The cruise started well, but then turned out to be the "Cruise from Hell"

For the first three days, we really enjoyed it. The entertainment was outstanding, the food was good, and the dining room staff were very good.

Then I got the nororvirus. From there on, things went downhill. Naturally, and as I expected, I stayed in the room in isolation. Unnaturally though, they also had my wife (who didn't have the norovirus) stay in the room too.

I was told that I could use room service for meals. However, it was almost impossible to get room service - the phone would ring for five minutes and then go dead; or, someone would answer after several minutes, then put me on hold, and then go dead five minutes later. Trying to get through guest services was almost as bad. On one day, I started to call around 12:00 noon, and by the time I finally got the food delivered, it was almost 3:00pm - 3 hours later, just to get a hot dog and a drink. That's unacceptable, but it's typical of what happened for the entire remainder of the cruise.

For another example, when I called guest services to question a charge on my account, I was told I'd have to go to guest service myself about it. When I told them that I was in isolation, they said they'd call me back. But, they didn't. That seemed to be their normal operating procedure - whenever a guest calls and has a problem that they don't want to deal with, they resolve the problem but telling the guest that someone will call them back, but of course, no one ever calls. Sheesh!

The final kicker was at the end of the trip. All of the "norovirus cabins" people (my guess would be about 100 cabins, 200+ people) were ushered off the ship as a separate group at 6:45am, so no breakfast, nothing. Just get off! Also, any excursions that we had scheduled were cancelled.

Note that I had the norovirus about 7-8 years ago on a Royal Caribbean cruise, so I kind of knew what to expect. On the Royal Caribbean cruise, I was only isolated for one day, whereas Norwegian staff isolated everyone for the entire remainder of the cruise. The Royal Caribbean staff were outstanding; they stopped by the room several times during the isolation period, they brought the meals so I didn't have to call for them, and they did not isolate the spouses or children. So essentially, Royal Caribbean did everything the right way for the guest, whereas Norwegian didn't seem to care for the guests at all.

Needless to say, Norwegian will never have to worry about us having the norovirus on a cruise again - we'll never be back.

The following is an excerpt from the CDC (Center for Disease Control) web site:

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Norovirus and food

Norovirus is the leading cause of illness and outbreaks from contaminated food in the United States. Most of these outbreaks occur in the food service settings like restaurants. Infected food workers are frequently the source of the outbreaks, often by touching ready-to-eat foods, such as raw fruits and vegetables, with their bare hands before serving them. However, any food served raw or handled after being cooked can get contaminated with norovirus.

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