I had never been on Norwegian, had cruised previously on Princess and Royal Caribbean. I'm planning a family cruise for 8-10 people to Europe in the spring. Wanted to try Norwegian then pick from the three the one I like best to go to Europe. I was not impressed with the Norwegian cruise. The crew people in customer service were rude, snippy and not very acomidating. Ship was nice but not easily accessible to move from forward to aft. entertainment was very good. Food was very disappointing! Had the exact menu every day in the buffet for breakfast varied only slightly for lunch and dinner! The main dining rooms had the same menu every day only changing the chef's special daily. There was NO SEAFOOD on this ship. I have never been on a cruise that did not have lobster, crab legs, shrimp. I asked because I have a limited diet and eat mostly seafood, I got the menu from the pay restaurants and they didn't even have it. I took this cruise with my grandson and granddaughter for their graduation. We live in the midwest, seafood is not something we get to enjoy very often I told them they would have any seafood they could want on the ship so they were very let down to find that to be not true on this cruise line. We spoke with a lot of other people who are frequent cruisers and they said the same thing, that usually they have all the seafood you could ever want or eat on the ships. NCL, lost my g-daughters suitcase from the airport to the ship. She spent the first day and night of her first cruise in bed crying because she had no clothes, swimsuit, meds, toiletries to shower, dress etc. to explore the ship go to the pool or dinner. She said I guess I will have to spend the next 7 days in the room wrapped in a towel and eat my meals from room service because everything I brought is in that bag! I called several times to inquire about her bag, was told they had until 7:30 pm to have the bags to us, don't call them until after then if they have not arrived to the room. We had a total of 6 bags, we watched them be tagged and put on the NCL truck together at Miami airport. All our bags were in our room within an hour of us arriving aboard ship except her's. At 7 pm, I went for the 3rd time, stood in the cust service line the agent was again rude, laughed at me when I asked if I could go to the baggage area with them and identify the bag myself so we could go to dinner. by this time I was furious, I had been in line all the first day and evening because of their poor service for one reason or another. I had to wait in line at the pursers to swipe my credit card to open our billing for the cruise. This was to have been done when we were registering before we boarded, but the machine they use to swipe the card was not working. When I asked the cust. service person if my GD's bag did't show up, would they pay for her to buy clothes, shoes, toiletries etc. to replace what was in her bag? Again, she laughed at me and said she didn't think so. She had me give her a list of what was in the suitcase and the estimated value. I told her everything in there was new, still had the tags on them value with makeup,shoes and contacts etc was about $2500.00! About 8 pm magically the bag appeared with no reason for the delay or apology. Then my husband served 22 years in the USMC, when I asked about our $250.00 military credit I was told no that the travel agent should have given me this. I told them no that is given by the cruise line on every cruise. They told me there was nothing they could do. We spoke to other military active and retired, they all were very upset about this as they said they had never been denied this credit until this cruise. In closing, I will say that we had a good time overall but I will not be choosing to spend my money on NCL! Their loss! We spoke with many people who were not impressed and this was their 1st cruise, I told them to not judge cruising based on this experience, this is the exception not the norm. Oh, one last thing smoking inside the ship! people were allowed to smoke in the atrium bars, around the pool, pool bars, in the casino located center of the ship so smoke was every place near the stores, by the rest. by some of the clubs and anyplace you had to walk through. One half of the casino was supposed to be non smoking but people sat there and smoked.
