Norwegian Cruise
 

Has anyone ever been on a Norwegian Cruise? How would you rate it? Is it comparable to other cruise lines?

I assume you refer to Norwegian Cruise Lines. We took their repositioning cruise from Athens back across the Mediterranean and Atlantic to Baltimore a couple years ago.

On a 1 to 10 scale, we would rate it about a 5. The food was OK, the short excursions over-priced, and the disembarkation arrangements at Baltimore totally chaotic.

There was an almost total cabin and diningroom crew change at Lisbon, with a lot of jostling and roughhouse between the men (mainly Filipino) who were being left off, and the women (mostly Croatian) being taken aboard. Consquently, service to passengers suffered in the melee.

To get to the show lounge, one had to pass through smoke-filled casino quarters. The smell made us gag.

Crossing the Atlantic, there was carpentry and remodeling going on below decks at all hours.

We would not go with NCL again.

We did our Alaska Inside Passage cruise with NCL and had none of the problems USNR experienced. We could walk from one end of the ship to the other without passing through the casino (although we passed by it).

I don't think that the cruise line has much control over how much shore excursions cost. Disembarkation is a madhouse at all cruise terminals I have visited.

We enjoyed our NCL cruise more than we did a Mexican Riviera cruise on the Monarch of the Seas.

Because of foul weather with moutainous seas, one was forced to stay inside the ship during the Atlantic crossing. Hence, we were obliged to walk through the smoke-filled casino when going either fore or aft.

When NCL dumped us on the Baltimore pier, we were crammed into buses that got lost -- yes, got lost -- on our way to the airport, even backing up a quarter mile once on a busy freeway! Talk about dangerous!

Once at the airport, we were taken to the wrong terminal, reboarded, and finally took our place in a long line at the correct place. All on our own, mind you, without a single NCL guide to be found, once we left the pier.

Our flight to Phoenix was routed via Minneapolis! Rotten customer service, IMHO.

Altho you should probably post this on the cruise forum, I must say we've had several cruises with Oceania, and I think they are the BEST. No assigned seating for meals, several restaurants, you chose when and where you want to eat, smaller ships so no "cattle prods/calls
".. great service, great food. Check them out.

Check out cruisecritic.com.

Great info and message boards on cruises!

We have cruised with NCL 4 times. Two times were on older ships and two times were on the Dawn. We have also cruised Celebrity and Carnival. We really like NCL and their freestyle. The newer ships work best with this. We always had great service and thought the food was good. I don't think you can get a better value for your money. I thought Celebrity was a little more upscale and really didn't care for Carnival. Sometimes your experience has more to do with the ports and weather than the actual line. By the way, disembarkation with NCL was a breeze every time for us. The last cruise we took with Carnival took forever. Cruise Critic is a really good site for information on cruising and comparing cruise lines.