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AimerLINY

Age: 32
Occupation: PR Account Executive
Number of Cruises: 3
Cruise Line: Norwegian
Ship: Sky
Sailing Date: April 4th, 2004
Itinerary: Southern Carribbean

Overall, our vacation was great. We really enjoyed ourselves. The weather for the most part was beautiful. And since we were there with 4 other couples, it was a great time.

However, we were very dissapointed with the Norwegian Sky. Although the main areas of the ship were very nice, the service was terrible.

Our cabin was tiny (in comparison to my inside cabin on Celebrity), lacked storage space and the bedspread was dingy. They were not good about cleaning the cabin, turning down the bed, changing towels. They left a bucket of ice in the room every day, but no water pitcher. We didn't get towel animals until Tim finally spoke to the room steward on our last day.

We also had problems with the food service.

Breakfast was a disaster almost every morning -- long lines, not enough food, runny eggs, no omlete or waffle stations until someone complained, and then when they were out, the closed earlier than listed in the daily newsletter.

The 24 hour pizza service was also horrible, burnt pizza, not enough to serve so you were always waiting and when you finally got to the counter, they'd only give you half a slice in order to try and accomodate the crowd.

The ice cream service was also horrible -- again, long lines, the soft serve machines rarely worked, it was only open for a short period of time each day, the ice cream was melty, and when Tim tried to get ice cream for the both of us, he had to argue with them about getting 2 cups.

The outside BBQ every day was also pretty bad -- overcooked burgers and ribs, they would run out of buns, cookies, etc.

The dining room experience over all was good, once we found a good waiter. The first night our friends ate at one of the dining rooms and had a great experience (we didn't board until late, so we were not there).

Our second night, we chose a different dining room to discover that it had the same exact menu. We though with the free style cruising that the menus would be different. We soon discovered that the menu was only different at the three other restaurants that require additional cover charge. The two free dining rooms (those included in the price of the cruise) were identical. Anyway, the second night experience was horrible. We were there for over 3 hours and ended up missing the show that night.

So the third night we decided to go back to the original dining room and try and get the same waiter as the first night. However, we were informed by the maitre'd that our waiter had been reassigned to an area where there were no large tables (we were a party of 10). So we ended up with a different waiter who was not very friendly, very slow, and once again, we were there for over 3 hours.

We spoke with the maitre'd and we were promised that the next night we could have the waiter we wanted at the time we wanted. However, the next day when we called to confirm the time, no arrangements had been made, and we had to put up quite a stink to have it arranged. They did however change the arrangements to please us.

So finally by the fourth night we had a pretty good experience. Dinner was still taking a bit of time, however, we started attending the earlier show performances to avoid missing them.

Some good things --
- we had a great time at the casino every night, the casino staff was very friendly
- bar service for the most part was also very good, although we found pricing a bit inconsistent
- the shows were pretty good (although I felt that my Celebrity experience was better)
- the art auction experience was fun -- Tim and I actually won a piece of art
- disembarking/re-embarking at ports was seamless -- no long lines

Anyway, I know this is probably more information that what you were looking for, but I hope this helps others sailing on the Sky so that they have a better experience that we did.

The sad part of this whole story is that my fiance and I were planning to take the Norwegian Dawn out of New York for our honeymoon (departing November 7th) and now we have many reservations and concerns. So we are now looking at altnerative options. Norwegian would have to promise us the world at a ridiculously inexpensive price to get our business right now.

NOTE: I am sending the basics of this post to Norwegian directly also.

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