Do not purchase any excursion packages from NCL… choose another ship to visit Alaska..
Embarkation
3 out of 5
Was ok for most part..a bit lengthy, though.
Ship experiences
Food and Dining
5 out of 5
The specialty restaurants were excellent; main dining rooms and buffets were also good.
Onboard Activities
3 out of 5
Over crowded everywhere and did not feel “safe” to use any of the pools or other onboard fitness facilities.
Entertainment
5 out of 5
All the stage shows, musicians, bands were excellent. Loved the performances of Siglo, the Beatles Experience, Jersey Boys and Six.
Service and Staff
4 out of 5
The room stewards and waiters were excellent and they worked the hardest to ensure everything was in order. The excursion staff, on the other hand, were incompetent, rude and not helpful at all; they were the reason why the highlight of our entire cruise was ruined.
Ship Quality
5 out of 5
The ship is well designed. The common areas were clean and well-maintenaned.
Cabin / Stateroom
5 out of 5
Our room is in the middle of ship. It is pretty comfortable even though we were not in our room a lot. We had the best room steward who was very pleasant and constantly keeping our room cleaned and neat.
Ship tip
Don’t book any excursions from them directly. They also provided too short port time at each port. One will not have much time to explore the town or shopping after going though the NCL booked tours
Seattle is full of homeless people…be careful! We did an excursion on the way returning to the airport as our departure flight was in the mid afternoon. It was good.
It is a pretty port that has a lot of bold eagles, bears and other animals. We did not have much time to explore the port after doing the Best of Sitka excursion. Felt very rushed…
We did whale watching and Mendenhall Glacier. Did see whales from the boat but the glacier portion was rushed due to lack of time. Forgetting about exploring the area or shopping as Bliss was only docked there for 5 hours.
We prepaid a combo of whale watching and zip rider from NCL directly. We only got to do the whale watching part. After waiting at the Zip Rider area for a long time and when it was our term to do the zip rider (the world’s largest one as we were told all along), we were told by the Bliss excursion staff to hurry back to the ship as we would biotic have time to go through it. Even though, there was enough time as the zip line operator told us. The worse part was after returning to the dock, which was just a walking distance, we had to argue with the very unhelpful and super rude Bliss excursion staff.. the time we wasted on the dock we would have completed the zip rider activity. After getting back to the ship, we wasted more time to try to get the resolution of this Huge mistake made by Bliss. No one wanted to take the responsibility or decision in making a full refund for our excursion that we did not get to do. Eventually after wasting more time speaking to the assistant director who finally agreed to refund the money to us. We wasted so much time that we should have enjoyed ourselves and we were extremely upset and aggravated by the situation… the point was we missed the one single activity that we wanted to do the most for the entire cruise. Our time, fun and excitement were rubbed because of these people and then we needed to waste so much time to get our money back…. Totally not acceptable. Wrote a complaint email to the President of NCL and the Guest Relations on August 28, 2022. Only received a generic response from the Guest Relations that it will take up to 30 days to respond. What a joke! BTW, our Icy Strait Port was cut short from 3 pm to 12:30 pm. Then we found the reason was because Encore could not get to one of their original port so they also came to this port. They stayed there much longer than Bliss. So are the guests of Bliss not as important than these of Encore? Shame on NCL whoever made this decisions. All of us spent a lot of money and time to visit Alaska and it is not to rush us from port to port.
We did a crab feast excursion but no time to visit the town or shopping as there was not enough time plus the NCL’s dock is so far way from the shopping area as other ports.
Bliss arrived too late..and the disembarkation took too long. There were no NCL staff directing traffic. There were so many people waiting in 3 different long lines in a very narrow hallway to get off the ship. The Victoria walking tour was not good to go through in the dark.
*Cruiseline.com is not a booking agent or travel agency,
and does not charge any service fees to users of our site. Our partners
(travel agencies and cruise lines) provide prices, which we list for our
users' convenience. Cruiseline.com does not guarantee any specific rates or
prices. While prices are updated daily, please check with the booking site
for the exact amount. Cruiseline.com is not responsible for content on
external web sites.
Contact us
Submitting...
Need help from a personal vacation planner?
Loading...
Find the perfect cruise with weekly tips and cruise deals for as little as $30/night!
Sign up for weekly cruise deals
Join other subscribers and get the best
cruise deals of the week in your inbox every Thursday.
