This is my second cruise with NCL (and second cruise ever). My first was on the Epic in 2011. For our honeymoon and my birthday we decided to try a fall cruise to Maine and Canada. The itinerary wasn't spectacular but we wanted to something other than Caribbean or Bermuda out of NYC.

The trip started on the wrong foot due to hurricane Dorian. As a result of the storm, the Escape arrived in port very late on our embarkation day. But NCL gave us plenty of advance notice of the change in Check-in and departure time. We adjusted accordingly with no issue. We were told check-in would commence at 4pm instead of noon so we arrived around 5:30 to allow some of the crowd to dwindle. And this is where it starts to sour.

Upon our arrival at the pier we see big crowds milling about. We are instructed to go to pier 88 and check -in our baggage, then come back to pier 90 and get our boarding group assignment number. By the time we got back to pier 90, NCL was out of boarding assignment numbers. We were asked to be patient and given vouchers for free snacks at the pier 90 refreshment stand. Upon presenting our vouchers at the stand we were informed that they would no longer honor them. Voucher were worthless. And we were in no way compensated for the roughly 6 hours of lost cruising time. Read more