We've done 7 DCL cruises. On our first NCL cruise now and it's beyond horrible!

[auntlynne]

I guess. I'm only going on that NCL cruise because it's a family thing. I'm sure that I'll try the ropes course once, but otherwise, there doesn't seem to be much to do on the ship except for gambling, high-end shopping, and drinking. There's no way that you'd get me into one of those people soup pools!

Maybe I'll just bring some books and read out on the verandah. That's something.

I call them cow wading pools to alternate terms with people soup.

Reading on the verandah would be a luxury for many people. I can fill a cruise doing basically nothing. I hear you on shopping and casinos.

If you are a meat eater and have the meals offer - I recommend filet at Onda or Le Bistro (if on your ship). They had some of the best meat I’ve eaten. French onion soup, too, at Le Bistro.

 

[DCLMP]

I call them cow wading pools to alternate terms with people soup.

Reading on the verandah would be a luxury for many people. I can fill a cruise doing basically nothing. I hear you on shopping and casinos.

If you are a meat eater and have the meals offer - I recommend filet at Onda or Le Bistro (if on your ship). They had some of the best meat I’ve eaten. French onion soup, too, at Le Bistro.

Is it any worse than the kid's pool on Disney?

The Wonder has plenty to do because Disney is always running trivia, crafts, origami, game shows, and other activities. There's also a show every night and additional shows in the bars after hours. There are characters to meet. There's usually live music somewhere. There's the promenade for a walk or shuffle board. One-off events like the diaper dash, Freezing the Night Away, and the various shorter character shows. And a movie theater! Plenty of things to do.

It sounds like NCL wasn't running many activities at all and they didn't have shows most nights. That's my biggest worry about my upcoming NCL cruise: nothing to do for five days at sea.

The Op was specifically referring to the go-carts and rope courses not being open.

 

[DCLMP]

Sorry for your experience but thank you for sharing! My DD is older now and had also been thinking of NCL due to the race track and other options for older kids but didn't consider the fact that they may not be available often. Glad we decided to stick with DCL!

My kids really enjoyed Royal as teens. Lots to do with similar teen clubs and more food options. They did not like the 1 am curfew though.

 

[auntlynne]

…And the absolute worse thing about this cruise is that there has been almost nothing to do unless you want to sit in a bar and drink. We love DCL because they have family activities going on all the time. They had a family pictionary 1 time for the entire cruise. I think there may have been 2 other family activities. …

^^ This is what I thought he was referring to. Not just limited Openings for go-carts and rope courses.

…

It sounds like NCL wasn't running many activities at all and they didn't have shows most nights. That's my biggest worry about my upcoming NCL cruise: nothing to do for five days at sea.

My response was to this post: (apology for backwards order)

…

The Op was specifically referring to the go-carts and rope courses not being open.

 

[DCLMP]

I call them cow wading pools to alternate terms with people soup.

Reading on the verandah would be a luxury for many people. I can fill a cruise doing basically nothing. I hear you on shopping and casinos.

If you are a meat eater and have the meals offer - I recommend filet at Onda or Le Bistro (if on your ship). They had some of the best meat I’ve eaten. French onion soup, too, at Le Bistro.

I’ve never partipated in Trivia other than the adult music trivia before dinnner. I only participate in that because its a good time for a before dinner drink. I like to work out in the gym, read a book, sit in the hot tub and maybe watch a movie. Basically relax on sea days. I really prefer port intensive cruises over a lot of sea days.

 

[Snowwhyt]

Which RCCL ship were you on? We were on Independence of the Seas and there wasn’t any included deck food.

I added a picture below with the Adventure 24 hour eating option. We never went to the pool so we would grab something on the way to the different program options they had.

We had similar frustrations on our RCCL cruise vs. Disney. Our main issues were that there were no food options outside dining hours unless you want to pay extra for Johnny Rockets or Starbucks.

