My husband and I travel extensively but have never been on a cruise. We had heard good things about Norwegian and decided to book with them. We wanted to go on the Dawn but it ended up being more convenient to go on the Norwegian Spirit.
First off, this was the most expensive trip we have ever gone on and it was the absolute worst. FOOD POISONING AND BED BUGS were but a small part of our trip! Our trip started in New York on April 7th and couldn't end fast enough. 8 days on this crap trap is a long time!
We had a balcony room. The room itself was comfortable. The balcony was filthy - you couldn't enjoy the view because the Plexiglass had some scummy film on it. We mentioned it to the reception and they told us they clean them during port days. That's true but evidently they don't do the 11th floor, where we stayed.
They have the nerve to charge you $69 per person for the unlimited soda card - too bad you can't ever get anyone to serve you any. When you do, it's either warm, half full or they forget. If you don't drink alcohol, you're out of luck. They ignore you. If you don't have the soda card, you end up paying $2 something a can. Like I said, we're first time cruisers but shouldn't soda be included with the fare? If they don't see you with a bucket of beer, you're invisible.
In the restaurants, you never got your whole meal at the same time - it was brought in pieces and I don't mean courses. One morning we ordered waffles and bacon with juice. The waffles came first, the juice 15 minutes later and the bacon about 10 minutes after that. This is no exaggeration.
One night around 8 P.M. I went to get coffee in the Blue Lagoon. There were no cups and trying to get someone to get me one resulted in 10 minutes of wasted effort. Fed up, I went to the Cafe on deck 7 to get coffee and the man there told me he would have to charge me if he gave me coffee! I explained that there were no cups in the Blue Lagoon and asked if he could just give me the empty cup. He said he couldn't do that. I just gave up. This is just a small sample of the service.
The food in the main restaurants is a whole different story. Bland isn't even the worst of it. My husband and a bunch of other people got food poisoning from eating the food at Raffles. Food was always cold, over or undercooked and basically verging on inedible. My husband saw the ship medic because he was so sick.in speaking with others in the medic waiting room, the common thread was they all ate at Raffles the same night. Not sure if they all ate the same things but does it matter? Food poisoning!
Because of this, my husband and I were both quarantined for 24 hours - we missed our excursion in Tortola and never got to leave the boat or our room. The others got quarantined too.
To make matters worse - I kid you not - I resigned myself to spending a very boring day in the stateroom. As I am sitting on the bed, I got bit by bed bugs. I had 4 welts on my upper leg. The head of hospitality came up to our room to investigate. He basically told me that I didn't get bit by anything (even though I felt pinching and stinging and had distinctly separate welts) I must be allergic to the chemicals they use to do the laundry, in spite of the fact that I had been sleeping in this bed already for 4 days with no problem.
My husband asked what they did with the bedspreads at night because when we came back to our room at the end of the day, it wasn't anywhere to be found. He told my husband they store them in lockers. The next day, my husband dropped something on the floor and happened to notice the bedspread UNDER the bed. So he lied about that.
They basically changed the linens and bug bombed our room. I had to also go to the ship medic and the doctor said, "This doesn't normally happen..." Whatever. Because we were quarantined, we were told we had to order room service. We did. We ordered soda. We were charged extra for the soda, in spite of having the soda card because "room service doesn't accept the cards." I tried to argue but to no avail. We paid $6 in change for 3 cans of soda.
We met a couple and the husband happened to be a doctor. He gave me a quick once over and he confirmed I had bed bug bites. They had problems too and complained to the hotel director and ended up getting the money back on their soda cards. They told us we should try and do the same.
To add insult to injury, Norwegian charged us a total of $108 for visiting the ship medic/medicine. How nice of them to give us the form for reimbursement from our insurance company. I arranged a meeting with Frank, the hotel director and he brought in Tony, head of food and beverage. Both seemed very nice but Tony was the only one who seemed remotely interested in anything I had to say.
I explained that while I understand you can't please everyone all of the time, I find it ludicrous that we were charged for the soda during room service since we wouldn't have ordered room service if they hadn't quarantined us. He would not remove the charge, saying when you're under quarantine and you order soda "it gets tricky". I don't know what he was getting at but it didn't sound too tricky to me.
I went on to explain that it was their fault we both ended up seeing the ship doctor. He told me he would not remove the charge because if I get reimbursed from the insurance company it's 'double dipping'. I told him I'd give him back the receipt since I shouldn't have to go through the trouble of getting reimbursed for something I shouldn't have to pay for in the first place! He told me that it would be impossible to determine if I got bit in my stateroom because "perhaps you brought a bug back from the Dominican Republic."
I told him that was amazing to me since we had been in Tortola and weren't scheduled to be in DR til the next day. But I was impressed he thinks bugs can fly between islands. I complained about the service and the fact that there was no way we were getting our moneys worth regarding the soda. I asked him to reimburse us. He said they don't do that. I told him another couple told us he did it for them. He denied it. Here's the most insulting part - I live in Arizona but I grew up in New York. He didn't know this. All he knew was where I lived currently.
After going back and forth about customer satisfaction, he said "Coming from the desert, you can appreciate... We have people who live on farms who have never seen the ocean or a vessel like this. They are amazed." I told him, "First of all, I didn't grow up in the desert and I certainly didn't grow up on a farm.
I grew up in New York. What's your point?" He said, "Well... New Yorkers are used to the best and latest and greatest. They're not easily impressed!" So basically you need to be a back woods hick to think this is a great trip but if you're from a big city you should expect to be disappointed? The best he could offer was a comped dinner at the restaurant we were dining at (Shogun). He offered us a bottle of wine but we don't drink it. I told him we do have the occasional drink, though. He said he would take care of it.
That night we got to Shogun - they comped the meal but wouldn't comp a drink.instead, they gave us 2 cans of soda! Could they spare it? I am so mad I can't believe I didn't punch that man in the head. I am writing to Norwegian to try to get some money back. They wronged us and I intend to raise hell about it. What a colossal waste of time and money. If you are booked on the Spirit, good luck.
By the way - if you're in 11662 or any room in the aft part of the boat, the entire vibrates badly when the ship is going at full speed.
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