Lofty Name for a Lousy Ship
Written: Jan 12 '05
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Great cabin stewards!
Cons: Everything else.
The Bottom Line: NCL! Get rid of Freestyle Cruising! It just doesn't work. Until they do, try Carnival, Celebrity or Disney - much better!
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| TheLastBaron's Full Review: Norwegian Dream |
Christmas, 2004: Our family group of 7 boards the Norwegian Dream in New Orleans to depart on a weeklong cruise which is slated to take us to Cozumel, Roatan, Belize City and Cancun. The Dream was decided on due to her itinerary which included both Roatan and Belize City - not the everyday ports the other lines often call on, and because of the sterling reputation NCL has had over the years.
Suffice it to say that in my opinion that sterling reputation is now severely tarnished. Arriving shipside in New Orleans, the Dream presents herself well. Spotless, gleaming from the exterior, embarkation was well organized and painless. We soon found ourselves in our staterooms on the Promenade deck. The staterooms are relatively large, compared to some of the others I have traveled in. The accommodations were comfortable, while not overly luxurious, and the large picture window had a wonderful, unobstructed view off the ship's starboard side.
NCL has, in order to stave off fierce competition in the cruise sector, bestowed upon its ships something called "Freestyle Cruising," which is touted as the "ultimate vacation." In principle, the idea is that cruisers can eat anywhere on board at any time the restaurants are open without the "tedious, old-fashioned" sittings travelers must "endure" on other lines. Travelers learn that the Dream offers three main "restaurants" and several buffet venues, as well as two "themed" outlets (which cost an extra $15 per person to "enjoy"). The menu in the three main restaurants is identical, so there is no real reason to prefer one over the other except location.
The drawback of this system, which apparently works well aboard NCL's bigger ships boasting 10 or more "restaurants," is that the entire pleasure of meeting new table mates, having amore formal dining experience, getting to know one's waiter, etc. is lost completely and replaced instead by long lines at the door during "peak periods," uninspired servers, and confused menus that lack any real sense of purpose. To add insult to injury, as part of the horrendous "Freestyle" scheme, NCL has "simplified" tipping for its guests - they simply add an over all (exorbitant) fee to your bill at the end of the cruise (much like an automatic gratuity). This is done, so they tell us, to "ease your mind" and take away the "drudgery and tedium of those little envelopes and finding all those crew members." What they don't tell you is that it also takes away the ability to obtain truly superior service (all of the staff try but obviously their hearts are not in it), and makes all customers equals... and that makes for a less than wonderful dining experience.
The Dream also suffers, despite her size (50,000BRT) and relative recent design (launched 1992, refitted in 1998) from a somewhat tired interior, with many of the "de rigeur" features offered by the ships of Celebrity and even NCL's bigger ships, appearing like tacked-on last minute "let's stick that there so we can say we have that too" aboard the vessel's 12 decks. The internet cafe, for example, was an obvious add-on, squeezed into what was once an elegant shop. And why is something which offers no coffee, food or beverages of any kind called a cafe? Very bizarre.
The Dream's show lounge, Stardust, suffers from myriads of burned out marquee lightbulbs and looks worn and tired, just like the entertainers presented. Aside from the NCL showband, which was actually quite good, the offerings consisted of some minor-league, tired female country singer, a few very mediocre comics and tired acts as passe as jugglers (!).
Nearly all the arrangements our little group paid for in advance were wrong - the soft-drink badges (entitling passengers to unlimited soft drinks for a set price payable in advance) were "missing" and did not show up in our cabins until two days after leaving New Orleans. My brother and sister in law, who were celebrating their 15th wedding anniversary aboard, were, despite clearly confirmed bookings, given the (less-expensive) romance package (almost as bad as a "naughty nighty" deal). Shore excursions were wrong, and much time was spent at the purser's desk and shore excursion desks trying to fix these annoyances by many, many passengers.
One common theme that was heard aboard over and over again was that aboard the Dream, the passenger was always wrong and the crew was always right. This attitude prevailed during disembarkations, when reentering the ship, whenever dealing with any personnel other than our wonderful cabin stewards who were both very old school and made the journey bearable.
Roatan was a wonderful experience despite the tropical rains (which Norwegian Cruise Lines does not bother to tell you about in advance, of course) and the very choppy tender operation necessitated by the fact that the Dream apparently regularly puts into Roatan while the island's only berth is occupied by a Carnival ship. Those going on shore excursions must tender or risk not being able to go at all, even though the Carnival ship leaves 5 hours later. Returning to the Dream means simply walking aboard at the berth... one would think a line as "savvy" as NCL would rearrange the itineraries just slightly to avoid having to tender there at all, but that doesn't seem to be something they care about at all.
Tender operations in Belize City were much better, as they were not performed by NCL's own staff, but rather by a branch of the Belizean government which has its system down pat. Once on land, total bedlam ruled while we were still in the hands of the NCL shore excursion people; once they turned us over to the state-run tour operators, all bewilderment, pushing, shoving, jockeying for position ended and order and pleasant behavior broke out like the plague once spread in the middle ages.
