Norwegian Cruise Line virtually ruined our honeymoon.in this review I will not dwell on theship from hell, with its really bad food in all dining rooms, bad in-roombreakfast, horrible service, pushy sell strategies on board, noise, dirt, smell, bad music, and horrible dcor. After all we ventured with budget level cruiseline.
However, even though their cruise constituted only about 20%of our itinerary, Norwegians incapability to handle its basic operationsaffected our whole honeymoon. Theylost our luggage TWICE during the same 5-day long cruise.in the painful process of recovering our luggage we weregiven misleading and false information by the ships management, and later theNCL Corporate Office refused to fulfill their own promises of reimbursing ourexpenses. We know that passengersin at least six other cabins were affected in the same way. So here is the story. Once we got off the taxi on the Norwegian Dawn embarkation day we rolledour luggage in front of the ship, where the NCL staff urged us to hand the bagsover to the porter. We complied, made sure the luggage tags were correct and spoke with the porter to make surethey would be loaded onto the Dawn. We also tipped him $5. When our bags did not arrive in our mini-suit until 6 P.M., we contacted the Guest Relations. A couple of hours later we were told that all three pieces of ourluggage were mistakenly loaded onto the Norwegian Jewel, which sailed off thesame day from Miami, where it was docked half a mile away. We were told upfront that we the luggage will not be returned back to us during thecruise. We promptly filled in thePre-Cruise Missing Luggage Report and provided the detailed description ofcontents. We also informed theGuest Relations that we had another cruise planned immediately after this one, and that we needed our luggage back in Miami by 18 December. At this point Guest Relations gave usone set of emergency toiletries and one t-shirt to survive the 5-day longcruise. When I mentioned that thetwo of us were affected they made me wait another half an hour for another set. As compensation for our inconvenience we were providedwith $100 onboard credit, but after the wave of complaints from all passengersaffected by the luggage mishap, the allowance was increased to $200 still toolittle to replace the items we needed. The onboard credit was useless, sincegift shop does not carry many necessities, such as prescription medication (weonly had one-day supply in the carry-on), certain toiletries, or clothing andsandals for a 60 woman with shoe size 11. My face powder and mascara bill alone was over $70. The swimsuit costs $99, etc. Faced with a distressed crowd ofluggage-less passengers the Front Office Manager Anita Niedinger, and GuestService Representative Imelda Valdez told us to purchase all necessitiesonshore regardless of the $200 budget and reassured us that the MiamiOffice has the money set aside for cases like that and as long as we do notbuy the Rolex watch, they would reimburse us. Despite this reassurance we tried to stay within the budget, and we spent $335.26 during the cruise on things we normally would not have tobuy. Most of this was spentonshore, and we kept all the receipts. We lost most of our time onshore searching for stores supplying itemsother than jewelry and perfumes. Anyone who visited Caribbean ports will know that retailers in portssimply do not stock everyday essentials.in addition to one t-shirt, one-day toiletries supply, and$200 gift shop credit each, we were given complimentary laundry. Having little change of clothing, wefound ourselves three times stripped naked in our cabin wearing the robes, while all the clothes we had were off to the laundry. To my despair, my favorite clothes were ruined by thisrushed overnight goodwill service. This was not quite how I imagined spending the evenings. The Guest Relations staff was slow, unhelpful, and sometimessimply rude. Often when speaking to the representative I would feel that Ineeded to explain myself for wanting to know what is being done to remedy thesituation. Almost every time I went down or called, their first words would beyou still need to give us the luggage report the contents list etc., eventhough we handed in all the required documentation on the first day. The nightbefore our disembarkation, when we were still not given any specificinformation about how our bags were being transported to Miami, the GuestRelations employee told me lady, youre not the only one in this situation wehave twenty more cabins with the same problem implying that I did not deserveany special attention. I do notknow if twenty more cabins were affected, but I feel that I definitely deservedkinder treatment. The medical staffwas also unprofessional. Since we had medication supply for only one day, weasked to see the ships doctor without a fee. The nurse was very unpleasant she chuckled when I gave herthe names of two prescription medications I needed. The doctor contemplated giving me a set of morning afterpills in place of my regular contraceptive medication. The Front Office Manager Anita Niedinger repeatedly keptpromising to keep us informed about the actions undertaken to take care of ourluggage, including the promise of giving us names of the port agents who wouldhandle our luggage, as well as the name and the luggage claim numbers of theairline. However, as we would later learn, all of her reassurances and promiseswere in fact outright lies only designed to calm us down, as we did not receiveany such specific information. Had we been given a chance to review thesedocuments we would have noticed that NCL did not retrieve all of our bags fromthe Jewel. On 18 December we disembarked Norwegian Dawn andproceeded to retrieve our luggage. To our horror - only two out of three piecesof our luggage were waiting for us on the pier one of them in bad shape. The third piece of luggage was stillmissing. My husband dealt with theclueless luggage handling staff and filed in the Post-Cruise Missing LuggageReport, while I kept calling the NCL corporate office. We were lucky that I researched NCLcontact information while still on the ship; otherwise