My NCL Prima Review

I recently sailed on the NCL Prima with my family. Here is a breakdown of some of our experiences with the ship.

• Check-in Process: C-
  • During the online check-in, why do we need to upload photos if you take them at the normal check-in?
  • The online check-in should expedite the embarking process and save time but it did not. We basically performed multiple steps several times. 
  • We were one of the first spots to arrive (10:30 am). We arrived early, checked our bags quickly, got through security quickly, and ended up being the 16th boarding group. This should be on a first-come, first-served basis. Many people that checked in after were checked in got to board the boat before us. This also contributed to the fact that we didn’t get any entertainment reservations.
• Embarkation / Disembarkation: C
  • Facial recognition takes too long and creates very long lines when embarking and disembarking. I had to wait over an hour, holding my sleepy 5-year-old, in the sun with my family who get back on the ship. Each time we returned to the ship, we were not offered a wet cloth or drink. There are no bathrooms on the pier either.
  • Halfway through the disembarkation process, it becomes a free-for-all. The tag colors don’t matter anymore.
  • At certain points, security puts a hold on the people coming off the ship because the security area reaches capacity.
• Entertainment: F
  • I had a 0% chance of booking any entertainment. When I made the cruise booking in August, I could not book anything then. When restaurant reservations were made available, entertainment was not included in the reservation options despite the app saying it would be. When we completed the online check-in, entertainment reservations were not available. The only chance I had at making reservations was as soon as we boarded. The problem here is that the Haven and guests with disabilities get priority booking and by the time my family was called for boarding, everything was sold out. Don’t plan on getting into any shows if you’re not in the Haven.
  • Apparently, sometime after we made our booking, the Noise Boys were removed from the ship. My children (and my wife and I) were very excited about this show. They watched the hype videos on YouTube. Then we learned that they would not be on our itinerary. To top it off, they weren’t replaced with another performer… they were just removed, causing even fewer options for entertainment.
  • There is a huge lack of family activities and things for kids to do. My children were often bored. 
  • Tee Time was in terrible shape. We needed to wait for an entire family to finish the 2nd half of the course just so we could have the golf balls to play. We didn’t even get enough golf balls for all four of us to play. The course looks like it’s seen 9 years of usage, not 9 months.
  • The Prima Speedway was poorly managed. The staff was very dull and not interested. The time and lap tracker was not working properly. The attendants kept stopping and throttling the cars so it was a poor experience. This was overpriced for the experience. Not worth the money! This should have also been open more. It seems like it was very difficult to get reservations for this.
  • Galaxy Pavilion needs more than just virtual reality. There is no variety here. Everything is way overpriced and not worth $8 per person for 2 minutes of VR. This was a waste of time and money. The staff was terrible. They did not want to be there at all. It seems as if the entertainment and activity staff on the ship were all miserable and not engaged.
  • There is no jogging track, basketball court, or sports deck, of any kind.
  • There must not be anything for teens on the ship. Groups of teens were constantly loitering and running through the halls. 
  • The shore excursions are a complete rip-off. In some cases, you’re just adding $150 onto excursions that are offered as you step off the dock. 
• Splash Academy: A (Recreation Staff: A / Activities: A / Reservation System: F)
  • The Splash Academy should be open all day. Nobody warned us to make dinner reservations at 8:00 so the kids could go to Splash Academy while we enjoyed dinner. Several times, my wife and I wanted to have dinner together but reservations are impossible to change and Splash Academy is often closed.
  • There were massive delays in messaging between the Splash Academy and the waitlist in the app.
  • Overall, Splash Academy is good, however, some attendants don’t pay attention to the queue. After waiting 15 minutes, we went over anyway and an attendant just was not paying attention to the queue. They checked in our kids and we got the notification that Splash Academy was ready for us to drop them off 15 minutes after we already did.
• Pools and Sun Deck: F
  • On sea days, finding seats outside is very difficult. This ship was not designed very well to accommodate sun seekers. There are many obstacles and amenities blocking the sun and taking up real estate. If the Go-Karts weren’t on the top level, there would be so much more space. 
  • There is no “flow” to the top deck. There are infinite obstacles, the stairs are too narrow and the seats are too close together. It made for a lot of bumping into people and having people walking really close to us as we tried to relax.
  • The pools are tiny. I’ve seen bigger inflatable pools. This is a monumental failure and NCL should be embarrassed.
  • The pools on deck 8 are also a laughable mistake. Why would anyone want to go in a pool that has a 12-story shadow cast over it?
