Norwegian Sky: An Interesting Journey, Dec 4-7

Hello Norwegian community, earlier this month I sailed on the Norwegian Sky, from Miami from December 4th to the 7th. It was the cruise that had the infamous evacuation and I just wanted to share my experiences and talk a little about this particular sailing and ship in general. I see quite a few reviews of this ship on cruise critic and figured I would add my two cents with what I thought of it, the itinerary we took, and Norwegian in general. This will be a pretty quick but thorough review, with some pictures included and I will be very fair and honest in my observations. This cruise was scheduled to depart from Miami on Friday, go to Nassau, Bahamas on Saturday, then to Great Stirrup Cay on Sunday, then back to Miami on Monday.

First, a little about me and my cruising history. I am in my mid 30s, single, no kids and from the Philadelphia area, southern New Jersey to be specific. I cruise quite a bit, although this was just my second cruise on Norwegian. I usually cruise on Carnival but I figured in the last year or so, that it was time to check some other lines out and experience different types of cruising. I had a very good experience on the Jewel, to Alaska in May, so I was looking for another good one this time around. I chose to cruise with a couple friends of mine on very short notice this time around, as we found a pretty good deal less than a week before sailing and we were able to get the days off all at the same time before the end of the year. For my friends, who I will call “P” and “M,” this was their first time on NCL, although P cruises as much as I do and for M, this was his second overall cruise (with the first being one I talked him into going on with me last January from California).

With that out of the way, like I said, we got what we thought was a great deal on an ocean view guarantee cabin on Deck 4 midship, if I remember correctly, and less than a week before sailing. I have come to enjoy the last-minute deals that I can get for cruises during off-peak times and I believe early December is one of the better times to cruise as it is that slow travel period between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Anyway, we got a cabin for three people, which was supposed to include the free ultimate beverage package promotion for two along with free specialty dining for two and reduced cost for the third passenger in the cabin. I will talk more about this as the review goes on but just know it didn’t go exactly according to plan…..

I will do this review in day at a time form, with the day’s summary followed by pictures in separate postings. I am sure most of you heard about the crazy times that were had on embarkation day, and I did start a thread a while back about my firsthand experience of it, but here goes a very detailed and somewhat sarcastic summary of the first day of our cruise.

DAY ONE: EMBARKATION (AND EVACUATION) DAY

So, the day began quite normally for us on this cruise. I usually don’t fly to my departure port the day of the cruise, except for rare occasions but I chose to do so today. M and I got a flight very, and I mean, very early from Philadelphia International Airport (KPHL) to Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport (KFLL) (P flew in the day before and got a hotel as she didn’t want to chance it on departure morning) and it went quite smoothly. We did experience some moderate chop in the general Florida area but there was a pretty strong storm system in that area that day and we arrived just a few minutes later than scheduled on the new nearly billion-dollar, very wet Runway 10R and got to enjoy a long taxi to the gate to begin our day. Usually flying to port is the hard part and once we get that out of the way, it is smooth sailing, no pun intended, and we can relax a little. Not so today. It was also raining quite a bit in South Florida on this day, unfortunately.

After arrival we met up with P at the ground transportation hub just outside baggage claim at FLL, and figured out how we would get to the port. Usually I go with SAS Transportation, but unfortunately they were sold out on this day and thus we had to do some google searching on our phones for alternate options. Luckily, there are plenty of companies offering transit to the Port of Miami from here, and we got a ride with Quality Limousine Service (QLS) for the same $15 per person that SAS charges. Good deal, same type of van ride, and we were out of the airport by a little after 1000. Traffic on Interstate 95 was sluggish (but being from the Megaopolis, I have seen much, much worse on an average day) and we didn’t arrive until sometime around 1100. We met some interesting people on our ride to the port, who would also be cruising on the same ship as us, and just chatted some about everything. Everyone marvels at the awesome tunnel that we ride through which connects 95 to the port now and before we knew it, we were right at the ship. Much easier ride than before, when you had to go through downtown to get to the port. Also departing with us today were the Carnival Ecstasy and another Royal Caribbean ship, but I cannot remember which one.

