Trip Jar note: This article contains an affiliate link. If you book through it, Trip Jar may earn a commission at no additional cost to you. As always, what follows is based on what Jodie and I actually experienced.
Seven nights aboard Norwegian Prima left me with a slightly inconvenient conclusion:
We really liked the ship.
We also have a list of things that annoyed the heck out of us.
Both can be true.
Jodie and I sailed Norwegian Prima from Port Canaveral September 20–27, staying in a Haven Penthouse with Large Balcony. Technically, this was my second Norwegian cruise, but the first one was more than 25 years ago. At that point, I think the statute of limitations has expired. For practical purposes, Prima felt like starting over with NCL.
Over the course of the week, we ate our way through The Haven Restaurant, Indulge Food Hall, Surfside, The Local and four specialty restaurants. We sampled enough cocktails to call it research without laughing too hard. We got lost more times than I care to admit, met some genuinely memorable people and somehow discovered that the best steak I ate on the ship was not served in the steakhouse.
Prima wasn’t perfect.
The food was inconsistent. Some of the extra charges irritated me. Parts of the ship could go from peaceful to oh crap, where did all these people come from? surprisingly fast.
But there was also a lot we loved.
And much of that came down to The Haven.
So, did we like Norwegian Prima?
Yes.
I wouldn’t call Prima the best ship we’ve ever sailed in every category. Based on our own past cruises, Norwegian didn’t beat MSC, Royal Caribbean or Margaritaville at Sea at everything.
But Prima gave us a very good week.
The ship is beautiful. The cocktail program was better than I expected. Some of the onboard experiences genuinely impressed us. The crew produced several of the best moments of the trip.
And The Haven changed the entire experience.
The easiest way I can describe it is this:
The Haven doesn’t replace Norwegian Prima. It gives you an escape hatch from it.
That became more valuable as the week went on.
The Haven spoiled us pretty quickly
On our first day, we mostly followed the advice we’d been given and stayed around The Haven.
That turned out to be smart.
Our suite was comfortable, the balcony gave us the kind of morning-ocean fix that makes me question how I’d ever go back to an interior cabin, and The Haven itself was generally calm.
Then came our first sea day.
We started really exploring the rest of Prima.
And suddenly The Haven made a whole lot more sense.
There were public areas that were loud, busy and packed with people. That’s not a criticism of the people. They paid for a cruise too, and apparently some of them were determined to use every square inch of it simultaneously.
But after walking through a few of those spaces, I remember thinking that if cruising felt like that all the time, I wasn’t sure I’d be much of a cruiser.
Then we’d head back upstairs.
Quiet bar.
Smaller crowd.
Pool.
Restaurant.
Somewhere to sit.
People who knew who we were.
The Haven became our reset button.
What did The Haven actually add?
The benefits that mattered most weren’t necessarily the flashy ones.
The concierge team was outstanding. Cindy, Samir and Carlos helped with restaurant changes, entertainment, logistics and all the little questions that come with learning a new ship.
Jojit, our butler, and Eugene, our room steward, took excellent care of us.
I started the cruise questioning exactly how useful a butler would be when you already have a room steward. I still think there is some overlap between the roles, but as the week went on, we got better at understanding what Jojit could help us with.
And Eugene may forever be remembered for helping me find a vacuum so I could compress the ridiculous amount of stuff we’d packed.
Nothing says luxury cruising quite like:
“I’m gonna start vacuuming the room to pay you for my cruise.”
The dedicated Haven elevators were also much more useful than they sound on a list of amenities.
And disembarkation may have been one of the best Haven benefits of all.
On our final morning, we went from the Haven concierge area, through priority luggage pickup and out to the car in roughly 20–25 minutes.
That was beautiful.
Our Haven Suite was very comfortable — with a few quirks
We stayed in Suite 13910.
The bed was extremely comfortable. The shower had great water pressure. We liked having the toilet separated from the rest of the bathroom, and there was plenty of storage.
There were also far more charging options than I’d expected, including USB and USB-C.
The balcony mattered more than I thought it would.
One morning I stepped outside into that warm ocean breeze and thought, Yep. This right here is why an interior cabin would be tough.
The balcony furniture, however, was apparently designed by someone who doesn’t enjoy sitting comfortably for extended periods.
The room lighting also required what felt like a minor engineering degree.
At one point, we had a strip of light cutting across the room at night that became known as the racing stripe. The curtain controls weren’t immediately intuitive either.
Prima is modern enough that occasionally it felt like the room was smarter than we were.
Eventually, we reached a peaceful coexistence.
Norwegian Prima’s food was all over the place
This is where the review gets complicated.
We had some very good food.
We had some okay food.
And we had food from specialty restaurants that made me wonder why we’d left the buffet.
The Haven Restaurant
The Haven Restaurant became our reliable fallback.
