Mexican Riviera Cruise turned California Coastal Cruise

Cruises: 1 cruise (first)

Review: 1

Helpful Votes: 33

Review summary

I was so beyond excited to go on my first cruise ever!!! We were celebrating my best friend's 40th birthday and another friend of ours 39th birthday. Four couples. All eight of us totally excited.... Until we were let down. We are all from southern California, about an hour and a half after leaving port we were told we would be on a California coastal cruise. Something I would NEVER spend thousands of dollars on!! We planned and saved for almost a year and had to wait to get the time off for this cruise and having the itinerary changed once off-shore made our entire cruise less than mediocre. When looking at the path on channel two from our stateroom, it appears we never even attempted to go south. We should have been given the option to get on the boat or to cruise later or to get a refund. It affected our and our cruise mates' attitudes putting a damper on the entire week, including having to be on board with sometimes drunk and surly people who were very disappointed, making us have to constantly make the best of every situation we encountered. We feel we were cheated out of our vacation. To put salt in our wounds, when we got home we saw news articles and facebook posts that a princess cruise that was supposed to have the same itinerary as us, they traveled to Cabo, Puerto Vallarta and came back. I also hear Cabo was not ever touched with bad weather. We never even tried the water slides due to the cold! We were not consulted or even asked our opinion on the ports that were selected in the change and we were never offered the opportunity to not board! We are from Southern California! We could have easily made our own way to Catalina or Disneyland from the port and had a wonderful time and been reimbursed for the cruise, which we would have then used at another time. During the better part of a year as we planned for this cruise we were told over and over again that Norwegian was the BEST cruise line. The BEST service, the BEST food and the BEST rewards program to get points on. Everyone we spoke to was so excited that we were to be going on the Norwegian BLISS! The biggest, and newest ship on the best cruise line. We got home to questions of how our trip was and instead of an excited response, our response was … It was okay. We had to go to Guest Services every day of the cruise because of one problem or another. We were there so frequently trying to communicate our needs, things charged to the wrong room, Misunderstandings on our dinning package, that the workers knew our (my best friend and myself)’s room numbers!! A lot of things were well done, and a majority of the staff was great. But we felt let down overall. The food was fantastic for my boyfriend and I – we ate at The Garden Café, The Local, Teppanyaki, The Q, Cagney’s, Le Bistro, Taste & The Manhattan. We thoroughly enjoyed the full experience of the restaurants except the night in the Manhattan. My best friend (the birthday girl, in room 10806) found a HUGE – BLACK hair all intertwined in her Prime Rib. She was so disgusted by it, she had tears in her eyes. They were courteous and brought her another meal but it had already gone too far and she couldn’t eat it. The ship was often times superb, but areas were overly crowded because people were not going ashore, we stayed in colder waters or weather when we could have cruised south and made better use of warmer weather! Now, we feel utterly taken advantage of, and we may not ever cruise again - which is sad because we clearly saw that IF the cruise had gone well we probably would have been customers for life, the ship was beautiful, most of the staff was great, we liked our mini-suite, etc., but there was no effort made to go above and beyond after the itinerary was changed. No hosted parties on shore, or on the ship, so many places we wanted to see and enjoy were roped off for special events during the entire week, we were made to feel like sub-standard lower tier guests aboard a ship above our class

Embarkation

Ship experiences

Food and Dining

Onboard Activities

Entertainment

Service and Staff

Ship Quality

Cabin / Stateroom

Ports of call

San Pedro (Los Angeles), California

Puerto Vallarta, Mexico Did not visit port

Mazatlan, Mexico Did not visit port

Cabo San Lucas, Mexico Did not visit port

Disembarkation

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