Which ship were you on? I’m looking for another RCCL trip and that would be a dealbreaker. I posted the Adventure 24 hr dining below from them.

Dining room menus were boring and blah. The desserts were better though. Disney is terrible at desserts, both in the parks and the ship. Everything is much too sweet for my taste.

I noticed a desserts changed also. I don’t seem to like them as much. I added the Adventure all day dining thing.

 

[lklgoodman]

We did the same Alaskan NCL cruise as OP on the Bliss in summer 2019. It was horrible. We are DCL fans, but we also had a couple we were sailing with who had never cruises before, and they too vowed never NCL again. The housekeeping was almost nonexistent, the meal service took forever and was almost always with errors…the worst being them serving wheat buttered noodles to my celiac daughter after a 55 minute wait…, there wasn’t much included activities for kids, and I was told that I could not bring sealed gluten free bread onboard for safety reasons (but my two Ulu knives were fine). By the fourth day, my kids just wanted to sit in the room…I just wanted to drink. I will never go on NCL again. I would love to try other ships (and will be this summer), but NCL is a never again for the above reasons which echo much of what OP posted.

Sorry to hear you also had the same problems we had. The only time we were served the correct meals was when we went to Cagney's and to the Local for lunch. We have no food allergies, but when they kept serving us the wrong items I thought about how horrible it would be for anyone who had them. I wouldn't have been able to trust that they weren't serving something that could make someone ill. We had only cruised on Disney before this cruise. There were a lot of people on my fb cruise page who were also really unhappy with the lack of entertainment, activities, and service.

 

[auntlynne]

I added a picture below with the Adventure 24 hour eating option. We never went to the pool so we would grab something on the way to the different program options they had.

Which ship were you on? I’m looking for another RCCL trip and that would be a dealbreaker. I posted the Adventure 24 hr dining below from them.

Forget the ship is called Adventure.

Then read it quickly - “Adventure 24 hour eating option.” That’s an activity that would keep you busy the entire cruise.

 

[anricat]

Which ship were you on? I’m looking for another RCCL trip and that would be a dealbreaker. I posted the Adventure 24 hr dining below from them.

Mariner of the Seas. Yes, they had that little Cafe Promenade thing. I forgot about it because all they served was tiny slices of cold pizza and you could only get one and the line was about 15-20 minutes just to get that. It was awful. We only tried that once.

 

[lklgoodman]

The Wonder doesn't really have much to do. It sounds like there was a lot to do on the Encore just the times were limited. There is no mini-golf, race cars, or rope courses on the Wonder. I'm a little confused about how they are even comparable. Shows are really good on Disney I'll give you that.

But they have things like trivia, Anyone Can Cook, character drawing, match your mate/family member etc. on the Wonder. Nothing like that was offered on our cruise except for 1 pictionary game. DCL ships have those activities multiple times every day and night. We've been on the Wonder twice and the Magic once and always had more than enough to do. The race cars were great, but if they're only open for 3-4 hrs per day(max of 24 people per hour can make reservations) then a lot of people will never enjoy them. Encore doesn't have mini golf or the ropes course. Those are on the Escape, another poster mentioned them. I knew the Encore didn't have those, it has the race cars and laser tag instead. It didn't have shuffle board either. I was surprised it didn't have that.

 

[lklgoodman]

Could this have been an issue with your expectations of exactly what you consider to be family activities and what the cruise line does? Could this have been an issue with what your expectations were based on how DCL does things and you wanted the same on another cruise line?

Before you booked it did you go to the website for NCL for the particular cruise you were interested in and the ship and what it offers?

Yes I looked at the website. When I talked to the TA I didn't just say family activities, I told her about all of the specific ones that we like(various trivia, cooking demos, character drawings, etc). I also told her my dh doesn't drink alcohol so we weren't interested in just sitting in a bar all the time. Doesn't bother us if others want to do that, but we were looking for other things to do. She also knew that we have a child, so we'd need shows that she could see. The comedians on board did a show 1 time for families with kids. All other shows were 18+. NCL advertises themselves as a family cruiseline, yet didn't offer much for families on this ship.

