I’ve been cruising since I was a kid ( I’m 39 now) and I have had many amazing cruise experiences (14 cruises )I have almost always sailed on Royal Caribbean, however, I have sailed with Carnival two times. I will have to say that I was very excited to sail on Norwegian cruise line as I had heard so many great things from patrons of the line. I was surprised to see that they were offering the Free at Sea which included two specialty dining nights, free alcoholic beverages, 150 wifi minutes, BOGO airfare as well as $50 off an excursion from every stop. I felt as if this was an amazing opportunity to take a chance at sailing with Norwegian. To start, my airfare was messed up and they booked me coming in Sunday at 12:15 instead of Saturday which is what I elected. I called to fix it and spent a day on the phone bouncing agent to agent to get it fixed and was basically told that there was no option to change it since it’s as past the time for changes ( even though I had just gotten confirmation and there was no way for me to have known I needed to change it). I spent literally 6 hours trying to work through the problem and eventually emailed the CEO directly and my flight was changed. That was a great feeling and much appreciated but the time spent was unnecessary.

I was not impressed by the process in which we embarked on day one. It was very unorganized and my husband and I wandered around not knowing what to do next as there was no guidance. We were supposed to get a number to get us onto the ship and waited a very long time until we realized ( bring new to NCL process) we were never given a number… it took us three hours to get on the ship. The muster station drill was a disaster- people confused everywhere and it didn’t start until after everyone had been drinking for hours. We were not given information about the drill so had I never cruised I would have not expected that. People started boarding at about 11:45 and I didn’t have my luggage for a clothing change for diner until 6:30 pm. We weren’t allowed in our stateroom until 2:50 and had to carry our carryons around the ship and stay close to them. There was nowhere for many people to sit when we got on waiting for our rooms. We were lucky and found a spot at the bar.

Out of the four things that we scheduled for our vacation to do three or four of them were canceled. I was in tears because this was our honeymoon and I felt like everything that I had spent time and effort planning had been ruined. I went to speak to guest services and they pulled me aside as I was crying and they offered me a package with some wine and chocolate my room and they offered to fix my situation with giving me some specialty dining. I left thankful and hopeful but none of the promises ever happened…. No wine, no chocolates… no dining. Compared to Royal Caribbean and to carnival cruises their regular menu food was subpar. I could barely cut the steak in the main dining room. We tried so hard to make the best of it because we had such amazing people trying their very hardest to make it a good experience. We had the best people taking care of us who were working nonstop around the clock to give us good service however they were so understaffed there was no possible way to take care of the oversold ship. When we went on the cruise there was rumors that 200 employees did not come for their shift leaving the ship oversold and understaffed- I felt horrible for the bartenders, servers, and the people tending to our state room as they had so much work to do so little time and so many people to care for. Read more