Question: Would I ever cruise with Norwegian Cruise Lines again?
I gave my son a cruise to Iceland, Norway, Belgium and Amsterdam as a graduation gift. I booked with NCL because I thought that some of the fellow passengers would be younger (30 to 45). I was wrong.
The deal that was offered to us included free drinks, including liquor priced at under $13. I really do not drink that much, but it was free. Well, not really. NCL charges you a gratuity on everything at 20%, so the free drinks ended up costing us $198 per person. Unless you plan on consuming your weight in vodka, the premium liquor package is not worth the month. If you have the free liquor package, the first $13 on the cost of any drink is covered; you only pay the difference. If a glass of wine is listed at $19, you pay $6, plus the 20% gratuity.
Then there is the free WiFi. Turns out that you get 150 minutes per cabin, but you cannot use the WiFi at the same time as your cabinmate. We’re in the practice of communicating by text, but in order for this to work, both of us need to use the WiFi at the same time. So, in order to be able to find each other on this huge ship, we had to pay $399.80 so that we could both use WiFi.
We arrived at 11:00 a.m. to check onto the ship. Check-in went very smoothly and was very efficient. We wanted to check in early because we were told that this is when we could book seats for the shows and spa treatments. Turns out that this wasn’t true. At no time could we book seats to anything. On the night of the show you stand in line for over an hour and the seats are assigned on a first come first served basis. We were not given access to our cabin until 2:00 p.m. (and we were the first group called), so we spent 3 hours sitting in the common area. Unfortunately, the ship does not have enough common area to accommodate everyone, and the majority of the guests were sprawled on the floor.
The tour was supposed to have 3 stops in Iceland, but a few weeks before the cruise started, we received an email telling us that the stop to Isfjordur had been canceled. It turns out that this was hardly the first time that NCL had canceled a port on a cruise. I did a little research and found out that the port was probably removed from the itinerary because NCL failed to reserve a spot at the port or failed to pay the port for the right to stop there.
We were now going to spend 36 hours on the ship before stopping at Akureyri at 3:00 p.m. We used this time to explore the ship, but unfortunately, the go-carts, darts, video games, and mini golf close at 9:00 p.m. You want to pass on the video games. The tech is at least 20 years old. We tried the casino, but there were only two other passengers there and it was depressing. Not much to do on the ship after 9:00.
Luckily, I had booked reservations for dinner every night. When we arrived at Hudson’s for our reservation there was a huge crowd in front of us. It turns out that if you do not have a reservation, the wait for dinner can be up to 90 minutes.
The food and the service at Hudson’s, Cagney’s Steakhouse and Palomar was wonderful. Just be sure to book a reservation.
Finding a seat for breakfast at Surfside or a seat for lunch at Indulge Food Court is virtually impossible. We finally paid the extra $5 (plus 20% gratuity) to have breakfast in our room every morning because we did not want to roam around Surfside looking for 2 empty seats. If you want a seat, you have to arrive at Indulge Food Court at 11:45 a.m. and wait 15 minutes until they open. Indulge Food Court is very efficient, and the food was very good. I would pass on the food at Surfside.
We arrived at Akureyri, but instead of pulling up to the pier, we parked in the middle of the fjord. The captain comes over the intercom and tells us that because of our “safety”, we would not dock until the following morning. I guess no one told the captain that there is an app that locates every registered ship located anywhere in the world. The true reason that we were not docking that afternoon was that there was another ship using the dock. Seems like NCL forgot to book this dock too. At this point we had missed out on our tour of Puffin Island and our opportunity to ride Icelandic horses.
The following morning we received the NCL daily newspaper with the headlining “The Adventure Continues” and I thought, do these people think that this is fun? We also learned that our tour for 9:30 a.m. had been moved to 7:30 a.m. I personally do not want to get up at 6:00 a.m. on my vacation, but I wasn’t angry until we reported to the meeting area and sat there for two hours while NCL got their act together. Have these people ever planned a cruise before (I found myself asking this question every day)?
It turns out that getting up at 6:00 a.m. was going to be an everyday thing. The ship claims that it spends 10-12 hours at each port. They do not tell you that for the first 4 hours it is dark and nothing is open. Of course, this does not stop the staff from getting on the intercom at 6:00 a.m. and telling everyone that the ship has been cleared for disembarkment. Yes- we did turn the intercom off in our room. It doesn’t matter. You can still hear the announcements through the walls.
Finally they loaded 500 of us on buses and started to take around Akureyri. Most of the places that they took us to could not accommodate this many people. It felt crowded, it was impossible to take photos without someone’s head in the frame, and using the bathroom was a challenge because the lines were so long. The tour was poorly planned and when we finally reached the botanical gardens, our main reason for booking this particular tour, we were told that we had 20 minutes before the bus left for the ship. Have these people ever planned a cruise before?
Two of the tours that we had signed up for were substantially changed before we left for the cruise. We cancelled these excursions and booked through Viator instead. It was refreshing not to be jammed into a location with 500 other people. We could walk around at our own pace, we took great photos, and we paid 70% less than we would pay through NCL. Plus, Viator actually followed the schedule that they sold you; no changes to the time that the tour started and no changes to the places that they would take you.
We had signed up for beer tasting in Belgium. The tour that we bought was to start at 11:30 a.m., but once on the ship we learned that the tour time was changed to 9:30 a.m. I gave up drinking beer for breakfast when I graduated from college. What were they thinking? Have these people ever planned a cruise before?
The first excursion that we booked was for the Flam Railroad. I realize that it wasn’t the fault of NCL that a rockslide had closed the road to the railroad, but NCL waited until 5 minutes before the tour to tell us this and at no time gave us the option to cancel. If we had known before we were walking out the door of our cabin, we would have cancelled the excursion; but that was probably why they waited to share the news.
We were promised that the replacement excursion would be just as fun and just as wonderful. They lied. We spent 9 hours sitting on a bus. We were allowed off of the bus for a one-hour lunch and three more stops at 20 minutes each. Because there were 200 of us, some people spent most of the one-hour lunch waiting to get their food. The three stops included seeing 2 waterfalls and looking at the same fjord that we could see from the ship. Can you imagine sitting on a bus where every seat was taken for seven hours?
I spent the last day at sea sleeping and planning my funeral. It turns out that there was a covid outbreak on the ship, but this information was not shared with the passengers. I managed to go 4 years without ever getting covid, but one week with NCL and there wasn’t enough medication in the world to make me feel better.
Because NCL decided to be concerned about the health of their passengers on the last day of the cruise, everyone with covid had to exit at one of two specific times. Based on the number of people in our group and extrapolating from there, I believe that approximately 80 people on the ship were infected with covid. Imagine how many people were not feeling well, but did not want to pay to see the ship’s doctor. I understand that there are HIPPA regulations, and I did not want the names of the infected people, but I did want to know that they existed. I would have taken steps to safeguard myself and my son.
NCL comes off as a less expensive option for cruising, but while the charges on the other cruise lines are included, NCL nickel and dimes you for everything. This cruise ended up costing me as much as my Viking Cruise to Venice. This does not count the $1100 bill from the ship’s doctor.
There are better option out there and the daily calls from NCL while we were on the cruise to book my next cruise with them is not going to change me mind.