 

[lklgoodman]

The Wonder has plenty to do because Disney is always running trivia, crafts, origami, game shows, and other activities. There's also a show every night and additional shows in the bars after hours. There are characters to meet. There's usually live music somewhere. There's the promenade for a walk or shuffle board. One-off events like the diaper dash, Freezing the Night Away, and the various shorter character shows. And a movie theater! Plenty of things to do.

It sounds like NCL wasn't running many activities at all and they didn't have shows most nights. That's my biggest worry about my upcoming NCL cruise: nothing to do for five days at sea.

I hope your cruise has more than ours. If you just want to sit in a bar all day and night then you'll be good. I have nothing against the bar scene, but that's not what we are into anymore. 30 yrs ago I would have been, but not anymore. Even some of the people in my fb cruise group that have done other NCL cruises are complaining about the lack of activities and entertainment. Service in the sit down restaurants was extremely slow, but the food was good and always hot. So at least they beat DCL when it comes to food temp.

 

[Kwami]

I hope your cruise has more than ours. If you just want to sit in a bar all day and night then you'll be good. I have nothing against the bar scene, but that's not what we are into anymore. 30 yrs ago I would have been, but not anymore. Even some of the people in my fb cruise group that have done other NCL cruises are complaining about the lack of activities and entertainment. Service in the sit down restaurants was extremely slow, but the food was good and always hot. So at least they beat DCL when it comes to food temp.

Nah, you wouldn't find me in a bar unless there was something interesting happening like trivia or a good live musician. I've never been into that scene. I just don't get it at all, I guess.

I wonder if other NCL ships have more activities. I sure hope so! We'll be on the Getaway. I wonder if they also have hot food...

 

[DCLMP]

But they have things like trivia, Anyone Can Cook, character drawing, match your mate/family member etc. on the Wonder. Nothing like that was offered on our cruise except for 1 pictionary game. DCL ships have those activities multiple times every day and night. We've been on the Wonder twice and the Magic once and always had more than enough to do. The race cars were great, but if they're only open for 3-4 hrs per day(max of 24 people per hour can make reservations) then a lot of people will never enjoy them. Encore doesn't have mini golf or the ropes course. Those are on the Escape, another poster mentioned them. I knew the Encore didn't have those, it has the race cars and laser tag instead. It didn't have shuffle board either. I was surprised it didn't have that.

You might want to ask on cruise critic if this is the norm for NCL or if this is a one off. Cruise critic is a great resource for picking a ship or cruise line that offers what you want in a cruise.

I will say Royal had a lot of trivia even daily Disney trivia. They had cooking, dance classes, karaoke, and some shows. The area where they did most of this was off the forward elevators. Although I didn’t participate I walked past it several times a day.

I spent some time talking with a diamond cruiser on Royal and she told me things varied a lot depending on the ship Older ship usually equaled older crowds and less to do. If you venture away from Disney again really do your research.

 

[auntlynne]

Nah, you wouldn't find me in a bar unless there was something interesting happening like trivia or a good live musician. I've never been into that scene. I just don't get it at all, I guess.

I wonder if other NCL ships have more activities. I sure hope so! We'll be on the Getaway. I wonder if they also have hot food...

NCL has been criticized / reviewed negatively a lot lately. Most of it stems from seemingly cost- cutting measures; the latest being replacing Broadway shows with in-house productions. Imagine Disney dropping its 3 production shows!

Here are three Sea Day Freestyle Daily activity schedules for the Getaway last year. Before people were so vocal about changes. (I only included one front page; it didn‘t seem to change much from day to day.

An FYI; I would have a hard time finding activities to my liking.

If they are too blurry, I found them here:

https://www.google.com/search?q=ncl+getaway+daily+schedule&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-us&client=safari

 

[happycamper47]

NCL has been criticized / reviewed negatively a lot lately.

