It was a nice 8-day cruise. However, I wouldn't have wanted to take it alone due to the time of year and its itinerary: Port Canaveral, the Cruise Line's Private Island, and Nassau, Bahamas. I've done this route a couple of times before (on different cruise lines) and it is one of the most boring routes one can cruise. But RQS pined to get away and warm up for a week, and I wanted to treat her to a cruise that I offered her a couple of years ago. So, off we went - just after New Year's Day.
Both of us feel that we have outgrown NCL for most cruises. NCL has lowered the quality of food served in its complementary restaurants. It has reduced the quality of its main theater shows, cutting back on its adaptations of Broadway shows such as "Six" and "Footloose." Additionally, it has shifted some of its entertainment focus to onboard versions of "Deal or No Deal," where the audience has to pay for a card to actively participate in the game. Every chance NCL has to squeeze money from its cruisers, it does so. Most of each day's activities listed in the Freestyle Daily newsletter seem to promote spa services, jewelry sales, casino games and other onboard products and services which are geared to extract money from cruisers' pockets.
NCL is more of a "Hit or Miss" line these days. In the past, I could always count on having good dinners both in the specialty restaurants and in the complimentary restaurants. Now, in the 5 specialty dinners we had, 2 of them were excellent, 1 was very good with excessively small portions, 1 was good with large portions, and 1 was mediocre at best. Of the complementary dinners, 1 was decent, 1 was acceptable, and 1 was terrible. NCL's food service misses the mark almost as much as it hits the mark - something that saddens me very much.
Cutbacks in the "hotel service" area (staterooms) have also reduced the quality of the onboard experience. Due to the ship's cabins not being serviced before 2 pm, all areas where cruisers could eat, drink, and simply wait for their cabins to be made available were occupied. We couldn't even enjoy lunch, as there was no place for us to sit down to eat it. As a result, I left a dish filled with food on a pillar in the buffet area (I knew someone would knock it over and make a mess), simply because I was too frustrated to keep carrying this dish around after 15 minutes.
Often, when we went through the atrium, the entertainment was so loud, that we couldn't hear each other talk. Whether there were singers in the stage area, or a game being played there, we had to avoid it because it was either too loud or too crowded to be comfortable. When we walked to the dining rooms towards the back of the ship, we had to plan our routes carefully to avoid most of the areas with heavy tobacco odors.
Will I cruise NCL again? Right now, I only plan to cruise with the line for trips to Bermuda and for the 7-day cruise on the Pride of America. My partner and I feel much more at home now on Princess and Cunard. We'll cruise with MSC (with all of its flaws) iif they ever cruise out of NYC again and sail to destinations we'd like to visit again. But NCL is no longer a line I can count on, and I prefer those lines on which the only surprises I experience will be good ones.
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