Paid for Balcony - Not able to use for 2 of the 7 days.
Pride of America Cruise Review to Hawaii
7 Night Hawaii (Honolulu Roundtrip)
Sail date: December 12, 2015
Ship: Pride of America
Cabin type: Balcony
Traveled as: Couple
Reviewed: 8 years ago
Review summary
NCL and its ship board staff are not guest friendly. They do not correct problems and because they consider this a captive market do not care about their guests once you are on the cruise.
My husband and I enjoy balconies so we always book them. We have booked ocean views a couple when cruising with other people. Those views were ocean views exceed what we had on POA's balcony view. For 2 of the 7 days cruise had smelly crane structures inches from our balcony cabin with no access to our balcony. I asked to be moved. It took six hours for guest services to escalate it to the Guest Services Manager who took another 24 hours to escalate it to the Miami office. In the interim I wrote to the Captain and met with him and the senior staff and got no results. Told that Miami office denied my request. When I got back from the cruise I called the Guest Services and was on hold for approximately three hours and finally made contact through a chat consultant who connected me to Miami guest services only to be finally be told by a rude, uncooperative guest services agent that complaints are handled via email. When I asked to speak to her manager, she refused to let me speak to management. So be very careful when you choose NCL. I am getting ready to write a more detailed letter to the Board of Directors of NCL. I found that NCLhas no urgency to resolve issues or to accommodate guests when things go wrong.
I have cruised on many cruise lines, none so arrogant.
Ship experiences
Food and Dining
Onboard Activities
Entertainment
Service and Staff
Ship Quality
Ship tip
NCL and POA lack in guest services area,
Ports of call
Traveler Photos
5 Comments
JusMe 8 years ago
Sorry that you had a bad experience on NCL. I have to agree that NCL customer service is very bad. Once they have your $ they could care less. They had changed the Cabin type on me before and would not give us what we had reserved "Sorry the ship is full, this is what you get" My TA had warned me that NCL was not good but I did not listen and gave it a try.
NCL should have given you on board credit for a smelly crane that stopped your enjoyment of your balcony that you paid for. At the least it turned your Balcony in to a partial obstructed view, not the full view that you paid for.
Ignore the people that say "I never had a problem" they were not in your cabin. There are a few people here that think NCL can do no wrong and down play anyone that says anything bad about the line.
SHGH 8 years ago
Ewoodspark -
Good for you! Please go ahead and book that balcony and feel free to pay for it. This is meant to help cruisers. However, no one is obligated to use this information or take heed to my experience with their customer service. I have logs of the time spent with their customer service!
Our money, our experience, our vacation so what you think you are seeing in the pictures is not relevant! We were present.
Good luck with your travels and with NCL!
Ewoodspark 8 years ago
SHGH 8 years ago
The one star was rating the cruise, the staff and attitude of NCL.
The ports we visited were fine and has nothing to do with the cruise, the ship had or the attitude of NCL. While NCL has no control of the ports they do control the cabins they sell. They docked in the same ports for the past ten years so they were fully aware of the obstructed view for these cabins and should be honest when selling these cabins to the guests.
Your bias opinions leads me to believe you are either employed by NCL or like cruising with NCL. And for your information, we have cruised plenty and I don't think you are in a position to make recommendation on what or how we should choose our vacations.
This is meant to others that unwittingly book Cabin 10568.
We enjoyed every port we stopped because we choose to have a good time, not because NCL had anything to do with it.
noname111 8 years ago
Thank you for posting your review. It is unfortunate that your concern was not addressed more promptly to your satisfaction. Since your rating is a one star, it appears your entire vacation was a bust... but all the ports seemed to get smiley faces so that's not entirely the case. Without substantiating comments, it is really difficult to understand why you rated just a one star overall.
From your pictures, I could clearly see the obstruction. It does not appear to be part of the NCL cruise ship or equipment. Please take a moment to understand that NCL (no cruise line actually) has control over what is going on in the ports where they dock or where port equipment is going to be located when they dock. There was literally nothing that NCL could do about this structure. Trying to hold them responsible will continue to prove futile and more frustrating to you. While guest relations could have been more diplomatic, my guess is that they were as frustrated with your demand to move something that was not NCL's to move as you were with having an obstructed view cabin for the period of time you were in this particular port.
This is an example of an unexpected variable posed to cruisers. There is little way for cruise lines to reasonably predict these sorts of things. Over 18 years of cruising, we have come to expect a few bumps and we roll with them in order to not let them ruin an entire vacation, such as this appears to have affected yours. If this approach isn't something that comes easy to you, it may be that cruising isn't a good fit for your vacations... something worth considering so you can get the most enjoyment out of your holiday dollars.