Overall Cruise Comments
We’re learning lots about cruising as a family. As soon as we get home, Dan and I will be ordering sun suits for us and possibly full length ones for the girls as the Caribbean sun is hot! We also think in future we’ll plan to alternate beach days with something else. We’d originally planned to go to the beach all day and then with the everyone sporting some sunburn (from just a few spots on me to full body red on Chris and Susan), we decided we needed a break in Barbados, but we didn’t know what all we could do and didn’t have a plan and so it kind of ended up being a bust. I think ideally, I’d have a beach plan and a non-beach plan so that I had plenty of information either way, but I ran out of research time for this trip and didn’t feel as prepared as I usually am.
So, far Dan and I aren’t huge fans of NCL. The ship is great and some things are really nice – like the buffet food. The food is good at the buffet, but the physical layout of the buffet isn’t as good and the hours seem less than other cruises. On another dining note – we are not huge fans of the “Freestyle” dining. Having to worry about making reservations or waiting in a line to get into a restaurant if you don’t’ have reservations isn’t a great cruise experience. Also, the wait staff service (and service in general on the ship) is as good as dining room staffs in the past and getting custom orders is difficult with the wait staff not being very good at speaking or understanding English. The RCI staff was always able to accommodate requests. In addition, the main dining room menu as a rule wasn’t that great of a selection, so even though you never had trouble getting in there you didn’t always want to eat there. Also, paying extra for some of the restaurant is not appealing, particularly when we didn’t think we received any extra level of service or food quality.
We’ve enjoyed being on a bigger ship that has things like bowling and Wii and a waterslide. However, the level of service on the ship has been less that we are used to and what we would expect on a cruise. It seems that the room stewards have more rooms than on RCI and it seems to take forever to get our rooms made up. This is hard since our balcony access is blocked in the morning until the room is made up and at night we can’t put the kids to bed until they’ve done up the beds. However, one night the girls were really tired and I just walked down the hall and asked if they could please do our room next and they did.
It is lots of little things that make the service less. We’re definitely being well taken care of on this cruise and having a great time, but it isn’t quite the pampering we experienced on our other cruises. Silly things like on RCI, they come around and get drinks for you in the buffet and always have water for you and on NCL you have to go to the drink station yourself and there are only 2 places to get water. They don’t have trays so I usually end up making quite a few runs to get everyone drinks. Also, if you drop silverware, you generally have to go back to the buffet to get more (no one is there to do it for you). It sounds like a little thing, but the seating area is LONG and so if you are at the opposite end (where the kids like to sit), it is a good walk to the buffet.
It is just little things, but for us, those little things add up. We’d cruise NCL again, but I’d rather go back to RCI. We’re also curious to try some other lines and we’re wondering if some of the drop in service has to do with the size of the ship, so we’d like to try a bigger RCI ship to see what that is like. We talked to a couple who said that NCL has a great credit card rewards thing and they earn a free cruise about every 2 years. Lots to think about.
So, far Dan and I aren’t huge fans of NCL. The ship is great and some things are really nice – like the buffet food. The food is good at the buffet, but the physical layout of the buffet isn’t as good and the hours seem less than other cruises. On another dining note – we are not huge fans of the “Freestyle” dining. Having to worry about making reservations or waiting in a line to get into a restaurant if you don’t’ have reservations isn’t a great cruise experience. Also, the wait staff service (and service in general on the ship) is as good as dining room staffs in the past and getting custom orders is difficult with the wait staff not being very good at speaking or understanding English. The RCI staff was always able to accommodate requests. In addition, the main dining room menu as a rule wasn’t that great of a selection, so even though you never had trouble getting in there you didn’t always want to eat there. Also, paying extra for some of the restaurant is not appealing, particularly when we didn’t think we received any extra level of service or food quality.
We’ve enjoyed being on a bigger ship that has things like bowling and Wii and a waterslide. However, the level of service on the ship has been less that we are used to and what we would expect on a cruise. It seems that the room stewards have more rooms than on RCI and it seems to take forever to get our rooms made up. This is hard since our balcony access is blocked in the morning until the room is made up and at night we can’t put the kids to bed until they’ve done up the beds. However, one night the girls were really tired and I just walked down the hall and asked if they could please do our room next and they did.
It is lots of little things that make the service less. We’re definitely being well taken care of on this cruise and having a great time, but it isn’t quite the pampering we experienced on our other cruises. Silly things like on RCI, they come around and get drinks for you in the buffet and always have water for you and on NCL you have to go to the drink station yourself and there are only 2 places to get water. They don’t have trays so I usually end up making quite a few runs to get everyone drinks. Also, if you drop silverware, you generally have to go back to the buffet to get more (no one is there to do it for you). It sounds like a little thing, but the seating area is LONG and so if you are at the opposite end (where the kids like to sit), it is a good walk to the buffet.
It is just little things, but for us, those little things add up. We’d cruise NCL again, but I’d rather go back to RCI. We’re also curious to try some other lines and we’re wondering if some of the drop in service has to do with the size of the ship, so we’d like to try a bigger RCI ship to see what that is like. We talked to a couple who said that NCL has a great credit card rewards thing and they earn a free cruise about every 2 years. Lots to think about.
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