I had to come review this cruise, because passengers on the first few trips had some negative things to say and I really think they just needed to work out the kinks since it's basically a brand new sailing. With that being said, I'm not super hard to please. I want a fun, relaxing time on a ship with cool ports, good food and drinks. We cruise a few times per year, typically on Carnival, RCI, or Celebrity. I've been on one Norwegian cruise about 10 years ago, a three nighter to the Bahamas and was NOT impressed, so I was a little nervous, but I shouldn't have been. The Joy was a delight! Beautiful, brand new everything. The food was very good. We ate in the Manhattan Room once for dinner, and the menu was fine. We enjoyed The Local twice for lunch and once for breakfast. Lunch was great, and breakfast was tasty although the morning menu is definitely limited. Service everywhere was excellent. Teppanyaki is a must-do if you enjoy hibachi-style food-- entertaining and tasty! We also ate at Cagney's one night, and had a great filet mignon there. Le Bistro was good but my least favorite of the specialty places we tried, I had some difficulty finding an entree that sounded appealing. I ended up with the shrimp dish, which was light and tasty. One thing I appreciated were the special cocktail menus for each venue. My husband and I really loved the variety and found the bartenders friendly and efficient.

We had three of our kids with us, 16, 8 and 6. They loved the laser tag, the go karts and the virtual reality gaming area. These cost extra, which we were expecting. Go karts were $30 per person, which seemed a little steep, but it's vacation. Little kids loved the kids club and the staff there was terrific! Our older son did some of the teen activities and said some were fun and some were boring.

The Alaska ports were phenomenal. We did the lumberjack show and crab feast in Ketchikan, whale watching in Juneau and the helicopter/dogsledding in Skagway. All of these were great and worth it, although we were glad to have booked the lumberjack show directly from the show's website and individual whale watching. Helicopter/dogsledding in Skagway was one of the most amazing experiences of my life, and it's crazy expensive but I'm so glad we did it. Victoria was a weird stop, as we docked at 4 pm on the last day, so we got off the ship, took a taxi into downtown and wandered around for a bit. We did a horse and carriage tour, which was okay. All aboard was at 11 pm, which feels too late on the last day of the cruise for me. Read more