Norwegian Cruise Lines

I called the Casino host, Feb 5 and asked for all my losses, Joe said he would definitely get back to me. 2 weeks later, no call or email. I called today 2/15/19, spoke to a woman, asked for Joe and was told he is busy. (Meanwhile he was talking in the background, listening). This woman, whom was not very nice or professional, told me, "You got your win/loss and it states you won $575.00." I then told her, I need a sheet of my losses or the IRS, will think I won, when they see 3 of my winning W2G FORMS. She proceeded to tell me, that's all I am getting and nothing else. I gamble a lot on those cruises, I got treated so horribly, I couldn't believe how bad, they (Joe in the background) were treating me. To all players out there, good luck, if you gamble on their cruises.

After many calls to Norwegian to find out where that refund was, and even after sending a copy of the very letter they gave us, they denied EVER giving it to us. They said they never printed it and had never seen it before. It was printed on their letter head signed by the manager of guest services. I do not know how a company that relies on good customer service can all out lie to people even when the proof of what they say is right in front of them. Will not be booking with Norwegian again and neither should you.

Beyond that, the food was passable at best, unless one ate at the premium extra-charge restaurants. This was the worst cruise experience of our lives, and one of my worst travel experiences in my 55 years of global travel. I strongly recommend that everyone avoid travel on Norwegian Cruise Line. They only care about their corporate profits and care not a bit about their passengers. NCL is a disgrace to the travel industry.

We have cruised many times on Norwegian and have experienced the inconvenience of waiting in lines on the ship and the stress that it causes. We picked this cruise only because of the new shows and the ability to reserve and pay ahead of time over the phone with Norwegian. As we refuse to spend our time on-board to get stressed out trying to reserve last minute shows...we have enough stress in our lives year round. We do not plan to get stressed out on your ship and seriously plan to cancel the entire cruise which include 6 passenger total...including both my parents who are only cruising to spend time including seeing wonderful night-time shows!!!

1. It is critical to allow your clientele to book shows prior to boarding the ship. 2. Update our website as it still reflects the shows that have been cancelled which to our entire family is false advertising and a main contributor toward our decision to book the cruise in the first place and convenience our kids and parents to join us. 3. You need to understand the inconvenience, time, and impact that this creates not only to me, my wife, my kids, family and thousands of other passengers that were under the impression that we were to see amazing night time Broadway type entertainment!!! We have yet to be credited for the pre-paid show nor compensated for not receiving services expected for when booking this cruise. Thanks, Silver member Norwegian cruiser and not so sure future Norwegian cruiser. Not so sure anymore: sail date 17-March-2019.

As for our room the steward did not clean our room or turn down our beds. He just made the bed in the morning and that was it. Except for stealing chocolates out of our fridge. I had a whole bag of Lindor chocolates which he helped himself to every day, so on the last day I left the last one on the bed with a note saying, "Since you ate all of my chocolate why not have the last one" and he replied with a thank you. I took pictures of my note and his reply.

The ship itself smelled of stale urine and fish near any public washroom. On several occasions there were areas blocked off due to some type of repair. The O'Sheen restaurant told us that the one whole side of the restaurant was off limits and he said he wouldn't recommend going anywhere near that side. The bathroom near the night club was shut down. There was garbage everywhere and nobody cared. I have been on many cruises and this one was the absolute worst piece of garbage.

On our last night around 12 AM there was screaming and fooling around right outside our door it was so loud I opened my door to see. It was staff members throwing around people luggage laughing and I said, "Do you mind? We are trying to sleep and you have been screaming and making noise for over 30 min. This is ridiculous." At this point the Stewart apologized but honestly it was unbelievable to see them throwing around people's belongings like they were toys. No respect for people's things and how people feel being woken up at 12 am to that noise. I have contacted Norwegian and they have given me a case number and said I will hear from them in 15 days whatever that is suppose to mean. I have no idea.

On land they would have been arrested but on NCL they are allowed to taunt and stalk our family. The cruise line did nothing. In my opinion they care more more about selling unlimited drink packages than protecting their guests. There was no security at the bars which were packed. This is our first NCL cruise and our last. One of our family members is an NCL Platinum member and she said she will never cruise NCL again.

