First Transatlantic Cruise

Where should I begin? The first six days of the cruise were better than expected in many ways - i.e. weather, entertainment & overall comfort. Then things went downhill! Our first port-of-call in the Azores was cancelled due to high seas so we now would have 10 sea days in a row before reaching land. Brest, France was the first port we visited and NCL was not prepared to off-load 4000 passengers in this tiny port. Some folks waited in line two hours to get off the ship and others waited two hours to get back on. There was only one gangway and it was wet, at too much of an angle and people were getting off and on using the same gangway - a chaotic mess ensued. I blame NCL for this situation since they should have known water levels and certainly could have deployed additional gangways.

Our next port was Southampton, England and since one of the Azipods broke we arrived there close to noon rather than early morning. To make matters worse the EU inspectors needed to see and stamp every cruisers passport even if they weren't getting off the ship. This process took four hours to complete and we didn't get off the ship until 4 PM and thus missed our excursion. We then stayed in port until midnight to finish the repairs and then left England. Since the broken part and subsequent repair put us behind we were informed that the best port on the cruise - Bruges,Belgium - was going to be skipped in favor of another sea day and early arrival in Rotterdam. The extra night there was fine but now we had missed three shore excursions. Holland and Denmark were great but there were lots of angry passengers and the meager $100/passenger compensation didn't appease many cruisers, especially since the same monetary award was offered to everyone without regard as to the cost per cabin.

The last item I want to mention here is that by day 14 I developed a severe lung infection and ended up going to a pharmacy in the first port of the second half of our back-to-back itinerary. I was given a strong expectorant in Talinn, Estonia and the condition kept getting worse. The next four days were so uncomfortable that I had to sleep sitting up and was exhausted all the time from coughing. My wife also got sick and in Copenhagen I went to a 24 hour pharmacy for more drugs. Still not getting better I then went to a walk-in clinic at a hospital and had blood work and x-rays done. I am home now and still sick so it's close to two weeks since first contracting the "bug". We read tonight on the Cruise Critic site that several other passengers have experienced similar symptoms. I have to again blame NCL for the the lax "washie-washie" policy throughout our 25 night cruise. And no we are not first time cruisers, we are Platinum Plus on NCL and have three other cruises booked with them. I must say that right now I am close to cancelling them unless NCL steps up with adequate compensation for this recent experience. They will be getting a copy of this review.