We got off the shuttle and checked our 22” roller suitcases with the porters outside (turned out to be a good thing that P talked me into checking mine as I was going to carry it onto the ship with me, more on this later of course) and were inside the terminal. P and I checked in well before sail day but M did not and after going through security, we were very early arriving and headed right to the front of the line to check-in. We got our sail and sign cards and filled out our mandatory health questionnaires and he had to do all his check-in stuff at the counter. After everything was sorted out there, we headed upstairs to the boarding lounge at around 1130, received our Group 2 boarding placards, and just waited for them to announce boarding.

I believe there was a wedding on the ship, so of course they allowed them to board first sometime around 1200, and then general boarding began after that. By 1230, we were onboard. Note that it appears Norwegian uses subcontracted folks to do their terminal check-in and boarding/debarking handling services (where it seems other lines use in-house employees) and I will explain how I think this matters in a moment. We were onboard by 1245, and our cabins were not ready yet so we just hung out on the pool deck (11) and got some lunch until we believed our cabins would be ready.

On the way, we passed by the desk in the art gallery lounge that has a person selling the ultimate beverage package and thus asked the attendant there if they could give us our UBP stickers since we did not get them at check-in. Uh-oh…….P and M’s names were not on the list for being pre-approved for the package. P frantically called her travel agent and asked what was going on with our booking and basically got a royal run-around as to what was going on. Finally, they said they would email NCL to fix the situation as it was clearly communicated to P when she did the booking that the UBP and UDP were to be our selected options for the promotion they were running for this cruise. Fine we figured but in the meantime, no free drinks for P or M until whenever. That was the first of the comedy of errors that made up the rest of this day.

We got lunch at the buffet, at the rear of the ship, which included grill fare, such as burgers and hot dogs along with some pizza, bread, etc. The more complete buffet is in the dining room area, between there and the pool. Notice we were all drinking tap water and lemonade-iced tea at this point due to the reservation error and this was just killing M, as he was ready to drink, LOL. We all talked to folks back home to let them know we were on the ship and it would be a good time and then stuff started to get really weird.

A little after 1300 (I will use the 24-hour time in this review as it I cannot confuse AM with PM that way) we began to see lots of US Customs and Border Protection and Miami Police officers walking around the ship. And not just once or whatever, they seemed to be looking for someone or something and people were beginning to get a little freaked out. By the time 1400 arrived, we had still not received the cabins available message and everyone was beginning to wonder just what was going on. Being seasoned cruisers that we are, P and I were beginning to suspect something was not right. And we were correct, naturally. We made a stop at Guest Services before going to lunch, and we explained the issues we had with the UBP and UDP not being on our reservation. Fine, they said they would fix it as soon as they heard from the travel agent and that we could just go ahead and order our drinks and they would be credited back later on. Fine, M got a Corona from the pool bar and I signed up for the unlimited soda package at a table nearby ($7 or so a day, not a bad deal and includes a tumbler) and we were just about to sit down at the pool when….it got really, really weird.

The captain came on the PA system and announced that everyone had to go to their muster stations immediately. Uh, what? Muster at 1430? Half the pax were probably not even onboard yet. I wasn’t even able to get a drink for myself. So, we went out to our muster station, which was midship, on the outside deck and we all waited and waited, and waited for an update and explanation as to just what the ($*%^) was happening. All we got from the captain was an occasional generic announcement that we were to follow crewmember instructions that they were dealing with a security issue. Meanwhile, we look down to the port area and see all the dock workers huddled in one spot on the dock with cops everywhere, on the ship and in the port. Seriously, WHAT IS GOING ON HERE? Ship staff came around to verify who everyone was and what cabins we were in, and this took a while. Finally, the captain says we will be debarking the ship, one group at a time, where we all will have to go through facial recognition software upon re-entering the building. You have to be kidding me. Again, WHAT IS THIS? People were getting really nervous now. We were joking around among ourselves and with other people around us but seriously, this was scary. Even the staff members said they had never seen anything like this.

Before anyone says anything, I understand that they did not want too much specific information to get out about what the situation was but to keep a thousand people in the dark about a situation that could potentially be dangerous to all of them was just not cool. We were all led into the customs hall, downstairs, and if you have ever been in there, you know how small that place is. STILL NO UPDATE. By 1500, approximately 800 of us were now in this small room with almost no chairs, a total of two toilets (one for men and one for women), maybe a total of four power outlets, no cell phone service, and no information about just why we were being kept in there. And once it was all sorted out later on, we were still not given a concrete explanation and the service recovery from NCL was atrocious but I will tie it all together shortly. Afterwards, we were told that those checked in but not yet boarded were kept in the boarding lounge and those not yet checked in were not even allowed to enter the building. At least the people in the lounge had chairs and some vending machines…….along with adequate restrooms.

