21 Nights - Norwegian Cruise Line (Miami to Seattle)

2025: Miami to Seattle

We booked with Costco after I got a ad on my phone showing $1,500 off cruises for a New Years special through Norwegian.

The cruise was $3,999.16 after a 15% costco discount. We used one of our future cruise credits (that cost us $125) and this brought the price down to $3,749.16. We had to pay all at once since it was within 3 months. Costco gives you Digital Costco Shop cards that you use like cash at Costco. We will get a $160 and bonus $200 card after this cruise for booking with them.

This also included a $120 specialty dining add on which allows us to eat at their specialty restaurants three nights. We already get two nights at specialy restaurants included since we are at the sapphire latitude level. So, we can eat at those restaurants 5 of our 21 nights. We also get a couple bottles of wine and shore excursion discounts.

This cruise is similiar to one we took in Dec. 2022 (L.A. to Miami, on the Norwegian Bliss), but longer, backwards and it skips Acapulco Mexico and adds Puntarenas (Puerto Calderal) Costa Rica, San Francisco California, Victoria British Columbia and Seattle Washington.

Ship

Norwegian Encore is the largest Norwegian ship and as of Jan. 2025 is the 27th largest in the world, holding 4,004 passengers, 1,735 crew, it weighs 169,116 tons and was refurbished in Nov. 2024. We booked room 12647 an inside room, midship. This is a larger ship with more sea days than we have done recently, so we will see how we like the change. We usually like a little smaller ship and less sea days, but this was a good deal, so we will see. We have cruised on ships from 4,004 to 1,380 passengers, crews from 550 to 1,735.

Tips will be extra ($40 per night) and excursions will be extra but we get a discount for our lattitude level. All in all though (for cruise, with tips, airfare, dining, excursions and parking) I estimate this will be about $130 per person, per night which is a good rate for all you get.

This will be our 28th cruise (8/64 days on Princess, 10/120 days on Norwegian (after this cruise), 6/44 days on Carnival, 3/26 days on Royal Caribbean and 1/9 days on Celebrity) = 263 days of fun and relaxing cruising.

Lastly, Lynn purchased Go Ready Travel Insurance from AEGIS for $396 which goes for one year starting March 30th, 2025 and covers items like: Trip Interruption, Airline Ticket Change Fee, Baggage Delay, Baggage / Personal Effects, Accidental Death, Emergency Accident and Emergency Sickness Medical Expense, Emergency Medical Evacuation, etc. Each with limits from $200 - $50,000.

Norwegian bonus offer

Inside Offer! Book select categories and the first two guests in each cabin will receive the following two offers:
1. Free Wifi; 150 minutes of free internet per person,
2. $50 per cabin Shore Excursion Credit on each excursion booked through the cruise line.

Drive to Miami for cruise, Airfare back from Seattle

So, a one hour drive to our parking, March 30th the cruise departs at 4 pm. We will park at the Pullman hotel, get a transfer to the port for about $15 each and be off. Parking for 23 days was $222.45, paid 12/29/24.

Our airfare from Seattle Washington back to Miami was only $11 as Lynn used American Airline air miles, but we do have to pay $40 per checked bag. We have an excursion reserved (see April 20th info below) since we have to be off early and the flight is late (April 20th at 10:10 pm) back to Miami on April 21, 7:05 am.

Cruise March 30 - April 20, 2025, I will only list stops below

Catagena, Colombia

April 2nd, more to come as we plan and go...........

We booked Amazing Cartagena: Bay and Wall City excursion with Norwegian ($74.80 total after discounts).