Cabin Review

As the cruise consultant said, this is the oldest ship in the Norwegian fleet. I suppose that translates to mean that you should expect problems in the cabins. Now I know why the age of the ship is so important to know when you are booking a cruise. This cabin needed work when we arrived. The bathroom floor had two large areas of rust / mold that the cabin steward couldn't have cleaned with the usual mop. The TV remote had problems, and needed to be replaced. It was so old, that the numbers were worn off of it. The TV's themselves always power on to channel 1 and at half volume. This must have been a shock to the people in the next room when I tried to turn on the navigation channel at 5:30 AM. After that, I tried to stand in front of the TV and reduce the volume, but you just can't reduce the volume fast enough so that it isn't an annoyance. Later in the cruise, the satellite system lost it's audio for most of a day. Ship announcements can't be heard in the cabins, unless the TV is tuned to channel 2. Since we didn't know when they would be making an announcement, we frequently missed the English version of the message. Newer ships have a volume control in the cabin, so that you can choose what volume you want to hear announcements at. On the plus side, after I left a note for Hotel Director Tony (telephone ext. 8888), these items were quickly resolved. Notes can be left in the box located on top of the piano in the lobby. However, there were other items that I didn't bother to report. The hangers in the clothes closet are the hotel style that have no hook on them. The problem is that over half of them were so twisted, that you couldn't remove the hanger from the closet so you could put clothes on it. Near the end of the cruise, the drain on the balcony backed up after a rain shower. Our balcony was flooded by a geyser about three inches in height, which left sand and dirt all over. We have no idea if their plumber ever solved the problem. After the stop in Toulon, the engine developed a vibration. This vibration caused an intermittent room noise like a woodpecker in the forest. The location of the noise moved, from night to night, and of course changed with changes in the engine RPM. The woodpeckers weren't loud enough to wake you up, but if something else did, you had difficulty getting back to sleep. Cabin 9608 is a poor choice, if you like to sleep at night. Two different nights, we were startled awake by a very loud pump or motor noise. It ran for a few minutes, and then stopped. On the way from Athens to Venice, there was some rough weather as we went westwards. This caused a loud metal clanging sound, that lasted for hours. When I went searching for the source of the noise, I could even hear it in the lobby, but the person on duty at the front desk asked 'what noise?'. When the guests in the adjacent room open and close the dresser drawers, or the cupboard door, the noise is so unusually loud that you might think they are opening doors in your cabin. Wake up calls or conversations in other rooms could be heard as a background noise, so the cabin soundproofing isn't as good as I'd expect in any other hotel. One pleasant surprise is how well the bathrooms are sound proofed. I couldn't hear the (very loud, aircraft like) toilets in adjacent cabins. We left two Barcelona single ride metro tickets in the bible. Enjoy.