So, by 1600 everyone was just chilling and trying to figure out what was going on but since it was hard to get any kind of cell or data signal (POM wifi was not available in the dungeon), we couldn’t find out much. Rumors were that some people involved in a crime in Miami earlier in the day had run onto the ship through a crew door and could not be found, then we heard someone ran through security upstairs without a ticket and blended into the crowd. Honestly we just did not know what to believe but it was really scary. Once in a while CBP and police with K-9 would come through which just added to the uneasiness. They did finally bring some bottled water down to us as many were getting thirsty. However, I did not take any as like I said, there were only two toilets and the wait to get one was over an hour long for both women and men, just ridiculous, unsanitary and did I mention, ridiculous and unsanitary? See what I am getting at here?

They did later bring some cheese sandwiches and the people tore through them quickly and after that, they began to bring some beach towels and a few chairs for the elderly and handicapped. How nice. What exactly the towels were supposed to do is still a mystery to me but whatever. Only an occasional generic announcement from some mystery people at the doorway (which nobody could hear because they didn’t even have a bullhorn) that they were doing secondary searches of the ship and more info would be available later on. But they were stressing that we were still scheduled to get to Nassau the next morning…..even though by the time we ended up leaving Miami, it was almost Saturday morning.

1700 came and still nothing. Many peoples’ phones were beginning to run out of power. People were lining up to use the outlets on the wall to just charge their phones a little bit so they would have some kind of a charge. People were laying on the cold concrete, stretched out with no end to the madness in sight. Children going wild, senior citizens getting restless, etc. The wedding party I talked about earlier, standing in the middle of the warehouse in wedding dresses and suits, special event severely disrupted. Finally someone began playing music with some wireless speakers or a boom box that they had with them and that sort of brought a little life to the place. Lines at least a hour for the restrooms now.

1800, same. Some mystery woman came to the doorway and screamed that anyone caught smoking would face a fine and then disappeared without even giving an update. ARE YOU KIDDING ME LADY???? I don’t smoke, never have, but during all this, that is all you can come up with? You know where to go with that. Many people had some nice words for her, lol. Supposedly NCL corporate was there or enroute, we didn’t see them at all where we were. Then US Coast Guard members came into the room to transport someone out who we were told had a medical issue. No wonder…….surprised more people didn’t have problems. We heard that the local CBS affiliate had people on the scene and were trying to get through to passengers for some firsthand observations of the situation but I don’t know if they were successful or not.

By 1900, same as the hour before. We did make a few new friends while we killed the time though . At least we had a story to tell. By 2000, still the same old we are doing a secondary search, blah, blah, blah. WHAT ARE YOU SEARCHING FOR? IS THE SHIP EVEN SAFE TO GO BACK ONTO AFTER ALL THIS? Finally, around 2100, they made an announcement that we were getting the all clear and we would be able to re-board. Wow, we were given priority over the pax in the lounge and at the curbside. How nice of them. Anyway, it was a mad rush for the doorway and all the staff did was meter off 20 people at a time to ride the escalator back to the terminal so it did not overload. No organization whatsoever as we went back through the boarding process. Just show your sign and sail card, and go. Think of a stampede. Anyway, we finally got on around 2130, and went right to our cabin. Since they had the issues earlier with security, the staff was not allowed to work in delivering bags to the cabins so no suitcases yet. We did meet our steward though and she seemed fine.

We went to guest services right away to see if the issues with our reservation were fixed yet and I don’t believe they were but they again told us to just order as if they were, fine. Many, many angry people went to the counter to get their money back while we were there and to just get off the ship. Do you blame them? I don’t even know if NCL did give them refunds as I heard later that they were given a number to call to get their refunds later if they elected to get off. Honestly, if we had not traveled so far to get to the ship and would have been able to easily re-schedule later on, we would have gotten off as well as what we went through was absolutely ridiculous. But we chose to stay and make the best we could of the situation. All NCL wanted to do was give each cabin (not each pax) a $50 credit with no acknowledgement of what had gone on during the whole ordeal. All they cared about was getting going ASAP, like nothing happened which was terrible. Oh, and one hour of open bar after muster until midnight. What, get everyone wasted so they would forget what they just went through and wouldn’t bring it up with NCL later?

