The Sky DOES Have a Limit
Norwegian Sky Cruise Review to Cuba
Contributor Level:
Deck Hand
Cruises: 4-6 cruises
Review: 1
Helpful Votes: 44
4 Night Cuba & Bahamas (Miami Roundtrip)
Sail date: August 21, 2017
Ship: Norwegian Sky
Cabin type: Balcony
Cabin number: 9218
Traveled as: Couple
Reviewed: 7 years ago
Review summary
You know how most things are, "It's all about the journey, not the destination"? Well, in this particular case, it was ALL about the destination - Cuba - because the journey on the Norwegian Sky was pretty underwhelming. Absolutely nothing bad happened, but my apparently-high expectations were not even close to met on this boat. If you want to go to Havana, this is not a bad way to do it. If you want to go on an amazing cruise, choose a different vacation.Embarkation
Embarkation experience was very smooth. The port and the waiting area were as crowded with people as one could imagine but it was relatively controlled insanity.
Ship experiences
Food and Dining
Main dining rooms were just fine. We had some good dishes, we had some really NOT good dishes, but we definitely didn't have any GREAT dishes in the main dining room. And maybe it's because of the freestyle nature of Norwegian where you don't have the same server every night, the two nights that we did eat in the main dining room, it's as if our server couldn't have cared less about us (and I don't blame them if I had to wait on tourists on a cruise ship). We did one night at Cagney's, the specialty steakhouse, and that was by far the best food we had on the ship. We had a reservation but still had to wait about 20 minutes to get a table. We had three waitstaff members looking after our table of four and yet never had anyone's attention and didn't get the right stuff on the first try. (When one person takes your drink orders and then a second person arrives to take the same order five minutes later...?) Also, the meal took a good 2.5 hours for no reason that I can fathom. It wasn't like we were intentionally luxuriating or that everything was coursed out very well. It was just long (and we missed a night's worth of boat entertainment). Price was completely acceptable - it was $46 for me and my husband together - but I guess when you're just paying the uncharge it doesn't seem so bad. We never did room service but we did do the buffet for most breakfasts and lunches. All just OK. Had zero interaction with buffet staff but everyone seemed generally helpful. Pineapple was super pale and unripe. All fruit was hard and not sweet. Sad sliced meat and cheese squares were out at most times of the day, as were shaky bowl of red and green Jell-o. Had a sandwich once - that was fine. Made a few salads that I brought back to my balcony - they too were fine. Absolutely nothing to write home about, and believe me, it doesn't take much for me to get excited about food. However, not a single thing that we ate on the boat - most especially at the main dining rooms and the buffets - even led me to want to take a picture of anything. BARS, however: plentiful, bartenders were the nicest of any people we interacted with on the ship, and I don't have a single bad word. Try the frose!!
Onboard Activities
It's an old boat. When they say "driving range," they mean "a fenced in cubicle with a mesh wall where one person at a time can hit a golf ball." Pools were never overcrowded, but the "adult pool" was seven feet deep for the ENTIRE POOL! People just clung to the sides until this one lady in a swim cap started doing laps and everyone got out! Hot tubs were fine but older. We played champagne shuffleboard one day. Had the rules been posted that would have been nice but then again, we were drinking champagne so who cares. Oh, and I don't know if it's because we were on a short itinerary, and that the goal of the boat was more the whole "going to Cuba" thing than the "being on a boat" thing, but this wasn't the kind of "run down to grab pool chairs at 6am" type of cruise. We always got a spot by the pool. (We also went in August the week that school started.)
Entertainment
Comedian was good. We went to the 11:15pm adult show and everyone enjoyed that. Musicians were all OK. Daniel, the piano bar player, was definitely a personality ;) The Jamaican band that was usually on the pool deck was actually pretty good. The entertainment skewed older and the theater and the Dazzles Lounge were amongst the oldest-looking parts of the ship (both in terms of how the rooms themselves looked as well as the attendees of events in those areas). We wasted $25 on Deal or No Deal (it was SUCH a crock, and believe me: on a ship, I'm game for trying anything, but this was BEYOND a scam). I won a Bingo card doing an activity on Great Stirrup Cay but I'm so glad we didn't pay for that either because it was equally a crock, and also TOOK SO GOD-DAMNED LONG TO DO ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. Everything entertainment-wise on the Sky was like the food: fine, and nothing more.
