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Norwegian Cruise Lines
Norwegian Dream Cruise Review
Baltic Capitals

George Betz
Age: Unknown
Occupation: Unknown
Number of Cruises: Unknown
Sailing Date: June 19th, 2006

Attn: Manager of Guest Relations (a letter sent to Guest Relations)

I am writing to you regarding my latest cruise. It was on the Dream and we did the Baltic Capitals on June 3rd.

First the Good News

1. The air/sea and 3 day London package was excellent and efficiently handled.
2. The Latitudes check in was great
3. The room was nice
4. The itinerary was terrific
5. Entertainment was excellent
6. The assignment of a concierge was a treat. We received this because we have been on 10 cruises
7. The little snacks from the staff were a nice touch (Golden Rewards maybe)

Now for the bad news or complaints

1. Food: Absolutely horrible. I complained about this on the Jewel in January and it was the same “Howard Johnson’s” caliber.
a. Cheap menu items such as turkey, chicken, pasta. The Captain’s Fair well Dinner was horrible. The best you offered was Beef Stroganoff. Where was the prime rib, Beef Wellington, or Sirloin steak?
The fish entrees were cheap. Tilapia $4.99 a pound instead of Swordfish at $8.99 a pound
Never saw a shrimp larger than popcorn shrimp
No eggs Benedict on the breakfast menu

2. Buffet
The Sports Bar was a zoo. You offered 1 coffee station in this area. It was the only 24 hour coffee station on the entire ship. The spaghetti and omelet station was crammed into the coffee station exit and lines formed all over. We avoided the sports bar like the plague. The salad dressing was horrible. The blue cheese was watery and the Italian was like vinegar. Like the Jewel, the salad bar had cheap carbohydrates like rice, pasta and corn. Who eats corn as a salad? The hamburgers were pre cooked and dumped into a grease laden hot tray. Every other cruise ship had a station with two cooks. One taking the order, while the other prepared the hamburger

The Four Season’s breakfast had no omelet station, so my wife had to eat cold eggs and yes they were cold. They were nice to serve the smoked salmon, but never bothered to put out onions or tomatoes. The pizza was terrible, just like the Jewel.

I later found out that this ship had a German chef. I also found out that the menus were created at corporate and were the same for all ships. This accounts for the terrible food on both the Jewel and the Dream. (“Get rid of the German way of cooking!!!!)

Just to let you know that after the Lattitudes party, we talked to a couple who had been on the Dream 4 times due to the itinerary, but stated that this was the last NCL cruise due to the food. Later, at home, I spoke with a long time cruiser who took the Crown around South America within the last year. He, too, said that the food was so bad that he was not going to cruise with NCL any longer. To top it all off, at the farewell show, when Patti, the cruise director, asked how we liked the food, very few applauded. I tell you that this was topic on conversation with most of the seasoned cruisers. “How Bad The Food Was”.

The Exercise Room:

You are going to have a real accident someday when someone drops a 40 lb dumbbell on someone laying on the floor doing belly crunches. There is no room for proper exercising. The treadmill and bicycle room was half sized for the amount of passengers.

The Public Restrooms

I do not know how many times I used the restroom off the casino/showroom area and found no soap in the containers and found filled trash containers with overflow towels on the floor. It seemed like they spent more time pressure washing the aft pool area then internal areas

Port dockage.

My friend, who took RCL gave me an RCL map of Helsinki and Stockholm.

In both cases, the dream docked the commercial freight pier requiring us to pay for transportation into the main area. The big joke was in Stockholm, where I had expected to dock where the RCL ship was and take a water taxi tour of the city, get off and go to the Vasa museum and then stop in the old town to take a canal boat tour.. This area had wonderful view of all of these sights. No, NCL docks at the oil refinery and required me to buy a $69 tour for a bus ride.

Speaking of canal boat tours, it was even worse in Copenhagen. Due to timing, I purchase the evening canal boat tour with shuttle to Tivoli gardens. I had expected a city tour like the morning tour It ended to be a 45 minute boat ride to town and taking the shuttle. It turns out considering the tour at $75. per and deducting the shuttle only at $29 per, it cost me $46.00 to ride a canal boat for 45 minute. Considering that they had about 60 people, they made over $2400. for an hour worth of work. That is legal theft.

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