Norwegian Prima Review
So Many Mixed Emotions- Good, Bad and Indifferent
Rating by category
Additional details
We booked this cruise because we wanted to preview the Prima prior to its Iceland/Norway cruise in June that we booked quite a while ago. We had read so many negative reviews and a few positive ones. Normally we ignore the few negative reviews and focus on the positive. With that in mind, we decided to be positive and enjoy this new ship as much as possible. In this review, I also wanted to address some of the things I have read from previous CC reviewers. This being a spring break cruise, we were prepared for lots of kids, which there were. Although you will read quite a bit of negatives in the beginning, there are a lot of positives on this ship.
Embarkation (1 star): We snagged a 9:30 check-in time, which I thought was really early. It excited me that we could get on the ship earlier than any of our other 40+ cruises. We were prepared to check out the pool/hot tub/etc with fewer people on this ship. Not to be. A "Coast Guard Drill" was being performed on the ship that delayed boarding until after 11:15. Even then, since we had not purchased priority boarding, Haven folks went first followed by all the priority and Latitude members with better status than us. Basically, it seemed like half the ship got to board before us. I have never been delayed by a "Coast Guard Drill" in over 40 cruises, so I suspect there was something else causing the delay that NCL was not willing to publicize. At any rate, it got the cruise off to a bad start. We were able to get to a hot tub before it was flooded with people/kids, though, so all was not lost.
Luggage delivery was very late (6 PM). We were told they were late because they were sent up to our floor late. Well, that makes perfect sense. Another excuse in my opinion. At one point, I was beginning to think we would be wearing our boarding clothes to dinner.
Cabin Review
Balcony
I would have given the BA category cabin 5 stars except that our location on deck 10 was right above the infinity pool and lounger area, which meant noise throughout the day such that we couldn’t really enjoy our balcony. Other than that, the cabin was very nice. Love, love, love the shower as it was the best shower I’ve experienced in 40+ cruises. Storage was kind of strange as there were not any drawers. There were 3 closets, 2 of which had pull out bins. The space between the closets and the bathroom was very narrow which resulted in each of us getting whacked by the opening bathroom door a couple times. The bed was comfortable and there was a small loveseat couch that was adequate. We did not like the fact that there was no sheer curtain that filtered light into the room. It was either all dark or all light from the one curtain. It is good that the cabin was nice as we spent a lot of time there given the lack of things to do on the ship.