Cruise Norwegian - NCL

Just got back from a cruise to Alaska on the Norwegian Pearl. This was such a unbelievable cruise! Everything went great from beginning to end. The staff was great and I am definitely going to cruise Norwegian again, every day was so easy to plan from the day brochures as to what was going on and everything and times where and when to eat, this made my trip so much better. I was able to spend more time on other things to do rather than finding out why walking on boat what was going on! Great job Norwegian Pearl crew!

I normally do not write a review of applications, if they function then I work through the app to get things done. But in the case of the NCL app i have to admit it has not been that effective. Let’s start with the “email” function, you log in and see an alert number for a new email to view, all of the emails look the same and the date of the email is the day you are logged in. You can look at each one and ta-da nothing changes. You go back to the main menu and you still have an alert that you have emails to view. Selecting options, no matter where you are in the app, eating, excursions or even online check-in, you select to chose something and it immediately warns you you are being redirected to a browser, you have to “select cancel” to stay in the app. If all actions are supposed to be in the app, why in the world would you want to go to a browser? Ran into issue with pre-booking where it would not allow my partner take a picture for them on their app, it was like the app I was using was blocking there’s from working. No emails listed show packages that have been paid for on the cruise, it gives old alerts but no confirmations that you have purchased these in the app those go to your outside email, would be nice if it was all in one place.

There are some things that we loved about the cruise! And there are some things that we thought could be better about the cruise. Notwithstanding, there was really nothing that we hated about the cruise. Pretty much, we’ve loved everything that we’ve experienced on the encore ship. The staff Was well, accommodating, polite, and kept things clean, and orderly! There were a couple of minor incidents with staff, that we thought was rude, however, not enough to really even mention. It’s more understood that these folks deal with a lot of people every day on these ships so forgiven. The excursion times seem to be a bit rushed. And aside from being rushed, The NCL excursions are quite expensive. When you pay as much as we did for the whole cruise, hotel airlines, etc. it’d be nice to have a more affordable set of excursions. I understand that the business is here to make a profit but it seems like you do get nickeled and dined, in a lot of different ways on these ships! Consider free Wi-Fi consider a little bit more affordable drink package. Little more alcohol in your drinks. Regardless, we love the ocean we had a great time definitely a time to remember!

The good is that this app gives a great overview of whats on board the ship your on. I used to turn on the tv to see whats going on and to check my acct and such, but now I can find it all in the palm of my hands. The app works through the ships wifi so you can see all this info wherever you are. The downside of the app is the messaging and talk which is a paid feature. My family all paid for thinking itd be a great way to stay in touch while at different areas of the ship. However it definitely needs improvment since its a paid service. I had problems hearing the ringer since many times theres enough ambient noise to drown the ringer out. The ringer isnt the normal ringer on my phone which is defintely loud and also vibrates. Also several times when my phone rang, I wasnt able to pick up from my home screen and could only hang up and dial back. NCL should definitely study and immitate how other chat apps such as LINE, wechat, or whatsapp implement their messaging and calling. I felt that NCLs first attempt at this felt like the app is still in the beta stage and needs more debugging and refining. Hopefully some improvements will be made by the next time Im on board.

Overall, this app worked well and was a tremendous help to my group...being able to search through the restaurants was the biggest advantage to this app (and being able to book reservations directly from it was supper convenient). Again, overall, extremely useful. One thing I used frequently while on my cruise was the “what’s happening” feature...this shows all of the things happening in the next 24 hours (I was constantly looking at it to see what options were coming up). The one thing I didn’t like about this feature is that you can’t tap an item and get more information...that would have been EXTREMELY useful because some titles didn’t lend themselves well to what that event actually was. Another change I’d like to see (and some others have said the same thing) are menus for all restaurants...most have “sample menus” (which is better than nothing), but some don’t have anything so you don’t really know what they serve.

