We booked with Norwegian because our family members had had several positive experiences on previous cruises. our cruise was not the same caliber as previous cruises and several guests agreed. Upon boarding the ship, there was no welcome party. No special greeting. We just went to our room. There were less events available. Dining rooms are open for breakfast but they should be open for luch as well. Mid day options were limited. There were very few activities and those that were available had an extra charge. No make your own cupcake, or other classes. The rooms were clean and our cabin was cleaned regulary but we were looking forward to the towel figures and never got one. The staff was nice but not particularly hyping the crowd. Dining rooms were full and getting a table took almost an hour. As a result, we missed some of the shows because our meal ran late. The shows were just ok anyway. For our first cruise, it was ok but we were expecting spectacular. Read Less

We are new-ish to cruising but this was our 3rd. We have done 1 P&O and 1 Royal Caribbean. We intend trying 5 cruise lines and then decide on who we want to sail with. MSC and Princess will be next. We currently have P&O and RC neck-and-neck in all aspects of quality and service from our own experience. This review isn’t against the staff because as with all cruise staff they work really hard long days and we appreciate it isn’t easy. The staff, as with others ships couldn't do enough for us. This is a long review but in sections, there is minimum opinion here because it is typed as we experienced it. This is typed purely for people to read before booking but also for those high up in Norwegian to pull their fingers out as people will just vote with their feet and you wont get them back. The problems started in Venice where we had a 1200pm check in time given to us but it seemed so did everyone else. After registering and getting the door cards we were given a boarding group number-this turned out to be a boarding time over 2 hours later. The Premium drinks package we had didn’t include water. Ive never thought as water as a luxury item but it wasn’t included, nor was the Starbucks coffee which is nearly $10 for 2 cups- we had 6 between 2 of us at nearly $30. The buffet wasn’t serve yourself as expected, all items were served to you and your plate (no trays) like in a prison. 1 person served 3 items or more so if the server was dealing with someone in front of you, you just had to wait for their return as they took the spoons off you if you dare serve yourself. Want to squirt your own tomato sauce on your bacon? They’ll take that off you too and squirt it for you. This happened. The water, juice, tea and coffee counter was placed alongside the walking gangway. You cant serve yourself here either, there’s 2 or 3 people stood there serving you but they were roped off with bollards, and we stood the other side of the rope for a drink, so you lost 4-5 foot in width of the walking gangway. This created an instant bottle neck of people wanting drinks and people passing with plates of food. I asked why we just couldn’t serve ourselves, and I was told ‘our bosses tell us this’. The casino was a decent size to be fair, but with crowds of people around the 1 roulette table it was difficult to play if you didn’t have a seat. Seats occupied by non players but the casino staff wouldn’t ask them to move to make space for players. The card tables were a minimum of $5 per play which meant the people who play just for fun for $1 or $2 werent there. The rest of the floor space was occupied by 160+ slots/bandits/fruit machines which at most had 10% occupied at any time- This is a generous estimate too. 1 craps table (this is usual), $5, $10, $25 card tables mostly sat empty 95% of the time with clearly bored dealers, and 1 busy roulette table. So much wasted space on slot machines it was a pity. The people leaving the theatre passed through the casino and carried on walking. I wonder who would have stopped for $1 / $2 games. The casino had its own rules not seen elsewhere too. Anyone played 2 hands at a card table? Me too. Not here though, you could play 2 hands but a clear plastic guard was placed over your 2nd hand of cards to ensure you played them blind. You had to gamble blind, gamble without seeing any cards. Haven’t seen that before. Roulette digital sign said $2 play with 5 chip minimum . Not sure why it just didn’t say $10 minimum. This changed when playing the columns or dozens (these are 3 available bets) because 2 out of 3 bets are often covered but the $10 minimum now meant $10 minimum on each column or dozen, so now we were at $20 per bet. Didn’t see this written anywhere and never heard of it before either. Again, no $1 $2 for the fun players to play but with only 1 table for a ship of 2,200 people on, its probably just as well. Royal Caribbean dealers said you had to be a casino dealer for 2 years outside before you could be a dealer on a ship with them. The Norwegian staff didn’t appear to have that level of experience but all were very pleasant, as were the waiters and bar staff. The casino rules and minimum pricing was clearly out of their hands by those above them. Gatsby’s bar which backed onto the casino had great bar staff, decent piano players but stunk of either blue cheese or stale feet. Every day and night we noticed it, until the last night before we sailed back to Venice on day 6 when it smelled clean. The ship had brass stair edges, bannisters and fittings but I couldn’t tell when they were last shiny. Admittedly brass is hard to keep shiny but its been done elsewhere and if it cant be kept on top of then its sensible to fit steel fittings that don’t need polishing. Tenders were required in some places (these are little boats from the ship to the town if the ship cant get any closer or into a normal dock) and the first tender needed was into Montenegro. 4 hours we had available here and after an utter shambles getting people off the ship, we had enough time for a stroll around the town and 2 drinks then we went back to the tender for the ship. Some people didn’t even get off the ship as time had simply run out for them due to the tender and ticket fiasco. For each town or island that needed a tender we had an arrival time and a departure time given to us, but no one knew the last tender time from each town. On the third tender they advised us the last tender departure time (most likely from repeated complaints about the tendering problems for the previous two days). Duty Free shop continually empty, but considering the prices it should be called Duty Added. Maintenance men painting the ship while sailing back from Croatia so a nice paint smell as we travelled watching the sun set. Pub quiz run (with football on tv, the Darby and Joan club sat nattering and other general noise) by a staff whose English was so poor she asked an English passenger to read the questions out for her. 1 notable quiz question was ‘what is the most popular river in New York?’ . We weren’t sure how a river becomes popular but we picked the Hudson and then gave up on the quiz due to the above points. Repeated queues from main dining areas up and down stairs, past toilets and lifts as there was often 1 person taking details for tables as pre booking wasn’t done, as its called ‘Feel at Sea’ or ‘Freedom Dining’ but with no booking times people turned up together and staff got overrun. I could go on but this is a long review already, so some good points. Good points Nice staff and hardworking, nice weather, nice ports to visit. In summary If I didn’t know better I’d think this was their first attempt at cruising. Wouldn’t use NCL again as theres way too many bad points that we didn’t experience on P&O or RC. If it was my first cruise I most likely wouldn’t bother again, no matter who tried to convince me. Read Less