You all want me to be Norwegian but I was born American and with that comes the freedom to choose and I choose one of your competitors. Get with it even Carnival was better than you... And they are literally named after a circus. Hire a high school student taking a business class to shine your precious fresh coat of paint Pearl because this savvy customer is screaming from the rooftops... Run don't walk as far away as you can. To top it all off no apology for the operational circus... Just four spam emails when I received service trying to sell me another cruise... EPIC FAIL. You get one star for entertainment that was your glimmer of light in an otherwise darkness void as I predict very soon the Norwegian name will sink like the Titanic into oblivion.

We also received a letter stating that NCL will give us a 25% credit to be applied to the next cruise! Norwegian needs to step up and compensate for THIS horrible trip and NOT for the next! MECHANICAL PROBLEMS RESULTED in the FAILURE of this CRUISE. Furthermore, the ship is old and has a foul odor in certain areas such as at "Dazzles" or at "Stardust". The service was good; the food was very poor, leftovers were served in the following days. The only positive thing was the free drinks. Entertainments were fine, we liked the shows.

We went to cruise excursions and spoke to the excursion supervisor who said there was nothing he could do because NCL HQ had overbooked the 9:30 am excursion and moved the excess into the later excursion. He was very unsympathetic and acted like he could care less that this spoiled our vacation. All he said was, "Take it up with home office." He callously pointed out some fine print that NCL had the right to change the terms of the excursion at their will. I told him that I understood this, but why didn't NCL notify us of the change so that we could have booked the earlier time the next day or used an independent to go on this once in a lifetime excursion.

I note that other cruise lines routinely notify guests about excursion changes, so why didn't NCL shows some courtesy to us in informing us of this change in scheduling? It does not give me a pleasant view of a company that doesn't apparently care for its customers. This was our 3rd cruise with NCL and I am totally disappointed and disgusted with how we were so callously treated. I don't see any excuse why a simple notification could have been made. This is certainly no way to treat loyal customers who pay large amounts of money to this company.

• View All Dates and Pricing shows a chart – WITH my balcony rate and a green color-coded hash next to it specifically. That green mark is explained as “Free at Sea’ below the chart.'

If ‘Free at Sea’ was something not available for what I chose – WHY put the green hash mark on EVERY option next to it as YOUR website leads me through the process? As a new customer, how am I to know what promotions are not available to me when you let me click on, PLUS show me in color code that it IS available? The only real thing made clear on these pages is that I may have an obstructed view from my balcony. Absolutely, there is fine print… "may not include promotional offers." Promotions – So what is a promotion? Could be promo codes, credit from past cruises, partial refunds, etc. How am I to know? On every page I followed it had the “Free at Sea’ listed on whatever I chose. I am not a novice web user and have booked MANY trips online. This was going to be my first with Norwegian. However, I will never sail this cruise line. This was total scheming or extremely poor web development – I’ll let you choose that one!

With the harbor being closed, Norwegian decided that our cruise was going to be delayed 2 days. We received a text from Norwegian and a letter from Vivian Ewart, Sr. Vice-President, Passenger Services on August 23rd stating that all passengers will receive a refund for the value of two days of the cruise fare. Because of the seriousness of the storm, United offered us a waiver to reschedule up to one year from the booking date. This was a much welcomed and rare offer from an airline. We were extremely alarmed at the possibility of trying to reschedule and fly into a hurricane, so we decided to accept the United Airlines offer and felt relieved that at least we had Norwegian's 2-day refund.

After a couple weeks of not receiving the refund, we were told that we will not be receiving it because we were unable to arrive in a hurricane for the new sailing date determined by Norwegian. In other words, we supposedly canceled. It was not stated in Ms. Ewart's letter that we had to risk our lives to arrive in a hurricane to receive the 2-day refund. We would understand not qualifying for the refund if we canceled well before the original departure date, but it hardly seems fair to penalize us the 2-day reimbursement for the very reason they are awarding it - unsafe to travel in the hurricane. After several appeals to Norwegian they refuse to reconsider and follow through with their written promise to refund the 2 days of cruise fare. So book your cruise with any other cruise line that has better customer service! They do not care about their customers!

Having no options we boarded NCL Escape on the 9 September and proceeded to Florida and Great Stirrup Cay. Third day into the cruise captain announced that our ship will not be going to Bahamas either. As a result of cancellation of the Bahamas stop, we've got neither and our dream vacation at this point was completely ruined. Totally a waste of our time and money. The Bermuda cruise is considered a premium destination and cost us around $3500 USD whereas the Bahamas cruise from the same port and same duration was selling for around $299 per person (approximately $1500 in total for 5 people).