We stood in an hour long line to get buffet food because although they said all the restaurants would be free, the lines for them were even longer and by the time we even sat down, the officers were yelling for us to go to the muster stations NOW. HEY DUDE, we are hungry. We are thirsty. We are tired. Can we just sit down with our dinner at 1030 AT NIGHT for a few minutes? I know you want to get to your precious Nassau on time so you don’t have to refund any excursions but have a little consideration for your customers. Just know we took our sweet time getting back to the stations. Of course we already knew where our muster station was so….we went, got through it with again, almost no acknowledgement of the earlier events, and were off around 2300 (scheduled departure time of 1600).

I will say it was neat to see Miami all lit up as we left port, as I had never seen that before and we went to get some drinks. We each got about a half dozen beers and whatever else and went to the comedian and welcome aboard show around 2330 and had a pretty good time. There were just not that many people in attendance though, as everyone was tired out from the day itself I guess. When the show was over a little after 1200, we tried to make our way back down to the cabin (the ship was really rocking badly due to rough seas and an increased forward speed due to trying to get to Nassau on time) but spent a lot of time running into each other and the wall LOL and it took us a while. We finally got back to the cabin, got our bags (I would have had to carry my roller bag around with me all day if I did not check it), unpacked some and were out. We were scheduled to arrive in Nassau at 0800 the next day. We had the steward separate the beds into two doubles and P took a rollout sofa bed and stretched that out across the front of the cabin to sleep. We made it work, and we did have just enough room for three. The cabin was decent although the showers are just tiny on this ship. Think of the teleport things they had in the movie Spaceballs and think our shower was smaller, haha. We were asleep by 0100 and since we did not have anything planned for the next morning, we did plan to sleep in some.

I will leave off with that, and pick up with our second day, a visit to Nassau. Hopefully my sarcasm is not too much but I just felt like I had to include it to set the tone for what really went on during this day. I had never experienced anything like what I experienced there, and hopefully never will again. I was disappointed in how it was handled from beginning to end (but if it was an issue with the subcontracted staff - and I do not know if that is what it truly was - they have working the boarding and check-in areas it kind of is still their responsibility), and the issues they had with our reservation were just the icing on the cake so to speak. I know that what went on was not a hundred percent Norwegian’s fault but good crisis recovery means taking responsibility for what went on, even if it was not totally in your control. Passengers will appreciate that and they just dropped the ball bigtime all around. I will explain later on how they continued to fail on the customer service level later in the review. This is not to say we did not have fun later on but that is because the three of us made it fun, just being together and enjoying ourselves the best we could. We did have a few good things happen to us on and off the ship and I will surely acknowledge them as well. Hope everyone has had a good holiday season so far and happy cruising.

You're off to a great start.

Keith

Some images from our time in the "dungeon." Great way to start the cruise and was made worse by lack of information, accomodation during the crisis, and horrible service recovery by Norwegian.

The only silver lining is that we got these cool looks at downtown Miami as we were leaving, albeit 8 hours late. Good views from the aft buffet dining area. Wish I would have gotten more pics today but it was just too hectic most of the time.

Thank you for sharing your experiences. We just left the sky earlier this week and were blessed with a great time. It was our first 3-4 day run on NCL after such cruises with RCCL and Carnival in the past. While we had a couple of small issues (nothing like you faced!) they were taken care of with a smile. Anyway, NCL blew both of the other lines away with the quality of their service.

I hope if you are ever interested in a short getaway in the future you will consider trying them again. We loved our time on the Sky!

Happy New Year to you and your friends!

Your experience was regrettable and unfortunate.

Nonetheless, I cannot fault NCL. We live in troubled times. Security protocols are necessarily rigid and often mandate absolute confidentiality. They are in place for the safety and welfare of everyone; passengers crew and ancillary staff.

NCL leases terminal space. Just like any other cruise line, they do not own the port facility. I cannot think of any terminal that has seating, etc., sufficient to comfortably accommodate the entire passenger compliment of any vessel.

The issue of the UDP, etc., is a routine-but-annoying snafu left to your commissioned travel agent to clear. I hope it was timely resolved.

I fly frequently. And while it does not happen often, I have had to vacate fully loaded aircraft for undisclosed security reasons. I take it in stride and try to focus on the fact that due diligence is being exercised for the protection of all concerned.

