Norwegian Pearl Review

Noisy, Mediocre Food, and Constant Sales Efforts

Review for Alaska Cruise on Norwegian Pearl
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Leifberickson
6-10 Cruises • Age 80s

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Sail Date: Sep 2015
Cabin: Oceanview Porthole Window

Have cruised a moderate number of times on various cruise lines, including NCL. The good news is that the staff and crew were for the most part very friendly and professional. That being said, it was nearly impossible, other than in the library, to find a quiet spot to just relax and enjoy the cruise. The area most of us preferred, which is the upper forward viewing area, would be pleasant one moment, and the next would have some event, like bingo, or dance classes or you name it, all at a loud volume. On other cruises events such as bingo are held in the theater area so as not to disturb the vast majority of us who could care less about playing bingo, or the adult dating game or any number of other truly inane entertainments. Again, for those who want to be entertained in that respect, use the theater.

Surprisingly, the food on this trip was truly bad. NCL has decided to offer a number of specialty restaurants for which they charge an additional 20 to 30 $ apiece. I cannot say for sure, but my suspicion is that the food in the "ordinary restaurants" is not given near the same attention to flavor, so as to encourage the extra spending.

Finally, not an opportunity was missed to hawk some service, or product or to raffle off some prize. This is fairly common on cruise ships, but it seemed to me this ship went out of its way to push sales. An example would be that before some entertainment in the theater, there would be a big push to sell raffle tickets to the now captive audience which had come primarily, I tend to believe, to see the nights event, not to further fill the coffers of NCL.

Cabin Review

Oceanview Porthole Window

Cabin OG

The cabin was actually fairly well laid out and in very good condition. The "couch" was obviously intended to serve as an additional bed for someone with a small child along as it was quite deep and not very comfy. The tv reception was really bad, even for their in-house programs which, considering the advances in audio/video was truly surprising. Grainy picture and terrible sound. Did not matter much as did not spend much time watching.

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