Willl anyone be on this ship with us?

We are 2 couples and it is coming up to our final payment and we are not getting good vibes on this ship...had lots of bad blogs.

Can someone help us?

thanks

Register At CruiseLineFans.com For Free

I see that you are new to CLF>

Welcome.

Don't forget to stop by the "Introduction" section and introduce yourself.

Sorry - I can't help you - haven't sailed on NCL in years.

Register At CruiseLineFans.com For Free

The only "bad" press I have seen is from people I would consider Trolls. Or, at best people that went into a Freestyle cruise with inordinate expectations or lack of knowledge

I have been on the Jewel twice, which is almost an exact duplicate of the Pearl. I also know a number of people, whose opinions I trust immensely, that think the Pearl is just a little bit better than the Jewel. I have been on 17 NCL cruises and have 2 more booked for the future.

So, if you have any specific questions please feel free to ask. If I can't answer them from experience, I'll bet I can get you an answer.

PE

Register At CruiseLineFans.com For Free

AndyS: We were on the Pearl in Feb., on her fourth or fifth cruise. She is a great ship and we had zero problems. It was one of the best cruises we have ever had. Great itinerary. Too bad they added Samara and dropped Dominica, but you do get a full day at Tortola (we left at 1 pm)

Like Planersedge said, ask any questions and we'll try to help.

Register At CruiseLineFans.com For Free

Register At CruiseLineFans.com For Free

You may be sorry you asked! HA!
This was not my first cruise by any means. It was my first and last on NCL. We sailed on DEC 14 - DEC 23, 2007.
The ship and our stateroom was beautiful! It was an outside Balcony. #10616 with a king size bed! Great shower and great water pressure! Beautifully laid out for maximum use of space. Bravo on room design!
We had great experiences on the islands, although only one excursion was done through the ship.
But that one. Oh my. That one was a life changing sort of a deal! I swam with the dolphins and it was breath taking and after that, nothing else mattered!
If we just could have gone 9 days without eating, we would have had a lot less stress.

