Awesome Alaskan Cruise!
Norwegian Pearl Cruise Review to Alaska - Inside Passage
Contributor Level:
Purser
Cruises: 4-6 cruises
Review: 1
Helpful Votes: 51
7 Night Alaska Glacier Bay (Seattle Roundtrip)
Sail date: July 02, 2017
Ship: Norwegian Pearl
Cabin type: Balcony
Cabin number: 9108
Traveled as: Family (older children)
Reviewed: 7 years ago
Review summary
This was a great cruise. We had never cruised with NCL before, but we will definitely be cruising with NCL again. We liked the staff, the excursions, the food, the freestyle experience, the activities, and really everything about it. It seemed like all of the staff went out of their way to make sure that we were happy. My daughter was pretty seasick, and the ship doctor was wonderful as well. (We had never seen a ship doctor, so we didn't know what to expect. We got a doctor who was caring and really wanted to make sure she felt better.) Alaska was awesome as well. It's just magnificent!Embarkation
Super easy and efficient. NCL gave everyone a boarding group as you arrived, based on when you arrived. We waited about 10 minutes and then they called our group and we were able to easily board the ship with ease.
Ship experiences
Food and Dining
The food was really good on NCL. We've recently traveled on other cruise lines and found the food to be fair at best, so we were pleasantly surprised that the food in the main dining places was really good. The specialty restaurants were delicious!
Onboard Activities
We did a lot of trivia and really enjoyed it. We also enjoyed playing board games provided by the ship in the card room. We also did the rock wall and enjoyed that. We also played Bingo and Deal or No Deal which was a lot of fun as well. All were well organized.
Entertainment
All the musical bands were great and a lot of fun. The stage shows were great too, as well as the comedian.
Children's Programs
My kids (age 16 & 17) really enjoyed the teen Entourage program.
Service and Staff
The staff was all very attentive, friendly and willing to do anything to make our experience a good one. The room steward in particular was terrific. This will sound disgusting, but my daughter got sea sick in the cabin bathroom. We called for towels so that we could clean it ourselves. The steward figured out why we needed them and insisted on cleaning it for us. This is at 3:00 a.m. too. We were so surprised and really could not believe it. Every waiter we had was very friendly too and had great suggestions. We also really liked that the dining staff could move quickly if you wanted them to. We really don't like 2 hr dinners in the dining room, as we like to get to the 9:30 show. The staff was able to make dinner a nice 70 minute meal for us.
Ship Quality
The entire ship was recently updated and we found it to be very clean and well maintained.
Cabin / Stateroom
The cabin was a decent size. The bathroom was the biggest we've ever had on a cruise, and it had a nice size shower with a door, and a separate toilet area, also with a door. We were impressed. There also was a little couch next to the king bed, with made the cabin seem more spacious. It was very clean.
Ship tip
We stayed mid-ship on the 9th deck, which was perfect. Dining was on 6 and 7, and on 12. The theater was 6/7 and the pool on 12, so it seemed like we were near a lot of things and could take the stairs. I also pre-ordered the water package before we got on board and it was very convenient having the water waiting for us in the cabin upon arrival. They do offer the same package when you get onboard, so I don't think it's necessary to order in advance, but it did make it convenient.
Thumbs up
0
Ports of call
We spent 3 days in Seattle before the cruise. We did not do any excursions, but we loved the city. We liked the Pike Street Market, the Hop on/Hop off bus and the Underground tour. We also did the City Pass which gave us access to 5 local attractions at a big discount. It included the Space Needle, Chihuli Museum, Aquarium, a harbor boat tour and the MoPop museum. The NCL Pearl also is docked in a great location at the port, right front and center at the waterfront, in easy walking distance to the waterfront. Also, Uber was super affordable in Seattle as the downtown area is not huge.
We did not get to see a lot of this port. We did the Mendenhall Glacier and the Whale Watch excursion. It was awesome but long, so the excursion took up most of the port time and there was no extra time to walk around and explore Juneau. That was a bummer, as we usually like to try out a local restaurant in port. The NCL excursion was awesome! We took a tour bus to the glacier, and had a terrific guide. Then we went on the whale watch, and Allen Marine took us out on the boat and were terrific guides (they have their own naturalist.) We saw lots of humpback whales...lots! We saw whales "bubble net feeding" which was awesome, and is apparently rare. I would highly recommend it.
This port was amazing! We did the Yukon Railroad tour with the sled dog camp visit. The railroad tour was mostly a bus tour. From the promo descriptions it appears that you take a bus one way and the train the other (either up or down.) We took the bus up for about a 2.5 hr tour, then took the bus down for about 1.5 hrs and took the train down for the final hour back to Skagway. It really was perfectly fine as we had the BEST tour guide. He stopped for lots of photo ops, and he provided is with lots of information on the town, the region and Alaska in general. He was really amazing and made the whole thing a lot of fun! We had a little time to shop around Skagway and explore, which was great. We really did not have time to get dinner though before we had to return to the ship. We did think that a lot of the port times were too short to do a long excursion and still explore the town. That said, we would not have done shorter excursion, as seeing Alaska is amazing!
Ketchikan is a fun town with a rich history! We did the Great Alaskan Lumberjack Show, which is an incredibly fun 1 hr show. We loved it, and really didn't know what to expect. We would recommend it to everyone. We also did the Totem Bight Park tour. We had a really boring tour guide for this tour, our first of the trip. My whole family felt that the Totem Bight Park could have best been seen on a self guided tour. That said, it was about 15 minutes from the port, so I'm not sure how we would have gotten there without the tour. We all would have preferred to take a cab and see the totem polls on our own, rather than with the boring guide we got.
We loved Victoria! We did not book an excursion, as nothing really appealed to us. We figured we would explore on our own, and honestly, we figured it would be somewhat of a boring town. It also was an evening port stop, from 6:00p.m. - 11:30p.m. We got off the ship and all the tour companies are there trying to recruit you to their tours. We ended up meeting a pedi cab guy who had a double pedicab (yes, he pedaled and dragged around 4 adult size people.) Our pedi can guide was awesome!! He was funny, told us so much about the city, let us off anywhere we wanted to get off for pictures, gave us great suggestions, and was just amazing! We fell in love with Victoria! The tour was 2.5 hours and then we got to shop and have dinner and just hang around and get to know the city. We would go back to Victoria any time!
Disembarkation
Super easy disembarkation. I mean easy! We have never left to get off a cruise ship and been off and through customs so quickly. We did check some luggage, and it was all waiting for us when we got off the ship. We left our cabin about 8:10 a.m. and were through customs with all our luggage by 8:25. We're still not sure how the whole thing happened so quickly!
3 Comments
MrChocoholic 7 years ago
This may be one of the best, most comprehensive cruise reviews since my last one of Carnival Victory last March. I like anyone who likes Pearl. I concur with GIL155 with his assessment of your review of the ship's doctor! Although we cruised aboard her in different regions, I bet our experiences aboard were pretty much the same. Check out my videos and see how yours compared to mine.
www.youtube.com/edit?o=U&video_id=qO9NrFlItA0 "All About Food"
www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6D7uj1nR3c "Welcome Aboard"