I do not expect the airline to compensate me for any alleged inconvenience. If anything, I applaud them for their alertness and performance. I'd rather be slightly inconvenienced than have a potentially dangerous issue swept under the rug.

Please know I do not fault you for being out-of-sorts when this happened. In your shoes, I would feel no different. I simply underscore that effective security often involves a need-to-know protocol versus a right-to-know; that might trigger a panic and increase any possible peril.

I hope the balance of your voyage was enjoyable.

Wow that was some embarkation day. We are scheduled to go in a week and this is my fist Norwegian. I'm always afraid something like this will happen. Those were really great pics not Miami though.

Thanks for your review so far. Sorry you had to go through all that, not a good way to start off a vacation.

I know you want to get to your precious Nassau on time so you don’t have to refund any excursions

And this is where you lost me. How exactly did you KNOW this was why they wanted to depart?

Stephen

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The good thing is NCL and the Port of Miami take security very seriously. The bad thing is NCL and the Port of Miami didn’t seem to be prepared to handle such an event as you experienced. I hope both entities learned some real lessons from your horrible experience.

Thanks for taking the time to share your story and I’m looking forward to the rest of your review and thanks for sharing the photos too.

You're off to a great start.

 

Keith

Thanks, I should hopefully get to the second part shortly and the second day went far better than the first. It was probably the best overall day of the weekend.

I am really interested in your "adventure" as I am on this ship next week

Thank you for sharing your experiences. We just left the sky earlier this week and were blessed with a great time. It was our first 3-4 day run on NCL after such cruises with RCCL and Carnival in the past. While we had a couple of small issues (nothing like you faced!) they were taken care of with a smile. Anyway, NCL blew both of the other lines away with the quality of their service.

 

I hope if you are ever interested in a short getaway in the future you will consider trying them again. We loved our time on the Sky!

 

Happy New Year to you and your friends!

It was my intention to both give an honest summary of what happened on this sailing and to let people know what happens when things like this occur and how NCL seems to have dropped the ball. Based on this and what others are saying in other threads, this poor customer service resolution seems to be a regular thing on this line.

Not to say I didn't have a pretty good experience on the Jewel in May, so perhaps this was an isolated incident, time will tell. The ship itself was dated and small but I knew that going in, however it does have the potential to still be a very nice vessel. I usually cruise on Carnival and have also cruised on Princess and Royal Caribbean so I have tried quite a few different things out over the years. I actually have the Star from Tampa booked for January because it was a really nice itinerary and unbeatable price, so hopefully they will deliver a better experience this time around. If not, well, my dollars and vacation time are both precious, say no more.

I am glad you had a good time onboard, usually even a subpar cruise is better than a day just hanging around at home or at work. If you are interested in spending more money on extra stuff, NCL still can offer high quality products.

Your experience was regrettable and unfortunate.

 

Nonetheless, I cannot fault NCL. We live in troubled times. Security protocols are necessarily rigid and often mandate absolute confidentiality. They are in place for the safety and welfare of everyone; passengers crew and ancillary staff.

 

NCL leases terminal space. Just like any other cruise line, they do not own the port facility. I cannot think of any terminal that has seating, etc., sufficient to comfortably accommodate the entire passenger compliment of any vessel.

 

The issue of the UDP, etc., is a routine-but-annoying snafu left to your commissioned travel agent to clear. I hope it was timely resolved.

 

I fly frequently. And while it does not happen often, I have had to vacate fully loaded aircraft for undisclosed security reasons. I take it in stride and try to focus on the fact that due diligence is being exercised for the protection of all concerned.

 

I do not expect the airline to compensate me for any alleged inconvenience. If anything, I applaud them for their alertness and performance. I'd rather be slightly inconvenienced than have a potentially dangerous issue swept under the rug.

 

Please know I do not fault you for being out-of-sorts when this happened. In your shoes, I would feel no different. I simply underscore that effective security often involves a need-to-know protocol versus a right-to-know; that might trigger a panic and increase any possible peril.

 

I hope the balance of your voyage was enjoyable.

I do get that security is the most important thing, trust me I understand that better than most of the average traveling public. When stuff happens, they don't want people knowing much but it was a really scary situation for a while with the uncertainty and everything. Just how they handled the aftermath was awful.

