I'm writing this review as a first time cruiser in hopes it will help the next person. There was 8 of us in our group and we had 4 balcony club suite rooms. The ship is amazing and so is the entire staff! They do a tremendous job of helping and we felt the ship was immaculate! When we left the port of Seattle, the weather was rainy and foggy so we didn't get to see much nor did we the next day. Our arrival at Juneau was sunny and beautiful. Some of us did the tram and others did the whale watching. Both were good excursions. Skagway was a nice stop and lots of tourists. Some of us did rock climbing and others did hiking to the waterfall and cemetery outside of town. Glacier Bay was breathtaking! Take your binoculars and enjoy the peace and quiet. We felt Ketchikan was depressing. We all did the duck boat excursion. No sun, rainy and not much to see plus you are only there for a short time. They get 13 feet of rain a year. The stop in Canada needs to be longer and more organized! No one did an excursion due to the limited time. But what a beautiful place. So yes, pack layers, a lightweight jacket, binoculars and good walking shoes.

Our experience with Norwegian before the cruise is where I am disappointed. Our agent through Norwegian helped us book the cruise and then was hard to get a hold of and never answered his phone! Unfortunately we were told not to worry about booking excursions or dinners at the specialty restaurants because the cruise was not at capacity and they only let 20% get booked before the cruise. Wrong! We were only able to get 1 specialty dining booked for 9:00 pm. We really would of liked to have experienced more of the restaurants. The buffet gets old. The shows were hard to get into and all the good excursions were full also. Our agent didn't tell us that if you book airline through the cruise line, you don't get to pick the airline and sometimes if you are in a group you are not on the same flight. Overall I learned a lot and we would definitely go on a cruise again. I did buy the magnet hooks and luggage cruise tags from amazon, they were nice to have.