As The Wind Blows!
Written: Apr 01 '02
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Relaxing in the sun, meeting new people, seeing new sights on some excursions
Cons: Lack of professionalism and training of staff. bad attitudes, service, food. Missing port..
The Bottom Line: I would not recommend this cruise line to anyone! Bad service, bad food, missing ports of calls, and utter lack of concern for the customer.
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| LPTV's Full Review: Norwegian Wind |
April 21, 2001
Norwegian Cruise Line
Attn: Manager Customer Service,
My wife and I were on a 7-day cruise on the Norwegian Wind from March 31st 2001 to April 7th. We had planned and saved a long time to thoroughly enjoy this once in a lifetime vacation cruise. It was in essence the honeymoon we never had. We were looking forward to a dream vacation. We carefully picked this ship and itinerary (and paid top dollar) because we really wanted to go to the Cayman Islands and had heard that we would have a five star cruise on NCL with excellent service. We did not get this!
Here is as list of some of what we experienced, with more detail later:
1. Missing the very first port of George Town Cayman Island
2. Terrible service in the dining rooms, A waitress and Maitre d’ that argued with us
3. A crew that seemed apathetic and inattentive at times to us the customer
4. Concierge service that was lacking
5. Steward service that was lacking experience and professionalism
6. A reception woman that did not care to even talk to us but grunted
7. Casino personnel that were argumentative
8. A lifeboat drills employee that was physical with my wife.
9. Horrible food for 12 hour Chichen Itza tour
10. A bus that was totally inadequate for a lengthy 3 1/2 hour tour breaking down twice
and with no air conditioning
11. Stranded in the middle of Mexico while two of your employees jumped into 1st taxis available to us and high-tailed it back to the ship leaving 10 of us on the side of the road
12. Luggage that was missing for hours until we made 4 phone calls
13. Upon return to Miami dock the ship did not inform us that we were docked on the opposite
terminal than we had left from, leaving me searching for an hour in a similar looking parking
garage for my vehicle thinking it stolen.
Let me explain in detail about these incidents....
1. Missing Port: We had chosen this ship and itinerary for the main reason that it stopped in George Town, Cayman Island. When we heard the announcement that the ship was skipping the Caymans, we were extremely disappointed to say the least. We were told over the ship’s intercom that it was due to one of the four engines not working. We found out later that this was a contributing factor but that there was also another reason that we left so late from dock (and I believe a huge mistake considering the circumstances). We found out that the ship had been waiting for 13 people to get on board. That they were delayed by Delta or Delta express for up to 3 or 4 hours. I believe, but don’t know for sure, that they had purchased the cruise and air package from NCL so that they were guaranteed that you would not sail until they were on board. I think that the captain gambled and stayed in port too long waiting for these people, especially knowing he had engine problems. He should have left on time knowing that he was sailing on only three engines to make the trip to the Caymans. It seems to us that he sacrificed the whole ship missing the port to accommodate 13 people! They should have been flown to the Caymans to meet the ship instead. Or if the ship still could not make it to the Caymans in time, then sacrifice the Roatan port for the Cayman stop. You could have Fed- Exed the part to the Caymans for the repair. The Cayman stop was a huge portion of our anticipation for this cruise that was crushed, and to no act of God or hurricane, but puts the blame squarely on NCL for not having sufficient replacement parts in the port of Miami and waiting too long for an extremely small percentage of the cruise passengers to make it to Miami. We were also told that we would receive a $100 credit for our inconvenience. This seems to me just a return of the port charges we already paid not a credit, and not a sufficient amount of compensation for the money we spent on this cruise.
2. Terrible Dining Service: We encountered numerous service problems of either apathetic wait staff or terrible training and lack of professionalism. We had a wine steward in the Italian restaurant tell us it was not her job but the waiters to get us something as she turned around and we had to then ask her to get our waiter, and she replied “he’s in the kitchen” which in turn we said “well can you get him”? Then she asked us which one he was...In the Four Seasons we had a waiter that should not be in the business. He had absolutely no charm or interest in us except to take our order and deliver it... We had another incident in the Italian restaurant when we went back a second time with two other couples. First we sat there in our table for what seemed an eternity before we were waited on. We waited 15 minutes or so before we got water. We were there 45 to 50 minutes, we arrived at 8:30 and it was 9:20, before the waitress finally took our order. She seemed new or lacked communication skills. We ordered the bean soup that we had ordered the night before.
