Where was middle management? So many issues with poor service and no one handling basic issues. It seemed like there is a complete lack of basic hospitality-service training. Here are but a few things to mention:
-honey packets so sticky in Garden Cafe each day, you have to wash your hands after handling. I told a woman in uniform...yet same sticky situation every day after
-salt grinders ...
While the cruise itself was pretty good, the total mess up be NCL of the disembarkment killed all the joy we had. 2 1/2 hours to get a taxi because guest services on the ship told us they would be at the port so we didn’t need to schedule one. That was a joke. It was our first cruise and maybe our last. Everything we did on board they wanted money to give us the information we were supposed to ...
This fall my husband and I traveled from Rome to Miami on a repositioning cruise on the Norwegian Star. We had traveled on the Star before and had not liked the layout of the ship because it lacked quiet bar areas for reading and viewing the ocean. Norwegian touted a complete renovation of this ship so we thought we would give it another try.
Quiet space was harder than ever to come by. More ...
I wanted to try a transatlantic crossing, and this Rome to Miami cruise looked great. I had not cruised on NCL, but thought i'd give them a try. Earlier this year i did a 20 day cruise on Holland america and they were great!
The first problem I encountered was before the cruise. They have packaged deals for dining in the specialty dining rooms, otherwise several of them have ala carte ...
After having had pleasant experiences on 2 prior NCL trans-Atlantic cruises (both on the NCL JADE), we found the STAR to be a poor comparison. The ship's buffet ("Market Café") is loud and extremely noisy, poorly configured with cafeteria-like serving lines that make it hard to get food in crowded conditions, and insufficient seating. Our cabin location on deck 8 was right above the ship's ...
My back ground: We are a retired couple, we had been cruised with Carnival, RC, Princess, MCS, Celebrity, HAL for about 20 times. This is the first time we cruise with NCL. More than half of our cruise are more than two weeks and back-to-back. Here the report from a straight shooter.
- The Civitavecchia cruise port (1 hour train from Rome) is difference than the other cruise port. Passengers ...
I'm an experienced and pretty easy-going traveler, but depend on a small mobility scooter. I found this ship much more difficult to travel on than any of the many other ships I have taken. Some examples:
- The elevators are quite small so you often do not even fit in with others. Also the signal lights does not give you enough notice to make it conveniently to the right door
- The main ...
We have cruised on NCL many times, as well as a number of other cruise lines. This has to rate as the worst cruising experience, ever. The only redeeming feature was that we met many friendly fellow cruisers from the US, UK and Germany. Some we hope to remain friends with in the future.
The food was poor, in our opinion, and so heavily salted that my wife and I had to ask for no-salt meals. ...
Food was disappointing for most of the cruise. First night duck was beef stroganoff, friends steak was actually pot roast with small potato and an single broccoli floret. Next night...bland food again with hot and cold spots. Part 2 of cruise had the cafe market serving the exact same thing for lunch as for dinner every day! With the exception of 2 items. At least the resturants got up to ...
We have been on 86 cruises prior to this one, mostly Royal Caribbean, but a fair number of NCL, Carnival, Celebrity and Princess as well, so we feel we gave a fair basis of comparison.
I'll begin with the positives: The cruise director, Ian, was one of the best we've had. Production shows and guest entertainers were top notch during the transatlantic portion of the cruise. As expected, the guest ...