We chose this cruise because we wanted to visit Venice (2 night stay prior to the cruise) and also visit the Greek isles and Dubrovnik. Prior to the cruise the stop at Kotor (Montenegro) was changed to Bar and this was a 2 hour ‘technical’ stop so no getting off the ship (Kotor would have been 2.30pm-8pm) Apparently this was due to the Venice port authority making changes to our departure time from Venice which was changed for 6pm to 8.45pm but we didn’t actually sail until 11pm. We did stop at Corfu and did our own thing by walking into the old town which was 10am-4pm as planned. The visit was as planned to Santorini which was beautiful. Mykonos was as planned but we chose to stay on the ship. Argostoli was cancelled on the day as the Captain stated the weather conditions were not safe to get into the harbour (no idea if this was accurate as the sea looked calm to us) very disappointing as this was two destinations now not visited out of five. Dubrovnik was disappointingly short (7.30am - 1pm). The guide spoke so fast you couldn’t take it all in. Saying that we did the Riviera Dubrovnik tour which took us to two beautiful destinations outside Dubrovnik. We have cruised before and never experienced so many changes. For a weeks holiday this was very disappointing and does not give great value for money. Entertainment was mixed the singers/dancers were good although we only saw one show. The hypnotist put on a good show. The pianist and the trio were ok! We mainly ate in the self service restaurant and the food was excellent. Great choices and something for everyone. We did three specialist restaurants which were very good. The Teppanyaki was brilliant, entertaining and great food. Our cabin was at the back of the ship and could be noisy at times. The cabin was a bit dated but clean. Read Less

Booked with a Group. Ship overall is average. Guest Service at Registration desk is poor, seemed bothered with any questions. Bar, Restraurant, and Fitness personal very good. Food is average. Stops at ports were changed frequently which caused some adjustments to booked tours. Learned to check also on how many ships will be in port at one time as many of the stops were extremely overcrowed. Many of the ship personal had little knowlege of aspects or ammenities of the ship if it was not their department. Internet access is poor and non-existant. Don't even bother paying extra for it. Over $200 charged and little or no connection and down completely most of the time. Ship personal were not caring about the wi-fi. This was very difficult do to communication obligations we had. It is very unfortunate about the cruise experience considering the beautiful ports of call. Will most likely not be back to Norwegian. Read Less

We selected this cruise for the ports and ended up missing Montenegro and Argostoli. Montenegro was missed due to changes by the Port Authority in Venice. Venice now staggers the coming and going of all cruise ship. NCL was given the LAST leaving time out of Venice so this meant we had to miss Montenegro. Argostoli was missed (we were told) due to the weather however we never experienced any bad weather on the ship. We must have been far from the bad weather in Argostoli? We were cut short on our last stop in Dubrovnik and had to get back on board earlier than originally planned. Why? We were told because NCL was given the FIRST time to be back in port by the Venice Port Authority. Does this make sense? Give the ship with the LAST leaving time the EARLIEST time to be back??? The ship was fine. Clean and well maintained. The food was average. The menu is so boring. We don't do buffets and the service is very slow in all of the sit down restaurants. Be prepared to be ignored. Bars are crowded and the bartenders are inattentive and not friendly. The Gatsby servers (mostly all females) only seem to have "eyes" for one another. That's fine, but can you get me a drink, please? One of the Gatsby bartenders has such a thick accent and refuses to increase her volume when you say "I'm sorry, I can't hear you." It was like she was doing ME a favor to even wait on me. Excuse me? All of the bars are crowded. You would think the ship would be prepared for the rush (like when people are getting back on board after a port stop) and put more workers at the bars and restaurants. The cruise director and his staff are mostly friendly and fun. The NCL production cast work so hard and are incredibly talented. We loved all of their shows. The aerialists are wonderful. The hypnotist was mildly entertaining, but we don't believe that the hypnotism was real. Can you say overacting by the "volunteers" from the audience? Customer service gave inaccurate information on two basic questions we asked. When we found out, we had to get back in line and get our key card fixed. They didn't apologize. Actually, I'd say it is typical NCL customer service. Snarly. Rude. Say NO to everything. Shore excursion personnel. Where to begin? Absolutely positively the WORST WORST WORST treatment we have ever gotten. This - after spending $700+ on shore excursions. Do they realize without us they wouldn't have a salary? To end on a bright note. Our cabin was clean and quiet and we slept very well at night. We enjoyed our time in Corfu, Santorini, Mykonos, and Dubrovnik (too short, though). The shore excursions we took were nice. Read Less

