DCGuy64

Any recommendations for a good company from which to purchase stock? I'd be interested in buying 100 shares, but have no experience directly buying stocks. (I have a 401(k) but that's managed by a fund manager.) Thanks!

Nice strawman argument there. Obviously, I never said any of that. And surely you recognize that what I wrote was a general comment, clearly not intended to be taken literally, right? 😉 For the record, I don't think there is any corporation that is perfect, because they're all entities created and run by imperfect human beings. My wife and I like NCL a lot, just as we like MSC, Royal Caribbean, Oceania, and Carnival. But none of the lines are perfect. I just don't believe in making grand generalizations about a corporation based on a handful of statistically unrepresentative negative reviews. That's it.

Uh, yeah you are, see post #154. 😉

Why is it always the same 4 or 5 posters that always want everyone to agree when they have something negative to say about a cruise line and get mad at anyone who defends it? It goes both ways, you know. To sum up: 1. If you hate a cruise line, you want everyone else to hate it, too. 2. If you love a cruise line, you want everyone else to love it, too. Neither side wants to hear from the other one. And both sides are dug in. That's the problem.

It seems you are confused by what I meant by "not representative," so please allow me to clarify that. I mean they aren't representative of the whole. Yes, they are representative of the experience of the individual. But they do NOT represent the experience of the entire ship and its passengers. I've even read stories on Cruise Critic about some terrible experience that was refuted by another passenger on the very same cruise. I remember on the MSC board someone complaining about a terrible smell that the author claimed was all over the ship, and then someone on the same sailing said "I never smelled that." So I take a lot of negative reviews with a grain of salt, and I definitely do not think they represent the experience of every passenger. When someone posts a negative review solely with the purpose of telling his story and leaves it at that, I have no problem with it. But when that person tells a personal story and then makes grand statements about the entire line and says no one should sail with them again, that is not confining it to one's own experience, it's attempting to extrapolate a personal experience as though everyone else has to agree and boycott the cruise line altogether. And I will call that out every single time.

I'm sure you're familiar with the term "gaslighting," which essentially means to undermine someone's confidence in what he knows to be true by sowing seeds of doubt and pretending things did or didn't happen, in contravention of what actually did. What you are doing is attributing things to me that I never said. Sadly, this has become commonplace on social media (along with lots of logical fallacies like emotion-based arguments, ad hominems, etc., as well as being overly dramatic). I have neither the time nor the energy to disabuse you of the things you falsely say about me. Like I said, have a blessed day. You can continue to believe whatever you want, I won't stop you, even though you're wrong.

Your mind is made up about NCL and me, so what's the point of my arguing with you? You have a blessed day now. 😉

Now THAT is well said. I have certainly learned more about cruising tips and tricks on this site than any other site, or even in speaking personally with others on cruises. CC is great at helping people, that is for sure.

As far as I understand it, the rules prohibit directly attacking an individual on this site or calling that person names. My comment is a general one based on years of seeing a particular type of scenario, therefore it wasn't directed at any one person and thus (I hope) it won't get deleted.

The textbook definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. And yet, there are those among us who trash NCL as terrible time after time, but, paradoxically, keep forking their money over to them. Folks, I got nothin'. 🤣😕🤷‍♂️

Why, oh why, don't people just stick to what they paid for? I can never understand how people think they should just be allowed to do as they please and not stick to the itinerary offered by the cruise line. These types of posts show up all of the time. Just stick to the itinerary. If someone really wants to see the Canary Islands, just fly there. Personally, I would never try something like what the OP is suggesting, because you never know what might go wrong. And I personally believe you'd be 100% at fault in case it did.

And I rest my case.

Must be nice to live in a binary world, that's all I can say. 🤣

I hope you aren't, either!

Then either I've been very lucky, or you've been very unlucky. 😊

I have NEVER gotten anything from any cruise line that was this shoddy. Not one time.

It also makes me wonder what behavior OP was exhibiting to prompt such a departure from protocol. Call me a cynic if you will, but 99% of the time when I read a post saying someone is "done with" a particular cruise line because of some fiasco, it turns out the author wasn't as polite and/or patient as he/she alleges. That doesn't mean a company never makes a mistake and tries to cover it up, because I'm sure that happens, too. But I highly doubt someone at Guest Services would show this to someone unless things got heated.

I agree with this assessment.

Wow! I don't think my dad is at his condo right now, but he knows people who live there year 'round. The units will be OK but there is the potential for any cars parked on the ground floor to be flooded. That's what happened during Ian.

Agreed, and the (poor and confusing) way in which it's written makes me think this was never supposed to be shown to the passenger (and for good reason, I might add). If an employee shows a customer something that was meant to be internal, it practically invites a long, drawn-out series of questions and explanations which shouldn't have taken place to begin with.

Exactly. I think there's something fishy about this document that was, as it were, entered into evidence.

I can't tell you without violating the rules and getting banned temporarily, that's why.

NCL has 21 ships, 19 of which are in service (the Luna and the Aqua aren’t sailing yet) Breakaway Getaway Pride of America Joy Sun Sky Spirit Gem Jade Pearl Jewel Prima Encore Star Epic Dawn Bliss Escape Viva The ship with the smallest capacity is the Sun. According to Cruisemapper, her capacity ranges from 1936-2323. Most of NCL’s ships hold at least 3,000 passengers, but you could say 2,500 and be conservative about it. If those ships are running at even 50% capacity, which again is conservative, that still means that 19 ships holding 1250 passengers are in service at any given time. 19x1250 = 23,750 passengers. Some itineraries are short, some longer, but if a cruise ship sails even 40 weeks a year doing 7-day sailings, you’re talking 950,000 people a year, 19 ships @ 1250 passengers x 40 weeks. I suspect the real number of people sailing is much, much higher. So if 10-20 people are complaining on Cruise Critic even every week, let’s say you have 20 bad reviews every week for 52 weeks, that’s 1,040 bad reviews out of 950,000 people sailing. 1,040 / 950,000 = 0.1094736842105263%. That means 99.9% of passengers aren’t unhappy. So yeah, unhappy people aren’t representative. Period. If anyone has real statistics that disprove what I'm saying, have at it.

Two things about NCL and bad reviews: 1. Happy people don't post. Unhappy people do. Bad reviews aren't representative. 2. Many allegedly unhappy people (including those who say "I'm done with NCL") end up coming back again and again, which makes them untrustworthy. The above applies to every major cruise line. If you read threads on Royal, Carnival, MSC, etc. you'll see the exact same thing. NCL is great and we love it.

Oh, I read every post. I just don't believe some of what I read. 😉