Service and Staff
Bartenders were extraordinary. Waiters in the specialty restaurant and in the main dining room were all OK. I've definitely had servers doing a much better job of faking interest in us on Carnival and Royal Caribbean ships. It was "sit, take your order, plop down your food, see ya." Our room steward - who we actually never met - did an amazing job of keeping our cabin in check, and I have to say that he or she was absolutely the best service person on the ship. We went to the Shore Excursions desk a couple of times to inquire about things (once when we were told there was "no way we were getting a cabana on Great Stirrup Cay" by a curt desk attendant, and once when we went to mention a couple of things that happened on our Havana excursion, where our issues were met with defensiveness and absolutely no resolution). The main Guest Services desk staff where we asked a couple of questions and eventually settled our bill were fine. Not any great extension of customer service.
Ship Quality
The layout was actually pretty decent!! And my first impression upon getting onto the boat and seeing the main area was that this was by far the most sedate, un-Vegas-y, un-Mardi-Gras-y ship I'd ever been on (which I prefer). That being said, the Hawaiian theme feels super dated. Everything felt very clean (minus some extraordinarily questionable public bathrooms on the deck 11) but just completely bare-bones and extremely old. I don't know if it's because I've been on a few cruises now that I "get" the layout of boats, or if it's that the Sky actually does have good geography, but navigating the boat was very easy. It also helped that we selected a cabin RIGHT off one of the staircases, so we almost never had a walk down a long hallway.
Cabin / Stateroom
Ship cabins are small, always. This one felt particularly small, but having the balcony was really nice to add some square footage. The layout of the room was bizarre to me, in that the bed was on the side of the room where you could LEAST lie in it and look out onto the balcony (it should have been on the other side of the room to allow the best vantage point). Everything in the room was clean, and it was one of the better ship bathroom showers that I've had to use. It was just older, and felt like it'd seen some better sailing days. Outlets are limited. The sofa-thing was nice to put suitcases on (because we never fully unpacked). The bed-side lights RIGHT in line with your pillows were weird. As was the artwork in the room. Whoever our room steward was was AMAZING, and made sure we always had a dry bathmat! I'm super glad I brought my own bathrobe because there wasn't one in the room. Bed linens felt super scratchy but again, you're on a boat.
Ship tip
If you can afford it, definitely eat at the specialty restaurant. It was by far the best meal we had on the ship and the deliciousness that Cagney's provided helped redeem some of its lesser-qualities. Also, we completely hanging out in one of the Deck 11 lounges - one that looks forward from the front of the ship - and when I finally went up there to get an excursion ticket I got to see how lovely it was!! Don't miss it!
