A perfectly "OK" cruise...

Cruises: 4-6 cruises

Review: 1

Helpful Votes: 38

Review summary

OK - where to start... The ship is in excellent condition - the rooms were clean, the drinks were free (if you could get to the bar), and the service was efficient. Embarkation & debarkation were easy & painless. The balcony was spacious. Key West was touristy, crowded, and expensive. The big PITA is the disembarkation from the ship. We docked at the Navy pier which meant that you could just walk off the ship to the downtown. You had to take the free trams/trolleys into town and carry both your key card and ID to get back to the ship because you had to pass thru Navy/TSA security to get back on the Navy base. Because you had to take a trolley/tram into Key West, they could only let a small group of people leave the ship at a time. You had to get a "leave the ship" ticket which had group numbers - too bad if you waited to get your ticket - we ended up waiting over an hour (and this was 2 hours after we docked) just to get off the ship. Havana was in dire need of a pressure washing. Hurricane Irma (2017) did significant damage to anything close to the water, and there just wasn't any money to fix the damage. Cuba has 2 million people and 1 million armed police... Norwegian tried to tell you that you wouldn't meet the State Dept. criteria for visiting Cuba (People to people) unless you took one of their EXPENSIVE (crazy expensive) excursions. Not true - you just have to keep records of what you do. In our family's case we made arrangements ahead of time to do an old car tour (thru oldcartours.com) for a 1/4 of the price Norwegian wanted for the same thing. We took lots of pictures with our driver and any of the locals we met to document our people-to-people experience. The highlight of the old car tour was the fresh mangos that our driver had picked from his own home that morning which he gave us as a gift. Since you couldn't bring anything back on the boat, we ate them right there - juice running down our faces! Cuba tip - bring lots of bottle water with you - you WILL get thirsty driving around in the sun. Be aware that you need to convert your dollars to CUC (the Cuban tourist peso) which is a 1:1 conversion plus a 14% fee for that conversion. In our case, $160 ended up being 140 CUC. We were later told that we would have gotten a better conversion rate if we had brought Euros instead of dollars. Now to the not-so-good stuff on the cruise... FOOD - Having cruised with RC and Oceania, I was expecting good food on this cruise. It was mediocre at best. Beautiful presentation with little or no taste - very bland. Anything fried had been sitting in warmers for a good bit before being served, and had the texture you would expect in that case. Salads had little or no dressing. The meat dishes were definitely superior to the fish dishes. Desserts were awesome and the "free" wine was usually good. Be aware that the two main dining rooms serve the SAME menu - so there's no difference between the dining rooms other than their location. Supposedly one is more formal, but I never saw anyone remotely dressed "up" in that dining room. The only shining beacon in the food world were the curries (Indian food). Perhaps it is because so much of the staff is from the far east (as is the head chef), but the curries were the best (and tastiest) things on the menu. Other guests commented similarly. One curious thing was the wait staff - there were plenty of them, but the service was spotty and seemingly unfocused. You usually never got a smile or friendly conversation with the wait staff. They and the bartenders always seemed harried and unhappy with their jobs - like they couldn't wait for their shift to be over. Oh - one thing I just don't get about cruise ships (including the luxury brands like Oceania): the coffee... In short it is the worst dishwater one could never want. If you want a good cup, you need to BUY it at the local expresso counter. Weird that you have an open bar, but have to pay for bottled water and good coffee... ENTERTAINMENT - in short it was cheesy and boring. The production shows were performed flawlessly (band, singers & dancers) but were poorly written, arranged and banal - more "Up With People" than true entertainment. They consisted of themed medleys of songs - no song lasted longer than 30-45 seconds and the transitions were terrible. Costuming was bad 70's Vegas style. The other entertainment on board was just OK - not sure why you'd have a caribbean style band with a drum machine - kinda defeats the purpose of the style of band. The jazz band featured an out of tune singer. The comedian wasn't funny, and very MOR. Also interesting was the little things that were missing from our room - coffee for the coffee machine, breakfast menus for the free continental breakfast room service. We had to go to Guest Services to get the breakfast menus. Typical continental breakfast fare delivered by unsmiling room service personnel (who also doubled as waiters in the dining rooms). In short, I don't feel like we got the value for our money. For 20% more, we could have cruised on a luxury brand cruise and eaten 5 star...

Embarkation

Ship experiences

Food and Dining

Onboard Activities

Entertainment

Service and Staff

Ship Quality

Cabin / Stateroom

Ports of call

Key West, Florida

HAVANA, CUBA

Disembarkation

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