Shows Great. Food Good. Service lacking in a few areas

Item: Norwegian Pearl
Rating: 3.9
Author: kbongi9999

Norwegian Pearl Cruise Review to Caribbean - Bahamas

kbongi9999

Contributor Level: Purser

Cruises: 7+ cruises

Review: 1

Helpful Votes: 60

Overall rating:

3.9 out of 5

Verified Review

4 Night Bahamas & Key West (Miami Roundtrip)

Sail date: January 08, 2020

Ship: Norwegian Pearl

Cabin type: Balcony

Cabin number: 10638

Traveled as: Couple

Reviewed: 4 years ago

Review summary

Enjoyed the time away. Entertainment was very good and food was good. Was hoping for a little more service then we got. In the future might think twice about freestyle cruising. Not a fan of pre-paid gratuity base of this experience.

Embarkation

4 out of 5

Handled pretty well

Ship experiences

Food and Dining

4 out of 5

Food was good in all that we tried.

Onboard Activities

4 out of 5

Lots to do

Entertainment

5 out of 5

All the shows we attended were very good

Service and Staff

3 out of 5

Around the pool only 2 servers for hundreds of guest. Lines at the pool bar of 10-12 for drinks. Stewards did nothing to make us feel special. No towel animals or chocolates at turn down. Waiters in regular restaurants did little to engage us. Specialty restaurants were better and made us feel like they were happy to have us there. Didn't feel that from many others servers on the ship

Ship Quality

4 out of 5

Cabin / Stateroom

4 out of 5

Pretty good size cabin Bathroom was OK nice size shower

Ship tip

Don't expect great service as Freestyle cruising and set tip standards of 20% for everything leave little incentive for the staff to do more than their basic job

Thumbs up

Ports of call

Miami, Florida

4 out of 5

no excursion

Thumbs Up 0

Key West, Florida

5 out of 5

Great place to spend a day

Thumbs Up 0

Great Stirrup Cay (Cruise Line Private Island), Bahamas Did not visit port

Heavy wind kept us from going there because of the tendering that would have had to happen

Thumbs Up 0

Freeport, Grand Bahama Island

3 out of 5

you need to do an excursion here as around the dock were just made for cruise ship shops. Town was a 10 minute taxi ride away

Thumbs Up 0

Disembarkation

4 out of 5

Smooth, didn't like that we did dock in the same spot so we had to get bused back to the parking garage our car was parked at. Good they had a bus ready