Norwegian Cruise Lines

We have cruised Norwegian 5 times, Royal Caribbean 1 time and Carnival one time. I would say Norwegian and Royal are about on par with regard to elegance, comfort, service, food (quality and choice) and amenities. The ship we were on with Carnival was the oldest in their fleet and due for renovations, so it is hard to judge their overall quality - but our ship was quite shabby and rundown. The food was definitely not on par with Norwegian or Royal. The service was excellent as with the other 2 lines. We prefer Norwegian's "free style " dining to the other lines' assigned time and seating dinning. Although on-your-own dinning was available with Royal, it was harder to get a seat than we have experienced with Norwegian. We really like and recommend The Haven section of Norwegian ships for the traveler not on a tight budget.

Great experience indeed at the NCL-The Sun. Departure was on May 06, 2019, little uncomfortable at the beginning due to the plague 'Love Bugs' in Orlando area. Nothing to do with the Cruise Line, but with mother nature. We embarked in the morning hours, lunch was ready for us, rooms were clean & ready. Staff was always ON POINT!! Thanks to all the magnificent staff from Manila-Philippines, Costa Rica, Colombia and other countries including USA. We visited Key West, did the Trolley tour, little delay due to the rainy weather, but that's the fault of mother nature again.

The booking & payment process was smooth & simple. Our few pre cruise queries were easily resolved. We sailed on April 7th 2019. Boarding was smooth, as we arrived quite late due to having had almost a 2 hr wait for a bus to the ship. We weren't informed by the agents of the cause. Our cabin was fine, everything worked & size was adequate. The ship is quite old, though recently refurbished. Facilities on board were good, with numerous bars & restaurants, plus many other leisure amenities. Ports of call were generally good & accessible, apart from Santorini, where rough seas & a broken down shore based cable car made access impossible. The ship was promptly readied for a "sea" day with food & events quickly reorganized.

We have gone on 5 cruises with NCL, most recently on The Epic. We have gone on 3 "mega ships" and 1 ship holding half the amount of people. We have never had an issue with anything. The NCL consultant we use to book is always helpful and is knowledgeable about the ships and islands. We have always had great meals in the restaurants, whether a specialty restaurant or the buffet. Our rooms have always been clean and the stewards were all friendly and got us anything we asked for. Was I a fan with the bathroom and sink setup on the Epic...not really but it certainly wasnt enough to ruin my cruise. The amount of storage in our room was unbelievable. Every nook was storage. Way more than we needed. Embarkation went very quickly and the disembark was quick with the customs facial recognition program.

Fellow cruisers and future cruisers: After reading all the complaints regarding NCL I must say hogwash to them all. I have cruised NCL 12 times and also a cruise with Holland America and Costa and I can tell you that NCL is far above them all period. The complaints given are BS! NCL have the happiest staff and I have yet to have any negative experiences at all... I can only guess that the complaint is prob work for another cruise line and or are loyal to the same. From the food to the entertainment NCL is fantastic!!! Having said this one certainly has their own opinion and tastes but for me I sail like a Norwegian???

My wife and I booked our cruise & flights through NCL. The bookings went through fine, but NCL says that they will email us our itinerary. We wanted to change flights, but according to NCL, we can only change our flights 2 month ahead before our departure date. We had 3 months left before our departure date. We checked our email every day, but no sign of NCL. We called Customer Service several times to see if we can get our itinerary and each time they said that there were "working on it." This has been almost 3 weeks after we booked our tickets.

Don't know where to begin but let me put it this way. We went to guest services in 3 occasions with issues. Each time told a manager would call to resolve. Received a call 930 pm on last night of sailing. Apparently managers were very busy on this ship. Message at 930 pm on last night of cruise was simply "Your request is denied." Since our only request was to speak with a manager apparently management chose not to speak with us.

Cruised on the Star in March 2019 and ended up with bed bug bites on last day. We were very disappointed and frustrated by the lack of care, knowledge and thoughtfulness of the Guest Relations staff who responded to our case. These bites of course ruined our vacation, and we then had 2 extremely stressful weeks afterwards at home, worried we had brought bed bugs home with us (we slept in a tent, bought pesticides and bed bug traps, etc.). The initial response was basically, "Sorry this happened but we checked the room and it seems fine." I sent pictures of my arm to show that I wasn't dreaming this up. I wasn't covered in bites so there wasn't an infestation and a couple of bugs could easily hide, if the people who answered us knew anything about bed bugs. We've done a ton of research and know a bit now.

No one at Norwegian Cruise lines wants to take ownership of a situation they keep bouncing us back and forth between departments everybody blames everybody else and they all state someone will contact us to get resolution and nobody does. We have spent hours on the phone and days and days and emails and no resolution yet. We strongly feel they do this intentionally to avoid providing us a refund for one leg of our flight. I have cruise with him three times and we will never ever cruise with them again nor would we recommend them to anyone. I would rather paddle on a kayak across the Indian Ocean than cruise with them again! I would rather jump in an ocean full of sharks and take my chance of getting to the other side than cruise with them. I would rather jump off a plank than cruise with them.

I just got back from an Alaska cruise on the Norwegian-Joy several things of concern to me were. 1) Staff literally was being disciplined in corridors in visible sight of passengers. This was found on 3 occasions. 2) Handicap, disabled or passengers with huge service dogs did not have a separate elevator I witness one handicap person wait 3 times. People were rude and would run in front of him to get on the elevator with no regards for him. Some people might have allergies to animals and these dogs were like Great Danes. I seen them everywhere on the ship. The dogs were very good dogs but they were huge and getting on elevators.