Barcelona to Europe - Western Mediterranean Norwegian Gem Cruise Reviews

I chose this cruise because the were only 4 consecutive sea days. As soon as I booked it the itinerary change to 5 sea days. 3 days into the cruise it was changed to 6 consecutive days at sea. I understand things like weather come into play. You accept that when you book. You also expect that when you add days the cruise line would have some sort of activities to make up for the lost ports. This ...

Overall, the vacation was fantastic, but I have to admit I was not impressed at all with NCL and will likely not sail with them again. Embarkation was fairly easy, they had to send us to 3 different lines because their key cards were not working, but it did not take that long and we were on board in under 30 minutes - very nice. The ship is very nice and very clean. I liked the layout of the ...

We have taken many cruises in the past 15 years. Most with NCL. This itinerary was our favorite so far. We had a problem checking in the day of our cruise, due to a computer glitch at NCL, Miami. So problem here is you have to wait until that office opens...we sat for 4 hours. We found the ship to be about half full. The staff were all very polite. The freestyle dining is important to us as we do ...

How to do Norwegian Gem's Western Mediterranian Cruise on Your Own: I just went on the Gem on August 9th and am going to write out my itenerary and suggestions for changes. Note that this itenerary included a good amount of walking and days that were packed full, but in the end we had an awesome time. This was an excellent trip for someone who has never seen any of these destinations before. ...

We've been on a handful of cruises and this was our 1st with NCL. (Family of 5 people) One thing about 'Freestyle' cruising is that everyone else on the ship can be 'Freestylin' at the same time you are!  Thus leading to wonderful wait times.  Very crowded... the only place more challenging to find seats than the main cafe is the pool area.  Either that or there are more Invisible people on ...

Embarkation:My wife and I arrived in Barcelona on Saturdaya afternoon, the day before the cruise was scheduled to leave Barcelona.  This gave us approx. 24 hours to catch up on sleep, and explore a bit of Barcelona.  When we arrived to the pier on Sunday at about 2pm, there was a sizeable crowd already in front of us for check-in.  Regardless, we were able to check out luggage quickly (within 5 ...

This was our first cruise, and it had its ups and downs.  We found we were bored. We also felt nickled and dimed, everything was an extra charge.  We expecting a movie theater on the ship, this didn't exist; instead you had to purchase movie at $11.95 each to view on the tiny TV in the stateroom. The library was somewhat out of date and was primarily made up of fiction. The person running the ...

As background, my husband and I have been on 3 previous cruises (Royal Caribbean & Princess).  We selected this ship based on its port-intensive Western Mediterranean itinerary and unbeatable value.  We opted to save money on the cruise and get a ocean view room and spend more money on the excursions.  My thoughts on Norwegian Cruise Line and the Gem:The Freestyle Cruising is fantastic!  We were ...

We are truly people who appreciate a good value for money spent.  We tend to seek out the more modest rooms, but we do like to at least have a bit of a view and on this trip the porthole was all we needed.  For goodness sakes if you're on a cruise there is plenty of deck space and it doesn't mean just next the the loud musical combo playing poolside.  There were many places for us to be in the ...

I'm posting this several days after our return. It was a wonderful itinerary, a great ship, but NCL really needs to get their act together in terms of customer service. We also found a number of great companies to use to avoid NCL's over priced shore excursions. November 2, 2008 We arrived in Barcelona about 9:30AM. NCL pre-departure told us we couldn't check in and/or get rid of our baggage ...