This is my 9th cruise with 7 of them being on NCL ships. I’ve been a member of NCL’s loyalty program, Latitudes, for about 20 years, but at this time I’m not feeling the loyalty love in return. After all the cruises, I have had only one previous frustration with NCL. They will not give me 7 Latitudes credits for my first cruise on NCL. (Otherwise, I would be a higher Latitudes classification.) In my book, loyalty is loyalty regardless of the timeline and is a 2 way street.

However, that is not my issue right now even though it still bothers me. I recently sailed on the NCL Pearl. Alaska is beautiful and I will probably go again. The ship was very nice and the crew was great. My issue is with corporate NCL. My frustration started during the cruise booking process and grew while on the cruise.

For the first time, I used a third party booking service. They had better pricing and incentives. I thought it was worth a try. I studied the ship diagrams and requested an OA category room because they are on the 8th deck. Alaska is about the views so I wanted to be higher on the ship. The booking agent said that NCL might upgrade the room which I have successfully experienced before. When the booking was posted in my account on NCL’s website, it said I would be in an OA category room. Great, but when NCL assigned the room a few weeks later they gave me an O1 category room. My account on the website stilled said OA, but the room, according to the deck plans, was an O1. Read more