Goodbye NCL and Possibly Cruising Altogether Rant One

[cruiseny4life]

2 hours ago, Sailing12Away said:

These are not my gripes... these were from the OP 9 pages back who farted and left the building for the rest of us locked inside to smell.

 

Maybe because I show up a bit later in the day, but the last few times I've arrived for a cruise there were a half dozen Haven employees standing around waiting for us to decide we wanted to go on the ship. So again, depending on the time of day, they're either super busy or doing nothing at all.

Don't worry! I'm with you...NCL absolutely could do a heck of a lot more than they are doing. Regardless of what others believe. They obviously don't read posts, official websites, etc. I also don't see anyone (other than you and I) trying to look at the root cause. I doubt NCL is looking at the root cause either. They have a lot more pull over port operations than some here would lead you to believe...but I suppose that's because they're experts. NCL needs to be updating the service standards in contracts. And that's all I'll probably say on the topic as I'm not going to get into he said/she said/xe said/they said! 

 

And heck, that's even assuming there are really all these issues. Certainly, I know of at least one since I was a part of it...waiting three hours, while others waited eight to board Getaway. What an introduction to NCL! I'm still here though....I'm still wishing NCL would do better (but I can't really complain about embarkation, except that one time). 

[njhorseman]

1 hour ago, cruiseny4life said:

They have a lot more pull over port operations than some here would lead you to believe...but I suppose that's because they're experts.

Yes, some of us might actually have some significant professional experience in the travel and cruise businesses.

Edited May 6 by njhorseman

[carohs]

6 hours ago, Sailing12Away said:

these were from the OP 9 pages back who farted and left the building for the rest of us locked inside to smell.

😂😂

 

 

My first embarkation experience (out of only two, admittedly) with NCL was pretty awful. Everything went pretty much as expected until we got through the initial check in. I can only assume there was a delay with debarkation because we sat in the terminal for a while. Then it took longer than normal between each group being called. Or maybe it seemed longer than normal because I was excited to be on the ship and impatient. Anyway, it probably took an hour from the time our boarding group was called to actually stepping foot on the ship. That is most assuredly not normal. As far as I could tell, the bottleneck causing all of this were people crowding the elevators. The bottleneck was so bad the line zig-zagged on the platform and there was a near-incident on the escalators. Rather than fix the issue, they turned off the escalators. At this point in time it was all e-muster, so there wasn't any kind of delay with people not knowing where to go or being lost or something else to explain why people couldn't keep walking onto the ship. Now, tell me that staff onboard the ship couldn't have done a better job directing people traffic so as to keep everyone moving. Sheesh. I could certainly blame none other than NCL but it didn't stop us from having a great time onboard.

[nimbex1970]

Weather?  Ugh, even I with my first TA knew that crossing the ocean in April could be a hot mess.  We chose a route that went the southern Caribbean, up the Canary Islands to Portugal for this very reason. We went into this thinking of four solid days of seasickness and rain. 

 

Perhaps the OP didn't research how bad weather could be. Then think ahead that all those folks would now be indoors creating above-capacity lines with limited seating.

 

I do agree that some seating and a water station should be part of a "pop-up" plan with delays in boarding, this isn't unrealistic to ask.

[graphicguy]

[DCGuy64]

7 hours ago, graphicguy said:

LOL, funny comic although obviously inaccurate since it was the RMS Titanic, not the USS. 😉 

[crazycatlady82]

On 5/1/2024 at 10:03 AM, DCGuy64 said:

I'd love to see NCL actually enforce the boarding times people are given, since so many people have complained about the long lines. NCL could say something like "we listened to you, our guests. In order to ensure an orderly boarding process and minimize waiting in lines, guests who show up in advance of their printed boarding times will be asked to wait in a separate area of the terminal until their assigned time has arrived." And I 100% guarantee people will find a reason to complain about that, too! 🤣

Kind of a delayed response, but I've actually seen Carnival do this! They had specific lines set up for the different boarding times at the port in Tampa. I was super impressed. 

[graphicguy]

19 minutes ago, crazycatlady82 said:

Kind of a delayed response, but I've actually seen Carnival do this! They had specific lines set up for the different boarding times at the port in Tampa. I was super impressed. 

Seen that on Carnival, too.  Since I don't sail Carnival as much as NCL, and I'm not going to "pay" to board early, it's a non-issue for me.  But, it is more orderly.

 

Where things get chaotic with NCL, those who get to the port early think they're going to board early.  And, most of the time, that's simply not the case.  If you arrive early, and you're not a Latitude member, you're going to be waiting a while.

 

On NCL, boarding times are separated by Limited mobility, Haven and then Latitude status, in that order.  Not nearly as regimented as Carnival.