I would say I am an avid cruiser and this was my first cruise on NCL. However, it was the worst cruise ive taken. I took my mom on this cruise because she just beat breast cancer and it was also her retirement celebration. We saved up for a LONG time to take an unpleasant cruise. I chose NCL for a step up from other cruise lines and I thought that paying over 5k for a mini suite would be worth while for a European cruise, however, I was wrong. Sanitation - There were so many people sick on the cruise so it was a constant fear. I understand the inhearant risks of this but getting paper menus, being treated like a baby in fancy restaurants, etc made the cruise that less enjoyable all while the staff was seemingly trying to hide the information. That is why I am sharing that information with the friends, news media, and future cruisers. Two ports of calls were cancelled and we got a lousy 18 dollars back in taxes. I understand that it is not a guarantee to get off the ship but for the amount of money that we spent, it seemed like nothing was done more to entertain us on the boat. The first port of call is prob getting cancelled frequently because of the Venice harbor master, but it is so uncalled for to place blame on Venice when we knew of this cancellation way in advance. I could get a hotel room if i wanted to remain on land. The second port of call, the weather cleared within an hour of leaving the port, so the captain seemed scared even though we were already inside the port. Moderno was a horrible restaurant to eat at for 50$ a person - dont waste your time. The food was not the greatest and we had to be HAND FED at the salad bar because so many people were sick on the cruise. Staff - the service the main dining was worth it - the wait staff was phenomenal. The following employees were the greatest on the ship: Jo anne - room steward Nozimbo - Casino dealer Michael - Wine steward Evelyn - Versailles restaurant Read Less

We were a group of 19 and for most of us it was our first ocean cruise. We salute the awesome crew. They are there to work hard and make it your best vacation. We prefer the food in the Garden Cafe and the late snacks in O’Sheehan. I love the quality of the green salads and fresh fruits in the Garden Cafe. Thank you to all the restaurant crew of Aqua and Garden Cafe! We took the Star Explorer Package for the excursions and really made our short visits to each port memorable. Despite of the long queues, I appreciate that the crew greets you with warm smile and cold face towel to freshen up. The quality of the shows were superb! Just for the show alone you’ll appreciate the value you paid for the cruise. Although the disembarkation process needs to improve, overall we are happy with NCL and now planning the next cruise. Read Less

We chose the cruise as we had cruised on the Star before in Asia, which was fab but also the destinations looked great with Greece, Croatia and Montenegro. This was our first Med cruise however we have been on several cruises before this in other parts of the world. First of all the destinations were excellent. Can't fault any location. A bit difficult with logistics in Venice getting to the port but ok there are ways and means if you are mobile enough. Tragically the time allowed on each destination amounted to between 2 and 3 hours only. The main reason for this was tendering. You are not communicated any of this information until you read the daily magazine after an evening out on the ship. So you have be up by 05.30 to get your tender tickets at 0700. The queue is halfway around the ship so there's an hour at least. You wait an hour and more to get off the ship. Ship location means you tender to shore which on average is another 30 minutes. You do exactly the same coming back. Queues! Queues! Queues!. In Santorini you can add another hour and a half queuing time for the cable car as there were 4 cruise ships in at the same time. So stress time on this cruise was around 4 hours each tender, Off and On. Allowing 2 to 3 hours onshore. Absolute circus. You can of course jump the queue by buying a ship excursion but that will set you back $200+ each person. The standards from two years ago have dropped dramatically. There's a huge lack of staff. They are obviously overworked and this in turn affected the quality. Incidentally you had to queue at the Sky bar for drinks. If you didn't it was a "Get in Line" from either the barman or a nice person from across the pond. The barman who served me thought a "Bloody Mary" was vodka and tomato juice. I had to show him what was actually in one. Spirits that were predominantly served were unknown brands. You had to specifically ask for a main brand although the choice was poor. And we had the top drinks package. Food in the Versailles was poor. Cold and bland. For dinner it was a 2 hour affair as the staff were overloaded. Breakfast was the same. A long wait. Thank god for the 3 nights speciality restaurants we had. The buffet food was ok but chaos at breakfast time. Just too many people not enough space. Food and service in the Irish bar was ok. But compared too two years ago, it was "Just ok". Total lack of communication from the cruise director and his staff. Didn't see any of them the whole cruise. And finally the clientele. Cruising used to have standards. Not bathers and shorts and towels wrapped around you in restaurants. Anything goes on this ship. The fact there's no formal night should have given us a clue. The etiquette, manners and friendliness is out the window now and the standard of a huge portion of the clientele on this cruise was ignorant, manner-less and loud, Gone are the days of having a normal conversation at a normal level of voice. No voice control on this ship. I will let you make up your own mind where the majority of them were from. First Med cruise. Last. Definitely the last cruise with NCL. Basically this was a "Package Holiday" A circus on the sea. Something I don't want to be part of. Read Less

1. the food was bland and the selection subpar. 2. There were 5 ports that required tendering. This is a mistake, and a bad choice by this cruise line to have so many tender ports for one itinerary. Each day, there were a couple hundred people waiting on line for tender tickets!! The first port was Kotor. Got to port at 2 pm, they started issuing tender tickets at 9am that morning. Got there at 8:30 thinking we were doing well. We received group 5, so we had to wait until our number was called to leave the ship. There were not enough tender boats supplied by the Kotor government, so we used the ship's life boats to tender in. There were so many people waiting to get off, that by the time it was our turn, it was almost time to get back on the ship! . On the second port tender, we got smart, and waited in line earlier than the call time.( 6am) Well everyone else did too. Received our ticket, which was group #2. Group 2 was not called for over an hour because of the amount of people waiting to get off. The 3rd port tender we waited in line, this time starting at 5am! (5 am??!! This is crazy). This time, we received #1. Good, Right? Wrong. We docked early, and they were already calling #3 even before we got back to our room!! This meant we docked at around 6:30 am, however none of the shops or points of interest were even open yet, (not until 9am) so we lost over 2 hours just walking around the town aimlessly. 3. Our room was 9060 port side balcony. Mind you we paid close to $4,000 for this stateroom on the 9th floor. We choose it because it was far away from the dining rooms, etc. Each night, there were different machine/equipment/grinding noises coming from behind the closet in our stateroom. Another night the HVAC was on the fritz. They could not change our room because the cruise was booked to the max. They attempted to fix the noises, but could not. I find it hard to believe that no one else who has stayed in this room before us, never complained about this room before we started this cruise. This leads me to believe they knew about it and chose not to disclose it due to the full capacity. We purchased ear plugs so we could sleep. HORRIBLE. 3. On a positive note, the staff who were assigned to our rooms was awesome and helped us feel as comfortable as possible and were genuinely wanting to help in any way possible. We will not be cruising with Norwegian again, nor will our friends. Read Less