Breakfast was generally good. Dinner had some real winners, including a wild mushroom consommé, miso pork belly, a harissa tomato soup Jodie loved and a pistachio baklava cheesecake that we liked enough to order again.
Some of the steaks were also surprisingly good.
In fact, by the final morning, a basic Haven breakfast New York strip and an earlier Haven filet were the two best steaks we had on the ship.
Yes.
The breakfast steak beat the steakhouse.
We’ll get there.
The biggest problem with The Haven Restaurant was repetition.
The menus remained essentially the same throughout our sailing. When you’re paying a serious premium to stay in The Haven, I’d really like to see a couple of rotating entrées or specials every night.
The food can be good and still get boring.
That’s what happened.
Onda by Scarpetta
Onda was our first specialty dinner.
It was also our first major what the heck happened here? meal.
My mushroom polenta was fantastic.
Then things went downhill.
The pizza Jodie and I shared had almost no flavor. My Milanese mostly tasted like salt. Jodie’s spaghetti with red sauce was bland. Her New York strip was cooked around the right temperature but so dry she struggled to eat it.
And my seafood pasta tasted like I was licking the ocean floor.
Not fresh ocean breeze.
Not beautiful briny Mediterranean flavors.
Ocean floor.
Dessert and cocktails saved the ending.
My tiramisu was excellent. Jodie’s butterscotch budino was excellent. The drinks were among the better restaurant cocktails we had onboard.
But overall, Onda was a disappointment for us.
Los Lobos brought specialty dining back from the dead
Los Lobos was much better.
I had the mole chicken enchiladas. Jodie had the burrito rojo. We shared tableside guacamole and a few other starters.
The mole had actual depth. You could pick up the chocolate without feeling like someone had dumped Hershey’s syrup over chicken.
It was a very good meal.
Not life-changing Mexican food.
Not something I’m building a shrine to.
But we’d happily eat there again.
Then came Cagney’s
Cagney’s hurt.
Not emotionally. I’m okay.
But I had expectations.
My ribeye was ordered medium-rare and came out substantially more cooked than that. More importantly, it lacked flavor. I sent most of it back and declined another steak.
Jodie’s filet was closer to the temperature she requested, but it was tough and dry.
The service was very good.
Management responded exactly the way you’d want when a meal misses. This was not a service problem.
It was a steak problem.
And when the dedicated steakhouse loses to the Haven breakfast steak, there is a problem.
At one point I may have said Outback had more flavor.
Vacation Allen stands by that statement.
Food Republic finished strong
Then Food Republic showed up on the final night and complicated the whole dining story again.
It was easily our favorite specialty dinner of the cruise.
The small-plate format worked for us. We could try several things, share dishes and move on if something wasn’t our favorite.
The kimchi fried rice with steak was good. The potstickers were good. Some of the sauces were excellent. A chicken dish was slightly dry, and the bao buns we ordered never actually appeared, but by that point we were full enough that we told them not to bother.
The overall meal was fun.
Food Republic was the closest we came to leaving a specialty restaurant and saying:
Yep. That was worth it.
So our specialty dining experience ended up pretty straightforward.
Food Republic was our favorite. Los Lobos was very good. Onda and Cagney’s disappointed us.
Your meal could be completely different.
That’s four meals on one sailing, not a scientific evaluation of every Norwegian kitchen.
It’s simply what happened to us.
Don’t sleep on the buffet or Indulge Food Hall
One of the funniest parts of the week was how often supposedly less-premium food surprised us.
Surfside had a better breakfast than I expected, including several omelet stations that made getting eggs the way you actually wanted them pretty easy.
Then late in the cruise, Jodie tried red sauce from the lunch buffet and essentially concluded that somebody needed to carry a bowl of it downstairs to Onda and conduct a training seminar.
That’s not supposed to happen.
Indulge Food Hall was another part of Prima we enjoyed figuring out.
At lunch and dinner, you order from several different concepts on a tablet and dishes arrive as they’re ready.
The biggest thing we learned?
Don’t order half the building at once.
Order a couple of things.
Eat them.
Order more.
Some dishes were much better than others, but the concept itself was fun and gave us a chance to try things we might not have ordered as full entrées.
Breakfast works differently, more like separate food stations spread through the hall.
That initially confused us because we’d watched approximately 47,000 cruise videos before sailing and apparently managed to combine three different Norwegian ships into one imaginary vessel.
Which taught me another valuable lesson:
YouTube research is useful.
YouTube research can also make you stupid with confidence.
Prima knows how to make a drink
Food may have been inconsistent.
The bars were not.
Not every cocktail was great. We had a Mango Meltdown that looked far better than it tasted and eventually got described as drinking calories.
But Prima had the ingredients and bartenders to make some genuinely excellent drinks.
A smoked WhistlePig Old Fashioned was one of the best Old Fashioneds I’ve had anywhere, other than one memorable version made with black walnut bitters.
The Haven bar became one of our favorite places onboard largely because of Mark and Darwin.
Those two stood out.
