We have cruised twice before on Holland America and once with Royal Caribbean and were generally satisfied but this was by far the worst of the four cruises. The problems included:

1) We routinely had to wait 25+ minutes to eat dinner at the complimentary restaurants because the ship has insufficient dining space. When added to the 25+ typical wait for food because of insufficient kitchen staff the 50+ minutes were unacceptable. Furthermore, we were not informed that such waits would occur if we do not reserve. Had we wanted to reserve we would have had to wait an hour on line to reserve on Day 1, and once we were able to reserve all of the dining rooms were booked for all reasonable hours. Further, NCL could have allowed us to book dinner times, all shows, tendering, and laser tag etc. online prior to boarding but did not do so. The result was that we could only play laser tag once and, due to poor communication by NCL, found out about choosing tenders too late to book the first five tenders.

2) The mattresses were not comfortable. The mattress springs dug into my back, so I informed the housekeeper on day 2. He made it worse by turning over the pillowtop mattress, which caused the springs to dig in more. Only after I complained to Guest Relations on day 5 was a foam mattress topper placed on top of the existing mattress. However, I still had four uncomfortable night of sleep due to a poorly trained and inconsiderate housekeeper. Read more