We decided on this cruise for our honeymoon and loved it. This was our first cruise and first time to Europe, so nothing to compare too, other than our south all inclusive trips. We had an ocean view picture window room number 5616, we thought it was great location, midship, 2 doors down from stairs and elevator, we weren’t sure about high traffic area, but didn’t hear anything, and getting off to ports were great as we only had to go down one set of stairs if elevator was busy. Getting to restaurant and entertainment was also easy. Our room itself was compact but very functional, lots of space and storage for everything, never felt cluttered and lots of charging spots, no need to bring extra. The only thing is we wished regular daily announcements would be in our stateroom as well as public area. Our maid was very nice and kept our room clean, had turn down and even made some towel art for me. The food was awesome from buffet to Versailles, Aqua, and o’Sheheens ( burgers are awesome here). We also ate at tepennaki, Cagneys steak house and Moderno’s, all were excellent and great atmosphere, Every single worker on ship were amazing, always so friendly, helpful and smiling! Entertainment was great throughout the ship, always stuff to do. Lots of dancing, music, karaoke, games and shows in the theatre. The pool was clean, a little cooler but refreshing but very small and had nice hot tubs as well. Embarkation and disembarkation were pretty straight forward. We stayed in Venice two days prior to cruise which was great and easy to get to cruise port from hotel principe which is walking distance and we took NCL shuttle back to airport. All our ports were great, Montenegro> got cancelled so docked out In water for 2 hours and it became a sea day, Corfu> we went on our own on a hop on/off bus 19$ each which gave a bit of a tour a d we went to a beach lol, was more like a local wharf lol but had a great swim anyways. Mykonos> resembles a little Venice, took free shuttle and explored on our own and had an awesome desert, we woulda went to beach if we realized it was so close. Santorini> very very busy, we did Oia and winery tour, got to sample wine with light snacks, got to see the famous blue dome and white building and ended in Fira had a lunch and some shopping (great prices here) and cable car down to ship. It was so busy here, kinda been there, done that but would love to see the other side of Santorini, I think would be much more enjoyable, not the sunset was absolutely beautiful. Argostoli> one of our favourite spots, Area was more lush with greenery, seemed like a much More relaxed area. We took a taxi to a beach called Makris Gialos Beach- costa costa beach. Absolutely beautiful and only cost $10 both ways plus chair and hut rental of $15 or $8 for the less comfortable ones. There’s a little place that serves food and great cocktails, also bathrooms. Dubrovnik> we done the tuk tuk tour, got some great views and information from our tour guides then walked through old town where game of thrones was filmed. Another extremely busy area but nice. So conclusion, cruise was excellent, ports were great but a few hours isn’t long enough to see the areas. We met so many great people from across the world, it was a perfect honeymoon for us and would choose NCL again as we love the more laid back, comfort level of this ship. We knew it was a smaller ship when we booked and didn’t have the big wow factors but we loved it! Read Less

We have planned this cruise for some time and picked this itinerary long ago. The ship was adequate, the service good and the staff was friendly. We had the most concerns regarding the food. As it turned out we did frequent the buffet several times and the food there was average at best. We did try a few of the specialty restaurants and they did not live up to expectations. In fact I experienced food poisoning after dining at one of them and it kept me up most of the night. Fortunately I was the only one in our party that got sick and it did not ruin our enjoyment of the next port. We will likely choose another cruise line the next time, willing to pay a little more for a better experience. We did pay more for a mini-suite but not sure if it was worth it. Liked the balcony but I was expecting a little bigger room for the cost. I thought it was more crowded than I expected especially after we learned that the ship was not even at capacity. Overall I rated it average with most of my concerns involving the sub-par dining experience. Read Less

