Five Reasons Why I Loved Cruising With NCL

It’s been about three months since we finished our first Norwegian Cruise and I still think about it. We did a Mediterranean cruise zigzagging from Rome to Athens calling on stops across Italy, Greece and Turkey. For around 11 days we slept at sea and woke up in a new location, and as a first time cruiser I loved it.

We did a bit of research into companies before booking to see what would work best for us. And I’m really glad with the decision we made. Here are some of the reasons why I loved cruising with NCL. Bare in mind I have never cruised with another cruise line so I don’t know if the things I loved about NCL are available on other liners.

Flexible dining with NCL

A lot of cruise ships allow you to choose a dining time and you eat at the same time most days. You may even then be sat on a larger table with the same people each night. Now I’m sure a lot of cruise liners are becoming more flexible, but I love that NCL offers complete flexible dining.

You can book most of the dining choices via the app which you can use on the ship. This is applicable for both the speciality (paid for) dining, but also the free options excluding the pub and buffet. This means you can change your dining time to suit your day. Some days we had later excursions so wanted to eat a bit later. And some days we wanted to see a show so wanted an early dinner.

Free at sea add ons

Again I’m sure other cruise liners have add ons like this, but NCL offer ‘free at sea’. You can pay a set price and add on some additional products which work out a lot more expensive when bought separately.

This includes a drinks package of items up to $15, so almost all cocktails and non high end alcoholic drinks. It also includes a few speciality dining trips (the number depends on your state room and cruise length). You also get a $50 credit for each stop to spend on excursions, and then there’s an internet package.

We’re not big drinkers, but even on a few cocktails a day and a load of soft drinks it was well worth it for us. We got four speciality dining trips for us and they would have cost us $100-200 per meal. And we saved around $400 off excursions as we did them in most locations.

Choice of evening entertainment with NCL

I wasn’t sure what to expect with entertainment when boarding our cruise. We didn’t go on one of the super new ships so there wasn’t a broadway style production but we had so much choice over the nights.

Most nights there was a main show in the theatre, shown at both 7pm and 9pm. And then something else going on in the smaller bar locations. There was such a good mixture of entertainment and we saw a comedy juggler, acrobatics, two musicals, a magic and contortion show, and a cabaret show. There was also ballroom dancing, a singer, and some other bits that we didn’t head to.

I also loved how much music there was around the rest of the ship. Our favourite bar had a singer on pretty much all evening from 7pm that I loved.

The NCL app was pretty great

When you’re out at sea unless you have an internet package there’s no signal. But everyone is able to use the NCL app.

And the app was pretty great, at least compared to what I had expected. You can view the full daily schedule on the app and see where activities are happening, or what time things are going on. You can make dinner reservations and check what you may have already booked. There’s a map on the app so you’ll never get lost, something I was very thankful for. And you can check our excursions available and get more information on what you have booked.

If you’re flexible you can get some great deals

There are plenty of ways to get a good deal when cruising with NCL.

The slightly older ships are quite a bit cheaper than the fancy newer ones. We sailed on a slightly older ship for our cruise (the Star), although there are some quite a bit older. You may not get some of the fancy activities like go karting or VR simulations, but that didn’t bother us for our first cruise.

There are always deals going on, although the end prices almost always work out similar regardless of the specific deal. If you book an inside room and you go out of season you can get a really good deal on your cruise.

And NCL offer the chance to upgrade your room if there are spaces on board your cruise. We upgraded from an ocean view room to a balcony room for about $300 in total. And if we’d paid for that room to begin with it would have been $1000+ more. This is one of the perks of going off season.

Have you ever been on a cruise? Or tried out NCL before?

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