It had been very good the night before, full of beans and quite good. When she brought it to us, it was apparent to all of us that it was not the same soup as the night before but actually was the other soup on the menu-minestrone. We told this to the waitress who responded by saying “Oh no that is bean soup” several times as we tried to tell her it was not. Later the M Maitre d' came over and said what is the problem. We explained it to him that this was not the same soup that we had the night before and that we did not even see any beans in the soup and that in fact this was minestrone soup. His response was to point with his finger very close to one of our soup bowls and proclaimed “ There’s a bean right there” continually arguing with us that this was the bean soup and not the minestrone. He finally left and had the waitress bring us bigger bowls of the same soup. Later the Sous Chef came unannounced and asked what was the problem. At this point we had to once again tell the story and through the following conversation he actually admitted that it was the minestrone soup but then backtracked and said that it was the bean soup but that some of his people were being trained or some sort of excuse. Needless to say this is not the way to handle customers who have paid for their meal and expect professional high quality 4 or 5 star treatment. This and other incidents made for negative conversation about the service and diminished our ability to enjoy ourselves. It seemed to us that there was a large contingent of untrained staff on board. The only establishment that had excellent wait staff and Maitre d’ was the Bistro. We had excellent service there and good food. These were courteous, fast and professional people who knew quality dining. Of course we had to pay an extra $10 a head to eat in there.
3. Apathetic Crew: We have been on many other cruises where you are really taken care of and the people working make you feel wanted and special. That is what good service should be. Let me tell you we did not feel that way on this ship. On one occasion after an evening meal my wife and I went outside a restaurant to sit at an outdoor bar. We sat down and were the only two customers. We were finishing a glass of wine. I had finished mine within a minute and waited for the bartender to come over and ask if I needed anything. I waited and waited talking to my wife when another employee of the ship came up to the bar and started talking to the bartender right next to us. I couldn’t believe that he hadn’t come over to see how we were doing but wanted to talk to an employee instead. I finally interrupted them and said “Excuse me but are you open?” He then sand in a self joke, “Yeah but if you want a drink that’ll be $50 ...ha ha ha“. This is the type of incidents I am talking about. We shouldn’t have to search out employees to take care of us; they should be tripping over themselves to take care of us. My wife finally asked him if the crew liked the new Freestyle Dining or if they liked the old way better (sensing accurately that the crew do not make as much in tips with Freestyle Dining) He smiled and said that he couldn’t say but that he like the old way better and so did the crew.
They made more in tips that way. It was very apparent to us that a lot of the dining staff felt resentment at the new system and were silently if not openly revolting by providing poor and sometimes apathetic service. The only decent service was at the Bistro restaurant and when we laid out on the pool deck topside, the wait staff for drinks there were plenty and mostly diligent, except when you asked for water or ice, then they took their sweet time.
4. Concierge Service: The very first couple of hours on the ship we already encountered problems and terrible service. Upon arriving in our room we read some fliers stating that because of our room designation we were entitled to a concierge service by a Ray Williams. We had wanted to sign up for shore excursions and the flier promised his help. But we could not find him nor did we know how to find him because he never answered his phone at 7122 nor had a message machine, nor was he at his designated window. We called information and were told he was not at his window. I finally went down later to the reception desk and asked to have him found or paged. By this time we had to stand in line for the shore excursion on our own. If the Concierge is not going to be available for whatever reason. You should have a voice recording machine explaining how to get a hold of him, or put it in writing on the flier, and not aggravate the customer for hours. He seemed to be out of pocket when everyone needed him most. Another time we called to have him paged ((he should just carry a beeper so people can page him directly, other cruise ships do this) after we were told that we were missing the Cayman Islands and obviously we had to try and rearrange our shore excursions we had planned for the 1st port etc. He did call back this time and told us that we had to come down and wait in line again at the shore excursion desk to change our itineraries. Isn’t this why we pay the extra money to have concierge service so that we won’t be too inconvenienced! I asked him if he could do it for us and he finally hesitantly said he would see what he could do. He called us back and said he could have our diving and shore excursions cancelled and our new excursions reserved. He said he had done it and I asked him for sure if they were changed to what we now wanted. Later that night on intuition I checked the excursion desk as we were walking by it and lo and behold he had changed mine but not my wife’s and they were sold out! I talked to a lady at the desk and told her about the concierge and she fixed it for us or my wife would have been out of luck the next day! By the way when I first complained to the reception lady that we couldn’t get a hold of our concierge she responded “ You’re not the only ones who have said this” implying that other people were complaining about not being able to get a hold of him.