Thumbs up
0
Ports of call
Miami, Florida Did not visit port
The city of Havana was amazing, and there's absolutely no point in going on this particular cruise and itinerary if you're not going to get off the boat in Havana and make the most of your time there. We started our day-and-a-half in Cuba with the "Ultimate Havana Highlights" excursion that we booked through Norwegian. We had to meet in the theater at 8:10am for our 9:30am excursion. Now, I know that the boat has to cater to the lowest common denominator passenger, but it felt like they were trying to corral elementary school kids for a field trip the way they condescendingly loaded us onto the buses. We were told by the excursion rep in the theater to NOT exchange money for Cuban pesos in the port before getting on our boat, because we wouldn't have time, and also that all the places we'd stop on the excursion would take American dollars. We heeded this advice but wished we hadn't; we'd have had PLENTY of time to exchange money, and we also did not get the impression that every place we stopped would take dollars. It felt like bad information and we regret having not exchanged money at the port before we left for the tour. The tour was as basic-bitch as you could expect: a giant, air-conditioned bus filled with people ranging in interest, personal responsibility, and manners. We actually got to get out and explore sites at more places than I expected, which was a lovely surprise. However, at at least one of those spots, it really just felt like a mechanism for us to be sold shit at touristy stomping grounds. Our guide was fine/nice/informative/good sense of humor. The one hiccup was that we were told we had 25 minutes at a particular site, and everyone except ONE PERSON arrived back on the bus in a timely fashion, requiring us to wait for said-person for nearly an hour. (It was lovely - I took a nap on the bus.) Why we didn't just leave without this person is beyond me. Why we got the most defensive response from our tour guide as to why we had to blitz through the last third of our tour (instead of any kind of apology) is beyond me. Why the Shore Excursion desk on the ship did not even acknowledge our commentary about the money-exchange-advice or the delay on the bus but just dismissed our complaints as worthless is also beyond me. But then again most things are beyond me. Would not recommend this particular excursion but if you have to do something to fulfill your People-to-People visa, it wasn't the WORST thing in the world. We stayed in Havana till 1:00am or so on the first night in port, and then went out again the next morning until just before the boat left (as it was our intention to make the most of our Cuba time). We drank mojitos to our hearts' delight and had a great time doing non-excursion stuff around the city from 1:30pm on!
Great Stirrup Cay (Cruise Line Private Island), Bahamas
Not Norwegian's fault that it was raining the day we had this stop, but ugh, Great Stirrup Cay was beyond underwhelming. It felt just, grossly commercialized (and this is compared to my vague memories of Royal Caribbean's Coco Cay that I was on, like, a decade ago). The minute you got off the tender it was, "Here's ways to spend more money...rent a raft!" Like, we're ALREADY PAYING FOR THIS ENTIRE THING. JUST GIVE ME A DAMN FOAM FLOATIE TO USE IN THE OCEAN. So anyway, rain didn't help the cause. The beach chairs were relatively meh. The bathrooms were actually in decent condition. After our dip in the ocean our foursome commandeered an umbrella table and played dominos for a few hours. Oh, the buffet lunch that we finally indulged in on the island was amongst the best food we had the entire trip: the ribs were great, as was the jerk chicken. Complete surprise that this was a decent meal.
Disembarkation
We woke up, we jammed some soggy scrambled eggs into our mouth, we grabbed our suitcases (which we chose to walk-off with, versus leaving them outside our door the night before) and we made it off the boat relatively quickly. My husband and I both have Global Entry and only wish that the signage for that to skip some of the U.S. Customs return line was better positioned because we both missed it and ended up standing in queue longer than we'd needed to.
3 Comments
momfalc 7 years ago
First thank you for your detailed review. It is really nice to be able to see exactly what any issues were rather than see a low rating and wonder what caused it. The Sky was also my very first cruise and we have sailed on her a total of 6 times and have the Cuba cruise booked in December of this year. This will be our first cruise on the Sky since the beverage package was included in the fare so we are interested to see how that changes the dynamic of the cruise. We of course were aware of the size of the staterooms so for the Cuba cruise we booked one of the Owner's Suites to get a little more room and hopefully more attention from the cruise staff. I believe the lounge you mention on Deck 11 at the front is the Outrigger Lounge which is one of our all time favorite places to be on any of the ships we have sailed on. And I agree that the Sky is one of the easiest ships to get around on but then we are biased since she was our first. Our last cruise on the Sky was in November of 2015 and we had noticed that she was getting a little shabby. We had hoped that they had spruced her up some before our next cruise. The biggest thing we liked about the Sky over the newer, larger ships was that we could always get a seat in Captain Cook's to hear the music or in the Outrigger during the day to get some quiet. On the newer ships they have located the piano bars right in the main walk-through and they are always so crowded and loud that it is hard to get a seat and enjoy the music. Again thanks for the detailed review and we'll hope for the best for our cruise in December.
epicgoddess 7 years ago
Lovescruisin 7 years ago