My husband, seven friends and I have just returned from a cruise on the Norwegian Sea out of the Port of Houston.  I would like to start by saying that we had a wonderful vacation on the Norwegian Sea.  The service on board was exceptional and the food was very good.

I was surprised that on the Texaribbean Cruise there were not more choices of Tex/Mex or Mexican food.  It also surprised me, since I have cruised before with a different line, that sodas were an extra cost with meals and that juice was not available as an included item all day long. As for the Chocoholic buffet, our group was really underwhelmed!  The chocolate seemed to have little taste and would not melt in your mouth (or over heat).  It was all beautiful to look at; it just didn’t taste good.  The absence of the midnight buffet except on a couple of nights was also not expected.

The shows in the Cabaret Lounge were wonderful, but since we never got in the first two or three rows (even the nights we were there 45 minutes before showtime) we could never see lower than waist up of the dancers.  Consequently, we felt that we missed a lot of the performance, especially with the “Riverdance” dancers.

Two of our three shore excursions were fantastic!  We took the Mexican Fiesta Party Boat out of Cozumel and had a party all the way.  The crew entertained us on the ride, took care of us at the beach, provided security while we played so that we did not have to keep vigilance over our belongings on the shore, they explained what did and did not come with the tour.  We had a superb time!

We took the West Bay kayak and snorkel trip out of Roatan.  That too was wonderful.  They also took good care of us, showed us how and what to do, watched over us so that we felt safe and watched our belongings so that we didn’t have that worry while we played. 

The excursion out of Cancun was not very well organized and fraught with problems from the start!  Unfortunately, apparently due to no fault of NCL employees or the tri-maran crew, the police were brought to the dock and would not allow us to embark on the tri-maran from that location so we had to be taken by taxi to another pier about 5 minutes away before we could start our excursion.  This was handled well under the circumstances, but it was a long hot half-hour standing on the dock while they haggled.  The Sail to Isla Mujeres was a slow motorboat ride.  (The sail was not raised until the trip back at the end of the excursion.)   A member of the crew took us to an area of shops and said this is the place to shop.  We asked where the “beautiful beach” was and he said about 2 blocks down the street.  He did not take us there and we never saw anything that would be called a beautiful beach.  Further more, we had no place to put our belongings except on the beach where there were peddlers following us.   There was a woman and her five children that stayed right with us for the first hour or so that we were there trying to get us to buy from her and watching our every move.  Fortunately, there were four of us together so that two could swim while two watched our belongings.  We felt trapped on the beach for the time we were there and really did not enjoy this excursion.

None of the nine of us found the Latitudes program to be much of an incentive to sail with NCL again.  One of the ladies in our group was a Latitudes member and she felt that for her membership on this cruise she received nothing.  Since we arrived at the pier after 2 PM, some of us first time cruisers managed to whip on through our lines and board before she did.  The $20 coupon gift for the casino was some what of a joke since it could not be used for the slots and had to be matched with $20 of your own, hence it really was not a gift.  The tour of the bridge turned out not to be too special in that at other times anyone on board could also tour the bridge.  The special cocktail party was at a time when there were too many other things going on so she did not participate in that.  Perhaps if she had been on a Latitude Cruise, her membership might have seemed more rewarding.

As I said, we had a wonderful time.  I did feel that the expense of the Sail to Isla Mujeres was a total waste of my money and our day in Cancun was the waste of a day!  Other than that, the cruise was fantastic! 

Texaribbean Cruise
July 9, 2000
Cabin #8011