5. Steward Service: Our stewardess seemed brand new to a service job. She was sweet but barely spoke English and one day totally missed making our room up and on another occasion took 50 minutes to bring us towels after we had phoned the front desk.
She would clean our room but leave room service food lying on trays in
the room, when it was obvious we were done eating it. We also had a mattress cover under sheet that had some small but noticeable blood stains on it that were never changed, and she had to have noticed it when changing sheets. She was also very hard to find.
6. Reception Woman: On the second day we went to the window for On Board Credit sign-up. When we finally got to the window I said “Hi how are you?” and I handed the woman my application. She looked at me stone faced, stern and said “Do you have a credit card” I handed her my card, realizing she had no interest in saying hello or making us feel welcome but wanted to just get through with her job. She looked at my credit card, scanned it and held it out for me to apparently take it, all without saying a word. I looked at her at that point and said “are we done?” And she just grunted and nodded her head...there was no, yes and have a great cruise! Or, yes that’s it, have a great day? No, all we received was a grunt yes reply...How charming. I turned and looked at my wife stunned, at the utter lack of social skills, for a woman working at McDonald’s let alone a cruise line of you apparent stature.
7. Casino Personnel: One day while playing 21 in the Casino, upon getting up to leave for another table and taking my chips in my hand I had the pit boss ask me to change them out for higher chips. I said I wanted to keep them and play at another table. She then insisted I change them there with a stern voice, which I responded ...NO! If I want to go to another table with dollar chips or five-dollar chips in my hand that is up to me period! I do not need to be told that it helps the house keep count on the table. It should be whatever is convenient for me not the employees.
8. Lifeboat Drill: From the moment we found our way to the lifeboat drill station we could not hear what was being said. The lady speaking was too far away from us. We just stood in line while a man (who works in the casino) barked at us repeatedly to get closer together. We all were jammed in pretty tight and my wife was the first in line with me second at our station, when this man grabbed my wife by her life jacket line on her front chest and yanked her toward him and to the right very violently. He was probably trying to get us in even tighter together, but there is no excuse and no reason to touch people in this situation period! Especially a man to a woman. We also felt that we did not get adequate information and were just standing there for the duration not being able to hear what to do in case of an emergency.
9,10 and 11. Chichen Itza Tour: I had wanted to go on this tour from the very beginning, another reason we chose this ship and itinerary. This tour went from bad to worse. When we congregated in the morning on the ship to get our marching orders we were given two white boxed lunches that were to be our lunches and dinners for the whole trip. We were told that just the night before the Mexican
government said no meat shall come off board due to mad cow disease!
We were told we were getting a vegetable sandwich, a tuna sandwich and crackers.
When I looked at the first sandwich I was appalled. It was three pieces of wheat bread; one hard as a rock, with some sliced bell pepper and sliced cucumber inside. Wow, how appetizing! Only if you had not eaten in three or four days would anyone want to eat this sandwich. The second was tuna spread between two pieces of white bread with no mayonnaise. There were packets of mayo and mustard. This was of no consolation as our bus promptly broke down and had no air conditioning! After our ferry ride to the mainland we walked and approached our bus. There were several really nice new looking buses there waiting on tourists but alas we were herded to the one that looked like it was a little on the old side. As soon as we were on our way I could tell the shocks were going as we were bouncing around like a see saw. As we were going through I believe Playa Del Carmen the bus was producing a burnt engine type of smell and a big pop produced our first breakdown. The men got out and I could see them holding a large belt from the engine compartment. They came back and said the air conditioning is no longer, and instead of getting another bus, which was an option, they decided to continue. Then the tour bus driver told us we would be stopping at an unscheduled stop at a gift shop for 15 minutes. We were there about 35 and I believe that this place had outrageously high prices for the items, and that the stop was not needed. We lost valuable time at the archaeological site because of this stop. The brochure says we would be about 2 and 1/2 hours at the site. What we had was about 1 hour and 50 minutes, because of this we did not see the whole tour. On the way back in the middle of nowhere the bus broke down a second time. This time the driver said he could go no further. We were in the middle of Mexico with no communication, no cell or satellite phones and a limited amount of time to get back to the ship. The tour guys conferred and decided we would drive very very slowly back toward a town and we finally stopped at a little mom and pop store where we all got out. Then two of the tour guys walked toward town to try and find a phone, while we all waited. It was at this time that we found out that two employees of the ship were on the bus with us on their days off. People started asking them what happens if we don’t get back to the ship in time, and they said that they would leave us...leaving all of us worrying how we would get home as most of us did not have our passports, or money and credit cards. Finally the tour guide came back with the news that there were some taxis coming and that we could get back that way. When the taxis arrived they couldn’t fit all of us in so we all decided that the elderly folks that were there should go first and the rest of us would wait for any other taxis that came, if ever. When the first wave of taxis left the 10 or so of us left on the side of the road were appalled to realize that NCL’s two employees along with the tour director had gotten on the first set of taxis, leaving the rest of us in the middle of Mexico on the side of the road with no phone service and no way of knowing if there would be any more taxis. It made us very uneasy and worried, over our safety and how we would get home.
