Norwegian Pearl Review
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Additional details
This review is for the May 12th sailing out of Vancouver. A little about me, I am in my mid 20s and traveled with my girlfriend. This was my 22nd cruise, and her 4th. This was our 3rd cruise together. This was my 4th NCL cruise, and second time on Pearl. All and all, I can say this was one of the most memorable and best cruises yet!
PRE-CRUISE:
We arrived in Vancouver 2 days prior to sailing. After a very long day of traveling across the country, we checked into our hotel (Hyatt Regency Vancouver) and explored the city. I would definitely recommend the Hyatt to anyone visiting Vancouver because it is modern, clean, and in a great location. Some of the highlights of our two nights in Vancouver include Dr. Sun-Yat Sen Classical Chinese Garden (the guided tour was wonderful), biking around the city and Stanley Park, lunching at Granville Island, and dinner in Gastown. After two nights, we left for the pier Sunday morning at around 10:30am. If you sail out of Vancouver, be sure to check which pier you are leaving from - NCL leaves from the Balintyne pier, which is much further from downtown than the Canada place pier that most of the other lines leave from. I'm glad we checked before we left the hotel!
Cabin Review
We had booked an inside cabin (9113), and this cabin was much smaller than the inside cabins on our last cruise (the Celebrity Eclipse), probably about 2/3 the size! Though the size didn't bother me, I was bothered by the fact that it seemed our cabin steward Ryan had very hurriedly "cleaned" our cabin between sailings. I put cleaned in parenthesis because I am almost convinced he did *nothing* besides tidy up the sheets and change the towels between sailings: (1) We found pills, pins, and papers on the floor; (2) We found what seemed to be dirty sheets stuffed into the closet and shelves; (3) We found melted ice in the ice bucket; and (4) The toilet paper cover was broken and on the floor. Worst of all, after a long first day we came back to go to sleep past midnight and found hairs in our bed that were clearly not ours since we hadn't slept in the bed yet or even opened the covers, and rips and stains in the sheets. And the icing on the cake, somehow our door handle kept on jamming and we couldn't even leave the cabin (which is a HUGE safety hazard). Of course, we were very upset and we had a new cabin steward change the sheets, which took almost half an hour late at night. Definitely not how you want to start your first night of the cruise!
The good news, GSR Jatin Vyas followed up with us the next day as per my request, and was able to move us to an Ocean View on the 5th floor for the inconvenience. That cabin was wonderful, and a bit more spacious. Our cabin steward Edwin for 5010 did a great job!