Poor Planning

There was a stomach virus on previous week cruise which affected 40 plus people and required Health officials release which caused departure delay and caused an overkill on service.  We were told that things would return to normal in a few days if no recurrence showed up, but this never happened with the following reprocussions:

1.  Cocktail Party with Captain and Officers for Gold and Platinum Latitude members was first postponed and then without any notification was cancelled without explanation.

2. The Buffet was restricted to being served by crew members only which normally we would serve ourselves. Each station had about 4 Entrees and 1 individual had to go through each with those in line causing long delays and people cutting in to be served.  It was not properly organized nor were there adequate staff to handle.  This also included all drinks being served by normally 2 people also causing further delays. There were no condements on the tables, so salt and pepper were served in small paper packets when requested as with Ketchup and Mustard which were in bowls when requested.

3.  Suite was not set up with coffee pots or ice containers and had to be requested and glasses were replaced by paper cups. I also noted and not sure if this is something new since our last cruise on the Pearl, but there is now a $7.95 Room Service charge for any meal served to your cabin.  It should also be noted that even if we paid they would not allow any take out service for snacks, etc!

NCL is Free Style cruising which was not demonstrated and many people that we talked to, which included new and previous travelers with NCL, all expressed how poorly things were handled on this cruise and never any explanation was given.  

We paid a lot of money for this return trip to Alaska with NCL and was  not at all up to our expectations as compared to previous travels and even though we will be eligible for Platinum status in the near future, I will be very leary of recommending or using NCL for any additional trips.