MakiraMarlena
It's a big black fish to you
- Joined
- Mar 28, 2005
I thought it looked kind of old, not kept up. We had a balcony room and when the couch was opened up to sleep on, you couldn't use the balcony. I thought the bathroom was smaller. Definitely not the smiling faces you see on Disney from the crew members. When we walked one the ship, there was no welcoming committee and we had no idea where to go. We also don't do the Casino and aren't big drinkers so if that's your thing there seemed to be a lot to do on sea days related to wine and chocolate tasting, alcohol testing etc. We were looking for more family things to do and we found a cupcake decorating class and thinking they were going to show us some cute ideas decided to go. We went in, they handed us a cupcake, a dap of icing and told us to go get our sprinkles and have at it. In all honesty if we hadn't done the Disney cruise first it might have been okay. The bar was set pretty high on the Disney cruise and the NCL Pearl didn't come close. Now that is just my humble opinion and others that have sailed love it.What was your impression of the Pearl if I might ask? I do realize NCL is not Disney so we are not going into this cruise with that expectation. I think if we did, that would lead to disappointment. We are going in with an open mind and the "let's check out this cruise line and see what they have to offer". I have to admit we also chose this cruise because we were tiring of some of the Disney ports of stop and this cruise offered ports we had not yet been to except Cozumel.
I posted about this in another thread but we are currently booked (haven't PIF so things could change) for EBTA with DCL and then a Mediterranean with NCL. Honestly, a big reason we are jumping ship to NCL (instead of doing the b2b and staying on the DCL ship) is price. We are booked in the Haven in a 2 bedroom villa on NCL whereas that same money wouldn't even get us a Deluxe Family verandah on DCL.
I'm sure we will sail on DCL again at some point, but I'm really not looking forward to going back to set dining times and locations. Everyone's different. A lot of people love the traditional dining aspect of cruising and really aren't comfortable with NCL's system. But for us it worked perfectly.
The last 2 pages of very helpful info is why.Not particularly. Just curious as to why?
I thought it looked kind of old, not kept up. We had a balcony room and when the couch was opened up to sleep on, you couldn't use the balcony. I thought the bathroom was smaller. Definitely not the smiling faces you see on Disney from the crew members. When we walked one the ship, there was no welcoming committee and we had no idea where to go. We also don't do the Casino and aren't big drinkers so if that's your thing there seemed to be a lot to do on sea days related to wine and chocolate tasting, alcohol testing etc. We were looking for more family things to do and we found a cupcake decorating class and thinking they were going to show us some cute ideas decided to go. We went in, they handed us a cupcake, a dap of icing and told us to go get our sprinkles and have at it. In all honesty if we hadn't done the Disney cruise first it might have been okay. The bar was set pretty high on the Disney cruise and the NCL Pearl didn't come close. Now that is just my humble opinion and others that have sailed love it.
I did like the freestyle dinning but missed the service from our servers on Disney. The shows were pretty good.
Just off the Bliss Transatlantic maiden voyage. As for the smoking issue and the enclosed casino, it works beautifully. Never even smelled a hint of smoke and we walked through the casino several times to go from one end of that deck to the other. Granted, the ship was brand new, and even had the new ship (new car) smell throughout, so hopefully it will stay smoke free with the enclosed part. I had always considered Disney Fantasy to be the most beautiful ship I’ve ever sailed on, but I actually am bumping the Bliss ahead of it. The ship was stunning, and the service outstanding. For anyone who might be wondering, the Stateroom TVs are not on demand, as on Disney, but on the Family TV channel, we saw Moana, Beauty and the Beast (live action), Guardians of the Galaxy 2, Frozen, Disney Nature, (I think about bears maybe?) and a couple Disney channel shows like Jessie, etc.