2fromTampa

Thank you all for your responses. Our first Norwegian cruise was in 2005 when customer service was a priority.  We have been blessed to have been on many great cruises, but were just so shocked that customer service showed no inclination to help us when we very politely and patiently requested assistance on these key issues. For some reason we were surprised that a travel company could not answer shipboard questions on the weekend. I sincerely wish that you have a better experience on all your travels. 

I have never posted before, but have used these boards for the last 15 years for research, and thank you all for your helpful posts.

We cruised the Western Caribbean aboard the Norwegian Dawn over Thanksgiving.  It was our 4th cruise on Norwegian and 11th cruise overall. We were an extended family of 11 and would consider ourselves "low maintenance", only expecting ice and clean towels from our cabin attendant. One of our party did not meet their cabin attendant until the third day of the cruise, and another tracked down the service cart to help himself to ice every day - a self-serve cruise, that's a first! The kids were disappointed that there were no towel animals, but adults would have been happy with clean towels.

Unfortunately, we were disappointed in this cruise over and over again. There were problems at the port, resulting in over 2-1/2 hours wain in the hot sun - not Norwegian's fault, but no communications at all from Norwegian. A text, email, or simply an employee walking the blocks-long line letting passengers know what was happening should have been standard procedure. Half of our rooms had inoperable safes, which seemed to be a problem throughout the ship. Customer service basically said they didn't have any replacements, not even saying "sorry".

Once on board, we waited in the customer service line repeatedly over the next three days trying to straighten out our drink package. Even though we had a receipt, we were told that our package was cancelled and that we were unable to reinstate. Apparently on-board staff could not access records, but had to get information from the home office in Miami, which was closed on the weekend. The gentleman at the Excursion desk was from China and could not understand our request to have our entire party on the same excursion. He told us he didn't have time to assist us.

We dined in several different venues throughout the cruise, and the food was on par with hospital food. It was the first cruise that I actually lost weight!

That said, the cruise wasn't all bad. We all agreed that the shows on the Dawn were the best cruise ship entertainment we had ever seen. The excursions were also very good, especially the Amazing Secret River in Cancun/Cozumel.

When we returned from the cruise, we tried to contact Norwegian to straighten out the charges for the tips on the drink package that we never got - only to be told that you can NOT call customer service, you can only request a call back on line. I wonder what older people with no computer skills do?

Needless to say, we will not be choosing to sail on Norwegian again any time soon. I find it very sad that customer service continues to decline on the middle-range cruise lines, and will stick to Wind Star and Celebrity in the future.