My new husband and I chose this cruise because we wanted to spend our honeymoon in Greece and thought a cruise would allow us to see more islands then traveling directly to the island. We were very wrong. The first issue with this cruise is that almost all of the locations require you to tender from the ship to the island. This requires passengers to wake up at 6am to get tendering tickets to be on one of the first tenders out. Although they have 3 tenders, the tenders only hold about 125 people and some islands its about 50 minutes round trip from ship to island and back to pick up more passengers. First day in Montenegro some people didn't get off the boat until 4 PM and we were only there until 6PM. Montenegro was nice to see, but I wouldn't go back. Corfu: Second day we did a beach excursion in Corfu. The beach and water were nice, but the bus forgot to come back and get us. Everyone on ht excursion was left standing on the side of the road for an hour while they tried to figure out how to pick us up. Luckily we didn't have dinner reservations that night. Santorini: we were supposed to be in Santorini for 9 hours, so we booked a 2 1/2 hour volcano excursion, thinking we would have time to do both. DUe to the poor planning by the cruise, our excursion turned into six hours which left us very little time to actually see Santorini, one of the places we wanted to see most. This was another tending location which then required a cable car lift to the town. (The cable car only holds 36 people each trip and there were 3 other cruises in dock, so imagine the lines and time to even get from the dock to the island) Mykonos: We thought this would be our redemption for a good time. We waited for our tendering tickets at 6 am, then they decided at 7am to announce that they couldn't stop there today due to high winds. According to a crew member this was the fourth time the ship didn't make it there this season. Argostoli: actually had a port. Beautiful little town. Food was really good and prices were cheap.Try Pan Nik for lunch. Croatia: typically when getting tendering tickets you have another our to get your family, eat, then get off the ship. This day they announced to everyone in line that if they're collecting the tickets they needed to get off the boat immediately and if they didn't they would need to get to the back of the line for a new ticket when they were ready because they had docked early. Peoples families were still sleeping, people were in pajamas, and it was an absolute uproar of guests yelling at crew members. Croatia itself was beautiful, very cool to see Game of Thrones locations. Food: the food was average, nothing to write home about, a lot of it seemed salty to me. Le Bistro was a specialty location we tried which was delicious. Room: we had a balcony room which was clean, modern, and plenty of space for two people. Shows: The individual performances were very good, but the larger productions were not good. Performers did the best they good with the trash shows they had to perform. Paradis was confusing and slightly offensive. Crew: Most of the crew were nice, but we did get attitude from a few of the bartenders. Also the ship was a majority of older guests. We are 27 and felt that often times we would be ignored at the bar or restaurants while they helped the 50-60 year olds. We paid A LOT of money for this cruise so to be treated like second class citizens was irritating. OVERALL: If you want to see Greece, don't book a cruise. We talked to another couple in the airport who did another cruise line and has cruised often and said they did not like the Mediterranean cruise either. Just fly to these islands to experience the beauty of them. Read Less

The people working on the ship are amazing! They made our trip extraordinary and special. I find that the services provides from embarkation are way above our expectations. I like that all the staff were smiling and greeted us all the time. The food was delicious and we had so many choices. We are able to customise our dining experience by having the main course at one place and dessert at another. Thanks to Debbie and all the food staff for all your hardwork. I can only imagine how hard it is to feed an entire ship. The shore excursions are great and we find best value for money. Thanks to Gemma for helping us out which ones to go to. The public areas of the ships are clean and that is where we stayed most of the time. Our cabin was spotless all the time! Thanks to Marck for cleaning our cabin all the time. We had a lovely time and we are looking forward to cruise with Norwegian Cruise Line again! Read Less

The cruise was very good and so is the food and service The only downfall is when you have to take a tender to go ashore You have to line up early in the morning to get a ticket and the line are very long. It would be better if tickets were available at the end of the day after supper When you have more time.tickets were available from 7 am to 8 am but the line up was very long at 6 am.Makes no sense Cabins were very roomy and well appointed . The crew make sure that you have everything you need. If you take a speciality meal program make sure to book very early Because larger group of people traveling will make it harder to get what you want. We try for the steak house restaurant but because they had 2 group of 25 and 60 People we could not get a reservation until 9.30 pm Read Less

Chose NCL Star because it started in Venice which is a city I have wanted to visit and sailed to a number of Greek islands I also wanted to see. It was 7 days which was just the right amount of time to be on a ship and there was a new port planned every day. And most of the sailing was in the evening so most of the say was planned for the islands. Embarkation was pretty easy except for getting from our hotel to the port as it is not easy for people with mobility issues. Our first port of call was Kotor Montenegro which should have been fun except it turned out it was a "tendering" stop and the tenders take 30+ minutes to go from the ship to the port. And it was raining slightly and somewhat windy so would be a long journey to port. It turned out there were 4 tender ports and long lines to get the tender and ride to shore. You lose 3 hours going and coming back from ports. And without notice we didn't even stop in Mykonos. Didn't find out until I asked a guest service person what time we were getting into port and they said we weren't going to Mykonos. No reason. Just not stopping. Very poor communication. This was also true while waiting for tenders which took a long time. No updates. The cabins are nice and the staff overall was very nice and helpful. The buffet was ok but I wouldn't say great. It had a decent amount of variety but nothing stood out. The specialty restaurants were better but of course they should be. They cost more. The main dining rooms were good with a decent variety but I now think I prefer the set seating times versus "freestyle" dining. They make freestyle dining sound like a perk but I actually like having the same wait staff for all 7 days because they get to know you and what you like/don't like. The main dining rooms have ok wait staff but not exceptional. Also the cruise over charges for internet usage which in this age is mandatory every day. I just don't like getting nickel and dimed every day. Read Less

The best way to start a review is to ask, " would I do this trip again"? Answer is yes. We stayed 3 nights at the Hilton Stucky(prior to the cruise) and flew American Airlines Economy Plus- both I would do again also. We docked at 8 am and were in the airport by 9am-plenty of taxis to get to Marco Polo. We flew out at noon. Now some details on the cruise. We stayed in a suite and had priority status. Without the priority status, I don't thing we would have been as happy on the trip if we had to wait in the long lines to tender. 12030- no balcony, but lot's of room and good view. Restaurants-generally good or better with service somewhat slow at times Entertainment- pretty good except for the magician Room- clean, our steward was exceptional Beverage Package- I upgraded to the Premium Plus, not sure I would do again, as availability of the upgraded items were not always available at the bar we were at(Champagne and Woodford Bourbon) Ports- all were worth the trip, except Cofur. Agrostoli and Kotor were surprises. Any questions please reach out. Happy Sailings Read Less