This app has problems with booking activities specifically dining. It’s clumsy if you want to go through each day to book dining. Minor complaint is that My Plans shows the date for the days your in port but not at sea. When you go to book dining from one of the cruise days you have to keep track of the date because it’s needed for booking. It would make more sense to book by day instead of date or at least show the day and the date. It’s also difficult to tell if you’ve already booked a restaurant that day until you try to add it to your cart. It doesn’t help you organize the process of booking restaurants. It would also be helpful to know the port times when your planning for dinner. Again you have to keep track of it yourself. Major bug is that most of the time after adding a restaurant to the cart and then viewing the cart, it’s emptied out. I’ve tried multiple times and when you go to view the cart it’s empty. It seems like this is random. I guess I’ll try again another day.

Sometimes updated isn’t necessarily better. Last year this app worked on the Escape. This year on the Bliss it was useless. App crashes in the middle of use. Phone usually doesn’t work, calls go directly to voicemail, you rarely can have a 2 way conversation. Sometimes you need to restart app and clear cache to make a call. Sometimes loses connectivity in cabin (deck 11 midship so I don’t see why this should happen). This app is almost useless for phone calls. ***NCL has some nerve charging $10 for something that shouldn’t even be a beta release***. Also NCL, you should be able to add people by stateroom and name, or issue phone numbers in advance. Once in the ship you need someone’s phone number to add them, but you need to make contact with them to get it. On a side note, I notice many 5 star reviews are for the cruise line, not the app. Please people you are skewing the rating for this app. I had a great time too, but leave those 5 star reviews on a travel site, not for this crappy app! WOULD BE NICE IF NORWEGIAN WOULD READ THESE REVIEWS AND FIX THIS CRAPPY APP. For a company that’s so attentive to their passengers, I’m surprised they ignore these.

NCL depends on people purchasing remotely. It would make sense to have a great App but they don’t. This app is the worst I’ve seen in a long time. Whoever is giving this 5 stars must have never actually tried to purchase excursions or schedule dinner reservations through it. A few times I tried to put items in the cart then switch over to the cart and it would be empty. Then, I put an upgrade in the basket then decided against purchasing it but I couldn’t delete it. You hit the “remove” button or you can also swipe left then hit the “remove” button but neither worked anyway. The remove button only appeared when I put another item in the basket with it. I tried to make dinner reservations, it would let me select them then prompt me saying they were no longer available. I finally called guest service and their response was “we get a lot of complaints about the app”. Thankfully customer service was helpful because I was getting discouraged from buy anything. I certainly lost confidence and trust in this app. Needs updating or an entirely new app.

The issue really comes down to communication with NCL. The messages they send are a mixture of advertising (sign up for our credit card) and really important (your itinerary changed) but you can’t 1) delete them, 2) mark them read or unread, or 3) sort them in any way. On top of it all, messages in the app’s message center all say they were received the same day for me. The day isn’t the day I booked the cruise or downloaded the app, so I have no idea what its significance is. I missed several really important messages because I had no “new” messages or way to see what was recent. Additionally, getting to your edocs is much more awkward than it needs to be with the button placed in the very bottom corner of the check in page. Half the time when you try to go to them it takes you to your phone’s home page thinking you’re trying to swipe up. Could be decent but it has serious issues with simple functions.

This is the worse cruise I have ever been on from day one my toilet have been stopped up everyday and went you call the front desk they have a attitude with you that’s poor customer service and they act like it is our fault that the toilet is getting stopped up one of the workers said that they are having problems with other toilets as well. I’ve been on many cruises, but this is the worst one that I ever been on. I don’t even know if I’m gonna take another cruise line. Maybe I will try to see if it is the same and if so, I would never do Norwegian ever again, I can’t wait to get off of this ship I was so excited about coming here to have a 10 day relax vacation but it’s just not that way they do not have any entertainment on here for you so it’s really not much for you to do Internet service is not working too well they had to cancel one of the good entertainment because of the connections on the food on the ship is OK not so happy very disappointed with this ship

I downloaded the app so that my husband and I could text or call each other while on the ship. When downloading, you agree to access of your photos. Of course we did for texting purposes. I just got off the ship yesterday. My pictures were scanned and any picture made on the ship that appeared to be taken by their professional photographers, although they were not, obviously caused a red flag and ALL of my pictures for two days were deleted. We had a stranger make a picture of us instead of a grand chandelier on Deck 8 of the Breakaway, and it is clearly by a pedestrian because I have my backpack on my arm-this was not a professional picture, but because they obviously have a ship photographer use this location in the evenings, this flagged my pictures and all of my pics were deleted from the Virgin Islands as well as the next day at sea. These were priceless pictures from my honeymoon that I cannot get back. I will never sail with Norwegian again and I warn everyone about to do not download this app!!!