They listened. They experimented. They worked with infusions. They weren’t afraid to make something that wasn’t simply printed on a menu.
By the end of the week, if Mark and Darwin disappeared on break at the same time, we noticed.
That’s probably the highest compliment I can give a bartender.
Compared with our MSC Seashore experience, I’d give Prima the edge in cocktail variety, premium spirits and experimentation.
MSC still gets the nod from us for fresh juices and espresso-based drinks.
Prima wins cocktails.
Some of our favorite moments had nothing to do with food
Norwegian’s Military Appreciation gathering was one of the most memorable experiences of the week.
I’m saving most of that story for another article because it deserves more than a paragraph buried in a ship review.
But NCL put real effort into it.
Veterans were recognized. Spouses and partners were recognized. There was a Missing Man Table, a moment of silence, branch photos, senior officers and opportunities for veterans from several countries to meet and talk.
Jodie served in the Army.
I served in the Air Force.
It meant something to us.
We also had fun at 80s rock trivia despite discovering that apparently I can know every word to a song while having absolutely no idea who sings it.
Travel keeps you humble.
Prima can be confusing
We got lost.
A lot.
Even several days into the cruise, we’d occasionally have some version of:
Are we forward or aft?
I don’t know.
Didn’t we just come from there?
Probably.
The ship isn’t impossible to navigate, but some areas don’t flow naturally from one another.
Interactive screens helped.
Eventually we learned it.
But Prima isn’t the easiest ship we’ve ever figured out.
And yes, the add-ons started bothering me
Some of this is normal cruise-industry stuff, and Norwegian certainly isn’t alone.
But there are still things that cost extra after you’ve already paid for the cruise.
Vibe Beach Club.
Thermal Suite access.
Certain activities and experiences.
Upgraded dining and beverage options.
At regular cabin pricing, that’s one conversation.
When you’re already paying the significant premium for The Haven, there were moments when another extra charge appeared and I found myself thinking:
Really? That isn’t included either?
That was especially true with the thermal suite and Vibe.
I’m going to dig much deeper into that when we write specifically about whether The Haven is worth it.
Was Norwegian Prima crowded?
Sometimes.
And that distinction matters.
The Haven was generally calm.
Some public areas absolutely were not.
Sea days were when we noticed the contrast most. Around the main pool and some popular public areas, the number of people, noise and kids could become a lot for us.
That doesn’t mean Norwegian Prima is universally overcrowded.
It means our experience of Prima depended heavily on where we were standing.
One minute we’d be in a packed public area wondering if cruising was really our thing.
Ten minutes later, we’d be sitting in The Haven with a drink wondering how we’d ever cruise without it.
That’s Prima in a nutshell for us.
Would we sail Norwegian Prima again?
Absolutely.
That part is easy.
The harder question is whether we’d pay whatever The Haven costs on any particular sailing.
That’s different.
The Haven came at a serious premium for us, and whether it’s worth that premium depends heavily on the fare you find.
It made our cruise significantly better.
No question.
We loved the quieter space, concierge team, Haven bar, priority access, room, easy embarkation and almost ridiculously easy disembarkation.
By the end of the trip, I remember thinking:
I don’t know how I’d stay anywhere else.
The problem is that enjoying something and deciding it’s worth any price are two very different things.
So yes, I’d absolutely sail Prima again.
I’d absolutely stay in The Haven again at the right price.
And I’d comparison-shop the heck out of it before handing anybody my credit card.
If you’re shopping a Prima sailing yourself, CruiseDirect is one of the places you can use to compare current cruise pricing and cabin options. https://www.tkqlhce.com/click-101809238-17001361
One link.
No flashing neon arrow.
No “BOOK NOW BEFORE MIDNIGHT OR YOUR FAMILY WILL NEVER LOVE YOU AGAIN.”
Just another place to compare the numbers.
Our final Norwegian Prima verdict
Prima gave us a very good week, but the ship’s strongest asset wasn’t its specialty restaurants, racetrack or shiny new hardware.
It was the people.
Cindy, Samir and Carlos at the Haven concierge desk.
Jojit.
Eugene.
Mark and Darwin behind the bar.
Saurabh.
And plenty of others whose names we probably failed to write down.
The food had highs and lows.
The layout occasionally made us question our sense of direction.
Some of the add-on pricing irritated me.
And I’d still like somebody at Norwegian to explain how the breakfast steak managed to beat the steakhouse.
But we laughed a lot.
We ate too much.
We met people we wouldn’t have otherwise met.
We saw places we’d never seen.
And occasionally we discovered that you need a vacation from your vacation.
On Sunday morning, we walked off Prima, grabbed our luggage and reached the car almost absurdly fast.
And just like that, the trip was over.
Not long afterward, the subject of another cruise came up.
Jodie’s answer?
“Not yet. I’m already looking.”
That probably tells you more about our Norwegian Prima cruise than any star rating ever could.