Finally some more taxis arrived and we all piled in going about 120 kilometers per hour dodging and passing cars to get back to the ferry. Luckily for us the ferry was waiting and we got back on the ship. Needless to say this is not the way a shore excursion should be handled. Why not use the big brand new buses for the long 11-hour road trips through the middle of Mexico?
12. Missing Luggage: On the first night of the cruise we had not received our entire luggage and it was approaching dinnertime and my wife’s bag and a trunk had not yet arrived. After trying to figure out how to get a hold of our stewardess (The stewardess’ name was on a flier but no number or way to contact her) we finally called information and they said they would send somebody to look for our luggage. We did not hear any more for several hours so we finally got a hold Ray the concierge and told him of our lost luggage, after about a half hour after this phone call my wife’s bag appeared outside our door. The other trunk was still missing so after dinner I called the front desk again and finally our steward came to the door and said that our last bag was nowhere to be found and she had looked. I had had Ray the concierge paged again and within another half-hour I looked outside and the steward was rolling our trunk to our room. I believe it had been there all along but somebody didn’t want to, or couldn’t bring it up for whatever reason.
13. Wrong Dock upon return to port: When we finally returned to the port in Miami no one informed us that we were docking on the opposite side of the dock and terminal that we had left from. As you probably know and we did not, is that both sides of the terminal look very similar. When we got our luggage outside on the curb I had my wife wait for it while I walked to what I thought was the parking garage where I had left our car. Little did I know that this garage looked exactly the same as the garage on the other side of the bridge at the other terminal. I searched for an hour walking up and down the parking garage thinking either our car was stolen or that I was going crazy. I finally went back outside and asked a parking garage attendant if there was another garage similar to this one. She said Oh yes there is an identical on to this on the other side over there. She asked me what ship I came from and I said the Wind. She said “Oh you’re on the other side...didn’t they tell you?” There were also several elderly gentlemen walking around the parking lot with the same predicament as me. The parking attendant called someone on her walkie talkie to come and pick us up, a guy came in a pickup truck but could only fit two people in his small truck so I had to wait another 20 minutes for another woman in a van to come and pick me up to take me to the other terminal. That was an hour and a half-wasted worrying and walking up and down a garage searching for my car. Is this the type of service you deliver?
The bottom line is, we work hard for our money and we like to spend it wisely. We expected a lot more value for the money we spent on this cruise. Like I mentioned before, we paid top dollar, about $3500 dollars for our penthouse with a balcony. We also spent another approximately $1300 dollars on the ship alone in one week. While we don’t mind spending money for quality and top-notch service, we do not feel we got this! We also don’t want to find out that people spent two thirds less, or about $1100 dollars for the same room, and we don‘t expect bad service and missed ports. For the kind of money we spent, we expect and deserve five star treatment, period. We don’t expect training staff at our expense. We don’t expect lack of professionalism. What we got is a partial vacation with bad service and some bad memories. We were not the only ones with these feelings. Many other guests had similar concerns and problems. I know that Norwegian could spout off rules and regulations as well as the fine print that they are not responsible for missed ports and bad service. But perception is reality, and we perceived that Norwegian Cruise Lines would deliver what the colorful brochures promised. Sadly the reality was a bitter pill to swallow when upon talking to your people on ship...The two officers in Charge of our concerns said that nothing could be done to alleviate our concerns. Is this the way to treat people! There seemed to be no sympathy or empathy from one officer as he spouted off rules and regulations, and the $100 pittance in return for our losses was not appropriate for the money we spent and aggravation we endured during our stay.
Recommended:
No
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LPTV
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Reviews written: 1
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