I picked this cruise because of the dates and the ports. The dates didn't change but the ports did. A few months before we sailed I got a letter saying that because of a "berthing conflict" Naples was being replaced with Palermo - what a downgrade. To make it worse, I checked to see what other ships were scheduled for the same day in Naples - none. That's right, there were no other ships scheduled to dock in Naples when we were supposed to. I'm thinking it was all based on money and profit. To make it worse, we were fogged in in Venice for two days and to make up for the lost day, Norwegian decided to skip Crete instead of Palermo. There's no doubt that they could have made it from Athens to Crete overnight because they ended up sailing at full steam from Marseille to Barcelona to beat a bad storm, arriving in 6 hours instead of the planned 13.

Other than our great steward, Trian, and the incredible nightly performances, there was not much to rave about. For some reason, probably money-related, we left each port between 4 PM and 7 PM, giving us less than 12 hours in every port, in Marseille only 7 hours. Most of the food was highly salted. Much of the buffet food was mediocre at best including watery, lumpy yogurt and unthawed berries. Voice mail between cabins didn't work and most folks didn't know it unless a fellow passenger alerted them, so they would leave messages and wonder why they never heard back. The phone hot buttons didn't work, either, for emergency, room service, wake-up and operator.

There was little to do on the ship for active adults and Millennials - the programs were geared to children and folks who liked to play bingo. To top it off, embarkation was ridiculous! The fog couldn't have been controlled, but it appeared that it was first time Norwegian ever had to deal with it - what confusion! The ship arrived in Venice 6 hours late, so embarkation was delayed. Although Norwegian had our email addresses and cell phone numbers, they didn't send us any alerts about the delay. Some folks arrived at the scheduled boarding time of noon, only to be told that they would have to wait hours or they could leave their bags and come back later. When my daughter and I arrived around 6:30 PM after a wonderful last day in Venice, we were confronted with a full terminal and no explanation from the people in charge - we learned only from other passengers what was going on. The endless line to check in was made worse by the Norwegian representatives who had to close their computers because they had maxed out their hours, leaving only a few positions open to check in hundreds of people. We were in the terminal 3 hours before we could board the ship.