All my attempts to reason with guest relations led to pointing at the fine print that they can do whatever they want and customers who pay and don't receive what they pay for, are screwed. To date we have not received any communication from NCL as to what compensation if any should be considered. We were not expecting a cash compensation, however, a price difference between two destinations would be fair. All I want to say to other customers is to stay away from these thieves who covers up with fine print. Even Carnival Cruise line has better customer service. Never again would we give our business to NCL.

I went to inform a staff member that they need to move upstairs. They looked at me like I was speaking a foreign language. There were people in wheelchairs, walkers, elderly and obese blocking the entrance to theater. Again I went inform someone, not safe. Emaunual ** a concierge told me to shut up or was going to call security. Bad enough not to think that through putting shore excursion people at the bottom of three flights of stairs, but when brought to their attention, ignored it and threatened to call security. I only wish I would have taken a video of it all. Needless to say I didn’t want to take the San Juan tour and wanted my money back. They refused. So if you're thinking of planning cruise! Might want to look at Royal Caribbean or Holland. If cruise on Norwegian DO NOT GO ON EXCURSIONS!!!

The Stateroom - I have been in staterooms before and the so-called “staterooms” on-board the Norwegian Jewel are definitely not staterooms. They are merely cabins, a real stateroom has room for at least 2 passengers to sit and dine in their room and they tend to be larger than cabins with more furniture. The balcony was average size for a cabin, however the 2 chairs were uncomfortable and the table was a mere 30cm x 30cm square (approximate) and about the same height, only enough space to put 2 glasses on, I had to be careful not to trip over it.

I also discovered the cabin door would not lock, the safe also did not lock and this took 2 hours to fix so consequently we had to wait in our cabin for that period of time. The bar staff at the stern. The 2 bar staff at the stern were extremely slow with queues building all the time, at times there were 13 passengers waiting for drinks which took up to 25 minutes to be served, the staff became rude to customers when they did not understand what drinks were required making the staff look incompetent.

The bar staff were consistently running out of drinks and stating to the passengers they will get some more later, the passengers needed their drinks then and not 2 hours later. What I did and a lot of other people did was to walk to the bar in the cafeteria area and get drinks there, it was a lot quicker and friendlier, the bar staff member there was a lot more professional and faster. By the time I walked there and back to the rear deck the same passengers were still waiting in the queue.

The Cafeteria Buffet and BBQ Deck - The food had been cooked and kept heated to a temperature of “just warm” so by the time you selected your food and found a table the food had gone cold. I also found most of this food was stale, it had been cooked some time ago. Main Dining Rooms - I found the menus needed to have more selections and also they needed changes to the menu each day, the food was also served warm so by the time I had finished eating the food had gone cold. I also found the food portions were too small and I was leaving the Dining Room feeling hungry.

Shore Excursions - The shore excursions I went on were poor value for the money charged, 1 excursion was canceled and I got very little notice so I had no time to choose another one. We were taken to venues not listed on the excursions like the “Gem Warehouse” for the purpose of buying gems, not what shore excursion are all about. if I want to buy something I will go to shopping in my own time.

On-board Laundry Service - There was very little instructions about how this service worked. I had to chase up crew members for laundry bags, the first lot of laundry I left for pick-up was left in the cabin so I went to the service desk waited for 25 minutes to be told I had not signed the bottom of the laundry list, it would have been far easier if the cabin crew had pointed this out on the day at that particular time instead of me wondering what’s going on and spending my time running around the ship to find out myself.

Reception Help Desk - It is stated in your cabin if you need assistance you can phone the reception/service desk, what a joke, in the 8 days I was aboard they never picked up their phone once so you had to trek down there and wait in line for assistance. There was no messages/advice coming through the speaker in our cabin so if you needed to hear vital information you had to be in a public area or stand outside your cabin to hear.

On-board Maintenance - I was woken up to the sound of crew members using power tools to repaint the ship outside of my cabin, I believe this should be done in port and not in the middle of my cruise and where it interferes with me. Cutting Short half a Day in Kuala Lumpur - For some reason, it was never explained fully to the passengers, the last day in Kuala Lumpur was canceled and the ship left early for Singapore, that’s not what I paid for. Please explain?

After hours of communication with several supervisors, I was told there was no customer service issue and it was up to me to state I want Canadian funds (even though they knew I was Canadian viewing the price on a Canadian website in Canadian dollars). They would not acknowledge their error. I requested an onboard credit and was told no as there was no service issue. I’m trying to figure out if this is done intentionally so they can make more money. (BTW past cruises have been great. So much for being a loyal customer!)

