Norwegian Cruise fiasco

First we stood in line to get on the ship for a couple hours, the logistics were terrible.  We finally got on the ship on Saturday afternoon and left port several hours late. We woke up Sunday morning to find that our room was flooded. Apparently there was a broken gasket in the closet behind the toilet which caused water to rush into our room. The bathroom was completely flooded and the carpet was sopping wet from the door to the room into the closet and up to the bed. We called the customer service line and had to call back several times before someone came to fix the problem. It was so bad not only our room was sopping wet (the carpet was soaked to the point that it was squishing water up when you walked on it) but it was down the hallway as well and into two other rooms.  They finally came and sucked the water up several times with a wet vac and fixed the gasket, so we thought. We went out for a couple hours as they put blowers in the room to dry out the carpet to find the room had flooded again!  We tried calling again to report the problem and all they said was sorry and they would send someone. The someone never came so I tracked down a maintenance person who was in the hallway and they finally paid attention. It still took them a couple hours to get someone to our room to fix the issue. We told them there was no way we could stay in this room with the soaked floor (and it was beginning to smell) and they said they had no where to put us as the ship was full. We pushed it and they miraculously came up with another room for us move to. They must have thrown those folks overboard. The room they put us in was about half the size of what I paid for so I was not happy about that at all. We called the hotel director who came to our smaller room and let us know he would get the other room fixed so we could move back in to it. He gave us access to "the haven" and a special room to eat breakfast and lunch which honestly did not make up for the nuisance.  Upon our request they also credited us the difference for the cost of the room downgrade for the two nights we were in the smaller room, not sure they would have done this if we did not insist on it.  We moved back into the original room two days later as they finally fixed the issue and dried the carpet. I packed and unpacked three times in one week and spent time moving from room to room because of their broken ship. Kind of defeats the purpose of being on a crusie ship where you are suppose to only unpack once to see several locations. 

Once back in the room we sailed through a bad storm which I understand is not their fault but it was one more lost day as we could not do a lot as you had to hang on to rails just to walk so we spent the whole day in the room riding out the storm. So our of seven days at sea we had about four where we did not have to move, pack, or hang on to the walls to walk.  

The food in the garden cafe was bland and generally pretty bad.  The room was always full and you had to fight through the crowds to get your food and find a place to sit and eat.  When you did find a place to eat the tables were not clean and you had to search to find silverware to eat.  It would not have been that bad if the food was higher quality.  For the price you pay to cruise I would have expected the quality of the food to be better than a cheap buffet place! 

It seems their version of customer service is to say sorry because that is all we heard from everyone we spoke with - no fixes or solutions just apologies (other than the hotel director who attempted but fell short).  We had to push for everyting or we would have stayed in a sopping wet, stinky room for the two days it was drying out.  I am just amazed that anyone would think that would be an option for their customers and the whole experience was disappointing and frustrating! 

Alaska was beautiful but cruising with Norwegian is not something I would want to do again anytime. Look for other cruise lines and read the reviews - do they really care about making your vacation that you get once a year (for most of us) and spent your hard earned money on a great experience or do they just want to pack the ship full and you get what you get....