  • The pool water was dirty… several times, we found bandages and other gross debris floating around but our kids were so bored, we had to wedge ourselves into the pool.
  • The smoking area is outside next to the kid’s aqua park. We occasionally could smell the nasty cigarette smell.
  • The photographers are very pushy and misleading. They kept talking about a special. As it turns out, if you buy something at full price, you get a coupon for a free photo, but only if you book a portrait session with them. It’s like a timeshare presentation made by a car salesman.
• Bars: C-
  • During our sailing, the NBA and NHL playoffs were occurring as well as the NFL draft and MLB baseball season. The stateroom TVs don’t have standard TV and none of the bars were showing any relevant sports. At the Local Bar, I asked them to change the TV from rugby to a playoff game and they wouldn’t. If you’re a sports fan, this is not the ship for you.
  • The servers at the Local Bar were slow and unattentive. The venue was less than 50% full, yet they would not come to the outer tables. We and several other guests needed to go to the bar to order or get the server’s attention. This venue was staffed by people that are fully checked out. 
  • The pool bar is a disaster. There is no order or organization at all. I waited for about 30 minutes before talking to a bartender. Finally, she took my order and she forgot about me. I watched people behind me get drinks. Finally, another bartender finally took my order. All in all, it took about 40 minutes to get a drink.
  • The servers would not come to the part of the sun deck where we were sitting or they reached their drink order limit. We had to walk down to the bar and get our own drinks. How enjoyable!
  • The bartenders generally didn’t seem to pay attention to detail. The drinks were very inconsistent across the ship. For instance, a Mai Tai at one bar would be sweet while other bars would make it tart. Some bars garnish and some don’t.  I requested a bloody mary made with Tito’s vodka and I watched the bartender quickly pour some cheap, nasty vodka.
  • The drink quality is terrible. The ingredients are cheaper and the drinks are smaller now that everyone has a drink package.
• Restaurants: C (Food: A / Reservations: F / Service: D)
  • The menus don’t offer enough options. We often felt like we were settling because there wasn’t enough variety. For instance, Teppanyaki had different steak options but Hasuki only has “steak”. Hudson’s and Commodore had menus that are too similar. Los Lobos should have had nachos on the menu. The kids’ menu was the same at all restaurants and offered little variety and the children were bored of it after a few days. Cagney’s could have had a few more options as well.
  • I purchased additional specialty dining meal options for our kids and they could not be used for kids. When we got to Cagney’s, they told us that the dining package could not be transferred. In addition to purchasing extra meals that we cannot use, we were charged a la carte for our children’s meals at the specialty restaurants. They got sick of the kid’s menu very quickly because it has limited variety. 
  • Restaurant reservations are nearly impossible to change. Either add more restaurants to accommodate more dining or make the venues larger. What I experienced was definitely not “Freestyle Dining”.
  • We went to Hudson’s for dinner one evening. We had previous reservations. There was a long line in which we waited. The hostess was asking people if they wanted to be seated with others to get in faster. I knew that wasn’t a good sign. With reservations, we were still waiting about 20 minutes for people without reservations to be seated. That defeats the purpose of making reservations.
  • On day 7, we went to Hudson’s for lunch where we waited for 15 minutes to be seated (in a restaurant that was about 5% full at the time). We then had to wait for 15 minutes for our waiter to come and take our food orders. When I asked for a drink after placing my food order, he said he would be right back to take drink orders. 20 minutes later, I left the restaurant and got drinks for our table at the bar outside the restaurant. The appetizers came 10 minutes after that. We finished and waited about another 20 minutes for our entrees. We started getting impatient because the kids were hungry and we had only seen our waiter twice in about 50 minutes. The tables near us were getting restless too. I suggested we leave to go to Surfside. As we were walking out, our food arrived. We sat back down to find out it was wrong. My wife asked how long it would take to fix it and the waiter said “Unfortunately, it will take a while”. We left. Over 75 minutes for lunch and we didn’t even receive our order. That particular day, we were all in the mood for burgers which is what we all ordered. It’s not like we ordered off the menu.
  • Surfside is the most inadequate dining venue on any ship on any cruise line. More guests and less main dining? The two dining venues on the opposite side of the ship seemed to only be dinner venues. Those should have been part of Surfside… like all the other ships in NCL’s fleet. One of my favorite things on previous sailings was to board the ship, go hang out at the pool and have some grilled food. There was nothing like that so we went to look at Surfside and it was a madhouse. We only ate here if it was absolutely necessary. It is way too small. To top it off, you need to go through it to get to other parts of the ship so there were often lots of excess people migrating through the dining hall.
