RCL or norwegian

[karmacats]

When were you on the Gem? We were on her in November 2013 the week before Thanksgiving and I agree it was the worst service we ever had on a cruise, too. We had decent entertainment and fairly good food in the MDR for the most part but everything took so long and they would forget things, some were not real friendly, we didn't get that feeling we were used to on cruises where you feel like they really want to help you and like their jobs. We were very disappointed as all I had read in reviews and on Cruise Critic was how great the crew on the Gem was. I heard later that NCL gutted the staff of the Gem and sent the good ones over to the Breakaway for it's debut. The Gem then got mostly all NEW crew (about 75%), and when I say new I mean NEW. Some of them first time working on a ship.

Nov 2010. i can't remember when the breakaway debuted, but i think our gem cruise was quite a bit before. maybe it's a november curse.

in all seriousness, the service was abysmal, and i'm not a high-maintenance person or anything. just as an example, our room steward would never bring fresh towels, even after we ran into him in the hall and requested them - if we left a dirty one on the floor, he would remove it, but not bring a replacement. on day 4 or 5 or so we finally called and asked him for more towels (he had given us his phone number in case we needed anything, but we hadn't used it before because we didn't want to bug him), and when he dropped them off he chastised us pretty harshly for calling and said he'd get in trouble because we had to call to request something. i think it's pretty universal at this point that a towel on the hook gets reused and a towel on the floor gets replaced, but at the very least after we asked him he should have brought us towels, and no way should he have yelled at us for calling.

i am curious to try the breakaway, but probably only in The Haven. norwegian's suite service is supposed to be phenomenal.