Truly loved the cruise. Love Norwegian. I don’t see a need for the specialty restaurants. I’m happy with the main dining rooms. I was pretty unhappy with the excursions this time. Will have to really review the excursions better on next cruise. Although I guess you can’t know the quality of the tour guides!
Embarkation
5 out of 5
We are platinum status now, so embarkation is a breeze.
Ship experiences
Food and Dining
5 out of 5
We had 5 specialty dining dinners available to us. Used 4 of them. Our fav was Bayamo, 2nd wasLe Bistro. We also did the supper club with a music act (complimentary). And enjoyed the main dining rooms for other two dinners. We avoid Garden Cafe buffet as much as possible.
Teppanyaki
2 out of 5
Our least favorite. Food was good, but way too much. It was so very noisy. Not relaxing at all. Seemed like all the preparers were competing to see who could be loudest. We won’t visit this specialty restaurant again.
O'Sheehan's Bar and Grill
5 out of 5
Our favorite place on the ship. We’ve eaten breakfast, lunch and dinners here!
Le Bistro
5 out of 5
Excellent food & service.
Bayamo by Ocean Blue
5 out of 5
We each had a whole lobster. Excellent. All sides were great. Nice atmosphere.
Onboard Activities
4 out of 5
Our favorite is Trivia. Wish it was held in a private space rather than the atrium. Way too many people in atrium, hard to find seats. Seems like people just hang out there, even if not interested in playing the game.
Entertainment
5 out of 5
Loved them all.
Service and Staff
5 out of 5
I’m rating this excellent, because overall service on a ship is always great. Our room steward this time was not as good as in the past. He met our basic needs, but was forgetful at times. We only physically saw him once.
Ship Quality
5 out of 5
Cabin / Stateroom
5 out of 5
This cabin is a mini suite. Same as balcony room but with a much bigger bath and shower (with jets). Love the mini suites!
New York City is New York City, too many people, too much traffic, way too expensive hotel rooms, etc. We’ve already seen all the tourist sights so I won’t mind if we never catch a cruise ship out of NYC again.
We did the Portland and Kennebunkport excursion which covered a lot of area. Our bus tour guide was very bad. He mostly talked about movie trivia and personal stuff. Not about landmarks we were seeing. After we passed something, he would say “oh we just passed (whatever), I’ll have to talk about that later! That was just one of many examples. Also the ride from Portland to Kennebunkport was about an hour, so be advised.
Loved walking around Bar Harbor. Our excursion was in afternoon to Acadia national park, which was cool. Our tour guide was great. Unfortunately we sat on wrong side of bus and missed a lot. Sit on left side to see the most.
We did the Trolley around St John which would have been great, except for the fact that the trolley we were on had plastic sides that you could not see through!! And people sitting in front of us did not want the sides raised because they thought it would be too windy! That was a disappointment. Tour guide was good and informative, although sometimes hard to hear her due to trolley engines. We did enjoy walking around the city after our excursion.
Enjoyed Halifax water front. We did the Deluxe hop on hop off which was very good. Our best excursion out of the four ports. Enjoyed seeing the Citadel and the Maritime Museum.
Disembarkation took forever, but that was our fault. We wanted to wait as long as possible to disembark since our flight was not until 6 pm. That really backfired on us. Crowds were terrible. Took forever. Be aware, there are people waiting at the taxi stands with signs that say “taxi”. They are not taxi drivers, nor Uber. They wanted $75 cash to drive us to LaGuardia. Luckily we were smart enough to hop in an actual yellow NYC taxi! Cost was $55 on the meter.
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