Let me first say that I am a firm believer that there is rarely ever a BAD cruise - I'm away from work, not having to cook or clean and getting to see places that I've never seen before. I have sailed 3 times with Princess and this was our 3rd time with Norwegian. My husband and I normally travel with friends that we met on our first cruise and this cruise was no exception. I have to say that all 4 of us were disappointed.

I knew going into this cruise that it was a repositioning cruise and a trade-off for the lower price would possibly be some concessions on excursions to pick from at ports that don't get alot of cruise travel except for repositioning time. I have to say that I will think long and hard before booking another repositioning cruise. You need to keep in mind that some things that are advertised as a ship feature or part of their normal cruise package may not be available on this special voyage. For example - I was really looking forward to being able to attend the murder mystery lunch. I'm sorry - not being done on this cruise. The weather didn't help this cruise - unseasonably cool several days which also happened to be the sea days.....Not very many activities planned for all the people that thought they were going to be able to spend their sea days outside. I found myself laying on my bed in the room and watching TV or napping the whole day.

This was our first time in Los Angeles and not knowing the area, booked our pre-night stay with Norwegian at one of their hotels they are partnered with. A few months before the cruise - we received notice that the hotel had been changed. The hotel stay was OK - the rooms were fine - but I had originally booked a hotel close to the beach and lots of restaurants and activities close. This hotel was an airport hotel - only the high price restaurant in the hotel to choose from with a few Taco Bells, McDonalds, etc a few blocks away. The rest of the area was more of a commerical, warehouse area so nowhere to walk or entertain yourself. With the hotel reservation also came a transfer to the ship. We received a letter from Norwegian in our room telling us the procedure. Leave our bags in the room at 11:00AM, they would be picked up and brought to the lobby where we could verify they were there and then would be put on the bus for our transfer. At 11AM we went to the lobby to wait, and to wait, and to wait until finally a lady with a Norwegian scarf finally showed up with a clipboard and was wandering the lobby. We went to her, she crossed off our names and told us to go to the bus. Still no signs of our bags. Finally we got a bellman to go to our room to check on the bags because of course we had checked out and turned in our room keys.......there they sat......no one picking them up and I'm sure would still be sitting there if we hadn't checked. We lugged them downstairs and to the bus ourselves. There were several other guests wandering the lobby also wondering what to do, who after seeing us get our luggage ended up doing the same thing. The Norwegian representative just laughed and said everything would definitely be an improvement from here which I didn't find very professional or funny under the circumstances knowing that if we hadn't checked - we would have sailed away with no luggage. Read more