations for excursions or things to do in ochos rios that are small kid friendly??

We are well-traveled 60 & 58 year olds who have retired early. For our 25th anniversary we wanted to do something different—we booked back to back voyages across the Atlantic. We’re not cruisers and it is unlikely that we will ever be—but we do love the ocean and unique experiences. We were not disappointed. 

1. Norwegian handled getting on and off the boat far better than Princess did. Embarkation with Princess was particularly terrible. NCL was hassle free getting on and off the boat with zero waiting or confusion. Princess was lots of waiting and confusion, much less organized.
2. Quite sure our cabin steward had fewer cabins to take care of on Princess. Hence better service for each cabin. 
3. Turn down service every night on Princess.
4. Felt like more servers, less wait time in main dining room with Princess.
5. With Princess plus package (almost) all of the room service, delivery service was free and easy throughout the ship. 
6. Everything—from furnishings to glassware of a 20-30% higher quality on Princess. 
7. Guest tech on Princess was way better. Entertainment system in the room was way better, with useful information (menus of the restaurants) and lots of entertainment choices. Princess app worked mostly well—on NCL the app was utterly useless. On Princess we used it every day to order food, drinks, reserve dining and plan the day. 
8. Both boats had wrap around promenades —but princess had deck chairs on their ship—a nice touch that we used every day. 
9. The medallion delivery service worked (mostly) on Princess and was quite useful and handy.  
10. A more affluent vibe on Princess. Princess had way less crocs, shorts, gym clothes and tank tops & t-shirts at MDR dinner and specialty dining than NCL. A lot more cocktail dresses, slacks and collared shirts, jackets. People seemed to take a bit more care and there was less slovenliness than on NCL. (This is a pet-peeve of my old-a** self)
11. The specialty dining experience on Princess was decidedly mixed. A step up from Norwegian in terms of Sabatini’s vs La Cucina. However, Crown grill on Princess was quite disappointing. The service was lackluster, the wine list was a bit of a joke. The wines by the glass were not great and there were few good choices.   Love to see the collaboration with the world’s most famous butcher, Dario Cecchini, unfortunately the kitchen could not get it cooked correctly.  All in all a disappointment and not an inexpensive one  Cagney’s  on NCL Sky was significantly better in all facets—and less expensive. The Planks casual BBQ “pop-up” restaurant on Princess was better than we had anticipated and we enjoyed it. Le Bistro on Norwegian was easily the best dinner we had on our 30 days at sea—we ate there 2X. 
12. I don’t understand why, in a world of decent drinkable red wine, both cruise lines chose undrinkable reds as their base wines. If I can buy drinkable wine from TJ’s for $13 a bottle, surely a cruise line has the purchasing power to do even better. The basic plonk was terrible on both ships. Princess had better choices for just a few dollars more and we often upgraded.—which is probably why the basic stuff was such shit—to get everybody to upgrade. 
13. Liked the Laundry service on Norwegian  better. There were self-service machines on the Princess—but they were constantly in use and required dedicating a day to just waiting for one to open. The service on Norwegian was reasonable and on Princess was very expensive. 
14. We packed entirely wrong. It was far warmer both going over to Europe and coming back than we had expected. It was a rare day that it was not at least 70 degrees—and quite humid. Warming ocean temperatures are definitely real.
15. Used our balcony more than I had anticipated—both going over and coming back. Would never do a long voyage without a balcony.
16. Wave action wasn’t as bad as feared. My partner’s propensity to sea sickness was kept under control with liberal doses of bonine—they worked  great for her. 
17. Norwegian bed was far better. It was both firm and supportive without being hard. The super soft and completely unsupportive mattress we had in our mini suite in Princess caused serious back pain and might be a reason we don’t pick them in the future. After 16 nights both of our bodies were begging for a better mattress. I’m surprised Princess doesn’t get dinged on reviews for this. It is straight out of the 1950’s; lumpy, old school, zero support , impossible to find a comfortable position to sleep.   I ended up on the sofa in our sitting area for a portion of many nights. 
18. Service at the inside bars , particularly the Vines wine bar, was veeeerrrryy slow on Princess.   The bars were clearly understaffed and  the waiters & bartenders and waiters struggled to make their ordering system work.    All in all a really bad experience on Princess—many times we just gave up. NCL was consistently better.
19. Hey Princess, stop serving mixed drinks/cocktails in your wine bar. The staff takes 4-5X as long to fulfill that order while making it more difficult for those actually ordering WINE in a WINE bar to get served in less than 30 minutes.  On more than one occasion we simply quit and left the bar after a 20-30 minute wait for service. Treat it like a Wine Bar please  
20. Really missed Norwegian’s The Local. A great pub-like atmosphere with footie on the TV and good beer. There was nothing like it on the Caribbean Princess. From the sports, to the beer, to the food, to the vibe—it was our favorite place on the Sky— nothing close to it on Caribbean Princess and we really missed it.
21. The crews on both boats worked their backsides off to make everybody happy. Super impressive.
22. The music in the bars was a little hit or miss. Some acts were great—Leoh on NCL Sky and Emma Lauren on Princess, but some were very “meh”. 
23. MDR on both boats were consistently good. Occasionally very good. 
24. Buffet on NCL Sky was appallingly bad. Crowded, poorly executed, no variety.
25. Buffet on Caribbean Princess was much better. 
26. Breakfast at the buffet was much better on both boats. Caribbean Princess was particularly stellar. 
27. We loved the sea days on both lines. There is nothing to compare to an ocean vista, uninterrupted, all the way to horizon for days on end. 
28. We don’t like or do “cruising” type things. No bingo, trivia, games, etc.. didn’t even set foot into the Princess theater. Simply uninterested in the product they were offering. We don’t gamble and the shops were a total rip-off. 
29. As an art & design guy I can tell you the art on auction was (mostly) hilariously bad and (always) a terrible value. 
30. I only read 13 books during the 30 days we were at sea. Less than I expected. 
31. We would book another “voyage “ with an ocean crossing on either line, would definitely not book a Caribbean cruise or the like. 
32. We liked the older ships we sailed on, neither of which were floating amusements parks.
33. Because of both the length and timing of these voyages, there were very few kids of any ages on either ship. 
34. The ports were interesting and we will definitely travel back to The Azores, Tenerife, Sardinia and Madiera for longer visits. 
35. We were among the youngest 25% on NCL, but youngest 10% on Princess. And we are not young. Princess skewed quite a bit older.
36. We met lovely and interesting folks on both ships. 
37. When extra costs/charges on both boats were accounted for,  our per day cost was maybe 15% more on Princess, but we had a mini-suite that was 2X the size of our aft balcony cabin on Sky. Princess felt like a better value. 
38. We would do it again. Probably. 
39. As always, YMMV..