I've sailed once before on NCL on the Getaway through a company promotion and had an excellent time. Granted it was my first cruise so I didn't have anything to compare it to but I'm still human and I know how I like to be treated. FAst forward to this weeks trip and from about the day we stopped at Port Canaveral it was just all downhill. We started with a drop off for the kiddies (2x 3-YO's and 1x 4-YO) at Splash Academy and no more than an hour passes when they call frazzled that one of them is a 'wanderer' (meaning she preferred blocks over gymnastics) the other didn't want to join in on the activity (he prefers to read a book) and the 3rd 'wasn't listening'. now, you are probably thinking 'Her kids must be terrorists' but I'm not one of those ridiculous parents that swears their kids are angels but I do now that they aren't savages like some of the children I saw being dropped off and picked up at all hours. They didn't even try to work with them a little. My kids aren't unreasonable and any good child care worker knows how to get kids excited about anything.

Moving on to the diembarkation process... what process? Trying to get to Stirrup Cay was so frustrating especially with kids in tow. There was no one to help guide people towards the exit. There were folks jumping and skipping the line, sloppy drunk people pushing everyone and just all out chaos. We finally made it to the island, which was nice and clean but with the hassle of the morning there was not much time to enjoy the fresh air and open spaces.

My biggest issue was for some family members and myself with cash payments and account payments. My mom made a cash payment to her room twice, we thought there were no problems until it was time to close out her account and the cash payment was no were to be found on the guest services computers but the iTV account showed the payment. We had to go back to our room take a photo of the screen that showed the payment and go back down to guest services and even with the proof she repeatedly asked me for the recipt showing that the payment was made. If you have cruised before then you may know that if you dont have a credit card or any cash on your card you are not able to make any purchases yet my mother went on a small shopping spree (obviously after her $100 cash payment) and this woman still couldnt muster enough common sense to say 'Hey, there must be something going on here!'. I asked for her supervisior a few times and all of a sudden the payment miraculously showed up on her screen, her excuse: 'I didn't look that far back on your account.' It's a 7 day cruise... you cant be serious?! My mother in law made a $140 cash payment to ensure her exorbitant $13.50 daily pp service charges were covered as well as a small gift shop purchase or two and when she went to use her card they told her the account was closed because she had no money on it. So back on down to guest services (luckily with the receipt) and she said the payment was never processed but since we had the receipt she could put that right in for us -_-. I opted to pay for my sister in law and her daughters room charges (including service charges) and they happily transferred the charges to my room but conveniently 'forgot' to credit any cash payments she made along the trip. Had I not asked for both the original room charges receipt and asked to know why the cash payments were not applied NCL would have happily kept those cash payments. Read more