My Sweetie and I cruised to Alaska on the Norwegian Pearl, starting on Sunday May 25th. Our prior cruising experiences were two inside cabin Royal Caribbean cruises. One a repositioning cruise from San Diego to Vancouver (Radiance), the other a Yucatan and Key West cruise out of Galveston (Splendour). This time we booked a balcony cabin.

First impression: It was so easy to get on the ship!

We are from the Seattle area, so we drove to the parking garage. We arrived at about noon, since showing up at 11:30 when it opened seemed like just asking for trouble. We were parked quickly (a valet only setup - it makes sense, but I wish they'd warned me on the Republic Parking web site - when I got back it was slightly less smooth - they wanted payment a second time - when they'd had my money for two months already). We handed our bags over to the parking garage guys, and went to have some chowder at Anthony's outdoor seating - it was sunny, and we didn't want to be hungry while we went through whatever hoops were presented getting on the ship. We then went through a very quick line (maybe 5 minutes) to trade our credit card information and a picture for our onboard ship cards. That was painless. We then walked slowly but steadily onto the ship (maybe 10 minutes). We were told by the first two crewmembers that our room was not ready yet (it was only 1 PM), and then the third one we encountered closest to our room, told us that the room was ready. We were first scouting out where the room was, and then going back to scout the rest of the ship when we met the third crew member who said our room was ready. This was the first of several times when not all crew members were on the same page. So we were in our room a bit after 1, and then we launched to see the rest of the ship. Read more