Norwegian Escape Review
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We sailed to Florida and the Bahamas aboard the Norwegian Escape February 17-24. The purpose for choosing this itinerary was to go to Great Stirrup Cay. Florida and Nassau were bonus stops; the pinnacle of our trip was to be GSC, our only reason for choosing this particular cruise. GSC was canceled due to high winds, even though it didn’t seem that windy. Norwegian didn’t offer any reimbursement for the lost port or a voucher to put towards another cruise to actually visit GSC.
However, losing a port was not the only negative aspect of the cruise. After the announcement that GSC was canceled, guests were literally running to the pool decks to “claim” their chair. They left towels on the chairs all day to claim them, even though they were never in the chair. There were signs all over stating that unattended towels would be removed after one hour. This did not happen, so we were unable to find an available chair for four hours. Had the deck attendants done their job, this would not have happened.
The day after GSC was canceled, we were scheduled to be in Nassau. We did not book a shore excursion to a more tropical beach location because we were expecting to have that in GSC. So, earlier in the morning of our Nassau port, we stopped at Guest Services to inquire about shore excursions since nobody was at the Shore Excursions desk. Guest Services told us all shore excursions were fully booked. I wanted to double check with Shore Excursions when they opened, so I called Guest Services at 8:00 AM to get in touch with Shore Excursions, but they said they were not answering their phone. I asked if they could simply walk the 20 feet to their desk and inquire about shore excursions or ask them to answer their phone. I was told they could not do that. When my husband went to the Shore Excursions desk, he was told there was available excursions, even though we were told a half hour earlier from Guest Services that everything was booked. Since my goal was to sit on a tropical beach and knowing Nassau wouldn’t offer that, we paid an additional $160 to visit Blue Lagoon Island. This is an additional expense we should not have had to incur if we had gone to GSC.