This is our 3rd cruise but first time with NCL. Don't get me wrong the scenery in Alaska was absolutely gorgeous just as what it's advertised no more no less. However, the cruise experience took a different direction. There were 27 of us friends and families meet up on the ship with the same expectation: take a lot of pictures, enjoy good food and relax. On the first day my wife noticed unfriendly atmosphere in the Summer Palace but I didn't pay much attention to it until the 2nd or 3rd day as the service was getting worse and worse. At first there was no water refill then no coffee nor deserve plus there was no follow up between each course at all 8 days. But we got used to it the first 2 days. The waiters tried to avoid eye contact so that they can ignore requests as if they don't speak English, this would never happen in other cruise lines like Carnival, Celerity or even at Denny's. At Carnival one of the waiters even helped my 6 years old daughter cut up the steak.

Food quality was badly executed for example Cocktail shrimps, the size of each shrimp is slightly bigger than my finger nail and I never seem "Bay Scallops" that small in my life but you get 3 of them for the appetizer. On the 3rd day they finally served "Sweat and sour crab soup" I hoping to see some king crab legs after all this is Alaska. Right? It turned out to be imitation crab meat. The main course wasn't that impressive as well. Tandoori chicken was way too salty and dried almost every one of us can't eat it and I was looking up on waiter for a replacement and he said "Oh yeah! I'll tell the chef" but no replacement was brought. I quickly left the restaurant and hoping I can get some leftover in the Garden buffet. Unfortunately it was closed of course, in average it took 10-15 minutes wait time between each course so meal entire could easily take 2.5-3 hours. I finally settle with some chicken wings at the Blue Lagoon that wasn't bad.

Room service was just OK too. We usually don't pay much attention as long as we have enough clean towels and clean sheets. However, there was this tray sitting by my door way (I guess it from next door). I got tripped twice one in the morning and one at night, the hall way is quite narrow and not much room to me to navigate plus it was rocking particularly hard that night. Read more