we would be lefthelpless. At some point Ms. MichelleCross from the NCLs Miami office, told me to describe the contents of ourluggage (again), because there was a number of misplaced bags in the office andwith some luck one of them would be ours. Once this operation failed, she told me that she emailedthe Jewel with a question about our luggage. I was outraged: we had five hours left until our next cruiseleaves and she sends an email? Wasshe too lazy to pick up the phone or was she trying to save a few bucks? Only after I demanded that she makes atelephone call directly to the ship, she finally called the Jewel and learnedthat our luggage was still on the ship. It was never offloaded with the rest of the misplaced bags! To me, had I not enquired about thespecific phone numbers while onboard Dawn and later had not insisted that myluggage is found immediately, our bag and its expensive contents would sharethe fate of other customers bags piling in the corporate office and lost totheir owners forever. Wewere dealing with the second NCLs mistake standing for two hours in the rainin front of their warehouse since they apparently have no appropriatefacilities to handle such problems. The bag we were still missing contained nearly all of myhusbands clothing supply for six-weeks of honeymoon journey, as well aswedding presents from family and friends. After Ms. Cross told me that we would not have the luggage for at leastfour more days, and since we had three spare hours in Miami, we decided to dosome basic shopping for change of clothes, shoes etc. I informed Ms. Cross that my husband intended topurchase clothing and necessary items, and I would send the receipts to NCL, and she agreed. If NCL had handledthe case responsibly and my husband got his belongings back, we would not evenconsider any such purchases.in Miami we spent an additional amount of $533.64. But that is not the end of the mishaps on part of theNCL. Once our luggage was lost andlocated for the second time, we were faced with the logistics of taking theluggage off the Jewel again and then forwarding it en route of the AzamaraJourney (as I mentioned we embarked Journey on the same day we disembarked theDawn). Azamaras crew wasextremely helpful with handling the situation, including making numerous telephonecalls and allowing us to make free calls to Miami. They even presented us with free express laundry, and twobottles of wine. Unfortunatelyeven with all this attention, Norwegian kept everyone in the dark. When I spoketo Ms. Michelle Cross of NCL, she promised to coordinate the operation andpromised that our luggage would meet us in Cartagena (the second port of callof Azamara Journey, the fourth day of the Journey cruise, and the ninth day ofour ordeal). When on theearly afternoon before we got to Cartagena nobody had any information, I calledMs. Cross again and left her a recorded message requesting any information Iasked her to either telephone the ship or send us email message with theinformation about our luggage. Neither Azamara Journeys crew nor us heard anything back and as wesuspected the luggage was not waiting in Cartagena. At this point I called Ms. Cross again. She was surprised that nobody calledus, and explained that there was a change of plans and we would have to waitfor the luggage additional three days.in the end we received our luggage back on the December 25th. My husband was forced to wear jeans toChristmas Eve dinner. The bagarrived soaking wet and completely destroyed. Nothing was missing, but most of my husbands belongings hadwater damage. He spent 13 days most of our grand honeymoon without his luggage. Once we got back to California, I filed a reimbursementclaim. All of our expenses, including the damaged luggage, totaled USD 988.90. We also feel that we deserve the fullrefund for the cruise that we could not enjoy. Since we were left without our beach and snorkel clothing, gear, and footwear - and were unable to replace it - we had to cancel all ofthe land excursions. The cruiseturned out to be a complete disappointment and our honeymoon was ruined. Therefore I asked NCL for a full refundof USD 827.38 that we paid for the cruise. I received a reply from NCL in mid-February. NCL sincerely regrets the unfortunateloss of our luggage, but they claim that they do not assume responsibilityfor losses occurring off the vessel (sic!). They refused any claims and offered a shipboard credit of$175 per person. Let me remind youthat the first loss occurred after we were directed by the NCL staff to handour belongings to the porter wearing NCLs name tag, and the second losshappened when NCL failed to include my husbands luggage with the large load ofother bags misplaced by NCLs employees. There were at least six other cabins affected. Our bags were clearly tagged. They encouraged us to buy necessities and promisedreimbursement. What a horriblepile of lies! NCL agreed to cover the cost of luggage repair if we filethe claim with receipts and ask for reimbursement. Sounds familiar? In any case, we did not keep the larger of the destroyed bags. I feel uneasy repairing the othersuitcase what guarantee do I have that the claim will be refunded? I have trusted NCL once to many timeson that subject. After I wrote another letter, this time to Conde NastTraveler and made a cc to Norwegians CEO, they increased the per-person amount to $349 ofcruise credits, valid towards the cruise fare only on one future voyage." After suffering the wide array ofcalamities all a result of NCLs lack of organization, sub-standard customerservice, and outright lies we doubt that we will ever sail with NCL again, thus this goodwill gesture has little value to us.
We believe that we behaved with reasonablerestraint about the whole adventure. We cooperated with NCLs employees. We accepted the declarations of Ms. Niedinger. We did not spend thepromised money on inessential Rolexes. With no swimsuits, no sandals, no snorkeling masks, etc. We could notenjoy any of the exotic offerings of our ports of call. The whole trip was a disaster and ourhoneymoon was ruined.
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