WORST VACATION EVER

here is the letter we had to send to Norwegian about how awful our cruise was
:

Dear Norwegian,

My family and I recently took a cruise through you all on the  
Getaway from dates march 5th- march 12th. We booked this cruise with our family that totaled 20 people for our aunt sally’s 50th birthday. We booked with you all because our aunt sally and my mother in law sherry have cruised with you all a couple of times and really like your company and we really like the idea of freestyle dining. This was our first cruise ever but everyone else who went with us has cruised multiple times before with different cruise ships including yours. We booked this Itinerary because we all wanted to experience Belize.I want to  state the fact that I am a server/bartender so i work in the customer service field and I understand how things work and how things happen so when I tell you my experience I want you to understand that for me to take the time to type this to you that this was indeed THE WORST VACATION WE HAVE EVER HAD.

I want to note on the positive side first that Amanda was EVERYTHING customer service is about and  I believe amanda was the shining star of what Norwegian should be and stand for.  We met her at the host stand of Moderno, Cagney's, and Savor. I believe she is a floating host. She was awesome! It’s unfortunate that everyone else and everything else wasn’t as awesome as amanda. I regret forgetting her last name but she was our vacation hero.

Now for the terrible experience we had. It started before we ever set forth on the boat. My mother in law booked everyone else through a travel agent at sky delta. She put ours on reserve but when we paid for our cruise we paid/ booked through you all and not the travel agent, however later she was able to pick it up i guess. When we called we were told by NORWEGIAN that they had family activities that we could do together ( me, my fiance, our 3 year old son , and our 1 year old daughter). We were also told we could go daily TOGETHER to plash academy stay with them and do coloring, paint and stuff daily. On 3 separate occasions onboard  we found out that was not true. We were told also that you had a toddler friendly pool which we found out through cruise critic that was a lie and however it is a national law most cruise ships do have a specific toddler pool for that reason. We also saw a baby in the kid pool with a top and a swim diaper on.( i have pictures to prove it) They were there for 3 hours and no one said a word to her but my little one year old wasn't allowed to. I had found out through a review on cruisecritic.com that you all didn't have a toddler friendly pool. I spoke to a young male representative who told me “ that’s something we don’t advertise or tell you unless you specifically ask us”  which was un acceptable he also questioned why my 3 year old wasnt potty trained. Also UNACCEPTABLE.

We originally were going to do the promotion of free drink package and the waived gratuities but due to us being told how family/toddler friendly our ship was we decided to trade those in for the 3rd and fourth person free, just buy our drinks on the ship, including a bottle of wine at dinner, and $192.00 on a bar setup that we other wise wouldn’t have bought had we known it was a lie.

Now for onboard. That bar set up i spent 192.00 on that i mentioned was suppose to come with 6 garnishes and 6 juices/sodas. I was told on the phone when i booked it that i would tell them when i got on the boat what i wanted. When we got to our room we had diet pepsi, pepsi and limes. So i called Guest services who i will refer to as “THE HELPESS DESK’ for reasons i'll get to in a moment. I called the helpless desk and told them i didn't want the diet and what else i wanted they told me i needed to call room service and they would bring it to me. So only because i asked them specifically if i would be charged the room service fee was i told YES. After arguing and being on hold for 23 minutes did they decide to finally waive that fee. I had already spent 192 bucks on  a bottle of bacardi and disaronno which we both know doesn't cost 192. Or anywhere near that. That was ridiculous. At one point  While i was playing deal or no deal my fiance bought a jack and coke for 11.95. Which we were charged but we also got charged a additional 28.00. So he either tipped himself 28 bucks which If so I will file a police report because that is unlawful theft, or he charged our drinks and then someone else's drinks on our card.

I’d like to talk  about our captain. We were late to every port, he let everyone off the boat in costa maya an hour before even announcing it, he never did announce it in cozumel we just all got off. On the morning of the day we were set to go to belize our captain ran our ship into a sandbar. He kicked up a lot of sand. We saw it with our eyes. We were stuck for over a good hour before he announced we were not going to make it there due to “high winds” and that we would have another at sea day. This meant we had to find activities that did not exist for our kids to do. Belize was the whole point of the itinerary we had chose. Every other ship we encountered at other ports (carnival magic, princess, and royal caribbean) made it to belize that same day no problem and even though we had an extra 24 hours to get to costa maya we were still 2 HOURS LATE!!!! There was a sweet lady we met who worked in the jewelry store the first day we came on she had been working 16 hours a day on sea days she was looking forward to her day off at the day we went into belize for  port day. She never got it and that broke my heart and made me mad for her.

