Norwegian Star Cruise Review by scn095

We were on a tight-ish budget, but because this was our first cruise we didn’t know if one of us would end up not doing well on the sea, so we wanted a cabin with at least a window. In case, we wanted to still be able to enjoy as much as we could, without paying so much extra for a balcony. I highly recommend you consider at least an obstructed view window if you’re going on your first cruise. Check the diagrams of the deck layouts carefully, and even look at photos on the web, when deciding which stateroom to choose. We also decided on a cruise as our vacation rather late, so I didn’t have much opportunity to know what to expect.

Port of Embarkation Fortunately we have family in Bothell, not far from Seattle, so we were able to stay there overnight after our drive up from Portland on Friday. On Saturday we arrived at the pier about 40 minutes earlier than the Welcome Aboard book suggested, so that we would be able to eat lunch on the ship, instead of having to find some restaurant in Seattle. NCL had made it clear on their site and in the Welcome Aboard kit that we shouldn’t arrive earlier than noon, so we were surprised that everything at the pier was open. A porter took our luggage immediately, only ten people were ahead of us in line for security, and we were given the day’s Freestyle Daily newsletter at the bottom of the escalator leading up to the registration queue. There was no line for the agent to get our information and issue us our card key, and there was water and orange juice to drink while we waited for the opening of the access to the gangway. While we waited, we got a copy of the ad/info/coupon book and found what free things we could get at each port. Since we arrived early, we were among the first 150 or so to get on the ship. I highly recommend arriving at the pier more than an hour before embarkation.

Embarkation Having not conducted a ton of deep pre-booking or pre-cruise research, we were pleasantly surprised to receive glasses of sparkling wine at the top of the gangplank after using our keycards to check in on the promenade deck. All of the hospitality crew seemed to be fresh and cheerful, probably a hard thing to do, considering how fast the shop has to be turned over from the previous arrival. I thought I had read somewhere that our bags would be waiting at the room when we arrived, but I must have been mistaken, because nobody else’s was and nobody seemed surprised by it.

Stateroom We chose room 6502. It’s port forward and, as said before; since this was our first cruise we wanted a stateroom with a window that would fit into our budget. 6502 fit the bill just perfectly, and the picture window was much better than we expected; we could comfortably sit across it. When we arrived the room wasn't quite ready, but we kind of expected that since we were so early and there are so many rooms on the ship. An hour or so later, after exploring the ship for a while, one of the first things we tested was the safe. The battery needed to be changed, so it didn’t work. Eventually (see below) the safe was replaced, and everything worked fine. Unfortunately all of the drawers were noisy, and this wasn’t a quirk of just our room (I talk about this more below, too). Noisy drawers or not, though, there was a lot of space to store more than all of our clothing and items, and we had packed very generously. The stateroom was in a surprisingly quiet location; especially considering it was just ten or so steps away from the Stardust Theater, which also served as our muster station. The location could be considered by some to be far from just about everything, but the benefits of the location outweighed the drawbacks. The bed, as I had learned earlier from research, was two twins pushed together. The affect of this was only really noticeable the 4th or 5th night, when we started noticing periodically that the beds had separated. Not a big problem, though. The bathroom wasn’t bad, either; the toilet and shower were on either side of the sink area, and were separated from it by an etched glass door. A fire door separated our cabin's hallway from the Theater, so we couldn't hear any noise at all related to it the theater once we closed our stateroom door. The room, being on deck 6, was also reasonably close to forward and midship disembarkation points, and very close to the forward main stairway. There were only four rooms next to ours, so I didn’t envy the people who had rooms on the more densely-occupied decks higher up.

A few drawbacks of the stateroom: 1. We could hear very well the noise of the children staying in the room next to ours. It wasn’t loud, but very noticeable. Fortunately we were tired enough from activities during the day, and we take a fan everywhere for white noise. 2. The toilet area was a bit on the small side, but there’s so much to do everywhere else that you probably be somewhere else when you need to do your business. 3. The mini fridge was ½ full of pre-stocked things like cans of $2.50 soda, so there wasn’t much room left for food we brought back to the room. 4. Aside from the bathroom, the vanity had the only 110V outlet receptacle, so we had to do a bit of cord juggling every once in a while.