Catering / dining experiences on Norwegian Star 08 Sep to 15 Sep 2019, Cabin 11568 Sun Sep 08 1600 hours Drinks rip off. Package I bought is up to $15 drinks only, any extra is chargeable. Not one of the four agents I talked to prior to me paying mentioned this to me neither excess gratuities. Speciality Moderno Churrasco Restaurant Reserved 2030 hours One server per table, very, very slow service. Chicken was extremely dry; flank steak was inedible, filet was completely overcooked. I asked for a rare, what came back was raw. We both ate around it and got food poisoning with extreme diarrhea the next day. Mon Sep 09 Breakfast room service, OK. Continental breakfast only - not explained previously. Coffee is absolutely terrible. Versailles Restaurant Lunch 1300 hours Poor lunch. Clam chowder was cold and had no clams. Really just bacon and potato soup, and the bacon was rancid. Salad was OK. Greasy fries and meat. Very, very average. Tue Sep 10 Specialty Le Bistro Restaurant Reserved 2000 hours French food, supposed to be special but they can’t deliver, even on getting in we had to wait. The wine provided was incorrect. Getting it changed took about 45 minutes. Finally, the steak was under cooked and had to be sent back to be re-cooked. When it returned the vegetables were cold. My fish was sent back to keep warm; it was cold on return. Poor, poor, poor, poor , no concept or substance. Wed Sep 11 Aqua restaurant Asian salad was delivered with no dressing. Pot stickers were so well cooked that they were inedible. Staff argued about the dressing with me. Pork belly was just fat no meat. Impossible to eat. Fish was as dry as a chip. Went to Garden area for dessert. Garden Dessert, banana cake was fine. Back to room. Pool party on deck above kept us awake to midnight with Salsa and Latin music booming. Thu Sep 12 Specialty Restaurant La Cucina Reserved 2030 hours Long, long wait to get in, even though we had made a reservation some months before. Some clown ‘Teddy’ from the Caribbean had no idea how to take dinner orders, to serve wine, bread, water. He called me ‘man’, like ‘chill out man’. I was absolutely furious. Eventually we got Neil the Assist Maitre’d who took care of us. The meal I had was still inedible; veal like rubber - overcooked; potatoes under-cooked, spinach so salty I couldn’t eat it. Another NCL fiasco. Fri Sep 13 Cagney’s Reserved 2030 hours My expectations were very low going in. And even that low standard wasn't met. I asked for nothing special or unusual. Steak was flavorless and extremely well done, lobster tail was flavorless and hard to extract from its shell. Service times were OK. How disappointing yet again. Sat Sep 14 Teppanyaki Speciality Reserved 1715 hours The only small thing that was pleasurable was the interaction with other passengers eventually and the cooks. NCL didn’t arrange that, we did. Cooked food quality was tasteless and bland. Summary: After experiencing FIVE specialty restaurants on board during this trip, I can say that I am extremely disappointed and they are all unremarkable, universally bland, usually cold, over and under-cooked, overprices and served by staff who, in general, have no idea how to serve food to people. Your claim to specialty dining is farcical. You just don’t know how. Excursions Mon Sep 09 Disembarkation Kotor 1430 hours What a complete fiasco, no one knew what to do, no-one giving instructions, about 1000 people lining up, sitting down between decks, trying to get off. A 45-minute boat round trip, 80 people at a time, three boats. It took hours and we had a tender ticket. I did not want to go at all. We went. Walked round the old city, thousands of tourists, all buying souvenirs. Came back to the boat early to avoid the crush. Not worth the aggravation. Tue Sep 10 Corfu 1100 hours Ship was alongside finally. Went on a hop on /off bus tour around the old town. Traffic was very, very congested. I can get this at home. Took an hour and a half to get back. Lots of vessels in port, security backed up. Got back on boat at 1330, sail time 1600. Departed quite late due to missing passengers. This has a triple effect; first it sends a signal that departure time is not fixed; second, late depart means less time elsewhere for everyone; and finally less time elsewhere means hurry for those who stand by the times. What is really scary for me is that NCL had to PA the missing passenger names to see if they were on board! NCL don’t know who is on Board??? Where is the ISPS security process? So, the message is, who cares about being late? Who gets on without authorization? How easy is it for anyone to disappear and reappear on this vessel? Wed Sep 11 Santorini 1300 hours Met in theater at 1300. Patronizing and insulting crew member with a microphone. He managed to insult everyone continually over the course of an hour. His instructions were inconsistent and conflicting. He was from Latvia. This person should never ever have a position giving information to adults. He should be fired. He MUST, MUST get fired. Akrotiri Good sized tender to the bus. Good bus and tour guide. Very enjoyable and interesting visit and wine tasting. Fira was heaving with 8000 passengers from other cruise ships. People who went to Eio said it was almost shoulder to shoulder with people, impossible. Cable car back to port had a line stretching to the horizon. My wife didn’t want to walk down the donkey path. I waited and then walked down through donkey pee and shit. Supposed to be good luck.I just think it stinks. Return to cabin No water in cabin at all cannot shower before dinner. Thu Sep 12 Mykonos 0800 hours Got up very early to get tender (again) tickets. Already had processed hundreds of people before the published start time of 0700. I got group 8 at 0705. Call the correct time for god's sake! Just after getting the tender tickets the captain announced ship cannot enter port, high seas and strong gales. Shore excursions cancelled, waste of time getting up at all. These conditions were known to the vessel (I hope!) way before the line up.... Fri Sep 13 Argostoli Excursion to Kelaphonia, we were alongside the dock for once. Bus ride was long. The guide never, ever, ever left a moment of silence. Talking non-stop about nothing, she talked incessantly even on the most twisting part of the road about frying food and onions, garlic, eggplant, local fried fish and meat pies and how they are prepared. There was vomiting on this bus. Going back to port this commentary ontinued, more people had the urge to throw up. She never stopped right up until the last minute of the tour. No awareness of anyone else but herself. She should not be allowed to operate a microphone - anywhere, ever Sat Sep 14 Dubrovnik Excursion to Game of Thrones, yet another tender. What is wrong with NCL that they can’t tie up alongside? Tour was OK, short on time and the last half an hour was just a promo for getting tourists to buy something. We tried to leave and get back to the port before then but were given an excuse to stay with the group. Long, long, long, long……. line up for tender. Looks like I joined a cruise that is just comprised of queues and lines. I HATE lines for anything. This was never mentioned in the brochures. Read Less