On our last day we were sitting waiting to get off the ship and we sat down on the seventh floor in a restaurant area and there was a bucket of puke sitting on the table. I immediately went and told someone about it and an hour and a half later when we did get off the ship it was still sitting there! That is disgusting!! While booking this trip directly with Norwegian I was never told that the third adult in the room is not eligible for the ultimate drink package. I think that is something that they should’ve let me know about! Overall not a very good time. I will not be traveling Norwegian again.

Then, the captain skipped our last stop (the main attraction) at Nassau. Now, I understand that we had to go out to sea farther to avoid the hurricane on the way home. What pissed me off is that instead of skipping their stupid private island and going to Nassau, we skipped Nassau. I am pretty confident this was done because it saved them money since they own Great Stirrup Cay. They saved on port fees by not going to Nassau. It's clear they don't care about the happiness of their guests.

At this point, I would have expected them to offer SOME type of compensation or incentive for another cruise - ANYTHING. Especially when you consider that our new itinerary was exactly the same as one of their normal cruises, which is CHEAPER than the Bermuda cruise we booked. At the very least, a partial reimbursement for the price difference would have been the ethical thing to do. The other cruise lines that had to change course offered all their guests some type of compensation. Not NCL though.

Next, let's talk about the actual ship. A member of our group has been on several Norwegian cruises (and will never go on another one after this). The other ships are apparently laid out the same, except the Escape added 2 floors of guest rooms and holds like 2000 more passengers. So there aren't really any more attractions, but there are way more people to fill up those attractions. That was a MAJOR problem during our cruise.

Almost every single event/show/etc on the ship requires a reservation. By the 2nd or 3rd day, they were all booked. ALL OF THEM - not an exaggeration. We decided to try the standby line for one of the comedy shows. We showed up 45 minutes early and there were already about 70 people in the standby line (and the comedy club isn't all that big). We didn't even bother. You basically have to plan your entire trip and everything you want to do by the 2nd day. You can't be spontaneous at all.

There are 2 tiny pools they are ridiculously crowded at all times. I guess if you're into the frat party lifestyle where you're constantly grinding against other people all day you would really like this. For everyone else, it's miserable. Seriously, if you put both pools together, they would be about the size of a typical inground pool at a normal house in the suburbs. If that wasn't bad enough, they close all the pools and hot tubs around 10pm. Not for maintenance or anything - they just close them. By 11pm, pretty much everything except one restaurant/bar is closed. We are adults looking to stay out late and have fun on vacation, but that is apparently not on the menu with NCL.

The one thing I actually enjoyed, the speed slides, were shut down for HOURS every day. The mini golf course has holes/dips under the green that you can't see until you step on them and almost fall, not to mention the frustration of a great putt randomly changing direction or totally stopping. The Bocce Ball court was tapered downhill from the center on both sides, which rendered it all but useless. I realize nobody takes a cruise to play Bocce Ball, but it's just one more thing on the list.

They advertise the zip line that swings out over the side of the ship as a big attraction. What they don't tell you is that IT DOESN'T EVER WORK!!! In fact, 50% of the entire ropes course is permanently shut down. An employee told us that it's shut down because they have no way to work on it and maintain it. So this course probably only worked for the first year of the ship's life and will probably never work again.

If you're not familiar with NCL ships, they have an Atrium in the center that is open for 3 floors, with the casino surrounding it on the center floor. They allow smoking in the casino. By the 3rd day of the trip, the smoke has traveled throughout the entire atrium - all 3 floors. This is really fantastic when your wife is pregnant and trying to avoid second hand smoke.

We got the "ultimate" beverage package, which includes drinks up to $15. What they don't tell you is that they jack up the prices of everything so that the good stuff is just barely too expensive to get. You can get most mixed drinks and pretty much all beers, but if you're into sipping bourbon or scotch, you're only getting the middle shelf stuff.

After all that, NCL wouldn't offer us anything at all. Not even 10% off a future cruise. Not even the difference in price for the cruise we got vs the one we paid for. I have been on Carnival cruises and had a much better time. I hear Royal Caribbean is great as well. I can say that I will never go on another NCL cruise in my life. Neither will any of the 25 other people in my group. That's how bad it was. In fact, I never even write negative reviews on anything, but this was so bad I felt like it was my duty to make sure others don't have the same experience.