clarkg

Wonderful review.

My husband, my two daughters (age 9 & 6) and myself recently cruised on the Norwegian Getaway (Jan 24-31, 2016). This was our 6th cruise, our 1st on a Norwegian ship..

We have said that we'll never sail NCL again, but had a cruise certificate so we tried again and the service was amazing. I do stick to the smaller ships though. It might just be the mega ship that's the problem.

Our first night on the ship we went to Savour restaurant. We arrived (with my sister and brother-in-law and their two kids) at approximately 7pm, we were seated shortly thereafter. We sat and watched 32 wait staff walk past us without recognizing our arrival. We stopped a few and requested a server, they just said someone will be right with you and walked away. Finally, a waiter by the name of Richard came over and very rudely took our food order. We had 4 kids with us, yet we still had to ask for kids menus (should they not be brought out at the time we are lead to our table)? Richard never did take our drink order, only our food order. We had to ask another waiter to take our drink order, after we ordered our drinks took about 30 min to arrive. Our entire meal took approx. 2.5 hours and our food was mediocre at best. I filled in the comment card that was on our table indicating our dissatisfaction with our meal, the next day, Isaac called and apologized and sent us up some chocolate covered strawberries..

Dining on NCL ships has always taken longer than the other lines. Trying to entertain the kids while waiting is a big problem. I agree that it's not acceptable, but we expect it so it doesn't upset us anymore.

Did you like the chocolate covered strawberries though?

We were on the private island the next day. We got off the ship with anticipation of a great day in our minds. The weather was hot so we wanted to enjoy our unlimited beverage package, unfortunately, the lines were so long that it took an hour to get a drink! To me, this is unacceptable! To stand in line for an hour just to get one drink because Norwegian won’t staff appropriately is offensive, the last thing I want to do on a beach is wait in line for over an hour for a watered down beverage. Also, we didn’t have one person stop by and take our drink order. This was the case for the entire trip…it seems not all bars were open and when you went to the pool bar it was 8 deep with people waiting to get a drink and two bartenders there to serve the 100 people waiting. There was another bar by the pool but it never seemed to be open..

I hate, hate, hate waiting in lines. I think that all the cruise lines are starting to cut staff. Even on Royal, the room stewards are cleaning a lot more cabins than they used to.

Our next experience was at O’sheenans….we went there 3 times and each time we waited over 20 min for someone to come to our table and take our order. The worst was on Friday night, we went at 10:20 to get something to eat before our comedian show at 11. We sat up right at the front of the restaurant on the high stools. The maitradee came over and gave us menus and said that someone would come and take our order…that NEVER happened. We sat and waited and waited…we saw 3 waiters that just walked on by us, the first one was filling napkin containers so he said he couldn’t help us, the 2nd one was cleaning tables and she too indicated she was too busy to take our order, finally, my sister went and spoke to the 3rd one who was inconvenienced to have to come over and take our order, she showed up at our table and literally said in a very rude tone “what do you want”….wow…I have NEVER had service like that in my life, even at Mcdonald’s! She walked away before we could put in our drink order so I went over to the bar and got drinks for our party..

The final straw was on our last sea day, Saturday, my daughter (6) went to the bungee jumping area to jump on the trampoline and play on the slide. When she arrived it was lined up with kids waiting. I told her we would go back at noon. When we went back it was just closing and I was told they were not letting any more kids jump…I asked if it was opening after lunch and the lady indicated that no, it doesn’t open again until 6pm, I said “Really”, it’s a sea day why isn’t it open all day? She indicated they didn’t have the staff to operate it. I can’t believe on a sea day all activities on the boat aren’t open! The only thing open was the obstacle course and it was so busy it took a 45 min wait to get on..

The rock wall opened in the afternoon so that alleviated some of the wait time on the rock wall. I sent my daughter up at 6pm to jump on the trampoline before our 6:45 dinner reservation, well, she waited and waited and at 6:35 we had to leave for our reservation and due to the amount of kids waiting she never did get to jump on the trampoline. As a guest that paid a lot of money for a family of four, I find it hard to believe that activities are not staffed all day for the kids to use.