I should probably start with the battery management on iPhone 15 Pro Max. This app ate 45% of battery mostly via background activity (22hrs+ of background activity within the past 24 hrs). Yes, we are cruising right now on NCL. Second, it’s really hard to find things on the ship. I have a dining reservation and the location of the restaurant is now shown. I have to search for that restaurant separately in order to find deck location. The deck maps are quite limited. Things like the shuffleboard are not shown. Also, I paid for unlimited internet and yet I cannot access websites that have nothing to do with video streaming. I was looking for an option to upgrade my internet access, it doesn’t exist in the app. We probably cruised 10 times so far on Royal Caribbean, this is our first NCL cruise and sadly it will likely be the last as well. So I’ll delete the app as soon as I return home.

Good features like showing my cruise account balance, my plans, and the ship's itinerary. Plus all the places to eat, be entertained, makes it really easy to find where to go. Very easy to book excursions. When the app is working properly, it improves my cruise experience. Activate/deactivate internet packages, etc. For the first several days of my cruise, the daily events/what's happening wasn't being updated so I had to take photos of the paper schedule to have it on my phone. Also the app has problems logging in to my account if I switch from ship wifi to cellular. Has other issues loading data. The part of the app that shows what's happening morning/afternoon/evening (the week view with tabs) was empty for the entire cruise. Overall a must to have for NCL cruises. Good experience, just needs a few tweaks

Third trip with NCL. Decided to use the app this time. Very clunky and confusing. Information is incorrect. We paid in full at booking and for 3 weeks it told me I had an additional 900+ balance. Contacted NCL to confirm and they told me it was a glitch. Apps should make it easier, not harder. Completed check in on it and it kept saying just a few more steps to complete check in. Can’t delete messages after you read them. Most are just trying to sell you upgrades. Depending on what you are doing in the app, it bounces back and forth to the website. Hoping it works better in a couple of days when we cruise. Still waiting on boarding passes as it was not clear if I did finish the check in, had to confirm with the 800 number that it was complete. We have two state rooms and it’s the same clunky thing on my wife’s phone with the other room.

This app was very useful to find your daily schedule, book shore excursions, see your balance, and make dinner reservations. I would give this 5 stars but the internet package needs to be improved. The price of the internet is astronomical as expected (almost $1 a minute), but sometimes you can use your minutes but not even get signal. Even simple things like messages won't load. If you don't use this app to disconnect, it will charge you an extra 8 or 9 minutes. Also all minutes are rounded down so if you have 59 seconds left, you really have 0. The best is when you can connect but then their wifi doesn't work and you cannot disconnect. That also will charge your minutes.

Inability to undo, for example should you make a dinner reservation you cannot undo it. Wife made two for the same date at the same time, cannot undo, potentially locking other people out of that slot we couldn’t fill. Also the back button in each page is embedded at the top of each page rather than at the top but scrolls away with the page so you constantly exit the page because the app itself has a back arrow at the top embedded to remain there Messaging is an extra fee (welcome to the new cruising norm of nickel and diming guests to death but if you have WiFi you should use normal texting with proper alerts to each others. It’s better than some cruising apps but still has interface and functionality issues.

iOS 15.3.1, iPhone 12 Pro - This app worked fine on land with good performance and no noticeable battery drain. I am currently on the NCL Bliss and I find this app still works alright but it has very high battery drain for no apparent reason. At night my phone is fully charged and connected to the internet when I go to bed. When I wake up in the morning I find my battery sitting at about 49%. The first time it happened I thought it was a fluke, but it happens every night. When I investigate the issue I find the Norwegian app had 1 minute of screen on time and 9.5 hours of background activity. What is this app doing in the background while I am sleeping? There is no way this app needs to be doing anything in the background while the app is not in use. This high battery usage is definitely a bug that needs to be investigated and resolved.