Wonder how they will do starting in December out of Canaveral then? The EPIC will be based there through April 24

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[Carohs]

It really depends what you like to do and consider family entertainment. DCL does a great job of entertaining all ages, but there's not a lot of evening activities and the night program assumes most people will either be at dinner or in the theater with very little to do otherwise. They also have a top notch kids club, so you never have to worry about kids getting bored, because even when there's a time when they aren't interested in any of the activities they can always go there. You're not going to find this on any other line. RCL seems to mostly rely on zip lines, flowrider, iFly, things like that.
We were on the NCL Jewel which has pool, but no water slide. Kids club hours were limited; usually 9-12, 2-5, and 7-11 but closed during times at port. The daytime activities were limited, and although many activities were offered that the kids could do, often there was only one age-appropriate activity at any given time. We made use of the card room, where we played gin and scrabble; the library had daily crosswords and books to choose from; they didn't even have poolside movies, but the stateroom TV did have the latest minions movie, Guardians, and Wizard of Oz available (if you could catch it at the scheduled time). The cruise staff said the kids could participate in Bingo but they had to have an adult with them. They had not so PG shows like the newlywed game, too. Nothing that my kids haven't seen before but that kind of thing isn't so entertaining to us. There were at least three different music groups with different genres of music, so even if you aren't a drinker you could sit and listen. On multiple occasions I saw kids there dancing along. The Jewel also has a sports court, ping pong tables, and a giant chess set. It isn't all shopping and Casinos; but you do have to have a low-key expectation and willingness to slow the pace down a bit.

 

[anjuan]

We just went on our first NCL cruise on the Prima at the end of May starting in Iceland going to 3 Norway ports, Amsterdam, Belgium, and ending in Southampton. Before I get into the details, I wanted to note that if you are interested in seeing the Norwegian fjords by ship then you need to book by 2024 because starting in 2025 all ships have to meet a zero emissions standard. Our stop in Geiringer was one of the biggest highlights of the trip. The fjords were simply stunning!!

As far as the ship goes, I wouldn't say that I would never cruise NCL again, but I'm not jumping to book another one with them. Our cruise started out bad, which somewhat set the tone of things. The weather was bad in Iceland and day before we were supposed to embark we found out that the ship was not docking in Reykjavik that day (as scheduled). It was instead arriving the day we were supposed to board. There were rumors on social media that day that they were canceling the two other Iceland ports. However, I thought that surely they would send us an e-mail if that was the case. Later in the day 2 different people confirmed that was what they were told by NCL. They didn't let us know about the itinerary changes until we were actually checking in to board the ship when they handed us a flyer. The ship ended up staying an extra day in Reykjavik and adding another sea day. While I believe that it was because of the weather, the communication of the information was poor. Thankfully, due to social medial I knew the ship was staying and booked another activity on my own for the extra day in Reykjavik.

When we got to the port there was a lot of confusion and little staff around telling us what to do. We ended up standing in a line outside in the very cold rain for an hour before entering a tent for check in. I later heard that some people that had later port arrival times had to stand in line outside for 3 hours.

Once we were on the ship I thought it was beautiful. The rooms were big. We had booked a spa balcony, which meant that we received free entry to their equivalent of the rainforest room for the cruise and our room was right down the hall from it. This was one of my favorite things on the ship. Both my daughter and I thought that the food was better than DCL. There were a lot of included options and the food in the Indulge food hall was amazing! We did somewhat miss having the same wait staff every night. I also loved the observation lounge but it was often hard to find a seat and there were at least 3 days that they closed it off for special groups.

I thought the evening entertainment was lacking. They had the Donna Summer show and the Price is Right and a violinist and the staff did a show. But for a 10 night cruise I expected more. The other venues like Sid Norman's were really small so you either had to stand in line an hour ahead of time or you would end up standing with a really bad view. I don't know if it was the itinerary or the time of year, but the people on the ship definitely ran older. My 18 year old had a hard time finding many teens her age, which has never been a problem on DCL.

