We sailed out of New York and cruised from the 19th to the 29th of December and were at sea over Christmas. I do have to commend Norwegian on the holiday celebrations aboard as they had egg nog, cookies, a Santa and even gave out some little gifts to the kids on Christmas morning.

That said, this trip did get off to a bad start for me. I have taken many, many cruises, probably more than thirty of them. This particular trip was booked directly through Norwegian with one of their agents and at no point was I warned that perhaps the stateroom that I'd booked wasn't really going to be comfortable for four people (we were travelling with two adults and two young children). In my opinion, the stateroom was the smallest four person room of any I've ever stayed in, hands down. There was only one drop-down bed and then, a cot was brought up from beneath one of the beds to form a giant, 3-sleeper, family bed. It didn't look promising.

Upon seeing the room, I immediately called Norwegian head office before we left port. I waited for nearly an hour to speak to a service rep and was greeting by a woman named Dee Dee who treated me with increasingly rude responses as our conversation progressed. I started off by expressing my concern with the size of the room, explaining to her that this was the size of a three person room on any other ship and not a four person room. She let me know that it was my own fault for choosing this cabin to save money to which I responded that I booked this through Norwegian's own agent and was never told how small the room was. I stayed in a junior suite last time we sailed on the Gem, so I had no idea. She repeatedly told me that there was nothing that she could could do and that this decision was my responsibility, failing to offer any sort of compensation or even an apology. I asked for a manager and was promptly "disconnected". Seeing as I had no plans to call back and spend another hour on hold, this call ended off as being extremely frustrating and a terrible customer service experience. Read more