Let me just say this before you read my review my husband and I are married 22 years, we have done alot of cruises and we usually walk off the ship sad that it has come to an end this one we just couldn't wait to get off, we usually have nothing to complain about, but this was our first with Norwegian.

We take cruises with our children 12 and 7, we enjoy the Service one usually gets on a cruise,seeing different parts of the world ,the pampering,and of course the food. Norwegian Gem was a big disappointment first off, the service or lack of it on this ship is beyond dissatisfaction, the staff morale on this ship is HORRIBLE, in order to get a good meal you needed to go speciality dining which gets costly, $75.00 to $125.00 a night based on a family of four, they charge for EVERYTHING on this ship and I mean EVERYTHING,from $5.00 for a game of bowling to the soda cards for the kids and forget about trying to skip drinking soda and going for the free iced tea because most of the time the drink machines for the free stuff were empty.

The ship is small, the public spaces are small the grand chocolate buffet was a disaster of epic proportions, they line everyone up outside the buffet and then they let crowds of people in and once you get inside the buffet it is mayhem there are no roped off areas so you can proceed in an orderly fashion to take pictures, people were like animals pushing and shoving and the best is a little girl was throwing up all over the buffet and instead of closing it off they continued to let people walk in and around stepping in throw up and my son got it all over his clothes because she actually threw up on him and some other children. What a major health violation not to mention if that was a Disney ship, they would have been all over that and had that kid quarantined. Read more