Overall this app does a credible job enhancing our NCL cruising experience. Once you learn to navigate the app, the amount of cruise information is impressive and it gets high marks for this. I would give this app 5 stars if it included a provision to communicate with other cruise party members. We are cruising with a party of 15 and are find it difficult to sync up across this many cruisers. Unless everyone purchases a full complement of internet services (silly expensive just for messaging), we are back to leaving paper messages on doors (terribly inconvenient…especially when people are spread all over the ship). NCL needs to find a way to satisfy this need.

Let me start with the pro’s. For texting it worked GREAT!! It was a life saver for the 5 of us on a huge ship. Having the itinerary at your fingertips everyday to know what’s going on is wonderful as well as being able to keep up with your spending, or your kids spending, also a plus. Where it falls short, the phone option is spotty at best. While you can make reservations for some shows, you can’t for others and this gets confusing. Menus should be available for all the restaurants. This would be awesome. Description of shows would be a bonus as well. The other bad thing it is a battery drainer!! I had to charge my phone 2 times a day with that app running. I would still recommend this app, especially for groups.

This is a very poorly designed app; you are forced to use it for certain aspects of the cruise. It has a lot of potential but falls far short from being the pocket concierge that it could be. It requires on-board WiFi which is difficult and expense to setup. If you are travel with others who are not on the same account, it is impossible to use to coordinate activities. The paper ‘What’s Happening Today’ newsletter, pencil and paper are more effective than this app. It really is not designed from the point of view of the traveler especially if this is your first cruise. It’s complicated, hard to find what you need and no ability to make changes to reservations. Many of the app features don’t work or take you to external web pages that no longer exist. Has potential but needs a lot of work.

App works pretty nice for the most part but some key functionalities are very buggy... I couldn’t complete online checkin using the app because it erroneously was not checking off one of my sections as complete, even though I had entered all required fields and did not get error messages when submitting. I also booked dinner reservations weeks ago (or so I had thought) but the app didn’t register them. I received neither error or confirmation messages. Navigating around the app can also be very confusing at times... it’s not laid out very well. I’m pretty shocked that a big line such as Norwegian hasn’t made a user friendly app that actually functions as expected. Very frustrating experience. You know it’s bad when you call customer service and their own agents are telling you not to use their buggy app and do everything on a computer instead.

This app is about selling things, not about helping you while on the cruise. It even requires an up-charge to use the in-app chat to get help or enquire about something the app leaves ambiguous. (Up-charges are a typical and overly-common Norwegian Cruise Line feature, so no surprise here). And... It’s slow, especially when it needs to access something off your phone. Perfect example: it asked me if I liked the app.... I inadvertently answered yes. This locked the phone for about 90 seconds, after which it asked me to write this review. About 30 more seconds of locked app later, I was able to start typing. (And this is with me having the premium WiFi/internet package, which cost so much, it’s embarrassing to mention). I’m sure if I had said no to the “do you like this app” question, I would have suffered no delay, because the app would not dare ask me to enter a review. Having said that, I was able to order a diving excursion, and a few hours later the tickets arrived at my stateroom... so it does appear the app works for ordering things. Just don’t expect it to help you become acquainted with the ship, nor current goings on, if you didn’t already know these things.

It’s was nice being able to have the daily itinerary on my phone, and see info about some of the activities/locations but that was about the only useful thing it did right. All over the ship and the itinerary it stresses making reservations for things, dining, shows, tenders etc. and to do so it always said to make those reservations in person, at a touchscreen kiosk, or with your stateroom TV. “Well why not in the app?” I thought. Well it turns out some things you can reserve in the app, and some things you can’t. Some things you can’t even find listed in the app. Seemingly random. Practically useless. Additionally when I tried to load my personal itinerary, it was a gamble as to if it would even load, and when it did, it was not correct. Useless. The app would randomly log me out at least once a day, usually multiple times. Very stressful in the beginning of the trip when I still though the app would be invaluable, and I could not recall my password, with no internet for a password recovery email. Thankfully by the end of the trip I became an expert in my login credentials. Pointlessly. Because as I said. The app was nearly useless.

