Who Norwegian is for
“Freestyle cruising” is a marketing phrase attached to a real structural decision: Norwegian dropped the traditional two-sitting dining room, and everything else followed. There is no assigned table, no fixed hour, and no night on which you are expected to wear a dinner jacket.
For a certain kind of traveler this is the whole argument. If the idea of being told to be at table eight at 6:15pm every evening is the reason you have never cruised, this is the line to try.
Norwegian also runs one of the more interesting itinerary sets of the large lines, a serious Alaska season, the only year-round inter-island Hawaii ship under a US flag, and a substantial European program.
What to know before you book
The Haven changes the ship. Norwegian’s suite complex has its own pool, restaurant and sundeck behind a key-card door. Guests who book it are generally delighted; the point is that it is a different product on the same hull, and worth pricing deliberately rather than discovering.
Flexibility cuts both ways. No fixed dining means no reserved table, which on a full ship at seven o’clock means a wait. Book the specialty restaurants or eat early.
Read what the fare includes. Norwegian’s promotional bundles (drinks, wifi, shore excursion credit, specialty dining) vary a great deal between sailings, and the headline fare is not comparable between two of them until you have.
