First of all, let me tell you a little bit about me. I was a first time cruiser and was traveling with my husband and our 13 month old. Frankly, I am not really into cruises and because we have a baby, we were pretty weary of going on one. But, it was a big family reunion trip, so we thought, what the heck, we would give it a try. Overall, we thought the cruise experience was okay. However, NCL's customer service really stank.
In the beginning, there were a lot of little things that bugged me. 1. We needed an iron but they could not get us one because they were all loaned out. 2. We needed a room service menu because we didn't have one in our cabin (other cabins had them), but, they couldn't get us one because they don't have any extras. I just don't understand why they didn't keep extra room service menus. 3. Certain ones of the housekeeping staff didn't like to get out of the way when we passed them in the narrow hallways, making it difficult for us to get to our room sometimes, especially with a stroller or child carrier. This happened numerous times. 4. The reception desk never answered the phones. I think these are little annoyances that I could have let go if I didn't have the two really bad experiences below.
Here's what really ticked me off. We had been at sea for three days. On the fourth day, we stopped in Puerto Rico. We were dying to get off the ship especially since there is not much to do for families with very young children. The plan was to have our son take his morning nap and then disembark. It was very important for our son to take his nap because otherwise he would be cranky the entire time and we would need to come back to the ship early so he can nap again. So what happens about 30 minutes into his nap? Extremely loud drilling coming through the floor. I found out from our maid that they're doing maintenance on the floor below us (we were on the 9th floor, the floor below us is where the life boats are hung). To make a long story short, I complained three times about the noise but the issue was never addressed. During one of the complaints, the receptionist argued with me about my request. Needless to say, I was shocked. Isn't the customer always right? As if that wasn't enough, they had the gall to call us in our room two whole days later and asked if the noise was still going on!!! I was amazed that they think we would have lived with the noise for three days and didn't complain about it the last two days.