
Cruise Lines: Crystal Cruises / Norwegian Cruise Line / Viking Ocean Cruises
shared a quick tip for Shimizu, Japan"Went to Minho-no Matsubara (World Heritage Site) on a ship tour. Aa large pine tree forest along the beach. Sometimes, if the pollution isn’t too ba..."
shared a quick tip for Kobe (Kyoto), Japan"Took a tour from the ship to see the UNESCO site of the yellow temple. Couldn’t get inside. Walked through the forest on a dirt cobblestone path. Noth..."
checked in for the roll call for Jan 24, 2016 cruise on Norwegian Epic!
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The ship itself is cozy, airy and clean. Good Itinerary, good price, good food, good fun. Not excellent becasue there's a few problems they should work on. One of those is the customer service desk. We waited in a line of 6 people while 2 cruise members helped and 2 cruise members talked together. Another cruise member walked the line and asked if he could help. After the people in front of us asked and got no help he came to us. We explained our problem and he again was no help. Why have him wandering around offering to help when it's ovious he has no clue what's going on. After I had my question answered, I approached him to tell him the answer so he could use it to actually help others, he said, "I always tell people to call". He didin't want to hear it.
Another area to work on is the speciality dining, specifically the Bistro. We went there for dinner twice and each time waited 10 minutes or more before our server came by to greet us. It takes way too long between courses and a couple of our courses were not hot. We ordered a cheese course for dessert. Our server completely forgot us. We waited over 20 minutes with nothing to do but drink our coffee. We left without it.
Thay had a pub crawl on our last sea day. We were taking a ChaCha lesson when they burst in and tried to dance with us. VERY annoying. If you can't keep the drunks under control, maybe you shouldn't have a pub crawl.
On a bright note; all of the latitudes parties were excellent! Usually you have to beg for a second drink, but not on this cruise. The servers were on top of it. They also continued to serve drinks right up until the end of the party. Very nice.
Our cabin attendant was also top notch. He was friendly, polite, and did a great job of keeping us supplied with beach towels and the like. We saw him almost every time we walked down our hall.
The itinerary was one we hadn't done before - well except Cozumel. Roatan was very poor and aside from the pier area, very shabby. Unfortunately, it rained almost every day on this cruise so snorkeling was cancelled which meant you went into the city. Made me appreciate what I have.
Same can be said for Belize. Shabby, run down, dirt poor. Costa Maya on the other hand didn't seem to have a city at all. The pier area was nice and the walk to our tour with Native Choice was safe and pretty. Not much to do if you didn't have a tour though. Then finally the sun came out in Cozumel. Sparkling water, green palms, hawkers outside every store front trying to get you inside for the pressure sale. Came back to the ship just before sail away and found the NCL Pearl parked along side us. There was a dance competition going on between our ship and theirs with the crew on each side showing off their dance moves. It was fun to watch.
So, all in all a good cruise with good memories.