Some great parts for a first time cruise, other...not so much
by Shanethesailor
We chose the Norwegian Encore Panama Canal Cruise as we were looking for a longer cruise. The cruise was 15 days and started in Miami, ending in LA. I really really wanted to love this cruise. We went in with a really positive attitude and decided to ignore all the naysayers from the various reviews and Facebook groups that we had seen. The cruise ended up being rather mediocre.
Food service is hit and miss on this ship. Some venues are better than others. Los Lobos has great food but terrible service and the staff does not know how to work together. Ocean Blue has good food overall, but it was inconsistent. The Cioppino was incredibly bland and the asparagus was both woody on the outside and liquid on the inside. The sea bass and chutney was wonderful. They really should switch the locations of these two venues as the noise from the atrium takes over in Ocean Blue and makes it hard to enjoy a meal. Room service is just not great. The menu is incredibly limited. The food we got was incorrect most of the time, or missing something, or just not good. One time I got a tiny little portion of fries so I asked for a few extra. The next time they gave me an entire extra plate but they weren't cooked all the way. I asked for extra ketchup and got less than a quarter inch across the bottom of a small bowl. I asked to add mayonnaise to a sandwich and then they skipped adding the mustard. One time we didn't even get half of our meal. Another time I ordered the kids mac and cheese as my stomach was bothering me, and they sent something that tasted like nacho cheese sauce from 7-Eleven. Cagney's was okay. Le bistro was our best experience except for the Russian mob contingent (not kidding) that was obnoxiously loud and ruining the environment. The staff was clearly afraid to say anything, as were we.
Choir of man was excellent and the Beatles show was pretty good though it lacked energy and enthusiasm. Some of the comics were good, some didn't seem to know their audience. The band, royal flush, was good overall and we enjoyed them on the pool deck. Other venues had entertainment that was mediocre.
Bingo is a joke. They literally play three games on three sets of cards. They need to go to a real bingo parlor and learn how to play multiple games using the same card. I spent $79 for nine cards. And we were in there almost an hour to play three games because the host thought they were being funny with all their stupid jokes and sound effects. Even with nine cards I was bored out of my mind. We will never do that again. I understand the entertainment director is new but she needs to work with her staff. They don't seem to understand how to give clear directions. People were confused during the atrium games. There's a lot of repetition as well. On a cruise of this length I would expect more variety for entertainment and activities.
We had a cabin on deck 15 about halfway between the forward an aft elevators. The location was great as we could go down the hall and up one floor for the spa or down the other way and up one floor for the buffet. We loved having the observation deck so close and often ate late meals there. They had a great selection of food and the environment was calm most of the time. Except for some groups of folks that did not seem to understand it was a quiet space. They may need to add some signage or tell those loud guests to quiet down. Our room steward was great and we asked for every other day service. He brought us ice everyday and did a great job of meeting our needs. His name was Crucillo. The club balcony suite was a nice size for two people. The double sinks and extra counter space were helpful and the shower was almost the size of a normal bathtub space. So there was room to move around.The bathroom and most of the room was exceptionally clean. The only exception was the vent on the floor under the closet which I saw was dirty when I leaned over to pick some things up off the floor. There is a lot of storage, including under the bed and in drawers under the couch. We put about 20 magnetic hooks up on the walls and an over the door shoe pocket organizer. With all of that we had plenty of room and we brought excessive luggage. Our room was right underneath where the slide hangs off the side of the ship. Our cruise was mostly older people so not very many people use the slide. I imagine it might get noisier if you're on a cruise with a lot of kids. We heard the noise from the pool deck parties occasionally but I wore ear plugs and it didn't bother me. There is definitely some vibration up there. It reminded me of when my dog is on the end of the bed scratching their ear. The first couple nights I was trying to kick a dog off the bed that didn't exist. It took me about four or five days to get used to the vibration. The balcony is reasonable in size, but we ended up moving the chairs every time we went out so we could get to them, then move them again to go back in the room. This wouldn't have been a problem but we had to work hard not to scrape the chairs and make a lot of noise and bother other people. Other people were not so considerate.
Embarkation went smoothly. We got there very early and only waited about an hour to get on the ship. They ushered us into the social to sign up for comedy shows. That was a little disorganized and I felt rushed. I couldn't get my schedule to come up on my phone so I didn't know what we were already signed up for. Ended up having to change some things because the person who signed us up didn't look at the schedule either and she overlapped some specialty dinners. From there we went to the local for lunch. The food was hot and pretty quick, though a lot of people hadn't even gotten on the ship yet. Our room was ready about 1:45 p.m. according to staff they get the rooms ready from the top down. So the higher deck you are on, the sooner your room is going to be ready.This is a very large ship and there is a lot of walking around. I didn't mind that at all, but with only two banks of elevators it can get very crowded. Sometimes we took four five flights of stairs just to avoid waiting for an elevator. When it's busy, you can end up waiting through multiple elevators as many of them are full. And people are very rude. You can be the first one there waiting and they'll walk up, and walk right past you and take the elevator you were waiting for.
