having sailed with NCL before on a Hawaii cruise I was keen to do a back to back Med cruise with them. I have cruised around 20 times with Princess, P and O, Holland America, Saga, Thompson, My Cruises etc. and I have never been so dissatisfied. The food was awful and though the menus sound good in the restaurant it arrives late and cold and incorrectly served. I.E. all breakfast choices served at the same time so as you eat your waffles your omelette goes cold. The buffet meals were often cold and picked over as the fellow passengers on my cruises were feral. The desserts were pre prepared on shore and frozen and of poor cafeteria quality.

The hygiene was atrocious and the seats in the buffet were often sticky and as they are made from wicker are extremely difficult to clean. My wife and I each contracted gastro and were confined to our cabin missing out on Sicily which is one of the few ports I had not visited before. The shore excursions were mainly ok but the NCL system of getting passengers onto the tours was abysmal. All tour groups meet in the large theatre and when called are funnelled through a claustrophobic passage at a snails pace as the shore excursion crew hand out bus passes painstakingly slowly. It is the worst system I've encountered on any ship and when I mentioned to the staff that perhaps they should consider looking at how other cruise lines organise tours I was told too bad, get used to it.

Needless to say I have unsubscribed from NCL's news letter and I will never travel with them again. There are too many good cruise companies out there than to waste your time and money on a dud. By the way be prepared to pay extra for everything with NCL. I wouldn't be surprised to hear that hey have installed coin operated toilet roll dispensers throughout the ship in future.