My issue with the terminal staff was that at least with Carnival, it seems they use their own in-house employees to handle check-in and debarkation and it appears NCL does not. If you subcontract out vital handling duties to a third party, you are still responsible for them doing the job to your standards. If it was only a guy improperly scanning a sign and sail card and then letting the person escape into the crowd, that falls back on training and protocol. They seemingly wanted to wash their hands of the whole thing which was rotten. But perhaps you are onto something when you said they just rent the terminal out. Still though, they are ultimately responsible for how their contract vendors perform. It's like a legacy airline not taking responsibility for something one of their regionals does because they were not actually delivering the service. Can't have it both ways. But I bet an airline would at least apologize and try to rectify a situation like that if they dumped a planeload of pax off due to a security scare. Even if it was just a heartfelt verbal apology.

I know the travel agent partly screwed up the udp/ubp thing and it would be understandable if it was resolved quickly but the TA did their job in contacting NCL about it and it took the crew forever to fix it on their end. I'll explain more as time goes on in the review but that just added to the frustration.

I know where you're coming from in general with your comments and I don't mind the constructive discussion but my (and many others) disappointment was with how the aftermath was handled and how the cruise line just seemed to not care enough to at least try to smooth things over with their pax. I am a seasoned cruise and will cruise again as I know this is not the norm. But many others on this sailing were first or second timers and this likely destroyed their desire to cruise more in the future. We did have a better day in Nassau although we had more issues on Sunday, I will hopefully get to the second part shortly as these reviews do take a while to put together and I don't have tons of free time these days.

Have a happy New Year and I do thank you for reading along and offering to discuss this.

Wow that was some embarkation day. We are scheduled to go in a week and this is my fist Norwegian. I'm always afraid something like this will happen. Those were really great pics not Miami though.

It was a crazy day. Over 20 cruises and never anything like this. Hopefully your experience on Norwegian will be better and the chances that this will happen again are low and hopefully they learned something from their failures and lack of a decent recovery. I took pics with my phone so none are photographer quality but hopefully they caught the general mood of the situations I found myself in. I have more pics from the following days to post when I continue the review. Thanks for reading.

Thanks for your review so far. Sorry you had to go through all that, not a good way to start off a vacation.

Thanks for reading along. It was destined to be a great time but unfortunately what happened robbed us of one of three days basically and Norwegian's service recovery left much to be desired. We did have a pretty fun day in Nassau though, check that out when I do get around to posting it hopefully soon.

And this is where you lost me. How exactly did you KNOW this was why they wanted to depart?

 

 

 

 

 

Stephen

 

 

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I know they didn't want to lose out on the excursion revenue from Nassau and hurrying already hassled and frazzled passengers into a muster drill when everyone wasn't even back onboard yet made it seem that way. Of course they wanted to go but announcing they would get to Nassau ontime and not telling us about what was going on with everything else made it seem their priorities were all screwed up. Just tone deaf mis-management of an already lousy situation. We were already late, they could have waited a little while to allow everyone to get settled in but instead they wanted to herd everyone around yet again like they had done all day to that point. This won't destroy my love of cruising but it sure gave me a bad taste concerning Norwegian. Perhaps they will do better by me on the Star next month, or else I will know they just aren't the line for me.

The good thing is NCL and the Port of Miami take security very seriously. The bad thing is NCL and the Port of Miami didn’t seem to be prepared to handle such an event as you experienced. I hope both entities learned some real lessons from your horrible experience.

Thanks for taking the time to share your story and I’m looking forward to the rest of your review and thanks for sharing the photos too.

Thanks for checking out the review and yes, I am glad security is taken seriously but this did show that neither the line, nor the authorities were ready for this. I just shudder if this would have happened in a foreign port. It was bad enough but would have been even worse if it happened in a place with no contingency plan in effect. Hopefully they have adjusted some protocols and procedures and this doesn't happen to anyone else again.

I will get to the next part as soon as I can and we did have fun in Nassau the nexr day despite everything that went on. I have some beautiful pictures from Nassau a d from onboard the ship as well so stay tuned. Happy New Year.

I am really interested in your "adventure" as I am on this ship next week

I will try to get itt done by then if I can. Nassau is a fine place to hang out for a day as that is all we did seeing that I have been there a few times in the past and my cruisemates didn't want to do any exotic excursions. Just beware that there is a good chance tbey will miss great stirrup cay due to weather, so don't get too disappointed if that happens to you like it happened to us.