I loved everything about the cruise and the ship. The food, accommodations were great. State rooms were a little small but we had a balcony. My disappointed with the cruise line, was there was no Greek food. I feel since it was a cruise thru Greece, they should have had a least one night with Greek food and deserts. I enjoyed myself and liked everything about the cruise. The service was great, the stewards, waiters and waitress, the bartenders . Was surprised that there were no more stores. Liked the sales for the bags and chains. I No enough chairs or lounges at the pool. People left towels and didn't sit there all day. Feel they shoukld take the towels away after 2 hours of a no show, COULD NEVER SIT AT THE POOL. That upset me. But all in all I loved Norwegian Cruise line and will definethly go with them again. Read Less

First the good: Comfortable cabin, decent excursions, buffet was ok (except deserts), decent service, decent wi-fi. Now the bad: 1. They cancelled the stop at Kotor. Huge disappointment. I realize that his may have been beyond their control, but we didn’t get any kind of refund or credit. I did get ship credit for the excursion that I booked. 2. The gym is small and many of the machines were broken. Most of them had spotty TV service too. 3. The deserts were all the usual Jello “cheesecake” type. The soft serve and scooped ice cream were both so soft and melted that you couldn’t even make a cone. I would have paid extra for a quality gourmet option like gelatto. 4. I couldn’t get reservations for the premium restaurants. They obviously sold more packages than they could accommodate. Initially we were offered dinner at 9:00, but by day 2-3, it was standby only. I didn’t get one of the meals that I paid for. Unacceptable! I would suggest that anyone who does this call immediately for reservations. 5. Mass confusion in theatre before excursions. I would strongly suggest some sort of screens up front that keep you informed, rather than some person with a heavy accent trying to herd all the cats. 6. Limited TV channels. No American news?! Pay per view would be most welcome so we can watch what we want when we want like most home systems. Or access to Netflix. 7. No snack food like chips or popcorn? I would think that a popcorn machine would be dirt cheap. 8. Mixed drinks are a joke. A mohito in a small glass filled with ice was $13. You can buy a drink package, but it’s only worth the money if you are a flat-out alcoholic. 9. House band was composed of three Filipino musicians. Hard working, but very bland expressions. They sounded OK (if you don’t mind Willie Nelson with a Filipino accent), but definitely looked like victims of human trafficking being forced to play hours a day. Other entertainment was a mixed bag. Seems like kind of a letdown from the last time I was on NCL and they had Blue Man. Read Less

We are Platinum members on NCL and have cruised on many of their ships. The Star is by far the worst ship I have ever been on. We normally sail in the Haven but this ship does not have a Haven so we booked an Owners Suite. First off the room was freezing cold the entire time and we were told we could not turn off the air just turn it up. We had it turned up to the hottest it would go and it still blew freezing cold air. The room was clean but weird layout and no balcony! No balcony for an owners suite seems odd to me. The room has floor to ceiling windows on the front of the ship but a big pole and partial wall block what would be a nice view. The service is spotty at best. Our room steward and Butler were good and did their best but restaurant and other staff such as bartenders were terrible. We had booked reservations for the specialty restaurants but when we showed up we were told we would have to wait. Both times we waited close to an hour past our reservation time! Why make a reservation? The only food for dinner we had that was good was in the Teppanyaki Restaurant. All other "Specialty" restaurants are terrible. Food and service. I took a look at the Buffet but would not touch anything there. Entertainment is awful as well. Very bad wedding singers at best. No movies on the TV just a loop of the same six shows played over and over. Very short stops at the ports and cruisers from at least 2 or 3 other ships at the same time making it very hard to enjoy the small towns. The worst thing was when my husband and I went to the spa for massages. My husband has Vitiligo which is a harmless autoimmune disease that affects the pigment in your skin. The massage therapist came in to the treatment room where my husband was laying waiting for his massage and told him she wouldn't massage him because of his skin!! You would think a massage therapist on a ship of thousands of people would be better trained. So insulting and rude to my husband. My advice is skip this ship if you are planning on visiting the Greek Islands. Read Less

Awful experience! I had my body covered in bedbug bites two days after getting on the boat! It ruined my holidays! They downgraded us to a different room which by the way they said it had also been cleaned off bedbugs! They washed my clothes and ruined quite a few of them! They said they had to spray our shoes and sent them all back in our suitcases all together in a ball without any care! I couldn’t sleep for 3 nights as my body was extremely itchy. I couldn’t take any photos as my body was covered in bites. I had to keep wearing the same clothes as I couldn’t wear clothes that showed my shoulders because of all the bites. It was an absolute disaster! I reported it to NCL and have heard nothing back yet. I would not recommend this ship to anyone unless I was shown a bedbug free certification from Pest Control. Read Less