  • Indulge is a great idea, but poorly executed. You need a hostess for this venue. It was CHAOS! I walked around the restaurant for 20 minutes holding my child looking for any table that might become available. We went to try to eat here 3times before actually finding a table. On the third time, one of the other guests stopped me and said he would take his food elsewhere so I could sit. He felt bad that I was bringing my family around in circles. This venue needs huge improvements.
  • Starbucks always had a long line but the staff was pretty good here. There were a lot of people coming back asking to fix their drinks though.
• Itinerary: B-
  • I’ve never had a previous cruise change itineraries… even during hurricane season. Without any notice or reason, Virginia Beach was removed from the itinerary after we made our booking.
  • Additionally, I’ve never been on a sailing that left port late or left a destination early. I understand it might have been due to the weather, but from my experience, captains typically keep good time. Leaving Bermuda early took a port day away. There is nothing that we could have done with the amount of time we had there on the 3rd day in port. It was a waste. We could have left the night before and it wouldn’t have made a difference at all.
• Guest Services: D
  • I needed to get a replacement key card but the line was down the hall. I tried calling from the NCL app and the phone does not work for making calls. Several times I needed to see guest services but the line was too long. This is ridiculous customer service. On the 6th day, I’ve only been able to speak to them once and they weren’t very helpful.
• App and WiFi: F
  • The app has major delays in messaging, particularly with Splash Academy messages. I often have to refresh the status page in the app because the messages are delayed by up to 20 minutes. Other times, I just showed up at Splash Academy because the messages weren’t coming through.
  • The phone does not work for calling restaurant reservations and guest services. That was one of the main reasons for paying for access to the app.
  • The wifi signal is terrible. I tried to watch a sporting event on my phone because the bars only show things that appeal to 1% of the passengers. I was not able to watch the event.
  • The wifi showed inconsistent information such as how much time is remaining and the number of connected devices. Many times our devices were disconnected. 
• Misc
  • Elevators: C-
    • There are at least 5 elevators that are out of service on a full ship. Getting around was very difficult and it took a long time. Elevators were jam-packed and we often needed to wait for a 3rd or 4th elevator before there was room for us.
  • Spa: N/A
    • The Thermal Spa closed at 8:00 on day 7. I would have paid for 2 entire day passes for my wife and I to use the spa if it was open till 11:00. Unfortunately, it closes very early so I was not willing to purchase the passes.
  • Gift Shop: C
    • The “Gift Shop” hardly had any souvenirs. There are no provisions. It is essentially a jewelry store with a few side items. This is a real shame. This entire ship is a money grab.
  • Photographers: D
    • The photographers are very pushy and misleading. They kept talking about a special. As it turns out, if you buy something at full price, you get a coupon for a free photo, but only if you book a portrait session with them. It’s like a timeshare presentation made by a car salesman.
  • Special Occasions: F
    • Upon booking, our personal cruise consultant asked if there were any special occasions. I told her that my wife and I were celebrating our 10th anniversary. She said they would have an anniversary cake at one of our dinner reservations. And a special surprise in our stateroom. We never received either.
• Rooms: B–
  • The “Family Balcony” rooms do not have Pullman beds. The only additional sleeping area is a pullout sofa that is maybe the size of a full bed. It’s not ideal for two people to share. My kids didn’t sleep well because of it. They both have bigger beds at home and sleep alone so now that they had to share a smaller bed, they kept bumping each other and accidentally hitting each other and waking each other up. How can a family balcony room be missing a Pullman bed?
  • Our room was on the 16th floor and I think the pool deck was above us. We heard the crew moving deck chairs late at night and early in the morning. It was very annoying and difficult to fall asleep to. 

A vacation for me should be relaxing and this vacation frankly was anything but. We paid for a high-end cruise and got a bargain basement equivalent. This is not the NCL that we have known in the past and built loyalty with. The new philosophy for NCL’s Prima class seems to be quantity over quality. All-in-all, the free (or included) amenities are being scaled back to make way for things they can upsell and upcharge. You can expect lots of waiting, long lines, and constantly being let down.

I would not recommend the Prima unless you are staying in a Haven suite. From the reviews I’ve read and guests I’ve talked to, those are the only people that seem to enjoy the ship. This past experience also makes me question NCL as a viable vacation option for my family. Everything on the ship caters to The Haven guests. Nobody else matters. On the Prima, there is first class and last class. They get all the amenities they want, access to restaurants and entertainment, and don’t have to wait for anything.