On Board Norwegian Cruise Lines' Star to Alaska

Alaska Cruise June 2010 on the NCL Star



One of the benchmarks of a business plan for a retail outlet is revenue per square foot.

It is not the model for executive suites, or country clubs, or churches or, until my recent cruise to Alaska on board the Norwegian Cruise Lines ship The Star, cruise ships.

At least that is not the image projected in the seductive promotions for those glamorous, carefree floating resorts. It was certainly not the model on that same cruise line when I cruised on its ships on two previous occasions. It has not been the business model on two other cruise lines I have sailed with.

The NCL Star at 91,745 tons and 965 feet long is a large ship. It is typical of cruise ships, sleek, majestic enviable. But as we cruised I began to become aware that something about life on board a cruise ship was missing on this ship.

What I would call “the cruise experience” was gone.

The fault was not that of the crew. The crew were all very attentive, helpful and friendly.

It wasn’t the food. Menus in the main dining room were creative, the food very good, the presentation and service excellent. The signature chocolate buffet late one night still offered chocoholics a taste of heaven.

While some of the entertainment was very amateurish, the staging of the main shows was quite spectacular. There were tall exciting spiral waterslides in the pool that might tempt adults to get out of the hot tubs or deck chairs and recapture some of the exhilaration of youth.

It wasn’t the interior decor. There was the usual central glitzy soaring atrium, the attempt at an ambience of opulence in the main Versailles diningroom. Attention had been paid to the bathrooms in the stateroom where there was a small sliding glass door to the shower stall instead of the usual thin plastic curtain, and another sliding door separating the toilet from the washbasin area. Remarkable. The crew kept the ship very clean.

But some grinch or more likely, bean counter of an executive board had stolen the “cruise” from “cruise ship”.

You could just imagine the process as they went through the ship trying to wring more revenue from each square foot of its decks, passageways, lounges, not by adding value ( at least not for the passengers or crew) to these but by turning them into so-called “Specialty Restaurants”, super-priced “Garden Villas”, eliminating even the usually complimentary lemonade from the cafeteria, and keeping the passengers circulating around the shops, buying photographs, paying extra for “specialty” restaurants rather than encouraging them to sit around, relax and enjoy panoramic views from expansive public areas by severely limiting such areas.

They may have started with the staterooms.

No more Room Stewards with a name and a telephone extension number and an assistant. Probably eliminated a few hires. And why not? The telephone operator could channel requests for that clean towel or small repair in your cabin in between her other calls, no? Or for a bar of soap. No, not soap. No more little bars of soap. Just a soap dispenser with industrial grade detergent. Is it really necessary to have an employee with a smile and helpful attitude to introduce him/herself to the guest at the beginning of the cruise as your assigned Room Steward anyway? Couldn’t he/she be more profitably used by sending him/her wherever a cabin needed attention anywhere on the ship or to free up personnel to sell Welcome Drinks at the Grand Atrium on embarkation? Every small profit counts. Certainly. The guests won’t miss the personal touch, would they? You even eliminate the pitcher of water in the cabin to steer the occupants to the almost $6 USD bottle of designer water in its place if he is incapacitated or not motivated to walk the 600 feet and several decks to the cafeteria just for a generously free glass of water with ice or too finicky to drink the water from the tap. Oh, but a bucket of ice is still provided and the guest can wait for it to melt. So many alternatives. Thank you NCL.

And those staterooms: no armchair. Just a cafeteria style straightback tubular steel and plain hard plastic seat and small back panel type chair and a matching wellworn stool, no back. Just the kind of furniture for a romantic room service breakfast, right? Or for sitting around to read that novel you packed. Well, if your cabin has a verandah, at a premium of course, there’s a more comfortable deck chair out there, leisurely on a Caribbean cruise but on an Alaska cruise?

Ah those ever-present bracing 20 mph headwinds, created by the forward movement of the ship, chill even in the Tropics, biting in Alaskan waters. On every other cruise ship I have sailed you needn’t brave them to have a wonderful 180˚ view because there has always been a vast totally enclosed lounge the entire width of the ship and located right up front. On The Star if you wanted such a view you had to brave the elements and that headwind because there is no such enclosed observation lounge, just open decks up front. There are glass panels with gaps between them. Ineffective. The design also spoils your photography because exposed glass on ships is always marred by salt residue.

