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Norwegian Cruise Line upgrade system.

jorcus

jorcus

TUG Member
Joined
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Location
Buffalo NY
For the first time ever I booked a cruise. We are going to Alaska on pretty short notice. I think right now we are riding in the bilge room. (ok not that bad) but we got the upgrade bidding email with 4 options on it. We could bid on any or all of the 4 options. I am trying a strategy of biding a low price on a high end room early figuring I would be very lucky to get that then with a week to go I will try to bid on one of the lower priced rooms thinking they would take that if they were open. Has anyone been through this process? Any luck doing it.
 
Good luck with any of that. For our last Norwegian cruise in February, it took a top bid to get any upgrade. We ended up just keeping what we originally booked.

Kurt
 
Same "no dice" with our mid-ling RCCL upgrade bids.
We'd woulda been better off just booking the better cabin, initially.
.
 
We are leaving on a NCL cruise in a couple of days. We bid a little over the minimum upgrade, but I think we would have heard if we won the bid by now.

Cruises are getting incredibly expensive. We generally book 2 balcony rooms next to each other with 2 people in each. I had been paying roughly $4K per cruise for quite a few years - including 2022. This year, the cruises are all $8K for similar bookings. Looking ahead to next year, they are asking $11K+ for similar books.

At that price, a cruise no longer makes a lot of financial sense. I always loved cruises as we could enjoy ourselves without the kids as they were safe on the boat. Now they are going to be 21 soon - we can vacation anywhere and my wife and I can go and do things without them.
 
joestein said:
Cruises are getting incredibly expensive. We generally book 2 balcony rooms next to each other with 2 people in each. I had been paying roughly $4K per cruise for quite a few years - including 2022. This year, the cruises are all $8K for similar bookings. Looking ahead to next year, they are asking $11K+ for similar books.

At that price, a cruise no longer makes a lot of financial sense. I always loved cruises as we could enjoy ourselves without the kids as they were safe on the boat. Now they are going to be 21 soon - we can vacation anywhere and my wife and I can go and do things without them.
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Wow. Even at $4k per year for two hotel rooms with food, this makes resale timeshares look like a steal. Especially when you have a kitchen in a timeshare to offset food costs for breakfast and lunch.
 
We have not had success bidding for 'suite' upgrades on Celebrity. But then we tend to book the type of cabin we want to begin with and only bid a minimum for the upgrade.

One memorable upgrade, though. We had booked a 'regular' balcony cabin. We had been curious about the upgraded restaurant that came with booking 'Aqua Class' and asked Celebrity if we could get a one time pass to try 'Blu'. When we checked in at embarkation, we saw that they had us in an Aqua Class cabin on a very high mid-ship deck for the whole cruise. Nice! It paid off for X too, as we've booked Aqua or a suite on every cruise since.

Jim
 
Well one thing I have learned booking my first cruise, I will have no idea what this is going to cost me until it is over. So far I am in for a pretty reasonable level. I think at the end of the day, with airfare from east to the west coast I will be less then 5k. for a week. It's a different kind of trip for us versus renting a time share or booking an all inclusive resort. I think the ship is too close to being full to get an upgrade bid through. We will see how that goes.
 
jorcus said:
Well one thing I have learned booking my first cruise, I will have no idea what this is going to cost me until it is over. So far I am in for a pretty reasonable level. I think at the end of the day, with airfare from east to the west coast I will be less then 5k. for a week. It's a different kind of trip for us versus renting a time share or booking an all inclusive resort. I think the ship is too close to being full to get an upgrade bid through. We will see how that goes.
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We paid for the cruise. We paid for all our excursions (around $1200). We book through a travel agent. They pay our gratuities and give us $700 OBC.

Generally - in these cases we end up going home with a lot of the OBC. Unless you go shopping or gamble a lot - there is not a lot of extra charges on the cruise. Maybe a water package.
 
jorcus said:
Well one thing I have learned booking my first cruise, I will have no idea what this is going to cost me until it is over. So far I am in for a pretty reasonable level. I think at the end of the day, with airfare from east to the west coast I will be less then 5k. for a week. It's a different kind of trip for us versus renting a time share or booking an all inclusive resort. I think the ship is too close to being full to get an upgrade bid through. We will see how that goes.
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We just took our first cruise. Completely agree. There were many opportunities to upgrade and spend more money. We had OBC and Shore Excursions credits and used them all up. Thankfully we had the beverage package included in our tickets as that would have added a lot.

