This crew/itinerery needs a lot of work. Poor planning and organization top to bottom. Problems with embarkation/debarkation, problems with communication with passengers, cancellation of a major port of call, poor recognition/care of latitude members, problems with inventory of wines, very few truly great crew members. We liked some of the places we visited very much but it was not the pleasant joyful cruise experience we are used to on Norwegian. We are hoping Norwegian makes it up to us on our next cruise to Hawaii as this will be our whole family including grandkids. Hopeful for a return to what we normally expect from Norwegian.
Embarkation
1 out of 5
The port in Manila is not prepared to handle embarkation yet—no walkable path to ship, entering and exiting was an enormous 1-2 hour wait just to get to terminal. Once inside they didn’t let us get in roped off line for an additional 1 hour and people were crammed together uncomfortably standing while space was completely available and empty.
Ship experiences
Food and Dining
2 out of 5
The food in main dining rooms was worse than most cruises I have been on with Norwegian. Service was mostly not very good. Several times we ordered wine and you were out. Specialty dining was pretty good—the teppanaki was by far the best in this ship. Cagneys was pretty good and Le Bistro was ok. The hostess at the Chin chin was unwelcoming and downright rude to many guests-she regularly turned people away with no reservation despite being half full. By far worst dining experience because of her specifically.
Onboard Activities
2 out of 5
Not really much to do on the ship. The wine tasting for latitude members was a joke! All the wines were from the regular drink package! I was expecting it to have some of the higher end wines so I could taste in order to get them with my dinners and pay the upcharge then. The wine stewards really don’t know wines well at all. The entertainment was lacking and worse than other Norwegian ships I have been on.
Entertainment
2 out of 5
See above. I did enjoy one trio Latin group very much. Other than that pretty bleak. The shows on stage were not very goos
Children's Programs
We did not have kids or use the services
Service and Staff
2 out of 5
Server in lounge outside of French restaurant was truly exceptional!!! Wish I could remember her name. She always asked “is this what you really really want?” She was quick and so friendly. Our room steward was ok but not as good as many we had before.
Ship Quality
3 out of 5
It was easy to navigate and mostly clean.
Cabin / Stateroom
4 out of 5
I liked our cabin quite a bit. Good size, nice location, well appointed. My only complaint was our latitude benefit of additional specialty dining was not places in our room and was very unclear. Placing that in an envelope at our door would have helped us a lot. We would have used our dining package differently if we had had the coupons right away.
Ship tip
Use Spa on port days to save a lot of money -or take advantage of daily specials
This place was really sketchy. The only interesting excursion was the waterfall and it was crazy expensive so we walked around town. Extremely run down-nothing really interesting to see or do. We spent most of day on ship
We like this stop very much, my only complaint was that our group was too large for one boat in the river and so we had no guide on that part of trip as our guide went with the other boat—felt like we deserved a partial refund for that excursion
Getting off the ship was extremely problematic and disorganized. Crew seemed unsure of everything and customs was sooooo slow. 2 1/2 hours to get off ship. We did our own thing and it was pretty easy to do-great city with much to see
Super angry about this as it was our only stop in Indonesia and one of the main reasons we choose this cruise. They claim some safety issue but we think they just wanted an additional day on Port Klang to ready the ship for next cruise. We also feel we should receive a refund for the visa we had to purchase before we got on the ship. Very upset by this and maybe Norwegian can give us a $200 voucher for our upcoming Hawaii cruise. Something should be offered
Mixed bag here. Since we got here a day early -the first day we went through customs and it was an almost 3 hour ordeal. Crew did not seem to know what was happening off ship and had poor control of releasing passengers off ship. Actual disembarkation was better since we went thru customs day before but it was extremely difficult to find our luggage and it was not well marked
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