This app is so buggy. I just got done sailing with Norwegian and really expected the app to be more useful. First off, you can’t download the app until your connected to the ships Wi-Fi but you can’t connect to the ships Wi-Fi until you’ve downloaded the app. Soooooo you can see how if someone didn’t know this until after you have set sail they would be almost totally out of luck as far as downloading the app goes. It would constantly shut down when trying to book any shore excursions or just freeze up halfway through any online checkin processes. Luckily the TV in your stateroom is useful for checking dinner reservation information but I would think that would be something they could very easily add into the app. Anyway, that’s just my opinion.

One would expect a world class cruise line like Norwegian to have a world class app, but such is not the case. Very often when searching and/or placing items in the cart for purchase, the app freezes up, items appear and disappear from favorites and cart. Every time, you have to log out and then log in again. Also, much of the descriptions are full of fluff with lots of descriptive adjectives but little concrete information. Although I cannot say that this app has not been helpful in planning our cruise, but it has been very frustrating to use. And by the way, it is exactly what you’d find online which also does the same frustrating things.

It has a lot of information, but is lacking things that would be helpful. 1. Excursions that you like and save, you should be able to organize them by the ports, once you have them in the like part. 2. It does not have in your reservation all of the extra offers that where included in your ticket purchase, at least with the deposit you made. (Maybe, it’s added once you pay in full) 3. You should be able to email them back. But, they are only able to send you an email and you can’t respond or ask them a question. 4. It allows you to book a cruise online, but does not allow you to add a day or two at the beginning or end of your cruise, with the airline request (you must call). It also does not tell you it must be within a 2 day time frame. You should probably go ahead and use a travel agent then book online, to make sure your getting what you paid for and what they are advertising, to be on the safe side!

My family and I just went on a Norwegian cruise this past week. To clarify, we went on the Norwegian Breakaway ship. The app was not much help for us. To communicate with each other it was a 50-50 chance to get through to them. When trying to call my parents or my brother, it would just go straight to voicemail. (There were certain parts of the boat you could not get through to whoever you’re with no matter how hard to try) Overall, my family did like the app except for the communication aspect of it. Also it was a little confusing to navigate through at first, but once you got used to it, it was a lot easier. It was nice to be able to look on the app to see what all was happening that day and 24 hours ahead for any activities. Along with that, what you had booked for your cruise trip: dining, excursions (what you are doing on the excursions), and the activities on board. I’m mainly giving the app 3 stars mainly for communication issues and prices of activities onboard.

The NCL cruise consultant say the app is better than the webpage… the app is buggy, is hard to navigate, and continually informs me when I do anything that I’m “leaving the app”. I have to cancel to stay in the app. Beware of the webpage too! It doesn’t ask you if you want to arrive early or depart late. This is causing us to arrive by air five hours ahead of the cruise. Not much time for hiccups!! Would’ve preferred some check box or something where I’d info NCL of our wishes. Maybe I missed it?? Also, NCL website doesn’t adequately inform you that the names of the travelers need to exactly match passports. This will cost you $150 to change once airfare is booked (assumes you book your air travel by NCL).

I like the app but they don’t allow you to make changes to your reservations in the app. You have to call ncl. Should add a feature to be able to change your plans. I really hate that you make an excursion reservation and can no longer see other available options. You have to call and ask what excursions are available. I understand why you can’t make changes directly but should atleast be able to see other options. Also, wish there was an option to be on a waitlist for items that’s sold out in case there is an opening.

This app does MANY things wrong. First off, it’s clunky and crashes every few hours. Second, it does the *extremely* chaotic practice of auto-saving every picture that is sent over chat. Meaning if ANYONE sends you a picture on the onboard chat section of the app, it will AUTOMATICALLY save that to your photo library. You may not even see the message but the picture will end up in your camera roll. This is very problematic as someone could send literally anything, maybe even child porn, and it would auto save to your camera roll. Please fix this NCL. also outsource your app development to a 3rd party like Royal Caribbean does.