The ultimate stupidity occurred after we left Belize. We steamed on up to Cancun (yet another overly touristy Mexican port ruined by ill-behaved Americans). The Dream's shore excursion people again had everyone going on a shore excursion pile into the tired Stardust Lounge simultaneously where we waited while tender operations were being put into place. We were, as part of the first group scheduled to disembark, then herded down the stairwells to the disembarkation points on Deck 4, where we stood in a stairwell for what seemed like hours (but was actually "only" 45 minutes) before bedlam ensured again and we were summarily told that all excursions had been cancelled. Finally, another (of many, many) longwinded announcement by Captain Hoddevik informed us all (at great length in monotone and hard-to-understand English) that all attempts to tender were being scrubbed as it was just "too rough and dangerous" (even though the seas were much calmer than at Roatan). While shore excursions frequently do get cancelled for such reasons, what came next was unheard of - Captain Hoddevik droned on to tell us that instead of either lying at anchor in the beautiful Mexican sun outside of Cancun, or possibly attempting to tender later in the day, or moving up to the nearby port of Progresso (where berths are almost always available!), we were simply going to cruise back to New Orleans early!
And so it was that we set sail and spent two days plodding back to New Orleans, summarily having been gypped out of even enjoying the Mexican sun for a day, with next to no apology or even an attempt at making up for the loss of a full 25% of the ship's itinerary (other than the "generous" refund of a measly $12 per passenger in reimbursed port fees). The motive was clear to all the passengers - plodding back to New Orleans at less than a quarter speed saved NCL an enormous amount of cash that would otherwise have been eaten up by the Dream's thirsty Diesel engines running near full-tilt.
Here are some excerpts from my letter to Colin Veitch, the president of NCL, taking the line to task for our family's botched Christmas-New Years-Anniversary holiday, which I concluded with the solemn promise that we will never set foot aboard another NCL vessel. Enjoy!
Dear Mr. Veitch:
I am writing to you to report on our family’s cruise on Norwegian Cruise Lines aboard the Norwegian Dream from New Orleans to Cozumel, Roatan, Belize City and Cancun, which concluded yesterday. You, as President of the line, tell us in the response cards on board, that you are concerned about our opinions and that you value them, so it is in this vein that I am writing to tell you that the cruise my family (party of seven) just spent a lot of money on was undoubtedly the worst we have ever been on. We are veteran cruisers with experience on Royal Caribbean, Holland America, Celebrity, Regal Empress, Cunard, and many other lines including cruises on several continents and trans-Atlantic crossings, so my opinion is not that of a cruise novice who may be disgruntled due to the lack of a comparable measure by which to judge your line’s services and performance...
While I appreciate that Freestyle Cruising is likely NCL’s attempt to respond to a bar set ever higher by other competitors, most notably, Celebrity, it just does not work aboard the Dream...not having a regular dining room in which to attend meals is disconcerting in that one as a rule encounters long wait times at both the Terraces and Four Seasons restaurants. It also makes your already-overworked cruise staffs work even harder for less compensation...and it also brings onboard dining down to the level of visiting a food court in any shopping mall without the number of choices available there. ... the quality of the food aboard the Dream at breakfast and lunch varied from very poor to so-so. The generally better (although not outstanding or truly memorable, even in specialty outlets) dinners were really not sufficient to make up for this wide discrepancy in consistency. ...Dinner selections were often unremarkable and some suffered from bizarre naming conventions, such as Cowboy Steak with Tobacco Onions, leading some passengers to speculate they were named thusly to discourage guests from ordering them as there was probably an insufficient quantity aboard to serve all guests the sirloin steak with fried onions it actually represented...
The Kid’s Club aboard the Norwegian Dream, as on many older ships of other lines, seems to have been an after thought. It lacks space, is in a mediocre location, does not have any attractive features which would make it particularly enticing to youngsters, and is even given the appearance of something NCL does not wholeheartedly support by its exclusion from the nefarious Freestyle Cruising tipping scheme. The result is that while some parents did enroll their children in a mediocre program which was easily rivaled by almost any daycare or after school program anywhere at home, most children did not want to enroll or attend, and instead spent their time taking over swimming pools near bars, playing in elevators, and generally being bored or under foot...
While I felt both Cruise Director Julie Valeriote and her assistant, Karl, were pleasant and genuinely nice people, they come across as amateurish, as does, indeed, much of the entertainment aboard the Dream. While the show band was very good and up to snuff, the singing acts were second rate at most (especially the tired female country singer). During all of the bingo games, I was able to note that there was a decided advantage in favor of the electronic bingo machines; on one day, the same woman using one such machine won five games in a row...On-board television was also disappointing at best - In particular, on one ship-channel a very good quality program about Brazil was shown…and shown…and shown; it ran, without interruption except for rewinding, for more than 48 hours. On other channels, announcements by Julie and Karl about activities that had either already occurred (such as the lengthy program about Roatan, which continued to air a day and a half after we had left Roatan) or been cancelled (such as Julie and Karl’s amateurish taping about the activities we would be having fun with in Cancun, which continued to air for more than 12 hours after we were long gone) made for comedic but annoying viewing and again indicated sloppiness and a lack of caring all around. Taped episodes of both The King of Queens and The Ray Romano Show aired for more than 36 hours at times...
Well, you get the picture. Would I recommend the Dream? Not unless every other ship sailing mysteriously sank... and to all those folks who believe NCL is a quality operation... re-read this review!
Recommended:
No
Best Suited For: Families
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Epinions.com ID:
TheLastBaron
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Member: Peter Weeren
Location: Paderborn, Germany
Reviews written: 51
Trusted by: 6 members
About Me:
German/American (dual national)
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