The first night, (and the first night doesn't really count. Things can be a bit confused on the first night of any cruise) we were given a pager to wait to have dinner for two at the Summer Palace, one of the ships two main dining rooms.
We were told it would be 45 minutes to an hour wait. This was at 7:00 PM. By 8:30, my husband was getting shaky, so we went back to see what was going on. We learned that our pager hadn't been activated.
That's ok. Anyone can make a mistake. Right? One time deal, right? Wrong.
Over the next 9 days we would learn from the head restaurant manager that the ship has a design flaw and is really one restaurant short. It isn't designed to be able to accommodate a capacity crowd of 2800 people.
The brochure said there would be 2350 people. How we had 2800, I'll never know, but that was the number they kept telling us that we had.
The brochure told us that they wanted us to eat where we wanted when we wanted. They wanted us to sleep in and "return to our adolescents".
The only problem with that was that we had to rise by seven each morning to begin the "hunt" for dinner reservations for the NEXT day's dinner reservation. (Unless you had a suite. If you had a suite you could reserve all nine nights on your first night onboard.)
You would call the reservation line each morning at 7. You and 2800 of your closest friends You would get a voice mail asking if they could return your call. If so, press ONE. Why SURE. I don't need to go ashore for my shore excursion. I can sit here in my cabin and await your call. After you pressed ONE you got a fast busy signal.
You tried it all again and got the same result.
Then you dressed, and ran down to Mambo's on deck 8 to try to get a reservation to any of the restaurants, for the next evening.
There is a line at Mambos. People are MAD. With each passing day they are becoming more angry.
Security was called on more than one occasion. When people are hungry and can't get in to eat on a cruise ship, well, it isn't pretty.
The problem on every cruise I have ever been on in the past is trying to STOP eating. not trying to START eating.
After 30 minutes in line, I learned that the ship only reserves tables for only 30% of the passengers and I wasn't one of them. The other 70% have to just show up, get a pager, and wait for between 45 minutes and an hour. I also learned that they are only able to feed 895 people between 5:30 and 7:30. Many of us didn't get to have dinner until well after 10:00 or 10:30.
Five days into the cruise on a Wednesday morning, after scrapping for each seating that we got for dinner I had flat had it. I called reception and told them to send someone to speak to me NOW or I was going to find the loud speaker and invite everyone else who was unhappy with this situation to join me in the Atrium for a jam session with the microphone.
Well, there was already LINE of people wanting to complain Everyone was angry. Everywhere you went you heard it. In the elevators. In line to get off of the ship.
The ships communication was non existent. This problem was being completely ignored.
We knew the virus had been a problem before. At every place you looked you saw signs telling you that if you had vomiting or diarrhea to contact medical so they could lock you in your rooms and throw away the keys I guess. I told people that if I saw one more sign about vomiting or diarrhea I was going to be SICK.
Everywhere we went there were lines. LONG lines. Lines to get to the latte machine. Yes, you had to get your own coffee. The crew would not get it for you nor would they get iced tea for you.
You had to go to the Garden Cafe to get it and tea was given to you in child's sized cups and no I am not kidding.
I asked for the reasoning behind this and was told that the owner of this boat is interested only in the bottom dollar. Tea doesn't make money.
Alcohol makes money. You will not be served iced tea. Not unless it's from Long Island.
There were lines to get to the buffet in the Garden Cafe. There were no carved meats as there had evidently been on other NCL cruises.
They were obviously cutting corners on our's. At every turn.
I spoke with some lovely English folks who had sailed on 4 other NCL cruises this year alone. They were doomed to stay on board for the next 14 days. After that however, they would never again sail NCL and didn't care who knew it.
The food was good but not fabulous, once you got to it.
Now the spa. Ahh the spa. The spa isn't owned by NCL. It is contracted out by a third party. This may explain the wonderful organization and communication. We spent every spare minute there and if you have already paid for this cruise, and don't have cruise insurance, go ahead and go and get a massage with Jessica from South Africa. She will make you forget you haven't been able to get into dinner for days without a fight!
The other problem was entertainment. The one main dance floor was up in the Spinnaker lounge on Deck 13. Guess what it's primary use was?
According to Ray-Ray, the ship's Cruise Director, the most exciting activity on board was, are you ready? Bingo. Bingo. And more Bingo.
Dancing isn't profitable. Bingo is.
If it wasn't being used for Bingo, it was being used for uh, er, Karaoke. LA-LA-LA-LA-LA.
Karaoke is profitable because the audience has to to be mostly dead or at least intoxicated to be able to stand it. Bring on the alcohol.
They had a fabulous band called Harmony and Rhythm. As good as any I have seen anywhere.
The time they usually played was 'round midnight. Sorry. I turn into a pumpkin way before that, mostly since I turned 50 last year. They told us they were playing to empty rooms at midnight. What did they think this was? Carnival and we were all 18 again?
They had another great group of Caribbean guys who played Steele drums up near the Tahitian pools in the evenings!
They would play 30 minutes and then would take a 45 minutes break. Each night. We know. We timed them.
You were welcome to dance if you didn't mind the pool sloshing out onto the deck first.
If you want to dance on this ship you are out of luck unless you know how to do the B-52 Bingo Line Dance while pretending you can sing like Madonna.
The casino missed out on my donations on this cruise because it smelled like a tobacco factory. I didn't even use it as a walkway to get to the Stardust Theatre.
By the way, despite what the brochure says, there is NO MOVIE THEATRE on board this ship.
Or if there is, none of the officers dressed in white know about it.
This was truly the first cruise where we couldn't find something to do while at sea. That's why we because so friendly with the spa. There really wasn't anything else going on.
Oh wait. I did leave out one activity that you all may just love.
Each day they would have a "Fine Art Auction".
Now why you would wait to come to the Caribbean to bid against other passengers to be able to own your own Renoir for I don't even want to know how much money , I do not know, but they would have you believe this is just what was happening on a daily basis.
I told my husband that if I heard that P. A. come on one more time and say, "This is your cruise director Ray-Ray" I was going to push him off of the boat-boat.
He needs to be fired-fired.
There was simply no organization, no communication, and no dinner reservations to be had!
The ratio of restaurants where there was an addition charge was very high compare to other ships. They had 12 restaurants. 50% of these restaurants were ones where you paid an additional cover charge. 50% of these restaurants held fewer then 80 people each.
You could also purchase a sticker for your room key for $7.50 a day for unlimited soft drinks. The only problem was that when the bar crew noticed this, they would call it out that you had a soft drink sticker, and then, it was very hard to find someone to wait on you. You see, tips are charged at 18% as you go. If you don't buy alcohol, you are basically a third class citizen on this ship, and they make no bones about letting you know this, right up front.
I understand they are making some changes and announced these on December 20 on their website.
It is too little too late.
I learned that they depend on first time business to keep them going and if people don't come back, oh well.
There must be enough first time business to keep them afloat, pardon the pun.
Despite the ship's problems, I swam with a dolphin! I will never be the same!
I will also never sail again with NCL. Bon Voyage! Robin

Register At CruiseLineFans.com For Free

RobinP

I see that you are new to CLF.

Welcome.

Don't forget to stop by the "Introduction" section and introduce yourself.

Register At CruiseLineFans.com For Free

My goodness, Robin! What an experience you reported! I wonder if we have any other folks here who were on your cruise? I'd like to hear from them, too.

Register At CruiseLineFans.com For Free

Hi Char!
Well, I found another review about the Pearl on another Board. I hope it is ok to post the URL. This is a little more about what we experienced, in more detail. The Truth Behind - NCL Review by Kelly Brown
We met several people onboard who were on the "delivery" cruise of the Pearl, and also on the maiden cruise of the Pearl, and they said these problems were NOT there then, but are there now.
Something isn't right on this ship. I hope they can turn it around. It is a beautiful ship! Robin

Register At CruiseLineFans.com For Free

Robin, thanks for directing me to the above review. It would seem that NCL has a lot of problems on the Pearl.

I have never cruised with NCL, but from the reviews and comments that have been made in recent months, I will probably delay booking for awhile.

Register At CruiseLineFans.com For Free