Pre-cruise, the app would not let us make reservations for restaurants or book excursions, needed to call the phone number to complete those. Also the app won’t let you cancel a reservation if you make a mistake. Once we’re on the ship, most things worked fine with the exception of the Wi-Fi. It worked fine at sea but terrible in port. On the plus side, we had no problems using the app for checking in. Not sure why there are so many 5 star reviews because the app clearly needs revamping. The one other cruise line app I’ve used had none of these issues. NCL needs to do better with this app. 2 stars as only the basics work.

I have been traveling Norwegian for many years on many ships, but this is day one of my current voyage on the Encore for the second time they have lost our luggage, our room keys did not function properly, we have been given wrong information about Internet access. And for the first time ever- I have encountered callous indifference to our concerns. This is not the Norwegian experience I have been accustomed to after many trips. My family is scheduled on a cruise in April, I am strongly considering seeking an alternative cruise line as a result of this as I recommended Norwegian to my family, and do not want them to encounter this type of service. Norwegian has obviously gone downhill. Loyal member who is reevaluating options.

The app works well, there’s limits to the things you can book online but for the most part it works well but my biggest issue is that a lot of things require your reservation number… hard to track that down with the app. Also wish it had a way to send message to concierge about why we’re cruising (it’s our 15 year anniversary). I did use it to figure out what shore excursions to do, so overall a five star app.

The title summarizes my thoughts. I just downloaded it last night and I like it much better than the website. However, I think the organization could be improved tremendously by simply offering categories, such as: Excursions, offer a filter by Port or by activity level Food, offer a filter for cost or complementary, also to filter restaurants that are participating with the food package purchase

The app itself has several errors and timeouts when trying to use it. On a day when we had multiple things scheduled, it would only display the dinner meal even though it said we had two items scheduled. Tried several times to pull up our on board account with no success. Waited in line for an well over an hour on 6/16 only to be informed the show was canceled and will be rescheduled. This is quite disappointing. With all of this said, we still like traveling with NCL. But the app development team needs to test their work.

This app is one of the worst I have used! Everything has links to go somewhere else and those have links to go somewhere else instead of putting the required information in one place. Half the links don’t work so if you really need the info you have to go to the website. No real help just a link to call the main NCL number which makes it very difficult to get information. Details are purposely lacking. On top of all that there are links and prices to add packages I’ve already purchased making it very confusing so I don’t know if I indeed already have the package or not. As a software engineer, I am appalled by this app!!!

I suddenly can’t login to either the app or the website. It keeps telling me that my info is incorrect (it’s not) and when I try to reset my password, it doesn’t even find my name or email address in the system. Did my entire account get wiped?? I have an upcoming cruise booked that I can’t get to. I’m not able to book any excursions or anything. I was on the fence about this cruise anyway and now I think I’ll just cancel it while I can still get my money back. On another note… I did a 12 day cruise with NCL last month and the app was terrible. You should take some lessons from Royal Caribbean, as their app is light years ahead and works great.

Other ships have handyphones. The other Norwegian ships have the old apps that kids with phones can use. But this new app would not allow our 13-year-old to register. On top of that the ship has no back up plan (handyphones to rent). So it very much made for some bad days and time on ship when my kid either is unreachable and can’t be found, or I make him stay with us. Kids have phones and families communicate with phones. I want him to be able to hang with friends, but to be reachable for plans as a family. Find a way to make this work or we can’t go back. The entire rest of the cruise/experience was great.

I like just about everything about this app except the in app communication from NCL. The app was great when planning my June 2023 cruise on the Joy. Unfortunately, it’s not been helpful for planning my May 2025 cruise on Aqua. I realize much of the information is not yet available but the internal messaging from NCL is terrible! There is a flag daily asking for a payment or loose my reservation. None due till Jan, 2025. There is no way to archive or acknowledge messages. Please see if this can be corrected. Thank you

Great for watching schedule when it is working. On transatlantic cruise, they failed to update time or did not do so till late morning. With 5 time zones this is important. System kicks you out 2-3 times a day. If not used to the app it is hard to find place to log off so when you think you have logged off, it continues to use your minutes. Large lines at internet help desk due to users losing minutes. In our case my wife lost over 200 minutes. One would think, since you need it on board, they would do a better job of keeping it updated.

