Norwegian Cruise Line 4+

Update: Someone exaggerated I visit the ship’s Internet cafe and chat with the tech guy on duty. Turns out if you have an iPhone and the private relay feature is turned on, you need to turn it off. Both NCL apps work just fine now. Now being able to really compare both apps while on board, I prefer the old app due to the chat feature and the deck plans/maps. If NCL continues with the new app, please add those 2 features! I’ve been on the ship all day and the app still doesn’t recognize I’m on board even though it shows ship time. The ship’s internet is working fine on my phone but neither app (this one and the old one) will recognize I’m on board. I can’t see my itinerary or any of my excursions/meal reservations. The chat feature of the app isn’t coming up like it normally does. I’m very frustrated. This shouldn’t happen. I liked this new app better than the older one right up until I boarded the ship. Now it won’t work at all. I just get errors. Update: it’s day 5 of my 10 day cruise and it still won’t recognize I’m on board or function properly.

Why on earth would you shut down your old app when the new one is NOT working??? For the pages that do load, for me, it takes a minimum of 15-20 seconds to load. Some pages will eventually return an error message. Some will continue trying to load until the phone times out and goes to the lock screen. Even when you keep touching to screen to keep it alive, it fails to load after several minutes. When I was on the ship three weeks ago, I was able to get into both apps. The new app is prettier, but the old app was much easier to use. Quickly reviewing your onboard account for all the daily charges was nearly impossible, but it did have one advantage that you could click on a charge and get more details about it. That advantage was not worth it when you have to scroll and scroll to see everything for even one day, especially when you have kids also making charges to the same account. The new app says I’ve bought nothing for my upcoming cruise even though I’ve booked and paid for all of the excursions. Maybe excursions appear on a different page that won’t load. I have no idea. There is absolutely no way that this new app has earned an overall rating of 4.8 stars after thousands of ratings. Something is being manipulated. My husband can’t even get the first page to load, and my Facebook feed is filled with posts from people who are very angry and frustrated with all the many shortcomings of this app compared to the old one.

(Posting this review for experiences Jan/Feb 2025 for cruise sailing dates summer 2025)
Our group of four has spent numerous hours trying to book excursions through the app and also the website. We have reviewed, selected, added excursions to our cart and when we attempt to purchase, we get a message that an error has occurred, and our cart has emptied by the system. So we spend more time searching for the excursion we wish to purchase. Try to add them each back to the cart and get an error, “Whoops, an error has occurred. Please try again later” or “No longer available”. We have tried to chat with representatives who tell us, “You will need to call the booking office”, but the office is unavailable.
We have tried to purchase excursions at all hours of the day; hours that would be considered regular business hours, very late evening, moments after midnight, and at every hour through the night from 1:00am-7:00am.
There has been NO EASE as the title of this app states and there website is no better. We have been trying to accept the glitches happen and mentally “chant“ affirmations to ourselves that we are going to have a great time. We have spent years saving for and now have spent several thousand dollars on this dream cruise but it might be our first and last time on Norwegian. We have sailed with two other cruise lines and never had a single problem with either. We are so frustrated and disappointed with Norwegian.