My overall cruise experience as Fair is because…..
Onboarding:
I boarded at 12:30pm but did not get my luggage, by 6pm, i went to front desk, they said wait a bit longer, its busy, I said ok. By 8pm nothing , I saw our nice Sewart, Brian, he said to try lost and found for luggage, so I went to a room next to the Q restaurant, my luggage was sitting there. The NCL tag was missing but my name was clearly on the bag with a second tag I had on it.
Why couldn’t anyone bother to read the name tag and look my name up and bring it to my room rather than sit there and wait for the client to go get it? Thats pretty lazy or someone does not like their job to go that extra mile to help a paying customer.
So after that I could finally get out of the close i was wearing since 3 AM that morning and go to dinner.
Food:
THE LOCAL:
After we first on boarded(we were 2 couples) we went to the Local pub and ordered wings, a basket each. The wings were undercooked, we each had one and left the rest, what a waste of food. We went back a couple days later ordered the wings again, asked for extra cooked and got the same under cooked wings again, we just left them there, again a waist of food.
BUFFET:
The assortment of food was very good, but 90% of the food was cold, except for things like where a cook was making pasta or omelets.
Even before we got to the table the food was cold, sad.
The best food at the buffet was “Taste of Asia” and the roasted potatoes 🙂
CAGNEY’S:
Very disappointed, was fantastic last 3 times i was there before, this time low quality. I always have the porterhouse steak, but this time there was a surcharge of $20 for the porterhouse! WTF? Never had that before, not cool at all. I was embarrassed as our other couple was there and i was always telling them how good Cagney’s was. Not so anymore.
So I ordered the Strip loin, and was again surprised that it comes with cold fries, I mean really, i never had a steak in a posh restaurant that served fries with steak? Everywhere we went it was always fries with a meat or pork meal?? I guess its cheaper and easier to prepare, and i guess Americans love that, but not so much for other people.
So I order a baked potato, talk about a pathetic potato, small, wrinkled and cold, do your cooks/chef not have any pride in what they do??
I guess not! I would be embarrassed to server a person with a Potatoe like that!
It did not even come with any condiments, like butter, sour cream, green onions, bacon bits, etc. It was just a hopeless lonely old wrinkled Potatoe that should have been fed to the fish.
TASTE Resto:
I ordered a Cesar salad for appetizer, very sad, maybe 4 pieces of lettuce in the bowl, that’s it, very very sad indeed.
The steak was OK, but cold and a bit too fatty, with the fat not cooked much.
Desert was a hard cold piece of apple pie, sad once more.
MANHATTAN:
The Manhattan was same as Taste, same experience except we had a great waiter named Shivia, he made a difference and served us some different appetizers without out even asking us, that was very cool. We tried to tip him $20 but i think his shift changed and we never saw him again. 🙁
Teppanyaki:
This restaurant was great, chef was amazing, best part of our trip! No complaints there. Everything was fantastic.
BARS:
All bars were just ok, except the one by the beach club, that guy, from Marisha was great, i forget his name.
Every bar we went to made the same drink completely different. So a bit of a disappointment.
But the wait time for the bars was always long, 10 to 20 mins to get a drink, due to the unbelievable amount of people on this cruise!
When trying to order 2 dinks at a time to save the next wait in line some bar tenders did not allow it, so as I saw and then started to do myself, is once we were handed our drink and gave our card in to be checked, we downed the drink , so when the bar tender came back we could order another one right away. 🙂
And some bars ran out of beer, I mean really??
And then some passengers were pretty aggressive getting their drinks, pushing in front and holding their card up and raising their voice, they would end up getting their drink before others. Your bar tenders should learn to keep the order, as it was frustrating and not fair at all.
Observation lounge bar:
After ordering a drink for my wife and I from an unhappy bar tender, i proceeded to go meet my wife on a lounge chair near the front windows, but walked into a corner of the wall causing a cut on the top of my head and bleeding. The was a small warning on the corner made from yellow and black tape that was not good enough as my head was looking down as not to spill anything while holding 2 drinks.
I mentioned this incident to some guy in a white shirt, he called over 3 other guys, also in white shirts, that came and made themselves look impressive but did nothing at all. Security asked me if i wanted to make a report i said no, just fix it.
So they took measurements, photos, spoke a bit then left.
The last day we went back to see if something was done about it, nothing was. So maybe i should have made a report , maybe something might have been done about that before some other tall person walks in to it!
POOL AREA:
WAY TOO MANY PEOPLE FOR SUCH A SMALL POOL DECK/AREA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So there are 4100 passengers on this ship and only one pool and only space for less than 100 people around the pool??????????
What genius came up with that idea??????? Was he on crack?
We spent two days at sea because someone messed up some ports of call, and everyone had to survive those 2 days fighting for every inch of space anywhere on the ship! We saw fights over chairs, people reserving chairs at 4am with towels and then some not even showing up wasting those chairs, rather than have people use them. My wife had finally found a chair, sat in it for a bit, went to the bar to get a drink, left her towel and bag on the seat and when we returned, we saw some American woman removing her stuff from the chair and saying that was her seat. I mean really, that is what was going on around the pool, that I guess no ship personnel noticed or cared to notice.
So my wife and I being a good Canadians gave up her chair rather than argue with the lady who was cursing out my wife.
OVERALL:
Overall, I do not think i will return to NCL for a while, this trip was very stressful. Being our first vacation since before the covid we were excited for it, but in the end it was not as fun as we expected.
We missed 2 ports of call for whatever reason, and this is the 3rd time(2020 and 2019) in a row i was on an NCL cruise and a port was cancelled!
The reason is not important, it’s the end result.
Everywhere we walked we had to walk like we were in a Black Friday sale in Best Buy, running into to people, people stepping on our feet, bumping into us. Was not cool.
There was way to many people and the ship, and is obviously not designed for that many people.
Almost everything a person wants to do there, there is a surcharge for it??
NCL was offering tours of the ship, but there was a fee????????? That is so stupid, i just paid to be on the ship and you want to charge people to take a tour of the ship we are already on?? No excuse can make that right.
Most The NCL employees either did not understand English/French/Italian or could not speak English/French/Italian. Communicating or asking questions was difficult.
And with all that said, I did not even see the captain once on the whole trip, not like previous NCL trips or like on the Celebrity cruises, where he or she would be walking around greeting guests and shaking hands. . Was he hiding and ashamed of that cruise and did not want to show his face in fear of having to listen to the complaints?
Anyways no need to copy and paste any responses to me, they will be the generic.
“We are sorry to hear you did not enjoy your cruise ” bla bla
You should check on Facebook the groups for NCL and get a real feeling of what people think and experience and learn from there, chime in and comment.
One such group is Norwegian Bliss February 11 – 18, 2023 Round Trip out of Miami | Facebook
So Safe sailings, I will check back in a few years and see how you are doing, meanwhile I will be on Celebrity Cruises and not recommend NCL to anyone for now..
Have a great day!