Hotel info The mid-day housekeeping was consistently reasonable, though the shelves near the desk/vanity haven’t been vacuumed in a while. We loved the lavender hand soap and body wash and shampoo in dispensers. There was turn-down service every night, with a different towel animal welcoming us back each time.

We didn’t quite like the mandatory $12 gratuity being added on every day, but we knew about it when we registered. (This site’s review from a previous cruise still shows $10/day.)

As said earlier, it took a while to get a working safe: five calls and about 24 hours, to put a finer point on it. A couple calls even gave conflicting information, and we were sometimes told to wait in the room for someone to come (I learned later that this was because they thought we had something in the safe that we couldn’t get out).

Ship info The Market Café, on deck 12, is little more than a nice cafeteria, but this isn’t as much a drawback as a practicality, considering a cafeteria is the most flexible type of Freestyle. If you don’t like eating in a nice cafeteria, there are at least three other sit-down dining rooms to use.

The Grand Atrium, most of which was three decks tall, was about as pretty as I had expected from seeing photos of other cruise ships over the years. Many other ships have a taller atrium than this one but, if you think about it, that’s a lot of wasted space. Three floors of pretty atrium are probably enough.

Deck plans were at the ends of every main hallway and at the elevators on each floor, so finding our way around the first couple days was easier than we thought.

There were hand sanitization stations within eyesight of just about everywhere. At the entrances to all of the dining rooms there was a person to make sure you used the sanitizer, and another station was further inside in case the first station was being used.

Exploring the outside decks, we found the children-specific pool area on the fantail. We don’t have children, so I don’t know how enjoyable the area was, but we noticed that the air back there smelled of garbage or something from inside the ship. Maybe the wind carries the smell away when the ship is moving.

Deck 12 and 13 are where most of the outdoor stuff is, and we were pleasantly surprised to find a ¼ mile jogging track, and it went only ¾ the length of the ship! We liked seeing all of the hot tubs outside, some in quiet areas with deck chairs nearby. Surprisingly a lot of the main pool area didn’t have water. There were sections with water, but I expected a bigger main pool. It wasn’t used much though, anyway; Alaska late in August doesn’t much facilitate outside water play.

The exercise room was gigantic and offered a very good variety of aerobic and resistance equipment and weights. There was also a big room that had stationary bikes, so I guess they did things like spin classes and yoga there.

The Barong Spa and its decoration theme were nice, but not quite worth the extra money we spent for a couple’s week-long pass. The hot-ish hot tub and hydrotherapy pool were nice, as were the deck chairs facing the floor-to-ceiling windows looking aft. Both the men’s and the women’s locker rooms had saunas and steam rooms, and the men’s side also had warm and cold baths. The rather small thing called a “lap pool” had to be drained on about the 4th day because of rough seas, so we couldn’t use it as much as we intended. A lap is only five or so strokes, so don’t expect vigorous swimming during your trip. Tea and lemon and orange water were available to drink, and each side of the aft end of the spa had even quieter rooms for reading or just watching the scenery float away.

The Spinnaker Lounge offered plenty of seating, and was a nice escape from other, more active areas while underway when it wasn’t being used for theme entertainment. We didn’t imbibe, though; too darn expensive.

We watched the entire voyage up to Sawyer Glacier from the promenade deck. Plenty of sections were either warmed by fans blowing air out from inside, or were otherwise sheltered from the wind.

Dining The quality of the food could be described as about average, but certainly not worse than that, reasonably. There was a lot of variety the Market Café’s buffet including breads, hot dishes, so-so pizza, and a TON of desserts. Most, but not everything was repeated every night, so if you didn’t like something, either walk further down the line, wait until tomorrow, or go to one of the no-surcharge dining rooms. The Aqua and the Versailles dining rooms offer almost identical menus, so pick which dining room environment you like and you’ll be okay. Or you can just go where your mood decides. There wasn’t much of a wait when my wife and I ate at either of them, and I don’t remember that we ate particularly early. If you don’t like waiting in line consider that, when you’re choosing a dining time you’re on a huge ship, tons of other passengers also mainly eat three meals a day.

At least one other reviewer has commented on the portion sizes in the Versialles restaurant being small. They may be small by American standards, where a large portion in any other country is called small here, but the portion size is actually reasonable. My wife and I both left satisfied, (not stuffed, like in the buffet) and the portion sizes are a good way to help prevent you from gaining pounds you don’t need.

