I’m trying to write this while everything from this cruise is fresh in my mind (we returned yesterday). This is a review of a Norwegian Cruise Lines week-long cruise to Mexico from San Diego and is fairly lengthy. If you want to skip the details, the conclusion is that my wife and I have been contentedly cruising on Celebrity for a number of years. We will be skipping NCL in the future in favor of Celebrity.

My concerns about NCL actually began during the reservation process. Our travel agent offered pre-paid gratuities. After booking, it took multiple requests to get this registered to the NCL reservation. Not horrible, but annoying.

Embarkation is when concerns deepened. We live in San Diego, but have never sailed from here. Embarkation began for the NCL Jewel at noon and it seems that NCL had scheduled everyone to arrive then. The relatively small cruise terminal in San Diego was overwhelmed. It took an hour and a half to board the ship as we had to stand in four separate lines to complete the process. One line checked passports, the second checked us in and issued room cards, the third was a security scan, and the final one was for a scan of the cruise card as we boarded the ship. Each line took about twenty minutes. Never have we taken so long to board a ship (usually 30 minutes or less). It could be that the San Diego cruise terminal doesn’t facilitate efficient boarding, but I expected NCL to better manage the process or set proper expectations on how long it will take. Read more