Are all NCL ships like the Dream? A review, I guess...

[Leafpeeper]

We also enjoy sailing on both RCCL and NCL. Of course, newer ships have so much more to offer passengers on both cruiselines. I would suggest booking your cruise last minute a few weeks before sailing if you want a bargain price to sail from Boston. We were hoping to sail NCL Spirit from Boston to Bermuda next Fall but found out that ship is doing Canada cruises instead. What a disappointment. Looks like we'll be checking out respositioning cruises instead. Unfortunately, NCL is offering repositioning cruises for 16 days, which won't fit my job schedule. Looks like we'll have to look into sailing from NY or taking RCCL's repositioning cruise next Fall.

[newmexicoNita]

Nita - do you mean they found each other on the ship or on the board or both? Just wondering.

 

Negativity breads negativity in my opinion.

 

Even if I had a bad experience, I would not want to harp on it and bring it down even more. Silver lining thing.

 

Plus, if I was with my mom she woud tell me to "get over it".

Probably both: I remember on the Jewel, her first transatlantic crossing. We had a very large Cruse Critic group. One gal spent most of the first meeting complaining about the hotel NCL had chosen (it was a Hilton but the room was too small) I guess she didn't know about rooms in Europe, the next day she griped about 2 or 3 other things. Another gal had hurt her arm the first night on the ship, I don't remember how. Anyway by the middle of the cruise these two gals were best friends and were elated to have support from one another about everything that was wrong. They even together complained about missing a port because of weather (it was really awful) their complaint, all NCL did was give a 1 hour open bar and removed the port charges. THe one gals bitch, some of us don't drink alcohol, we should have gotten more. I could go on and on, but that one really stuck in my mind.

 

Nita

[Kellismom]

We also enjoy sailing on both RCCL and NCL. Of course, newer ships have so much more to offer passengers on both cruiselines. I would suggest booking your cruise last minute a few weeks before sailing if you want a bargain price to sail from Boston. We were hoping to sail NCL Spirit from Boston to Bermuda next Fall but found out that ship is doing Canada cruises instead. What a disappointment. Looks like we'll be checking out respositioning cruises instead. Unfortunately, NCL is offering repositioning cruises for 16 days, which won't fit my job schedule. Looks like we'll have to look into sailing from NY or taking RCCL's repositioning cruise next Fall.

 

I have a request right now on a travel site for the Spirit for September - I was told it was for Bermuda. Who told you the Spirit won't be doing Bermuda? That will be one dissapointment if they are not.

[Nikolle2]

I didn't have a horrible experience... but paying what we paid for this cruise, I expected more from it. The sewerage smells were NOT avoidable by staying away from certain areas. They could be smelled in some of the hallways by the cabins as well and that wasn't something we could avoid.

 

And I get the fact that faithful NCL cruisers are a bit protective of their favorite line... but I hardly feel like complainers find each other. We were just sitting outside of La Trattoria waiting for our table to be ready and 2 couples were complaining (separately) as well. One asked us if we cruised NCL before and that sparked conversation. La Trattoria had an hour wait each time we dined or attempted to dine there... so maybe we always timed it poorly but we never had a 5 min wait.

 

Our service was spotty.. some bartenders were FABULOUS! Some were not. I guess no different than anywhere else. But service in the restaurants was spotty as well. One evening when we dined in the four seasons it took forever.... and we only had 1 appetizer - no salad - an entree... we weren't endulging in all courses. same with La Trattoria one evening. A couple sat down next to us... ate more courses than we did and left before we even had our entree. SLOW service. We left before dessert arrived because it was just so slow.

 

I don't feel like these are unreasonable concerns/complaints. You wouldn't stand for it at a neighborhood restaurant, not sure why it's okay on a cruise.

 

And the pool area was FAR smaller than the RCCL ship we took out of LA. So it was very difficult to find a place to rest (and we circled deck 11 and 12 searching for even one chair or lounge chair... finally one gentleman said he was leaving and gave us his lounge chair and then we snagged a chair about 10 min later).

[AnnieB925]

We booked two reservations at Le Bistro shortly after we got onboard. Both were 7:30 reservations. Twice we ate at Terraces around 8-8:30, once we ate at La Tratoria around 5:30, so our times varied. We were told by the hostess at Le Bistro that "sea days" are busy in the dining rooms, so we planned on our reservations with that in mind.

 

 

Glad you had a positive experience on the dream. We will be going on Sunday. What time did you dine at the restaurants? Just wondering if there is a better time to go and avoid the long waits.

[AnnieB925]

Forgot to add:

The Spirit will be sailing out of Boston next September. It's up on the NCL site:

http://www.ncl.com/nclweb/cruisesearch/cruisesearch.html;jsessionid=L1XSGDMRHTKvJRK8gpF0X9rbLLvPHVNV!1305068410?destinationCode=BERMUDA&selectedFromDate=092009&selectedToDate=092009&senior=false&latitudeNumber=false&residencyState=ALL&durationRange=0-99&shipCode=ALL&embarkationPortCode=ALL&startingRowNumber=0

[daw]

As several have pointed out, the Dream is really not representative of the NCL line. It's possibly the oldest ship in the fleet and it's definitely not equipped for freestyle.

I was on the Dream in Jan of this year, South America/Antartica and had a great time but there were logistic problems in trying to serve too many people in areas not really designed for the traffic. For instance, it was a common occurrence to carry your lunch from the buffet one flight up to the La Trattoria just to find a place to sit. Wait service in the restaurants for dinner was also usually slow. Naturally, these were aggravations. I didn't notice any sewer smell but there were a few other issues primarilly related to the age and design of the ship.

 

Nevertheless, I will definitely be cruising NCL again because I like the way they do things. I like the idea of freestyle and look forward to experiencing it on a ship designed to handle it.

I like the fact that I am not rushed out of my cabin at 7am on departure day only to wait 5 hours tucked away somewhere until my color is called.

I appreciate that I can order eggs and bacon for room service breakfast rather than having to be satisfied with a roll and glass of juice or whatever comes on a continental breakfast these days.

The atmosphere was relaxed, the people were friendly and the service was great.

OP, I can identify with some of your complaints but I suggest you give NCL another try because I think that the age and design of the Dream was at the root of most of your disappointment. I've just booked another cruise with NCL for early 2009 but on a different ship. Really looking forward to it.