What happened to the panoramic observation lounge? The closest thing to it is a similar but much smaller structure midship with a view of the pool, waterslide and some masts. The top level is occupied by those super expensive villas, The lower level is a cramped bar. You don’t have to pay to sit in it of course to admire the waterslide, unable to see the wide horizon hidden by it, but it is so evidently a bar that you feel odd sitting there and not buying a drink.

And that seems to be the idea also behind what are normally choice public lounging areas on other ships which on this ship have been designated “Specialty Restaurants” with a cover charge. They are not walled off but even outside of restaurant hours they are unmistakeably revenue-producing areas, meant for business not lounging with a book. Since they occupy most of the best vantage points other than your own cabin it means few places to just stop by and admire the view.

Every cruise I have been on has had a cocktail party hosted by the Captain for all the passengers. Not this one. There was a cocktail party for members of NCL’s frequent cruisers’ club. Other than that if you wanted to have your picture taken with the Captain there was a session at which the professional photographers would take it and of course you could buy a print. Don’t think of taking out your little “point and shoot” digital camera and doing it yourself. And those photographers...every single evening they prowled the main dining room taking not just a picture of couples but of each individual as well. Three pictures instead of one. No obligation to buy of course but...

But I save the worst for last, and this may have explicit language, so be forewarned. On cruises significant numbers of passengers require wheelchair assistance. The usual cruise line practice is to provide curb to cabin assistance, but on every cruise I have had, even those with large numbers of such guests, if the passenger requested and there were sufficient wheelchairs (and there always were), the line would leave the wheelchair with the passenger for use on board.

Well here was the ultimate captive market for NCL’s revenue magicians. If you wanted a wheelchair on board you had to rent one. Granted, even that in principle might be ok. But there were two absolutely devious and heartless aspects to NCL’s practice.

The minimum rental on this 7 day cruise was for 10 days, at an unreasonable minimum charge of $125 USD. That was Gotcha #1.

Gotcha #2 should be qualified with an expletive. On the last evening there was an announcement that those who rented wheel chairs were expected to turn them in that night to have them inspected and the paperwork completed before the rush of disembarkation. The announcement added, seemingly solicitously, that NCL would provide complimentary wheelchair assistance from the holding area for disembarkation the next morning upon request. Of course that overlooked the little matter of the handicapped person having to get around from the moment he/she returned the rented wheelchair at the Reception Desk, till next morning when he/she would have to find some means of navigating the up to 600 feet and some decks to the holding area.

I happened to be sitting listening to the music in the Grand Atrium near the Reception Desk that night at about 10:30p when I witnessed the most disgusting impact of the totally greedy and inhumane business model that NCL seems to have applied to its cruises.

A very overweight middle-aged lady wheeled an equally overweight sickly elderly female relative to the Reception Desk to dutifully return their wheelchair. With difficulty the older lady got up from the chair and unsteadily supported herself with the help of a cane on legs too weak to sustain her weight while the checkin process proceeded. When the process was completed the pair shuffled off with evidently great discomfort and difficulty holding on to each other. Distances to staterooms are quite far in a ship the size of the Star.

But the ultimate in indignity was that as they passed it was obvious that the older lady was incontinent and had to shuffle along at her slow pace, her pants wet, through the public passageways of this glamorous ship all the way to her cabin. Meanwhile there were still technically three days of wheelchair rental that she had paid for but could not use.

I inherited from my mother a resistance to seasickness, but I came close to puking as I seethed with rage and disgust at Norwegian Cruise Lines at how low they had sunk.

The receptionist was pleasant, quick and efficient, and doing her job. She couldn’t see the lady’s predicament from her station. I repeat, all the personnel on the ship were excellent, professional, helpful and friendly. She is in no way to be blamed in this.

It’s those bean counters isolated in the plush no-expense-spared executive suites where revenue per square foot is irrelevant. They had robbed that elderly lady of the cruise experience that was owed her. They had robbed her of thirty percent of the rental of her wheelchair. They had even robbed her of her dignity. They had reduced the pleasure of cruising for most guests, herded them by the interior layout of the ship as much as possible from lounging areas with views to revenue-producing outlets and impersonalized the cruise experience.