I do have to say that Splash Academy was a great program for my daughters, they enjoyed it and were treated well while they were there.

I question the tipping process, I feel the staff already know they are getting their tips as we have pre-paid them so they don’t have to do work as hard to earn them..

You might be right about the prepaid gratuities.

While we did enjoy our cruise, the service was definitely not like we have received on both Carnival and Royal Caribbean. I have never requested my tips to be refunded, in fact, I have always tipped over and above when on the ship as I received great service with both those cruise lines.

I love cruising, but I loved it more back in the old days when service and food were the envy of any land based vacations. Today, it's not near what it used to be. I think its getting worse too. I miss the good old days.

Loving the review, and I promise, I laughed in all the right places.

Reshuffling the deck. I still haven't gone on any ship where you have to reserve the main shows. Feels kinda weird actually.

Cruise lines are more the same than they are different. Having said that, we have sailed both and I think you would be happier on Princess.

Booking, packing and going all in the same week is fun. I don't think you lost your mind at all.

I always check out the buffet after eating in the main dinning room, and sometimes before. Hmmm maybe that's why I gain so much weight on a cruise?

Thank you for spending the time to write a review. I really enjoyed it.

You must have some amazing pictures. Any chance of posting some of them?

Wouldn't the cat just bring you along as its service human?

Leave the helmet on, they will never know.

You can absolutely walk to both forts.

 

Just make sure if you walk along the water to el morro to enter the old city through the red gate along the way.

 

The water walk, while nice, takes you to a deadend place below the fort with no access.

 

Loved the forts and the walk was the way to go.

Thanks.

Life revolves around traffic when you live in Atlanta. If you are not out by a certain time you may as well hunker down and enjoy a good movie versus sitting in a car during rush hour. Like a robot I can jump up and get rolling, but DW & DD are like fresh dough needing time to rise. To keep things going smooth, I always set the alarm early and use that extra time to pack the car. This keeps me occupied while the girls get it in gear. We hit the road just before the deadline and off we went.

 

 

 

A few more minutes we would have been waiting until 10:30 to get outta there.

 

 

So looking forward to some warm South Florida/Caribbean weather!

 

 

 

 

One Happy Family waiting to get to One Happy Island!

 

 

This is the Atlanta Traffic I like to see.

I love the middle picture. I laughed when I saw it. After looking serious in the one especially.

Really loved your review!

Just a couple quick questions. Do you have to take the Trolley to the forts in San Juan Puerto Rico, or can you walk?

Does the Trolley have a lot of stops?

Thank you!

The reason I ask is because we are going to San Juan soon, for the first time. I've always wanted to see the forts.

Enjoy your cruise.

Just Curious, did you book through Carnival, or a travel agent?

We did a 15 day TA last fall, and menus did not repeat.

Go to know, I guess I'll have to do double entrees those nights I can't decide. Oh well.

Since you need a special room, and there is no guarantee that you will get that type of room if you rebook, you might want to not do anything.

Having said that, I am the kind to change rooms and bookings several times before I sail. I book the new room before I cancel the old. It is a roll of the dice and since my TA died of a heart attack last year, I'm on my own in doing so. It has caused me to rethink my strategy.

Good luck with your decision, please let us know.

Thank you. It's a transatlantic so it's a full 14 days.

Just saw a sample menu and there were several dishes that I would like to try. Do I have to order two entrees each day, or will the menus repeat so I can eat both on different days?

Just curious, did you book through the cruise line or a travel agent?

I have a blog post about our cruise.

http://clarkanddeb.blogspot.com/2014_09_01_archive.html

Enjoy the Spirit.

Just curious, did you book through the cruise line or a travel agent?

I flat out didn't want to go on my first cruise. My wife and her friend insisted and we booked. After three days aboard ship, I never wanted to leave. As you can see by my signature that I've been on 26 more.

My blog would also be interesting for you to get a feel of it. I have a couple of Royal cruises on there.

I was thinking about going on the Breakaway, but after reading this I'm very hesitant. Thanks for the heads up!

We did a twelve day on the Spirit and loved it. Here is a link to my blog about it.

http://clarkanddeb.blogspot.com/2014/09/grand-mediterranean-cruise-part-one.html