Getting off the ship for tours was a mess. People were lined up in the hallways down the elevator area and down the hall. There was no signage. It turns out we were all supposed to go into the theater and sit down and wait for our group number to be called. But nobody knew that. So we were all hanging out in the hallways. Everything was behind and they had staff members running up and down the line asking people which time they were supposed to go on the tour. They then pulled those people out of line and urged them into the theater. Some signage telling people to go in and sit down would have solved all of that. It didn't help that the person calling the tour numbers had a very thick accent and was hard to understand. If they would put up a screen and display the group number so everyone could see it, it would help tremendously. It took forever to get off.
Coming back from our tours was great as they had staff lined up with ice cold, wet washcloths and cold water to greet us. I really appreciated it that. The tours were okay but somewhat rushed as port times were short. This was a bit frustrating given that there were supposed to be two additional stops when the cruise was first advertised. We lost both of those and then the other ports didn't have much time either.
I appreciated that they put together a quick event for veterans. Unfortunately it wasn't planned very well and it was standing room only in the Q restaurant where they held it. I was frustrated that the person who sang the national anthem was way off key and hard to listen to, and she clearly had never practiced with the music because she had to keep starting and stopping because she couldn't grasp the tempo. It felt like it was a half effort.
I was worried about the quality of the coffee as many people said it was poor. We are coffee snobs and we found it was acceptable. We often got coffee in the observation lounge and brought it back to the room. Other drink selections were reasonable. You could get juice and milk in the buffet and in the observation lounge at no charge.We have the basic beverage package so we had free drinks and we only had to use our card to get those when we were at a bar or when ordering alcohol at a restaurant. Drinks were pretty good though. The amount of alcohol was incredibly inconsistent. Some were so strong, the flavor wasn't good and others didn't seem to have much in the middle. I do recommend the mudslides.
The fitness center was fairly empty and my husband used it a few times. They offered some classes but there were charges for those and I heard people complaining about the cost. We used the thermal spa after buying passes. We really did appreciate that option as the therapy pool was wonderful. We also really liked the steam room, the salt bath, and the paradise snow room. My only complaint about the spa is that they station two people outside and harass people to buy products and services. After spending almost $800 on two thermal spa passes, we had no interest in showing out anymore. I think one of the massages was almost $500. They're going to price themselves out of business at that rate. I understand that it's going to be a higher cost on the ship but honestly the prices were insane.I do think that the ships need to go back to testing people for covid. We got sick on day four and lost many days of our trip. Then we got some kind of food poisoning on day 10 and lost more. Had they tested, whoever brought it on the ship wouldn't have been allowed on. The reviews on Facebook show that a lot of people got covid on this particular trip. There were a lot of complaints about a stomach bug as well. I don't know if we got that in port or on the ship but 12 days later I'm still trying to get over it.
The public areas are kept very clean and there's lots of comfortable seating. The pool deck was busy but we never had trouble finding somewhere to sit. The pool itself is small and not particularly fun. I mostly hung on to the edge of the pool and floated a little bit. You can't really swim in it because there are just too many people.
Staff were all or nothing. Some of them were absolutely phenomenal. My husband really appreciated the bartenders in the mojito bar and in the observation deck. We had great servers at taste and savor and in le bistro. But our server at Los Lobos clearly didn't want to be there and it showed. Other people were either overly friendly or basically ignored you. I even tipped for drinks and couldn't get a smile out of some of the bartenders on the pool deck.
The buffet is mediocre at best. On a 15-day cruise there should have been more variety. We found the same stuff offered over and over again and none of it was great. There's no organizational system and some of the buffets are set up to feed people from both sides into the middle. This means people are constantly cutting in front of you. Given that some people are rude already, that made it worse. It was very difficult to find anywhere to sit in the garden cafe and we often took our food elsewhere. We took it down to the atrium one day and got yelled at by one of the staff members because apparently you're not allowed to have food in the atrium. There's no signage for this so I don't know how we're supposed to know that.
The casino is atrocious. Seriously. I'm a heavy gambler and I have gambled in Vegas and Reno, all across Nevada, and at dozens of different tribal bingo casino places. You just don't win anything there and there's no playback. The money goes in and disappears in a heartbeat. I saw one person win a jackpot the entire time I was there. Most of them machines were empty after a few days as everyone figured out they weren't going to win anything. I kept going back and never did win anything significant despite some pretty hefty bets. The variety is okay but not great. Minimum bets for blackjack tables is $15 on one table, another table was $25. All the rest were $50. The casino staff was mostly unfriendly and unhappy to be there. What frustrated me the most was that our casino host didn't know anything about the casinos at sea program. All she could tell me was to call a number to see if I might have qualified for a free or discounted cruise. They have no control over it and they have no insight into it so they can't tell you anything. That just seems incredibly stupid to me. If they want me to keep gambling she should be able to tell me if I'm coming up on getting a free cruise or not. Or at least let me know if the amount of gambling I'm doing is leading towards some level of reward. My local casino is pretty clear. You hit so many points, you get a certain reward. It feels like some kind of secret club and they don't want to share the formula. I think I'd have better luck understanding how my credit score works than understanding how casino at sea rewards points. I certainly will never gamble on one of their ships again.I'm not sure what I expected as this was admittedly our first cruise. But our next one will not be on Norwegian. I will be checking out some other cruise lines for comparison before we decide to stick with a company. We are in our early 50s and have a lot of years left to cruise. It's very likely that Norwegian lost a long-term customer.