[mjkacmom]

On 5/6/2024 at 5:06 PM, carohs said:

😂😂

 

 

My first embarkation experience (out of only two, admittedly) with NCL was pretty awful. Everything went pretty much as expected until we got through the initial check in. I can only assume there was a delay with debarkation because we sat in the terminal for a while. Then it took longer than normal between each group being called. Or maybe it seemed longer than normal because I was excited to be on the ship and impatient. Anyway, it probably took an hour from the time our boarding group was called to actually stepping foot on the ship. That is most assuredly not normal. As far as I could tell, the bottleneck causing all of this were people crowding the elevators. The bottleneck was so bad the line zig-zagged on the platform and there was a near-incident on the escalators. Rather than fix the issue, they turned off the escalators. At this point in time it was all e-muster, so there wasn't any kind of delay with people not knowing where to go or being lost or something else to explain why people couldn't keep walking onto the ship. Now, tell me that staff onboard the ship couldn't have done a better job directing people traffic so as to keep everyone moving. Sheesh. I could certainly blame none other than NCL but it didn't stop us from having a great time onboard.

We once had a horrible disembarkment due to a lack of customs officials, the MCT seemed to struggle a bit on Sundays. Since we couldn’t get off, new passengers couldn’t get on, it was a SS (those escalators are. I trolled by the port authority). We got off at 10:45, we were in the first walk off group, lined up since 7 am.

[njhorseman]

One problem you often see in threads complaining about the embarkation process is that people mistakenly believe that they've been assigned an embarkation time when they do their on line check in. It simply isn't true. You get a check in time from NCL, NOT an embarkation time and there can be a couple of hours of difference between the two even if the process is proceeding smoothly at the cruise terminal.

 

On a day when things go sideways for any number of reasons  (most if not all of which are not in the cruise line's control)...the ship arriving late, an insufficient number of CBP officers working to process  disembarking passengers, an insufficient number of longshoremen to unload baggage, the Coast Guard conducting an inspection, passengers who don't disembark in a timely fashion...and the check in and boarding processes become a complete cluster.

 

Cruise terminals aren't large enough to hold the entire passenger capacity of a big ship at once. There's an assumption of an orderly normal  disembarkation, check in and boarding processes taking place. Once that doesn't happen the cruise terminal gets like a highway that has all lanes closed by an accident...you are just not going to go anywhere anytime soon.

[The Traveling Man]

On 5/8/2024 at 12:58 PM, mjkacmom said:

We once had a horrible disembarkment due to a lack of customs officials, the MCT seemed to struggle a bit on Sundays. Since we couldn’t get off, new passengers couldn’t get on, it was a SS (those escalators are. I trolled by the port authority). We got off at 10:45, we were in the first walk off group, lined up since 7 am.

That’s a bit worse than our last experience debarking in Miami.  It took us about 90 minutes from getting off the ship’s elevator to reaching the curb.  The ironic aspect is that although they have “global entry” signs all over the terminal and one of the Customs stations is marked “global entry”, they lumped everyone together, Heaven, Latitudes, Global Entry, and any other possible form of priority into one line before getting to the Customs officers.

[ontheweb]

2 hours ago, The Traveling Man said:

That’s a bit worse than our last experience debarking in Miami.  It took us about 90 minutes from getting off the ship’s elevator to reaching the curb.  The ironic aspect is that although they have “global entry” signs all over the terminal and one of the Customs stations is marked “global entry”, they lumped everyone together, Heaven, Latitudes, Global Entry, and any other possible form of priority into one line before getting to the Customs officers.

None of you can touch our worst disembarkation experience. On a holiday weekend (Labor Day) there was a hurricane that kept us out of Fort Lauderdale for 2 extra days. Naturally, basically everyone now needed the first disembarkation tag to get to the airport to try to get flights. And there were too many ships coming in and too few immigration agents.

 

The first tag was called, and the lounge filled up. And then the second tag was called and the room was so filled up that one could hardly breathe. And then they finally made an announcement, as everyone anxiously awaited to hear that disembarkation had finally started, instead we were all told it was our last chance to buy pictures from the cruise.

[Crissy699]

Did I miss the actual complaint? Or was this a joke? 😆

[ontheweb]

13 hours ago, Crissy699 said:

Did I miss the actual complaint? Or was this a joke? 😆

And don't forget this is only rant one. Who knows how much more there will be in the future?

[Catnip]

On 4/22/2024 at 5:29 PM, MajSteve said:

The gift shop did not contain one item related to our cruise. Only Caribbean items. Who wants to go on a TA cruise and purchase a Virgin Islands T-shirt? Think I am getting snarky? Just wait!

 

 

 

 

That is a gripe from me too!  I've noticed on my last 3 NCL cruises that there is precious little in the gift shops for actual NCL items (shorts/t-shirts/caps, etc).  The one shirt offering on the last 2 NCL cruises that had the NCL logo on it was a very strange material shirt, obviously some mysterious synthetic that felt weird.  Other lines we've sailed on had a lot of their own cruise line logo apparel.