Oceania / Regent cruisers try Norwegian

[marne-c]

My wife and I are many times Oceania cruisers, and recently have gone for Regent in a big way.  (See my signature below…)  But on short notice we needed to fill a couple weeks away from home, and chose to take a Panama Canal cruise on the Norwegian Bliss.  What follows is my first impression after not quite three full days on board.  These are my (and my wife’s) thoughts only — YMMD.

 

 

I’ll admit I had MAJOR trepidations about sailing on NCL. They proved unfounded.  The ship is quite nice, the staff is plentiful and very service oriented, and in general things are okay.  It’s a fine cruise experience.

 

In specific, we really like this large, near-new ship with lots of venues, and especially the wonderfully large and beautifully designed Observation Lounge.  It is a pleasure sailing on a ship with updated décor, un-worn furnishings and a new, fresh-scrubbed ambiance.  (Especially after our recent otherwise wonderful Oceania/Regent sailings on ships  l-o-n-g  overdue for refurbishment.)

 

Our stateroom and balcony are capacious enough — just— with plenty of storage space.  The balcony has simple but comfortable furniture (VERY welcome!).  The bathroom design is quite accommodating — the roomy shower and long, double-fauceted sink are especially welcome.  (The trash-receptacle-as-a drawer, though is a head-scratching choice.)  On the downside, the safe is too small for more than a couple of wallets; our laptops and iPads wouldn’t fit unless sawn into quarters.  And for me (shades of Mommy Dearest), I truly dislike staying in accommodations with nail-stud closet hangers.  The non-removeable clips on the hanger rail severely inhibit rearrangement of hung clothes, and they make me assume that management feels their clientele (me and my shipmates) will steal anything unattached.

 

To date, we’ve eaten in all three MDRs for several meals, and have had dinners in two different specialty restaurants.  Food in the MDRs has been okay overall, with rare ventures into (a) wonderful and (b) awful.  Our first specialty restaurant meal, in “La Cucina” was truly exceptional, start to finish.  But last night’s dinner in “Ocean Blue” was largely meh.  (To be fair, the sea bass was beautifully cooked.)

 

Happily, there’s a (potentially) GREAT venue here for us — the wine bar.  A very attractive space, staffed by (MANY thanks!!!) a very knowledgeable server.  A pretty darn good selection of wines by the glass and bottle is on offer.  Tables all have a tablet with a marvelously designed filterable presentation of each available wine.  Two curious omissions, though:  There are no standard table snacks — even crackers — to offset the alcohol intake.  (A full charcuterie plate from the neighboring restaurant can be had.)  And some lovely wine varietals are completely absent, notably zinfandel.  Rhone wines, white and red, also are near no-shows.

 

I read on CruiseCritic before we sailed that the two elevator banks are insufficient for the 4000-ish passenger count.  That is true.  But what I found interesting (and borderline evil) is that within a bank of elevators, different cars are on different circuits responding to different wall switches.  We’ve seen something like this on ships with glass-enclosed atrium elevators — they work on different circuits than the all-metal cars.  And sometimes we have seen that port-side elevators are on one circuit while the starboard elevators are on another.  But never before have I seen that multiple cars on the same side operate on different circuits, and will skip your floor if you haven’t hit the button on their particular switch.

 

The ship-only intranet and its extension to the internet has worked reasonably well.  It was puzzling to set up initially (and remember, we are life-long tech folks), but with perseverance we got it.  Connected just to the intranet, the NCL app proved quite useful in setting up reservations, seeing what venues and events are available, and providing guidance on how to get from here to there.  Internet connections worked well enough for our needs (email and WhatsApp), but we did have to remember to deliberately turn off the connection on a browser using loginnow.com at the end of our session to stop the minute clock.   On occasion though (right now as I write this), the intranet can be oversubscribed and unreachable.

 

Now for my big turn-off — how Norwegian handles pricing.  First, even before we boarded, I was very annoyed by our up-charge drink package having additional charges of 20% gratuities for the maximum computed value of possibly consumed beverages.  These were added separately before boarding.  I’m happy to pay gratuities on the posted value of drinks I actually consume.  But to pay in advance for gratuities on 15 top-of-the-category drinks per day.  Uh, no.  I’m sure I agreed to this on some fine print disclosure.  But to me, it’s near fraud. 

 

And on-board, my stateroom account is computed and presented in a seriously opaque way.  First of all, our non-refundable on-board credits — like NCLH shareholder credit, and gifted credit from our TA — is restricted to only some kinds of on-board usage.  For example, it can NOT be applied to gratuities.  (*****!)  Total charges on my account do not seem to relate to any definable set of individual charges.  Our package includes $50 credit on ShoreEx, but I was told the credit won’t appear on my statement until after we take the tour.  (Too soon to tell if true.)  The net impression I’m forced to have is that accounting is deliberately obfuscated to increase revenue and bamboozle passengers.  Not my kind of cruise.

 

…So in summary, we’ll likely NOT sail with Norwegian again.  But we WILL now look for ships with newer build-dates or significant refurbishments. 

 

 

—Marne

Edited November 22, 2023 by marne-c

[Pcardad]

You can pull the gratuities off your bill at the front desk and distribute any tip money you chose to leave at your discretion. 

[marne-c]

1 hour ago, Pcardad said:

You can pull the gratuities off your bill at the front desk and distribute any tip money you chose to leave at your discretion. 
 

@Pcardad Thanks for that info.  Good to know.

 

—Marne 

[KruzPrincess]

Fortunately my TA advised me in advance that NCL charges a gratuity on the drink package. I decided to opt out of the drink package and purchase drinks separately. I’m not much of a drinker, though, so it worked for me. 

[Kwaj girl]

19 hours ago, Pcardad said:

You can pull the gratuities off your bill at the front desk and distribute any tip money you chose to leave at your discretion. 

 

BUT......if you remove the auto-gratuities ....those that you tip individually must turn in those tips to the tipping pool. Yes....they KNOW

[Pcardad]

4 minutes ago, Kwaj girl said:

 

BUT......if you remove the auto-gratuities ....those that you tip individually must turn in those tips to the tipping pool. Yes....they KNOW

It all depends on what cruise line and if they actually follow the policy of not. Even Regent has departmental policies for tipping but they are generally not followed. We have friends on RCC who do not pool tips and one friend makes over $100K a year as a bartender....mostly tips. She left Regent to go there.

[Travel-or]

2 hours ago, Pcardad said:

It all depends on what cruise line and if they actually follow the policy of not. Even Regent has departmental policies for tipping but they are generally not followed. We have friends on RCC who do not pool tips and one friend makes over $100K a year as a bartender....mostly tips. She left Regent to go there.

Holy mackerel! That is a WOW moment for me! I wonder if they stuff it into suitcases?!

[Pcardad]

28 minutes ago, Travel-or said:

Holy mackerel! That is a WOW moment for me! I wonder if they stuff it into suitcases?!

She wires it home