The #10 per person per day service charge is being applied by almost every cruise line serving North America. Besides Norwegian, Carnival, Cunard, Holland America, and Princess do so.
About the only cruise lines not charging a $10 per person per day sevice charge are Celebrity and Royal Caribbean, and their suggest tipping guidelines are $10.25 and $9.00 per person per day (pppd), pretty much the same.
What's the difference?
With Celebrity and Royal Caribbean, you'll dine in the same restaurant at the same table every night, so it's fairly easy to stash cash at the end of a cruise in an envelope for the waiter $3.50 pppd, assistant waiter $.50 pppd, and maitre'd $2.00 pppd.
Imagine doing so for different servers every night because NCL has open seating. You'll spend all your free time on a cruise addressing and stashing cash into envelopes every night. You'll also will need much more cash to stuff into these envelopes.
There's a reason all but 2 major cruise lines serving North America have switched to auto tipping policies....
As to your other issue, there's still plenty of "free" restaurant aboard NCL and NCLA ships. You only pay a surcharge for the extra "speciality" restaurants that many ships don't have. NCL's surcharges are less than what other cruise lines charge.
Here's NCL's surcharges: $12.50, $15 and $20 per person, depending on which speciality restaurant.
Carnival's surcharges: $25 per person.
Celebrity's surcharge: $25 per person.
Cunard's surcharges: $20 per person for lunch, $30 per person for dinner.
Holland America surcharge: $20 per person.
Princess surcharges: $15 and $20 per person, depending on which restaurant.
Royal Caribbean surcharges:: $20 to $25 per person.
They all are doing this, so why pick on just NCL?
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