Norwegian Gem Review

4.0 / 5.0
2,589 reviews

Norwegian Cruise Line Isn’t Ready For Cruises

Review for the Western Caribbean Cruise on Norwegian Gem
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FPDSGT_2020
2-5 Cruises • Age 30s

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Sail Date: Sep 2021
Cabin: Mid-Ship Balcony

I debated writing this review for sometime for so many reasons. The one thing that can summarize this review is that Norwegian Cruise Line Isn’t ready. They aren’t ready to sail after COVID 19. I just got back yesterday from a 7 night cruise to ports in Belize, Cozumel, Honduras and Costa Maya on the Norwegian Gem. This cruise was by far my worst experience with any cruise line. I love cruising and I understand every company has good and bad but this experience was unacceptable. For starters, the minute we stepped on board. We were told things that were entirely different than what we were sent or told prior to sailing. For example, when booking excursions, many excursions were not available to book online for unknown reasons so my fiancé and I booked different excursions. Once we got on board some of the excursions that they eliminated online were now available to book on the ship so we missed out because we already booked and paid for our excursions. Second, they pushed a lot of the internet packages on cruisers which the packages are extremely overpriced for the quality you get. Norwegian internet is TRASH. We lost connection 10-12 times a day. On top of this, we purchased packages for everyone in the staterooms and we had a party of six. After we paid and got on board, they told us if we paid $10 in the NCL app we could communicate with everyone through a message service. Being how garbage and unreliable the internet was, all six in our group purchased the service. The app worked for roughly 8 hours and then kicked everyone off and told them in order to continue use they had to repurchase the service again for another $10 each. Norwegian had no explanation or resolution to this problem. After debating it with customer service everyone eventually got a refund for the app services paid for.

Moving on to the quality of food…I felt like I was eating prison food for 7 days that’s how bad it was. The burgers were bland and had no flavor. The scrambled eggs every morning were liquid and runny and the steak cuts we had were chewy and disgusting. I think the best food we had was at La Cucina and that still had food that was not good. The service at Orchid was completely terrible. One member of our party ordered noodles and it took them 45 minutes to bring her a bowl of noodles and everyone else finished their food before her noodles came out. Unacceptable especially for a cruise line operating at only 60%.

Moving from food to cleanliness, the cabins were pretty decent and our cabin service was great but all over the ship every toilet in the mens bathroom had stuff blown all over the back of nearly every toilet at least two or three times a day. Disgusting and not pleasing.

Cabin Review

Mid-Ship Balcony

Cabin was great and service in cabin was decent. Always cleaned in a timely manner.

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