luckylori Cruise Review on Norwegian Pearl on Oct 21, 2017

Norwegian Pearl Cruise Review

luckylori

Contributor Level: Second Mate

Reviews: 3

Helpful Votes: 118

Overall rating:

4 out of 5

Sail date: October 21, 2017

Ship: Norwegian Pearl

Reviewed: 6 years ago

Review summary

This was our first cruise and we had a great time. The boarding process was a disaster, but once we were on the boat everything thing was awesome! We had 4 nights of speciality dining and the drinks package. We ate at the French, Italian, Japanese and Brazilian restaurants. My favorite was the Brazilian by far!! We ate at the Great Outdoors for breakfast every morning. We also ate at Indigo and the Summer Palace. We never ate at the big buffet in the Garden Cafe. We did eat at O’Sheehan as soon as we boarded. It was good, my sister in law loved the wings. She had them 4 times during the cruise. They did offer prime rib the first night and we didn’t care for it, very thin and tough. The drinks were great everywhere on the ship, especially the Mango Meltdown!! The lines at the bars were a little long but not bad. If you sat at a table the waiters were very good. Our cruise mates had cabin 11096, midship mini suite with a balcony and we were across the hall in 11097. It was nice to go out on their balcony while were docking at each port and for some quiet time. In my opinion our cabin was great we did not have neighbors on either side so no noise, except for the humming on the ship and it kinda lulled us to sleep every night. I tipped our room stewart, Jezreel, $10 the first day and gave him a $20 on the last day. He was great, he called me by name every time he saw in the hallways and always smiling and asking how we were doing. We really enjoy hanging out in the atrium, there was always something going on there, the chairs were comfortable and having a bar right there was awesome!! We did go to a couple shows the Angels, flying acrobats, was a good show, we also went to the Legends in Concerts it was okay. The Avalon group was really good. We also like Lace Walker. They played in the atrium most of the time. We went on excursion at every port. Mr. Sancho, in Cozumel was the best. The weather was perfect. We snorkeled from a boat and the guys parasailed. We ate, drank and had a blast!! The rain came at Honduras and Belize all day long but we still had a great time. At Honduras we went to The Pirates of the Caribbean zipline then to Little French Key. The gal from the zipline was great she told us about Coxen Hole, some history and made the trip to the zipline place very enjoyable. She was there to pick us up at the port and when were got finished zipping she was there to take us to little french key and she was there at the right time to take us back to the boat. First off, I’m scared of heights and was apprehensive about ziplining, but our guides were awesome. It took about 1 1/2 for the four of us to complete the course. We only had to go up some steps to the first line then we just went from platform to platform. There was only one other platform to climb and it was like climbing a ten foot ladder. Our group Range in age from 54-72 and we had no problems at all! I left my camera in my bag, by accident, in the lockers they provide(free)but they took pictures of us and I bought the sd card from them for $20. Then we went to Little French Key. It was absolutely beautiful even in the rain! We snorkeled from the beach, we didn’t see a lot of fish but we did see some. The place was amazing. Harvest Caye was next. First of all it was beautiful and if it wasn’t raining we probably would have had a better experience. We rode the ferry over to Placencia, we had booked a tour to the Spice Farm and Botanical Gardens, but when we got to the meeting place our ‘guide/driver’ was pretty sketchy. He didn’t have a name tag or company shirt on and he didn’t have our name. First he told us that we couldn’t go because the bridge to the farm was flooded, they had a lot of rain the night before, then he told was the bridge was not flooded and he want 20% up front so he could go get his car and that he would be back in about 15 minuets. We decided to pass. It might have been fine but we choose to not go. The ferry did not go back the Harvest Caye for about 3 hours so we just walked around Placencia and stopped at The Tipsy Tuna Beach Club. This is a very weird little village. There is a side walk that goes for a least a mile. There are little houses/shacks along one side of the side walk were people have their handmade item for sale and along the other side is mostly nice beach clubs. Then if you go over a block away from the beach there are dirt roads and that’s were the ‘business district’ is. We walked down a little ways and I went into a grocery store and bought a few things. It was a real eye opener as to how poor this village is. The beach was beautiful and very colorful and we had a couple of drinks and enjoyed the view. One last comment if you are planning on an excursion from Belize I would recommend going through NCL. Unless you just want to go to Placencia for a few hours. We didn’t book any excursion through NCL. Last stop Costa Maya. The rain finally went away and we went on a 4 hour excursion to the maya ruins. It was a long walk from the ship to the meeting place. But the guides were right there with company shirts on and had our names and were very organized. The tour was great we had Carlos as a guide and he was very knowledgeable and very easy to understand. The only negative was we asked him to drop us off on the malecon on the way back so we could go to the beach, which he did. We only had about an hour because we wanted to go back to the port and do a little shopping. He dropped us off at Bama Mama and said he would come back and pick us up there, it was very crowded, they didn’t have menus so we just ordered 2 drinks, they charged us $12 each. We wanted to go to Blue Kay but we didn’t think we had time to get there and back within the hour. We should have just gone back to the port. I know this is long, sorry. So much to do in a week. So, for us overall we had an amazing time and we will cruise again. We are looking at Alaska maybe for the summer of 2019 we will definitely go with Norwegian again. We love the free style dining and the casual dress code. We are smokers and we found that we could smoke on deck 7 around the outside of the ship and on deck 13 front and back of the ship and in the casino.

luckylori Cruise Review on Norwegian Pearl on Oct 21, 2017

Overall rating:

Review summary

14 Comments