This app is junk and wasn't worth the $10 x 6 people to use. Here is the list of issues, but let me be clear its a great idea with a failed execution. Crashes all the time. Only works on boats wifi so you can do anything from shore to boat even with data. Calls wont answer most the time. Nothing has ratings and you cant rate the excursions either. Most people devices need to have the app open to get notifications. Text and photos randomly double send. Time was never correct with “Boat time”. Thats just a few. Fix your at NCL and this could be a great app other wise save the cash for a taxi to go see something.

Half the time I can’t connect - not sure if it’s the Wi-Fi, but all passengers should have access to the app at all times regardless of log in or Wi-Fi plan or age. It’s just to hard - I would rather carry a piece of paper with my calendar and a map of the ship. Also, consider the video screens at the elevators - they are useless and hard to read/follow. Hate to compare cruise lines, but Princess seems to be the easiest and most intuitive with the medallions. Tracking family and friends, finding restaurants and shops on the ship with the giant, horizontal screens at the elevators, wearing your medallion instead of carrying a card - super easy.

I enjoy cruising Norwegian. I have been on 44 cruises, 13 with Norwegian. but this review is strictly about using the app. as a former programmer, they might be a little tricky to accomplish. I would have appreciated being able to click on a restaurant and being able to see the upcoming menu, particularly for the main dining room, which would change for lunch and dinner. it seems to me that it would require someone to provide information on each of the ships which could be tricky. It would also be nice to be able to add things to favorites that are not necessarily listed. For example, captains dinner, cruise critic meet and mingle, left right center game. again, I’m not sure where that data would be stored. if those could be added, it would be wonderful.

When I first started using this app a few weeks ago, it was working fine. I’m stateside and not aboard ship. But these last few days, the app crashes while looking up the available excursions. I select sort by port, and scroll through the list. When I get to a selection and want to find out more, the app crashes. It’s annoying to have to start all over again each time I want to find out more. It makes me wonder how much worse it will be when aboard ship, especially after reading some of these reviews.

So far the app has been great and easy to use but there is one minor issue. I keep getting notifications that something needs my attention. When I open the app, I see that I have a new message. However, when I open the messages I do not have any new messages, they are all old messages that I have already read. I wish there was a way to delete them once I’ve read them. Also the notification badge will not go away.

Navigating through parts of the app isn’t always logical and easy. For example, when reviewing the ports of call schedule, one would expect to be able to select a port and view all excursions for that port, but it only shows three. To view all ports one must select “View All Shore Excursions” which takes you to a page that shows all excursions but they are not categorized by ports of call making it difficult to review. Why can’t we see a list of all excursions by port?

I have come to really appreciate using this app- both before cruising and while aboard. However, there is one hiccup that never seems to get resolved when updates are run- every time it loads a screen where the “chat” feature appears in the corner it pops a message saying I’m “leaving the app” and click confirm or cancel. I always click cancel and I can stay on the screen I’m navigating, but it’s a pain to constantly have this happen. Are they ever going to fix this glitch?!

But ... has a few bugs to fix: first of all it was very difficult to register. Then had to turn off app then back in to be able to log in to confirm I had finally registered. Keeps trying to redirect me “outside the app” for what I believe is a credit card application which I did not request. When I booked shows, redirected me to a blank page. I knew i had a reservation thanks to the email. Too much scrolling to find airline and flights. Easier if one could simply type airport and airline codes.

It’s not the worst app but as big as NCL is their developers could learn a thing or two from Royal’s developers regarding a travel app. It’s also disappointing that the app is useless onboard. Also, in a post COVID world you would think they learned how beneficial a robust app could be. It’s mediocre at best. Side note, please clean the carpets in the ship. The first thing I noticed when stepping onboard for my first ever trip with NCL Encore is the funky smell. It reminded me of a restaurant that has carpet and all the funk is trapped in the carpets. Not a pleasant first impression.

When you initially log into the app it is difficult to find the excursion, the a buried under a different heading. This app should be easy to use and find what your are lookout g for but it is not. Perhaps they should have a separate menu item for excursions booking then an option for booked. .Like I said once you login and play with it you can figure out where everything is buried but it should not be this way. If you haven’t logged in a while you forget where things are buried to find them it should be easily found all in your face under the menu bar.