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My wife and I have only been on one other cruise, and that was with Royal Caribbean and that was also to Mexico. After reading many negative reviews on the Sun, I can only guess that most of those negatives are from nit-pickers. Not to say that our cruise didn't have some problems, but for the amount we paid ($959.00)pp for a balcony, I feel we got our moneys worth.
Embarkation was smooth but time consuming. Welcomed aboard with champagne and a greeting. The Sun is an older ship, but is in great shape and was very clean. The stateroom was adequate in size and also clean with no traces of smoke from previous occupants. I was worried about that because I heard that there are no designated non smoking rooms on the Sun.
The food was the biggest surprise of all. We planned on visiting a few of the surcharge specialty restaurants on board because of the lousy reviews of the food on this ship. The two main dining areas on this ship had such good food that we only paid once and that was for a special brunch on the last sea day of our voyage. ($15.00 )pp which consisted of foods from the french restaurant Le Bistro. Well worth doing. The buffets on the other hand are just that, buffets. We ate there only when we had time constraints. Try out the Sports bar if you want something simple and want to stay in your shorts.(Great fish and chips). The service at the restaurants was top notch, but I was made to feel uncomfortable by there body language when we ordered seconds or thirds. I thought on a cruise that was to be expected.
Most of the dinner shows were good. Stay away from the Bingo unless you have a lot of money to blow. They have these electronic game stations where you play 96 cards at a time at a cost of $50.00 and you just sit there and watch it. You can play a few paper cards, but your odds aren't good against the machines.
My only big complaint on this cruise is with the bar staff. On the few occasions that we ordered a glass of water, the servers acted disgusted and were not polite about it. In fact, if you spent the full day at poolside you probably were close to dehydration from all the alcohol and no easy access to ice water or ice tea.
Room stewards were good and room service was on time and called ahead to let you know they were coming.
Disembarking in San Fransisco was awful. NCL has a color coded system that sends a different color luggage tag and people off the ship in 20 minute intervals. They called four colors off the ship at the same time and we spent 30-45 minutes herded like cattle trying to leave the ship. Bad move NCL! One color at a time, like the system was designed and the last emotion of the trip would not have been a sour one.
Bang for the buck, I'll give this cruise a 10!
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