Overall a fantastic cruise. We had great luck with the weather, it rained only in Juneau. Glacier Bay was a lifetime experience, and the Captain having the ship do a slow pirouette in front of the largest glacier so that we could all get a good look was incredible. Add in great food and service, ten carefree days and interesting ports of call and you have a marvelous trip that was definitely worth the price!
Embarkation
4 out of 5
Good, way better than our last cruise (out of New York). The system was structured so that the inevitable delay was spent sitting in comfort and not standing in a line forever. Merci Canada !
Ship experiences
Food and Dining
5 out of 5
Service excellent everywhere, food in main dining rooms very good, specialty restaurants excellent. As we are not big buffet fans we did not use them much.
Onboard Activities
4 out of 5
Great hot tub, good trivia games.
Entertainment
5 out of 5
Shows were consistently very good, cast did an amazingly versatile job in putting on as many different shows as they did. Lounge music was also very good.
Children's Programs
We did not take our grandkids or great-grandkids.
Service and Staff
5 out of 5
Waiters were generally superb. Room steward was low key and got everything done that needed to be done. Did not find a single grumpy or uncaring person among the crew.
Ship Quality
4 out of 5
Considering this is a sixteen year old vessel it has held up very well. Everything seemed clean and our only maintenance issue was the aft elevator call buttons on our deck being wired backwards - up meant down and down meant up. With our stateroom being almost all the way aft we had occasional vibration from stabilizer deployment/retraction and the use of the thrusters, but not enough to bother us.
Cabin / Stateroom
5 out of 5
Cabin was comfortable and steward kept it very clean, size was what we expected. Adequate drawer and closet space. Only minor disappointment was the inability to do certain things (check bill, book restaurants) through the in-room monitor as on the Epic or Breakaway.
Ship tip
Relax, enjoy. Make sure you have a sweater even for the tropics as the larger lounges, theater and specialty restaurants are maintained closer to frigid than merely cold.
Spent the night prior. Hotels seemed generally very expensive. Did not do excursion, walked around downtown some before embarkation, probably should have arrived a day earlier to see more.
Took no excursion here. Columbia River Maritime Museum is really worth seeing, I had no idea how many ships have been lost at that river's mouth. Also tour of old lightship was fascinating.
I have to assume we experienced the worst of San Francisco. Traffic at 11AM made Houston or Mexico City look like a picnic and there is nothing attractive between pier and airport. Our bus driver though was very helpful. Airport food prices were obscene.
Onboard part of process was a little slow but well organized. Port was unmitigated chaos. After filling out Customs forms we never saw a Customs person. No-one but the bus drivers supervising Norwegian's transfer to airport service, they ran out of buses with a hundred or so people left, yet our tickets were never checked. Fortunately we had a mostly retired and peaceful bunch of passengers or there would have been trouble.
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