Norwegian Gem Review

4.0 / 5.0
2,589 reviews

Fun, Relaxing Family Trip

Review for the Bahamas Cruise on Norwegian Gem
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rubyblue
2-5 Cruises • Age 2020s

Rating by category

Cabin
Value for Money
Embarkation
Dining
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Service

Additional details

Sail Date: Aug 2015
Cabin: Mid-Ship Balcony
Traveled with children

This was our first cruise on NCL, having cruised on RCCL(4) & Carnival(1) before. This was our DD first cruise. That said, my family had a great trip. I was very concerned after reading the mixed reviews but we found only a few small things that we could complain about( most were not NCL fault either, nothing big enough to take away from our overall enjoyment.

Embarkation was great. We drove to the port early to avoid crowds arriving around 10:15, while passengers were still departing from the previous week. We dropped off our luggage and case of water and were in line in a few minutes. check-in was quick. We knew we would wait to board because of our early arrival, but it didn't seem too long.

Most evenings we ate in the Magenta Dinig Room. On our first night we had an excellent waitress named Aimara. The next morning she remembered our names when we met at the Great Outdoors. We chose to ask for her on our remaining visits. Her service was great, as was the food. I would have liked a larger selection of entree choices, but we enjoyed all our meals here. My DH and I ate in the Geand Pacific Dining Room one evening while our DD was at Splash Academy. We found service to be slow. The food was still good, but our meal took much longer to arrive than expected. On another day we chose to eat breakfast here and the same thing happened. We watched people who were seated after us order and eat before our meals arrived. We couldn't find our waiter to ask if there was a problem. Eggs, bacon, sausage and hash browns shouldn't have taken that long. We actually were getting ready to walk out, when our waiter served us. Two tries and two fails. We ate breakfast most days at the Great Outdoors buffet. Average buffet food here. We chose to eat at Cagney's on Thursday night and we were disappointed in the service. We had 3 different servers tell us they would be our server that evening in a matter of 5 minutes. We gave our drink order to the first one, but then it took about 10 minutes before they arrived, served by yet another person. We had another wait before our orders were taken. Our salads arrived quickly, but then we waited for our entrees, which my husband saw sitting on the counter. The food itself was perfectly cooked and tasted delicious, however the overall experience wasn't worth the extra money. We were also disappointed with the service at O'Sheehan's, not the food.

Cabin Review

Mid-Ship Balcony

Cabin BA

Our cabin was a mid-ship balcony. The room was tight for 3 people especially when the sofa bed was set up at night. The only way to get to the balcony then was to climb across that bed. My DD had to crawl across the king bed to get to the bathroom. There was ample closet and storage space. Our room steward, Rommel, was great. He greeted us by name and each evening asked how our day was. His towel animals delighted us each night.

Port Reviews

New York (Manhattan)

Embarkation was painless. Driving to and from the port was not as challenging as expected.

Nassau

Too hot and crowded with 4 ships in port. We walked around a little,but chose to head back to the ship after a short time.

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