The sale included two for one airfare and our price was $8,225.28 (cruise $5,816, airfare $1,208 and transfers $250, Gov tax/Port Exp/Fees $951.28). Tips and excursions will be in addition later. The person we were working with said we both have multiple accounts and they needed to merge them before we could put down a deposit. Our last Norwegian cruise, they said the same thing, so this was a little frustrating. Lynn got a call Nov. 25th, following up on our original hold and Kathy, who was more knowledgable, was able to put our cruise credits (we purchased on our last cruise) as deposits for each cruise. It was nice to use our two $250 prepaid cruise deposits that we purchased on our last cruise. Now we are set until final payments (7725.28), which are due in July 2024.
A few months before the cruise they allow you to bid on upgrading to balcony rooms, so we put a bid in for around $400 for the first cruise and $500 for the second. To book a balcony room instead of a inside cabin was almost double when we originally booked. We will see if we are lucky but will be happy with or without an upgrade.
With less than three months to go we started booking some excursions. They probably average about $250 per, so our bill will increase but this is probably the only time we will be to these destinations.
Airlines going were all on Delta (Korean Air):
Miami 11/13/24 7:05pm to New York at 10:08 pm (3 hours)
New York 11/14/24 12:50pm to Seoul Incheon 11/15/24 6:30am (Incheon is 13 hours ahead, this is about a 15.5 hour flight)
We paid $75 each for transfers to the ship
Airlines returning were all on United:
Hong Kong 12/10/24 9:05pm to LA 12/10/24 5:45pm( 13.25 hours)
LA 12/10/24 9:21pm to Washington 12/11/24 5:09am ( 5 hours)
Washington, DC 12/11/24 9:00am to Miami 12/11/24 11:52am( 2.75 hours)
We paid $50 each for transfers to the airport.
We parked at Pullman MIA Hotel - Shuttles, 5800 Blue Lagoon Drive, Miami for just under $230 from Nov. 13th until Dec. 11th. It is self park, uncovered parking but a better cost and more convenient than ubering back and forth from Key Largo.
This will be interesting for me as my parents lived at: 390 Futoo-machi, Kohoku-ku, Yokohama, Japan in 1957 (may have changed names to: 390 Okurayama, Kohoku-ku, Yokohama, Japan) while my father was in the service. I remember a story of my sister wandering off and ending near railroad tracks, with someone giving her an octopus leg to eat. Hopefully we will be able to go see the area when we are at one of our stops.
Map of area
Photo links
NCL Spirit is an old ship, built in 1998. It was refurbished in 2022. Our last cruise was on this ship and it was fairly nice, but you could see its age. We will check out possibly upgrading to an oceanview or balcony room later, but pricing was at least double, at the time of our booking. We also investigated transfering our reservation to Costco travel as they also give onboard credits or cash cards when they are your travel agent, but Lynn read it is not possible when airfare is booked by Norwegian.
NCL revised the itineraries three times before we left. The current itineraries are below. Second map update to come?
November 15-26, 2024
November 26 - December 11, 2024
More to come, if or when we confirm and plan more.