This cruise was delayed two years due to covid. In 2020 we were scheduled on Royal Caribbean but our dates didn't work to rebook with them so we went with NCL. We had previously cruised on the NCL Escape and it was about average so we didn't think anything of booking the Bliss. This was our third Alaskan and 22nd overall cruise (only our 2nd & last on NCL).

Embarkation - This was a mess but this can easily be attributed to Seattle and not NCL but they should have some minimum expectation of how their vendors perform

Ports - It appeared that in Juneau and Ketchikan NCL took a page out of my dad's book and parked at the cheaper dock that was farther away ("the exercise is good for you"). This made for a mess in trying to get into our shore excursion in Ketchikan. And port times were odd and short. Icy Point felt like a manufactured port like Castaway or Coco Keys without the waterslides. In hindsight we should have just stayed on the ship. Victoria was a disaster to disembark and NCL couldn't blame that on the Canadians (who were wonderful, by the way). Read more