My husband just received another offer for a "free" cruise from Harrah's
Vegas properties for July 17-19 (giveaway at Rio). The offer says cruises
include Alaska, Bermuda, or Europe (July-Sept. 2009 and May-July 2010) and
Caribbean or Mexican Riviera (Oct. 2009-April 2010).
If any Harrah's employees are reading this, you might want to note that we
don't think this is such a great deal. In fact, due to the extra costs and
restrictions, these certificates may cause the receivers to be unhappy,
once they realize they aren't so good as they originally look.
As with past NCL cruise certificates, you have to pay your own port and tax
fees (as well as airfare and gratuities). After our last couple of
experiences, in all likelihood we are not going to bother with this certificate.
These certificates turn out to be more or less 2 for the price of 1,
rather than "free," because they add on very high port taxes and other fees.
Also the room is only "ocean-view" and those staterooms are fairly small.
(You have to pay extra for balconies or other upgrades). Also many NCL
ships seem not to have Handicapped Cabins in this category (or they may be
"obscured" ocean-view, as we found when we booked using a similar certificate
for Alaska).
Certificates cannot be combined in any way with other certificates either.
You can't transfer them, and the named person has to go. (In fact I asked,
what would happen if 1 person were sick and couldn't make it at the last
minute, and I was told the 2nd person would not be able to board. Don't
know how true that really is though.)
Also the cruises are generally restricted to only "certain" cruises. As
we found out with the certificate we received during the Tahoe Special 7-
Star event, only 1 European cruise was included, and certain Alaskan ships
were excluded, and so on.
If you want to take an NCL cruise in an Ocean-view cabin, the 2-for-1 final
price is a good one, but it isn't "free". And you should be aware that
there may be restrictions on just which cruises are included in the offer.
This offer did have one interesting extra -- $200 in onboard promotional
slot play if you book your ship July 17-Aug. 19, 2009.
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