Definitely enjoying the review and your hint of sarcasm! It really makes for a good read. I also agree that NCL handled this situation poorly based on several first hand reports. Communication was lacking, and regardless if they had control over the terminal or not they did have control over the shipboard environment once people re boarded. This was their opportunity for service recovery and it seems they failed. At the very least a letter to every cabin from the Captain explaining what happened, apologizing, and letting you know about the OBC. Apparently they didn't even do that.

Looking forward to the rest!

I know they didn't want to lose out on the excursion revenue from Nassau and hurrying already hassled and frazzled passengers into a muster drill when everyone wasn't even back onboard yet made it seem that way. Of course they wanted to go but announcing they would get to Nassau ontime and not telling us about what was going on with everything else made it seem their priorities were all screwed up.

See, I'm HONESTLY confused about this. I don't get how you "KNOW" they didn't want to lose the excursion revenue? Did the captain tell you that? Somebody else in the Executive on NCL?

Nassau is a port where a LOT of people just do their own thing....grab a taxi to Atlantis, or wander around the port. I'd be surprised if the ship made much money on ShoreEx in this port. On the other hand, it's cheaper for them to simply say "sorry, we're not going to make it to Nassau this trip, and instead it'll be a 3 day cruise to nowhere".....then they wouldn't have to pay port fees to dock in Nassau, and they could cut the speed to just enough to get through the storm.

As for why they have a Muster Drill ASAP, it's a requirement. And can you imagine the discussion we'd be having if the ship had sailed into a storm and people were scared and had NOT had a muster drill?

As you said, it was a very late dinner when the summoned people to their Muster Stations - they probably needed to get it done so some group of people could then go to sleep. Imagine getting back on board, saying to yourself...well tonight's a wash, I'm going to bed & will wake bright & cheery tomorrow.....only to have the Ship Evacuation Alarm going off at 1 a.m.

I'm sure that wouldn't have made you any happier. So, they did the least worst thing, which was conduct the mandatory drill right away, then releasing passengers to their own agendas.

Lastly, if Nassau was your only port-of-call, then they were probably announcing the on-time arrival in order to assuage concerns from people who had made plans to spend the day at Atlantis, or wandering around, or....whatever..... to give them peace of mind, that they would still get to enjoy that Bahamian day.

But I'm looking forward to hearing about your source which clearly made all of my conjecture above moot.

Stephen

P.S. Don't misinterpret....I'm not saying things couldn't have been done smoother, or with a better customer focus, etc. I'm saying that I'm surprised to hear that you KNOW the reasoning behind it all.

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It was my intention to both give an honest summary of what happened on this sailing and to let people know what happens when things like this occur and how NCL seems to have dropped the ball. Based on this and what others are saying in other threads, this poor customer service resolution seems to be a regular thing on this line.

 

Not to say I didn't have a pretty good experience on the Jewel in May, so perhaps this was an isolated incident, time will tell. The ship itself was dated and small but I knew that going in, however it does have the potential to still be a very nice vessel. I usually cruise on Carnival and have also cruised on Princess and Royal Caribbean so I have tried quite a few different things out over the years. I actually have the Star from Tampa booked for January because it was a really nice itinerary and unbeatable price, so hopefully they will deliver a better experience this time around. If not, well, my dollars and vacation time are both precious, say no more.

 

I am glad you had a good time onboard, usually even a subpar cruise is better than a day just hanging around at home or at work. If you are interested in spending more money on extra stuff, NCL still can offer high quality products.

That's just it, my cruise was not sub par. It was a regular cruise with a couple of small problems they took care of. I would venture my cruise is more the norm than yours. I totally understand your frustrations though, I would of had a lousy cruise with your experience as well. I've found the first two hours of the cruise usually set the tone for the cruise. That may explain some of your feelings.

As far as spending money, I didn't discuss that, but more money in any vacation will usually (hopefully anyways) make it a better experience regardless of what travel company you use. That wouldn't of helped with your situation of course.

I do feel the way it was handled from reports is not something I would ever want to experience and understand fully that you felt robbed of a day of your vacation. The line should of reimbursed everyone for that day and added a little sweetner for the inconvinience.

The font makes this unreadable.

The font makes this unreadable.

Weird. It worked fine for me.

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Thank you for posting this. I'm surprised there haven't been more reviews of this debacle. $50 OBC per cabin in exchange for 7 hours of detention is a joke. I have also never heard if the true cause of the incident was determined.