Norwegian Star Review

4.0 / 5.0
2,583 reviews

Norwegian Star Panama Canal Cruise

Review for the Panama Canal & Central America Cruise on Norwegian Star
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Surfside Beach Mike
10+ Cruises • Age 70s

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Sail Date: Oct 2010
Cabin: Inside

We were excited in anticipation of our first cruise with Norwegian since we have cruised mostly with Royal Caribbean and Carnival, but found out quite quickly (the first night) that our expectations may not be met on this ship. I first must say that embarkation was very smooth and without incident. We received many friendly greetings from the crew as we boarded. Like most cruisers, we found our cabin and then went up to the Market Cafe (buffet restaurant) for lunch. The layout of the buffet was typical, and similar to Carnival, with two major food lines, one on each side of the ship. In comparison to RCI ships, the layout was inferior because on RCI ships, they have "islands" of service areas which feature the different types of food offered including a "salad island", a "hot-food island", a "desert island" etc. This makes for a much better flow of guests and eliminates waiting in the long line to go through the line. I must admit that even though we boarded very early and before many of the other guests had boarded, the restaurant was already very crowded. Our first impression of the food was that it was mediocre. We are not big fans of the buffet restaurant food on cruise ships anyway, and the "Star" was not any better than others we had experiences.

The first night there was only one show, an introductory show that introduced the production company and the Cruise Director (Ray Carr). This show was disappointing on many levels. First, the theater only holds 1100 guests and with 2500 on board, it was standing room only. Even though we arrived 15 minutes before the start of the show, we had to stand. Ray Carr hosted and the presentation was ok. Ray talked about the guest satisfaction and offered his ship phone number (8850) and invited us to call him if we needed his help with anything. The production company put on a quick show and that was just ok as well.

The second night was our first "formal-or-not" night, so we made our plans to go to dinner at 7 pm and attend the second show which began at 9:15 pm. So we headed for the Versailles Dining Room at 7 and ended up waiting for about 15 minutes to be seated. Since this was our first experience with 'freestyle dining', we had to wait in line both the first and second nights and that was a definite turn-off for us. We are used to having a certain seating time and schedule with RCI and we never had to wait in a line. Service was very, very slow and we got more nervous as the evening wore on because we were worried about not making it to the show on time. The minute we received each course, we ate quickly, hoping that they would hurry with the next course, but that didn't matter, it just continued to be slow through the entire meal. When they finally brought our desert at 9:05, we inhaled that within a couple minutes and rushed to the other end of the ship to the theater to try to make the show in time. Well, guess what, when we arrived the theater was already dark and the show had begun. We tried to look for any available seats but there weren't any. In fact, people were sitting and standing in the aisles. We were very disappointed and, after standing in the aisle for a few minutes she went back to the cabin, unable to stand any longer. I remained for the rest of the show. My impression of the show was again, just ok. It was a production company show with colorful costumes and an Asian/Japanese/Chinese theme. It was all dancing and no singing and although the dancing was fairly good, it was not a typical Las Vegas Style production show with the singing and dancing you usually find. When I returned to the cabin, my informed me that she had called the Cruiser Director, Ray, to complain about the bad experience with dinner and then not arriving in time to get a seat for the show. I was astounded to hear that he was rude and abrupt with my wife. She explained what happened to him and all she got in return were excuses. He told her that there were seats available in the theater and she should go back and look again. Even though she insisted that no seats were available, he insisted that there were. His excuse for the slow dinner service was that on a formal night service would be slower and that we should expect it to happen again with the next formal night. He also told her that the specialty restaurants had no waiting and perhaps we should have chosen to go to one of them instead. Well, this just angered my wife all the more since we do not usually dine at the specialty restaurants because of th extra cover charge. His entire attitude made my wife feel that it was her fault that she had missed the show, he did not apologize and was not at all sympathetic to our concerns in the least. She was very disgusted and told him as much, but to no avail. The conversation ended badly and that experience would be another of several that made us very unhappy with this ship and its' staff.

Cabin Review

Inside

Cabin ID

We had an interior cabin which was tiny. We usually take an interior and although they are always small, this one seemed a bit smaller. Although adequate, we have had much better ones on Royal Caribbean.

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