GJohnston

I have taken several Carnival Cruises and a Princess cruise. Carnival has gotten a lot of bad press lately but I always enjoyed their cruises very much and the Princess cruise was extremely enjoyable. So when I say I enjoyed the food on the Pearl just a tad better than any of my other cruises, I am comparing to cruises that i liked a lot. This was a 14-day cruise and all my other cruises were shorter so there were a lot of evenings for Norwegian to find entertainment for the shows. I say that because I wasn't too crazy about a few of the acts/performers. The Pearl dancers and singers were first rate, excellent. Besides the Pearl entertainers, they had two shows that really stood out, in a good way. One was a Four Seasons tribute group of 4 men. The name of the group was 'Oh What a Night'. They are an amazingly talented group. A German juggler; Hilby, was VERTY funny. The journey through the locks in the Panama Canal was very interesting. That journey took us most of a full day. We had a few downpours of rain during the trip but were very fortunate in that the rain never interfered with the times when we were to get off the ship. I was surprised that the temps at our first (more northern) stops were a little warmer than the ports closer to the equater. It was clear that the crew of the Pearl bent over backwards to cater to passengers. That really helped to make the experience exceptionally nice. 

I have taken 11 cruises. It took 5 minutes on the Star Princess to know this was the prettiest ship I had been on. For me, typically in a one-week cruise will have 4 nights of quality shows. In a two-week cruise, 7-8 very good shows. In 15 nights on this cruise there were 13 great shows. AND most of the acts had a second show in the Vista Lounge later in the week. Because of that, many evenings we had 2 quality shows to see. The MUTS (movie under the stars) was a very nice feature, although it was chilly at night outside, but they supplied blankets. On sea-days they showed 3 movies over the course of the day. The cruise director, Andrew Kadalak was exceptional! Captain Tuvo was omnipresent. He was exceptionally social and has a very playful, fun personality. The food quality was as good as any, and the service all over the the ship was outstanding. This was my best cruise to date.