The biggest drawback of the Market Café: the beyond-stupid ice and water dispensers. They work by putting a hand in front of a sensor, but not a single machine ever worked really the same way twice, and would suddenly turn off even if you didn’t move your hand away at all. The crew couldn’t get the darn things to work better than the passengers. Those things gotta go.

We didn’t try any of the extra-charge dining areas.

Activities We didn’t participate in any of the organized activities. Either there was enough to do on our own or we were otherwise too tired from the fun we’d had already.

The seminar in the theater on glaciers and icebergs was led by a person who appeared to assess her knowledge of the topic to be better than it really is. During a seminar, by the same woman, that was supposed to be on native alaskan culture she spent most of time talking about the Aztecs and other cultures having almost nothing to with Alaska.

Entertainment This aspect of the cruise was pretty good, although we didn’t find the comic group (named in other reviews) funny. “Funny” is subjective, though, so decide for yourself.

We enjoyed relaxing in the Spinnaker lounge every once in a while, listening to Melodious Jones. The drinks prices were steep, though, and we don’t really drink so we didn’t partake.

The theater showed kids’ stuff in the morning, a presentation after, and about three movies per day, so we took in part of a movie a couple times.

In the full Stardust Theater my wife enjoyed the dancing show, and we both enjoyed the comedic juggler. He raised the bar on our standards of juggling skill so much that we weren’t impressed with the jugglers at a well-known circus we recently watched. The crew “talent show” was enjoyable, and my wife liked the farewell show she watched at the end of the cruise.

Port and Shore Excursions I won’t describe the ports; just the excursions we chose. There’s enough here and elsewhere on the web about the ports themselves. In Ketchikan our much-anticipated “Misty Fjords and Wilderness Explorer” tour was cancelled due to weather, but we enjoyed the cheaper “Best of Ketchikan by Land & Sea” tour, which an excursion guy on the dock said was still available. The people on the tour boat were surprisingly friendly, and we enjoyed the better-than-expected visit to Libby Cannery, and entertaining and informative bus driver back into town with a stop at the Saxman Native Village.

In Juneau we just walked around the city for a few hours, using maps as our “guide,” stopping at the Orthodox Church, State Capitol and shops along the way. The downtown area isn’t huge, so the walk wasn’t hard. A few companies offer $7 bus trips per person each near the ships way to Mendenhall glacier, so se took one and walked around outside the glacier’s visitor center.

Tracy Arm Fjord was everything we expected from Alaska. Absolutely gorgeous. We haven’t been to Glacier Bay, but we can’t imagine how it could be more beautiful than this. Like others who cruised on the dates around ours, it was very disappointing that we weren’t able to get up to Sawyer Glacier because of the calving. The scenery on the way there, though, was as I said: absolutely gorgeous.

In Skagway the ship arrived before most of the shops had opened, so we just killed time by walking around for a while. We had booked our Summit and City Tour directly through the provider, Frontier Excursions. The vehicle was in pretty reasonable condition, and the driver/guide was pretty friendly. We got back from the tour in plenty of time to walk around the city again, join an hour-long tour the national park service gave that was better than expected, shop for a while, and explore the park on the little peninsula across from the pier.

The stop at Prince Rupert, as others have said, was definitely not long enough to offer time for an excursion outside the city and walking in the city. We enjoyed our Canoe Quest and Rainforest Walk excursion, though I’m sure we probably could’ve paid a lot less if we’d booked it directly through the guide group, which lives in P.R. and tries to support the native heritage. The paddle to the island across the bay was a unsettling for my wife because the wind made some good-sized waves, but the canoe was very stable. The guides split us into two groups, with one first staying at the rustic shelter (they said they’ll have a better one next year) to enjoy fresh crab they’re boiling in a pot when you arrive, or hotdogs over a fire, s’mores and fried bread. When the other group came back from the walk through the forest, we went out. It was a nice walk, but if you’re the outdoorsy type it won’t impress you much. The group tries really hard to give a good experience, but I don’t think it’s worth the $109 through NCL. Find the name of the local group and pay less and send you money directly to them. After paddling back across the bay to end the excursion, we tried a self-guided tour through P.R., but it got dark too quickly and we didn’t have much time left so we didn’t see much. A shame.