Great Trip
Norwegian Escape Cruise Review
10 Night Mediterranean: Italy & Spain (Venice-Trieste To Barcelona)
Sail date: May 16, 2024
Ship: Norwegian Escape
Cabin type: Suite
Cabin number: 18100
Traveled as: Couple
Reviewed: 9 days ago
Review summary
The cruise and the ship were amazing. I can’t say enough about the staff. Above and beyond.Embarkation
Ship experiences
Food and Dining
Onboard Activities
Entertainment
Service and Staff
Ship Quality
Cabin / Stateroom
Ship tip
Don’t expect NCL to support you if they cancel an excursion. We were notified at 8:00 at night that our excursion was canceled …because they didn’t have a bus. This would not have normally been an issue,as there were several excursions going to Rome. However when we received notice, all the others were booked with the exception of one. The $500 a person one, of course. This one included Vatican City, of which neither my wife or myself had any interest in, but it also included the other sights around Rome. So we booked it. The tickets came and read that we were to meet in the theater at 6:30 am. When we got to the theater, we weee told the busses were running late. After an hour and 15 minutes of waiting, we finally got on the bus. (Now remember, this excursion was to be 9 hours, and was scheduled to return to the pier an hour before the ship left). So now we are an hour and 15 minutes behind schedule before we even start. Given this was a Wednesday, the Pope was to speak, so traffic was terrible, setting the excursion back about another half hour. Long story short…after the 5 hours at the Vatican, we were taken to a lunch that was supposed to be 45 minutes, but ended up an hour and a half. We got to spend 10 minutes at the Trevi Fountain, and after another 30 minutes on the bus, we were told we had 10 minutes to look at the Colosseum. So 5 hours in the Vatican that I didn’t want to see, and 10 minutes at the other attractions that were pretty much the reason we wanted to see Rome. It was disappointing, and NCL (after a complaint) said too bad, we make no promises. Lessons learned: hire private drivers (we did cancel our remaining excise and did just that). It was way more personal experience and at my pace. Lesson number two: don’t waste your time or effort to complain about an unpleasant excursion. You will get a canned response offering no apology or help.
Ports of call
Palma De Mallorca, Balearic Islands
Livorno (Florence & Pisa), Italy