About to book a NCL Sky cruise for Feb. Have read so many different reviews on this line and this ship. Consulted Cruisecritic.com and this board too. Anyone actually been on this ship recently and willing to share pro and con? Also in the running for us is Costa's new Mediterranea. Better review from Cruisecritic, but some individula reviewers gave poor grade for food. Can this be??? Thanks so much for any input.

My experience with NCL is that they pretty much suck.

Costa (I have cruised them twice)has beautiful ships. The interior on one even had marble doors in some areas.
Costa's food was excellent.

ttt

Peggyann-
We will only cruise NCL. We were on the Sky twice. First time-Wonderful! Second time-New captain and sassy crew. Complained to NCL as the crew was really bad.
Next time we went on the NCL Sun and loved it so much we went again in two months.
The food was wonderful on the Sky, the hot cinnamon rolls at 6am at the pizza ovens were out of this world too. The Indian Buffet at lunch is excellent. But to get sassed when you ask a question was just too much for us. Some friends of ours went on the Sky and had the same bad experience with the crew.
Try the Sun or Dawn. We are anxious to try the Star which I posted here once and someone told me it is the sister ship to the Dawn.
I cannot say enough good about the freestyle cruises. We had a window table for two by the window in the dining room every night. They have a free alternate buffet for dinner if you don't want to change clothes from daytime jeans or shorts. Really super line.

We sailed the Caribbean on the Sky Oct. '03. First cruise on NCL.

Pros:

Freestyle cruising.
Food was quite good in dining rooms and at the buffet. Chocolholic buffet was great. Staff were extremely pleasant and very helpful. Service in the Four Seasons Dining Room was outstanding.
Entertainment was first class.
Security was tight & efficient coming/going from the ship.

Cons:
The ship is not beautifully decorated and imo needs renovations or redecorating in the common areas.
Some of the chairs in the sports bar were worn and thready.

It was a nice, but not great ship. We were booked back on the Sky to Alaska but will now be moved to the Superstar Leo out of Seattle. It will be a good comparison.

The staff manning the tour & reservations desk were not very friendly or helpful. They acted like they didn't care. They received 25 complaints re. one tour we took and they still never said a word to any of us about the bad experience. Not good customer service.

We did NOT like some of the ports we visited. We would never return to Martinique. If I'm ever on a cruise that docks there again, we'll stay on board.