For purposes of a frame of reference, this was not our first cruise. In fact, we've sailed Royal Caribbean 4 times, Princess Once and Norwegian on two prior occasions. These cruises have taken us to Alaska twice and the Caribbean the rest of the time. This was our first trip to Hawaii. We were SOOOOO excited to be going to Hawaii and completely trusted Norwegian to make our experience a good one. (based upon previous two NCL Cruises) I can't emphasize enough how thoroughly disappointed and disgusted we were with this cruise. Let's start at the beginning..

Embarkation - we always arrive early to avoid the rush and this cruise was no exception. What WAS the exception was, that even arriving early as we did, we were in a long line. Further, the line was outside in the heat with no water or other means of staying cool. This didn't get us off on the right foot and the experience seemed to go downhill from there.

Cabin - upon checking into our cabin we found a dirty tissue on the bathroom floor, a small candy-cane apparently left over from the previous cruisers and two dirty pool towel on the closet floor. When I looked close to the phone, the little sign said "Cabin Service" dial a particular number. When I dialed that number, I was connected to Room Service. Room service was very kind and connected me to housekeeping who indicated they would resolve the issues immediately. Anxious to check out the ship, we left the cabin immediately. Later when we returned it was clear housekeeping had been there but they had neglected to remove the towels from the closet floor. Once again I dialed the posted number,which I now knew to be incorrect (reception didn't answer) the phone was answered by a man named JOE who was one of the few bright points on this ship. He was extremely apologetic and said that given the problems we were having he would not transfer us but would take care of making the call personally. I hung up grateful for his assistance and we began to stow our clothing. When we opened one of the very few drawers in the stateroom (but that's another issue) I found two empty booze bottles. I called Joe back to update him on our findings and told him the bottles were going outside the door in the hallway. During this time the staff were delivering the suitcases. I heard at least three different sets of staff members walk by the room so out of curiosity I opened the stateroom door - yup! The bottles were still sitting there. This would NOT have happened on any of our previous cruises and was truly representative of the staff's attitude in general. A - "it's not my job.... so I'm not doing it" attitude. Enough about the dirty room. Now let's talk about the lack of storage space. The best way to describe the lack of storage space is like this.... Read more