Because of this cruise, I will likely never travel on Norwegian Cruise Lines (NCL) again. This was the second cruise my wife and I have taken, and it was sub-par compared to our previous cruise as well as other resort-style vacations we have taken together over the past 5 years. Norwegians Freestyle Cruising was not to our liking and did not seem to work at all. Few programs began or ended on time, multiple misprints in the daily onboard bulletin (including a misprinted time change onboard the ship) caused confusion and planning problems, and dining was a terrible challenge.
We booked our cruise on the Norwegian Star specifically to go to Acapulco two months in advance of the sailing date. Shortly afterwards, the cruise line cancelled the Acapulco leg of the trip and changed the itinerary to roughly match the one we had done 4 years earlier. We did not know about the change until 6 weeks later when I began to pre-book shore excursions; neither NCL nor our travel agency had sent a notice of the change and the documentation that arrived with our tickets (mailed by NCL after NCL made the itinerary change) still referred to the booked itinerary, not the new one. NCL awarded a $50 per person cabin credit in exchange for canceling the port stop we had specifically scheduled the cruise for. Already, we were apprehensive about the cruise. We did not use NCL travel to arrive at the port. Our flight from Albany, NY to Los Angeles, a night at a hotel (to arrive early and avoid weather delays), and a private taxi were cheaper than paying for the NCL travel service. Boarding procedures were average. We checked our bags and had them delivered to our stateroom in a reasonable time frame. The room steward and housekeeping staff immediately showed their excellence by helping us settle into our cabin. These members of the staff were the only ones to distinguish themselves during the next 8 days.
The Freestyle Dining program used on NCL ships meansin theorythat you can eat anywhere at anytime&as long as you have a reservation. Thats right, a reservation was needed for Freestyle Dining in all but the main dining hall and the buffet area. My wife and I were turned away from a half-empty, no-cover-charge, specialty restaurant on her birthday because we did not have a reservation. Bear in mind that the onboard bulletin specifically said that reservations for the specialty restaurants were only recommended not required. Making a reservation was very difficult; the service was only open during the day (8am to 5pm), so you needed to forfeit time ashore to make a reservation if you didnt do it on the sea days. Additionally, it took as long as 5 minutes for someone to even answer the phone when I called to make a reservation. In addition to the inherent problems of Freestyle Dining, the restaurant staff was sub-par (drinks ordered from the bar often did not arrive, water glasses frequently ran dry during the meal, waiters and waitresses hovered while we reviewed the menu to select our meal) and the food was nothing exciting. We ate better at local restaurants when we went ashore in Manzanillo, Puerto Vallarta, and Mazatlan than we did aboard the ship.