As far as the activities goes. There was a cupcake decorating thing my kids could do. They had things like origami that my kids couldn't do, the guppie playroom has 3 mats and a few toys that really don’t change much. It needs to be bigger and needs more toys and activities. My 3 year old loves golf so we were looking forward to playing mini golf together. You had enough equipment for 10 people our ship had over 4800 passengers. You do the math and tell me how long of a line you think  it was. There were no chairs available ever to sit down outside, pools were over crowded, at one point a kid puked in the kiddie pool and my kids couldn't even play in the splash area. I highly suggest taking toddler friendly off your website for this ship.

I had paid ahead for 3 specialty dining creds. On our 3rd day i was told at guest services i could pay to get more all i had to do was go to any restaurant and they could do it for me. So i went to le Bistro where Claudia was working. I am a little dyslexic I told her the wrong room number twice she got impatient with me, she told me she couldn't help me and that it was only for the first 2 days you could upgrade. So she eventually called to ask someone else because i was a little persistent, she had to call them multiple times, she was stomping her feet, huffing and puffing, rolling her eyes, and slamming the phone down hard. RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME. there were tables next to us that could see her. She also charged us for 4 additional credits when we only wanted 3.

We used one at margaritaville which was AWFUL. We ordered appetizers it took our waitress 30 minutes to come back and get our food order, we only saw her 4 times, it took an extra 45 minutes to an hour for our food to come out. Which should have took 12 to 15 minutes. We ordered a quesadilla for our 3 year old, 2 burgers for me and my fiancee, and fish n chips for our 1 year old. EVERYTHING was gross except for the fish and chips however we told the waitress we ordered it for our 1 year old and our 1 year old kept screaming while eating it.  we thought maybe she was tired till we tried it and dipped it  in the tartar sauce. It was hot and not just kinda spicy i mean hot and she had been dipping gobbs and gobbs of it on her fish.  I filled out a service card on that and placed it in my reciept book that i signed. The waitress also had kept our room card the whole time because my fiance ordered 2 landshark beers, when he ordered the second beer she asked for our card in which we replied she still had it, it took her looking for a minute to find it on her tray and then had to ask me if the name on the card was mine or not.

I had two bad experiences at your buffet. During transition to lunch time i went to get my 3 year old a piece of cake. They had already stuck ladles in food to signal it was ok to eat. So as i was pulling the piece out i had already got it majority of the way out when a male cook told me “ to stop and put that back it wasn’t ready yet.” Me and my son came back later for lunch we got up from our table for 1 and a half minutes to get a sandwich and chips and when we got back a guy had bussed our table sat a family at it and was still talking to them. When i told him we weren't done and were sitting there he told me he hadn't seen anyone there for a while. Which i guess that means a minute and a half is a looonnggg while. I also had to have him go search for my sons toy pig he threw away when he cleaned that table.

After going to the helpless desk on 3 separate occasions and after raising my voice i got to speak to jahy the manager. I felt like he didn't help much but i felt like  he could tell we were upset and he tried to understand but i still feel like he did not.  Your helpless desk needs more training  I could tell they didn’t have enough answers to provide me with the issues i had which I blame norwegian for. You trained them after all and it’s unfortunate for them because they have to deal with those unhappy guests in person which I know can be hard. Jahy refunded us our gratuities which in turn hurts everyone  we encountered not just the awful ones but that was all he could do he said, he was suppose to fix the extra 28 we got charged and the extra meal credit claudia charged us for but never did.

All in all this was a TERRIBLE experience. The rest of the 20 people had their own unhappy experiences and have vowed never to cruise through you all again even the ones who travel with you all often. We easily all spent over 50k on this cruise.  I am looking for a partial refund.

Sincerely,

Jasmine Decker