We still had an extra thousand on our bill at the end of one week even with all of our credits and benefits. We took many onshore excursions in Europe which added to our cost. All but one were worth it. We self toured in two ports. We were there to see Europe after all and not just sit on a ship in port.

Cruising is different than timeshares, but it is not cheap. Will do again because it is fun, but I can take 3 timeshare trips for the price of one cruise.
 
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We've bid low end on a couple cruises and didn't get the upgrade either time.
joestein said:
We paid for the cruise. We paid for all our excursions (around $1200). We book through a travel agent. They pay our gratuities and give us $700 OBC.

Generally - in these cases we end up going home with a lot of the OBC. Unless you go shopping or gamble a lot - there is not a lot of extra charges on the cruise. Maybe a water package.
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Generally you can add almost anything precruise. Booking dinner or drink packages is easy to do online. With NCL's newer ships, there are more a la carte options like go carts or laser tag. Also if you don't have a meal package for specialty restaurants, those are a la carte too. From a cruising standpoint, we always end up owing more at the end of our cruise with on ship charges with NCL than we do with any other cruise line.
 
We did a upgrade bid back in early 2022 and our bid was filled. We didn't bid very high, perhaps only $10 over the minimum. The ship was only about 40% capacity, so it makes sense that the bid was filled. I think we went up from an inside to a standard balcony.
 
dioxide45 said:
We've bid low end on a couple cruises and didn't get the upgrade either time.

Generally you can add almost anything precruise. Booking dinner or drink packages is easy to do online. With NCL's newer ships, there are more a la carte options like go carts or laser tag. Also if you don't have a meal package for specialty restaurants, those are a la carte too. From a cruising standpoint, we always end up owing more at the end of our cruise with on ship charges with NCL than we do with any other cruise line.
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True - but with the free at sea - I get the beverage package and 2 dining credits. We buy the 2 extra discounted credits. That is enough for us.

Also... I have no desire whatsoever for those go carts, arcade or laser tag. The only thing I would desire is a massage. That only happens if they announce a sale - which happens if they are booked up.
 
I typically book what I want, and I don’t like the upgrade options since they are essentially all guarantee cabins and could be anywhere. I did one in Oct 2021 when I knew the ship would be ~30% or so and I knew there would be lots of empty cabins, and I got the upgrade for just $5 over minimum. And, Royal was nice enough to move our two cabins (we each bought the same upgrade) to other cabins we chose even though they aren’t required to do so.

So far, Virgin Voyages and Windstar have been the only cruise lines I’ve been on where I was able to do a pierside/on board upgrade on day of departure. When I first started cruising I would ask, since I was “told” it’s often an option, only to discover it’s extremely rare and many ships have signs out saying “no upgrades”.


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Ken555 said:
I typically book what I want, and I don’t like the upgrade options since they are essentially all guarantee cabins and could be anywhere. I did one in Oct 2021 when I knew the ship would be ~30% or so and I knew there would be lots of empty cabins, and I got the upgrade for just $5 over minimum. And, Royal was nice enough to move our two cabins (we each bought the same upgrade) to other cabins we chose even though they aren’t required to do so.

So far, Virgin Voyages and Windstar have been the only cruise lines I’ve been on where I was able to do a pierside/on board upgrade on day of departure. When I first started cruising I would ask, since I was “told” it’s often an option, only to discover it’s extremely rare and many ships have signs out saying “no upgrades”.


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I think those signs are just there to keep people at bay. They don't want a hundred people walking up asking for a free, or even paid, upgrade. We sailed on a ship that was pretty much sold out and there was a problem with our cabin. They were able to find another. So ships are rarely 100% occupied, though it is possible that we got the cabin of someone who cancelled last minute or missed the ship.
 
dioxide45 said:
I think those signs are just there to keep people at bay. They don't want a hundred people walking up asking for a free, or even paid, upgrade. We sailed on a ship that was pretty much sold out and there was a problem with our cabin. They were able to find another. So ships are rarely 100% occupied, though it is possible that we got the cabin of someone who cancelled last minute or missed the ship.
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It’s extremely rare for a ship not to have a few cabins available for emergency needs. That does not mean they are available for upgrades. Obviously, those signs are there to ease the customer service line.


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