Choose this cruise if you're young and can take a lot of chaos AND if you haven't done much other cruising. The public areas are noisy and hectic, with kids in the hot tubs and everybody screaming at each other. The food was junior high school cafeteria level, and most every dish was barely warm. It answered the question, How can you spoil a hot dog? Pastry and breads were routinely stale. You are charged a service fee of $15/person/day, but my lone beer had a healthy service fee added too. Know also that Venice is tired of tourists and cruise ships. The harbormaster suddenly ordered our captain to sail four hours later, at 10 PM, which effectively eliminated our stop in Montenegro the next day. Did we get a refund? Only for our port fee ($15) and our prepaid shore excursion. What if we went primarily to see Montenegro? Well, tough. Finally, know that the Greek isles you visit are mobbed by tourists. At Santorini there's ONE way up the cliff to the city, a cable car system. You will wait for an hour to take it each way, even if you bought a shore excursion. Similarly long waiting lines await you at each port of call. In Dubrovnik, Croatia, you take a shuttle bus for a half hour to the old city, see what you can for 2-3 hours, then take the bus back (long line again) to the port. So much for the 6-hour stop. The crew and staff are unerringly sweet and helpful, but they invariably misunderstood anything we said that was outside their normal English experience. The shore excursion to the island of Delos was decent but rushed -- we had about 10 minutes to see the good museum there. Read Less

We are Platinum Latitudes - so we get some really nice perks -and we appreciate the extras that keep us coming back to NCL. Having been on just about every class ship we were excited to hear that the Star had been overhauled last year -and while it was nice, there were a few things I found strange. They enclosed the back end from the Garden Cafe - now H2O. It got a bit stuffy even when sailing but at least it was a quiet spot. The change in the Atrium to include Starbucks seems strange for a place that you go to listen to music before dinner (and other times) - now that it is a Starbucks -if you want a drink while listening to the music you either had to get your own from another bar or wait a while for the "barista" to go bring you one. That being said, I loved the ports, we spent 2 days in Venice before the cruise, and went off ship every port. Did 3 ship excursions and explored on our own for the others. Santorini was crowded as we were told to expect, but lovely just the same. Great views and some wonderful food. Speaking of food (and drink) The restaurant servers & bar people work very hard and we had no complaints about that. Food was good, good selection in all venues. The shows were OK - to be honest we have seen Band on the Run on 2 other ships - so didn't go to that. But there is enough other entertainment around the ship in the bars for fun. So- all in all - a good week - I always say , if you can't have a good time on a cruise -there is something wrong with you. Read Less

We have always talked about going on a cruise. My wife had been on quite a number of cruises and she was excited about going on a Mediterain cruise for the first time. Bookings of flights was not correct until brought to the attention of NCL. At one time our travel agent was told that NCL is a Cruise company and not n airline, which I told my agent that they should not offer air travel with the cruise then. The sailing time was changed and not communicated to anyone of our travel party although other members did get an email or this change. A destination was removed because of the delayed departure which was also not communicated to our group until we boarded although it was known three days in advance. The food seemed to be discounted in flavor and in texture. There are certain things I have seen working in food service before that some restaurants do to cut food costs, and it appeared to me that NCL practiced all of them (Watered down juices and beverages, Kraft singles? Really, Bland flavor). It was like food on a retirement home cruise. One Word NCL: SALT. Ok, two words: SALT and SALT. The staff, the crew, every person on the cruis was friedly and helpful, but that did not make up for the poor quality of logistics and food. What a shame, because everyone I know that has been on a cruise talks about the food more than anything and this was a complete disappointment. Entertainment was ok but not fantastic. The actors and singers worked hard just the shows were not the qualty I expected either. Read Less

This is the second time we've sailed with Norwegian and it will be the last. Twice now they have cancelled a port without having any kind of alternate plan in place. The first time was the Baltic Sea cruise where they cancelled the Stockholm port. Reason was that it was too windy to get thought the passage. And I understand that. BUT I'm also certain this was not the first time it was too windy and would have expected an alternate plan. I've sailed on other cruise lines that had to cancel ports and they quickly had a 'Plan B' ready to go. In one case it was an extra day in one port; in another case it was taking us to a nearby port where they had excursions ready to go visiting the same cites. This time on our Greek Isle cruise they cancelled the Mykonos port because the water was too rough (this port had tenders). Again, I understand that weather related issues occur. But again, no alternate plan. And no offer of any compensation. I'm sure the fine print likely says something about itinerary subject to change but a better cruise line would alternates at the ready. I did complain after the first cruise and I received a letter stating that they would make it right on my next cruise. "Make it right" meant they could give me the "Welcome Aboard" gift which was a bottle of wine or $25 onboard credit. Are you kidding me??? I was also disappointed that there wasn't any stand up comedy on this ship. Not sure if that is all of Norwegian cruises (can't recall my last Norwegian). I'm not one for the sing and dance entertainment and prefer stand up comedy. I will say though that the magic show was good and also the Russian contortionist couple was good. I was surprised that the gym did not overlook the ocean. I like walking the treadmill looking out at the ocean. For this reason, I found myself preferring doing laps on the top deck rather than going to the gym. I was flabbergasted that they raised the gratuity to 20%. That's just outrageous. 18% was bad enough but 20%? Come on! Also, they don't let you bring soda or wine onboard (unless you pay a corking fee). Other cruise lines let you bring a 12 pack of soda and a bottle of wine per person (without corking fee). I really like Holland America and would have gone with them but they don't have cruises to Baltic Sea or Greece. Did great Mediterranean and Alaskan cruisse with HA. Read Less