Review - Norwegian Star April 27 - May 3, 2008 (Sawyer Glacier)

April 27, 2008 - Embarkation Left the house at 10am, for a brief 1 hour drive to Vancouver. Left the car in North Vancouver and took the SeaBus from North Vancouver to Canada Place. Was at Canada Place about 11:45am. The lines were atrocious. Seems that the port agency decided that the Star was going to be a "training" day for most of the employees and it showed (I know this first hand because one of my co-workers was there and hadn't had any training prior). There were few porters and it took about an 45 mins just to check your baggage. Then, another hour for security. When we got to customs, there computers were down. A border agent blurted out "This place sucks" and we all chuckled. The line started to move, and we were then put into holding pens within the NCL area - time now is 2pm. Unacceptable by my terms. There was no Latitudes check in, and it wasn't clear about the VIP check in either. We were finally called to get into the check in line and were at the counter at 2:45pm. We were then escorted onto the ship (Freestyle 2.0?), and up to our Deluxe Balcony (what were previously mini-suites). Because we had been in line for more that 2.5 hours, we were hungry, so we headed up to the Market Cafe only to be told it was closed because of the life-boat drill. There were more than 700+ people still waiting to be checked in.

Nevertheless, we went back to the room to enjoy our bar setup - not there! I think it had something to do with our rooms being changed a couple of days before sailing - however our kids (20-somethings) had theirs, so I knew the ship mixed this one up. Read more