NCL Cruises, Nowegian Wind, Australasia

My husband and I have just returned from our honeymoon in Asia. A honeymoon which included a 4 night cruise on the Super Star Aquarius from Singapore. We had chosen star cruises and Super Star Aquarius for two specific reasons. The first of which is, we have cruised with star cruises on Super Star Leo (now Norwegian Spirit) in 2004 and had enjoyed an exceptional cruise with fantastic activities, entertainment and especially food and service. The second reason for choosing Superstar Aquarius is that we sailed on this ship as the Norwegian Wind in Hawaii. We enjoyed the ship, we understood it was both smaller and older than the Super Star Leo on which we had previously cruised, but we had enjoyed this ship in Hawaii, so with Star Cruises excellent food and service on top of this - how could we go wrong with the superstar Aquarius for our honeymoon?? Well unfortunately I feel we went very wrong. Without going into large detail, I will highlight what were complete deficiencies in our cruise as far as I am concerned. Firstly, the fact that most of the restaurants were buffets was very disappointing. They do not offer a quality dining experience at all. The buffets lacked cleanliness, service, choice and often had no orange juice left at breakfast in the dispenses. At no point in the whole cruise did we feel “waited” on at all. More so, it was a bit of push and shove and help yourselves to buffets. To get wine or drinks orders, you had to ask for attention. Often our whole meal was finished and plates were not removed. Even in the dynasty restaurant we were not really waited on, especially at breakfast, tables were not set and staff were milling around often talking when there was much work to be done. I was also incredibly disappointed with the move for all restaurants to have buffet style dessert, so although we tried to get waited on by using dynasty for most of our evening meals we still had the same basic buffet desserts as the rest of the ship, with nothing special, and very repetitive menu choices on the dessert buffet. Also the lack of a formal night – on a 4 night cruise, there would usually be a formal night and we had taken formal clothes all the way from Australia for not a single special dining moment to be had. Besides the poor dining experience, the other noticeable problem was the lack of organised activities. There was little trivia or games during the day. Many activities were gauged to teens or kids with little specifically for adults, there wasn’t even such simply things as cocktail making or napkin folding!! There was one session of fruit carving demonstration and a few very basic trivia games. The night time game shows by the assistant cruise director were good but this did not make up for the lack proper shows at night. Without the Chinese acrobats, the two shows would have had no substance and for the other two nights there wasn’t even a proper show. Although there were many port stops and you presume most people get off, there is still a requirement for some type of organised activities. A whole section of the program that says – design your own activity – just ask cruise staff is just not good enough. Our downfall in choosing this cruise, was the lack of information available. We booked early when the itinerary was released and no reviews were available. We found out from other patrons on board, the short cruises from Singapore are frequented by gamblers and the casino forms a great deal of the entertainment for the cruise. Also a bit disappointing, we didn’t realise smoking is still allowed on board in nearly all areas and although it stated no smoking in the state room ,our neighbours often smoked and the smell was brought into our room complements of the air conditioning. Despite these deficiencies with food, service and entertainment. The concierge desk was very helpful and pleasant in helping me organise a special package of champagne and cake and decorated the room for our honeymoon at short notice (as this should have been booked in advance). They were helpful in currency exchange and general planning as well, but the overall experience on the cruise was sheer disappointment.