The itinerary, which is the main reason that I booked the cruise was great! We saw so many fantastic places!

 

[darnheather]

I'm so sorry you didn't enjoy your vacation. I think the worst part for me would be the lack of friendly service. Also the couch not being remade daily would annoy me so much!

Thanks to those who said Princess for Alaska is good because that is where I'm going next. I'm taking my older sister so the twin beds and balcony will be great.

 

[KevinFL]

We are on the NCL Encore on the last night of 7 night Alaskan cruise. We have done 7 DCL cruises and have loved every single one. I booked this NCL cruise Feb 2022 and was so excited about it. Before booking it I tried to do as much research as possible. The reason we decided to try another line is because my dd is 15yrs old and no longer cares about the characters. We have also seen the shows many times. We love them, but thought it would be great to try something new. This is going to be long, but in all the research I did, I was never told some of these things. I now realize that the people who told me NCL is great have never been on DCL.
We had a family club balcony. Size of room was good and we had big bathroom. The bed was as hard as a rock. We asked for an egg crate matress which was thin as paper and did nothing to help. On all of our DCL cruises our room host would come to our room to introduce themselves. This is our last night and our host has never come to our room to introduce himself, we aren't sure which of the ones we've seen in the hall is our host. There were also clothes from previous people left in our cabin when we arrived and we had no towels. They only clean the room once a day, which is fine. There is no turn down service. First night I had to call to get the sofa made into a bed for my dd. It stayed as a bed the entire time. Anytime we needed more toilet paper, we had to ask for it. We were gone for 7 hrs in Skagway. Came back and cabin hadn't been cleaned. Never got cleaned that day. Majority of the employees on this ship almost never say hi when they see you. There are 3 sit down restaurants. They all serve the exact same menu. The food is good and the servings are huge. We are a family of 3. No food allergies and at every meal we would just get water to drink(rarely got refills) and never asked for any substitutions from what was on the menu. Yet at every meal we were served something wrong. We would get to the restaurants as soon as they opended and even when there were very few people in the restaurants it would take forever to get your meal. We would be seated and then wait 15-20 mins to get menus, 20 mins to place order, 20-30 mins in between courses. People think it's hard to find a place to eat at DCL's buffet, it's worse on this ship. They have NO quick service places to get food. It's been too cold to use pool deck, so no food on the pool deck hasn't bothered us, but on a hot weather cruise, I would hate not having quick service outside. And the absolute worse thing about this cruise is that there has been almost nothing to do unless you want to sit in a bar and drink. We love DCL because they have family activities going on all the time. They had a family pictionary 1 time for the entire cruise. I think there may have been 2 other family activities. We were able to do the race cars 1 time and loved it. Unfortunately they are rarely open and you have to reserve a time so all the times are quickly taken. Same way with laser tag, our reservation for that was canceled due to weather. They do Deal or No Deal game show in the Atrium. This is a family activities they do several times a day. It costs $30 to get a card to play. We watched a few games. The Choir of Men show was good. They have had 2 comics on. They only did 1 family show during the week. All their other shows were 18+ yrs old. They also had a Beatles show 1 night for families. So out of 7 nights, there was only 3 nights of entertainment for families. They had a magician who was good, but he only performed 3 shows. They were during the day. I don't know why he didn't do a night show. Needless to say we will not be cruising on NCL again and I would not recommend them to anyone!! The extra cost for a DCL cruise is worth it!!!

Very helpful review!! We researched an d considered doing this same ship for the same Alaska cruise for this summer! We wanted Alaska, did not have any direct flights available to Vancover for DCL so we started looking at all options and it was very stressful and time consuming. Sorry to hear this did not go well but hopefully Alaska was amazing and you walk away with some good insight on what you like