Just off the Gem

This was our first NCL cruise. We have previously sailed royal Caribbean and carnival. We were a family of 6. And had 2 rooms on deck 8 an inside and a cove balcony.

The ship was nice clean and well kept up and lots and lots to do. Our kids are 9,7,5&4. We loved o'sheehans and ate there almost every day. The kids club was great and the kids loved going there, I personally preferred the carnival kids club they gave you a phone and had more activities planned, but the boys loved it here and the carnival at the end was a huge hit. So in their opinion it was better.

Our stewards were good we had two as it happened the one for our balcony was far better but they both did their job well.

The restaurants the service was bad, I wouldn't say awful for they mear reason we were always done with in 90min. But everytime they came to us they all seemed

So very annoyed to take our order, we weren't a hard order either 3 kids always ate off the kids menu and we never did substitutes. It totally turned us off, this was every meal every restaurant we are at. Both grand pacific and magenta as well as tepenaki. The food was not great either, though tepenaki was good the other two were not. Not what I would expect on a cruise and far below our other cruises. The buffet was a buffet not great food and I wish there was more variety.

Ok now the desserts, omg the worst ever, they seriously need to hire a new pastry chef because there was nothing to write home about. I love a good dessert and there were nights I couldn't find anything even at the buffet.

All and all we had a good vacation how could u not but I'm not sure we will

Sail NCL agao unless it's unbeatable price. The ship

Was great but the service did not hold up.

I was on this cruise with my Mom and we were very disappointed with the food and service. The Main Dining room always had a new menu for Lunch daily and now they only have 2 menus, One was for the 1st 3 days and the other for the rest of the cruise.The Dinner Menus were different but repeated some dishes and service was slow and not so friendly. We ate Breakfast there the last day and my Mom ordered Oatmeal, the server came over with a bowl of raisins and put a small scoop on her oatmeal, my Mom said could she have more and she gave her another small scoop. My mom asked a 3rd time for more raisins and the server just dumped the whole bowl of rasins on her Oatmeal and walked away! My Mom is a Vegetarian and it seems they got rid of all the good Vegetarian dishes. We ate at Le Bistro once, food was ok, Chocolate Fondue was delicious but we barely got any fruit to dip. We liked La Cucina but service was slow. Food was good, deserts nothing special. We ate mostly at the Garden Cafe which had more selection of food but so crowded with people pushing to be first etc. My Mom is a Platinum Latitudes member and there are no more treats delivered to your room anymore. But the 25% off of Spa and Photos were great. We had to go ask for our Chocolate covered Strawberries, Welcome gift and bottle of free Sparkling Wine because it was not in our room when we arrived. We will probably not sail with NCL anymore.

Thank you both for the short review - opinions on food are always subjective & personal, but I can appreciate it for what it is. We have our last FCR booked on the GEM for 10 days later this year but ... who knows, what are we going to do. By the time we sail and if we sail, I will not be surprised if more Platinum perks will be "changed" for our convenience.

What I've sensed last month and that was on the Breakaway, is, that, the synergy of the crew was just not all there anymore for our sailing - something isn't right, just didn't feel right - one would think that with the pooling of the DSC and gratuity, even the behind-the-scene crew always working below decks should be "happier" and working even harder for exceptional services.

Fifteen years sailing with NCL and I agreed, haven't seen crew members being so absent-minded and subtle in being indifferent, as if it's their covert way of staging silent protest of their unhappiness - and, I keep looking for signs & reviews that go to prove otherwise. So far - I'm more or less on a wait-and-see attitude about all the changes.

Carnival has a new ship coming to NYC in 2016 and starting to take a good, hard look at the offerings - competition for NCL is a good thing since we can always choose.

Thank you both for the short review - opinions on food are always subjective & personal, but I can appreciate it for what it is. We have our last FCR booked on the GEM for 10 days later this year but ... who knows, what are we going to do. By the time we sail and if we sail, I will not be surprised if more Platinum perks will be "changed" for our convenience.

What I've sensed last month and that was on the Breakaway, is, that, the synergy of the crew was just not all there anymore for our sailing - something isn't right, just didn't feel right - one would think that with the pooling of the DSC and gratuity, even the behind-the-scene crew always working below decks should be "happier" and working even harder for exceptional services.

Fifteen years sailing with NCL and I agreed, haven't seen crew members being so absent-minded and subtle in being indifferent, as if it's their covert way of staging silent protest of their unhappiness - and, I keep looking for signs & reviews that go to prove otherwise. So far - I'm more or less on a wait-and-see attitude about all the changes.

Carnival has a new ship coming to NYC in 2016 and starting to take a good, hard look at the offerings - competition for NCL is a good thing since we can always choose.

You might want to try the Pearl. The crew was awesome all over the ship. They never missed a beat, were always smiling and generally looked like they enjoyed the passengers.

I was on the Gem 3 weeks ago. We had a good cruise and cannot complain about the service BUT we had the UDP for the first time. We ate at specialty restaurants each night and that made a huge difference. On previous NCL cruises we were generally disapponted by the MDR waits and the general lack of selection and quality of food in the MDR and the buffet. With the UDP the dining was as good as, and maybe even better than, Celebrity. I highly recommend the UDP!

What I've sensed last month and that was on the Breakaway, is, that, the synergy of the crew was just not all there anymore for our sailing - something isn't right, just didn't feel right - one would think that with the pooling of the DSC and gratuity, even the behind-the-scene crew always working below decks should be "happier" and working even harder for exceptional services.

Fifteen years sailing with NCL and I agreed, haven't seen crew members being so absent-minded and subtle in being indifferent, as if it's their covert way of staging silent protest of their unhappiness - and, I keep looking for signs & reviews that go to prove otherwise. .

This is distressing. I'm not very upset by the price increases - they are what they are. But if NCL cannot use them to at least in part keep the staff engaged, the price won't be worthwhile.

We had great service in March, and a wonderful time. I'm sorry your cruise experience wasn't better.