Review - Star 1/4/06 sailing

Review of our 1/4 cruise on the NCL Star

These are our thoughts from the cruise we just came back on yesterday. In our party, were me (28), my brother (21), and my parents (50s). My brother has never sailed on NCL before, only, Carnival, RCL, and Holland America. My prior experience with NCL was on the Norway, which wasn't doing freestyle at that time. And my parents had actually been on the NCL Star 2 years ago when it was in Hawaii. We ended up picking this cruise mainly because we had already been to the West and East Caribbean several times on various cruise lines and we wanted to do something different. We were going to do South Caribbean, but it ended up being cheaper to do the Mexican Rivera. As long as my brother and I could snorkel, we didn’t care where it was. While the cruise wasn’t the best cruise we’d ever been on, we would sail on NCL again.

We flew in a day ahead on a direct flight on Continental from Newark, NJ to the LAX a day ahead. We booked the air on our own, as I still had credit from a cancelled flight, and my parents had frequent flier miles. For transportation purposes, we had booked a minivan from Enterprise to be picked up from LAX and returned to the San Pedro location. For those who are wondering. It was an additional $25 fee for us to drop off the San Pedro location. Since we landed around 11AM in California time, we rode the Enterprise shuttle to pick up the minivan and then checked into our hotel and had lunch there. We stayed at the Renaissance Montura which is a Marriot property near LAX, since we had Marriot bucks and points. They do have a free airport shuttle, as they are only .2 miles away. Also, while we could see the planes taking off from our window, we didn’t hear them at all. The LAX Enterprise is only about 3 blocks away from the hotel. For the rest of the day we went to meet one of my mom’s high school friends, who lived nearby.

Embarkation:

The next day, we drove to the San Pedro Enterprise location around 1PM. This was across the ship from where the NCL Star was docked. Enterprise requested that we go and drop off our luggage and party first and then they would drive back the person returning the car.

Compared to our previous cruises, the embarkation process to get onto the NCL Star seemed a lot longer. Not sure if this is because we’ve never left from LA? We’ve normally left from one of the Florida ports or New Orleans. Anyway, as we had gotten an upgrade after they had already mailed us our documentation, we ended up having to wait in a line for about 20 min to get the blank luggage tags. Then we were supposed to wait in another line to get a porter to take our luggage. We got lucky, because as my mom went to wait in the porter line, a porter was walking back from break and saw us standing by our luggage near the passenger drop off point and just picked it up for us. Then he pointed us to the other entrance to go into the building. Once in the building, we went up some stairs and then there were 2 areas where we could stand in line. One was the citizens that were not US or Canada, Latitudes, and Suites/Villas. The other area was for the rest of the passengers. On hindsight, I think we should have just waited in the regular passenger line, as it seemed to move faster and had more people at the counters, then the Latitudes line. We were in line for about an hour. Once we got our ship card and passport scanned, we then went to another room, where they passed every one a group number. Groups of people were called up so that we could get our carry on luggage x-rayed and they could check our photo id w/ the name on our ship card. They were on group 20 when we got to that room. And we were in group 30. So it took us another 30 min. There are 2 lines for getting your stuff x-rayed. Our parents went to the one on the left and my brother and I were standing in the right. My advice would be to go through the one on the left. The reason why, is because when ever there is someone that needs help (such as people in wheel chairs, scooters, canes, etc) the NCL people have them cut the line on the right to let them in. This takes longer, as the people who need the help cut the line with their entire party. So my brother and I got cut by a party of about 10 people. After the X-ray part, we were ok and on board in no time.

Sea Days:

There were a lot of activities to choose from. One of the first things we did was go up to the fitness center to find out if they had a program like RCL and Holland America did, where we could get a prize or something after collecting points or ship shape dollars. NCL does in fact have a program. It is called Ocean In Motion. They give you a card, that you get initialed whenever you do an activity. After collecting 10 initials, on the last sea day, you can redeem it for a T-shirt. They only had size Large, which, my brother didn’t like, as he wears XL. Something to note, even though on the card, it says that the eligible activities will be noted in the Freestyle Daily, it is not. But the activities that are eligible are the Walk a Mile in the morning, and various competitive activities done by the Cruise Director staff (Such as shuffle board, golf putting, etc). Dance classes are not eligible, though. We had so many activities that we missed the Latitudes party.

Formal night was on the second sea day. We checked the dailies every day, but the rest of the nights were resort casual. They did, however, have formal portrait taking every night, so if you missed formal night, and just felt like getting dressed up, you could.

Also, we had to set our watches twice.

Casino wasn’t bad either. We didn’t play the slots, but we came out ahead by $100.

Manzanillo:

The ship docked for this port. My brother and I had packed our own snorkel equipment. So we did this one on our own. When we got to the taxi line, we asked some of the local people where would be a good spot for snorkeling. We heard there was a spot not too far away from the ship. They recommended La Boquita. So we took a $15 taxi there, for about 25 min ride. From there, while we were offered a boat ride to snorkel for an hour for about $40, we decided to snorkel from the beach. There were few fish, and the water was cloudier then we expected, so I would recommend not snorkeling from the beach. Perhaps the boat trip would have been better. Anyway, we had arranged to have the taxi diver pick us up a few hours later and he did. Please be aware that ship time is an hour different from local time here. And it was a good thing the taxi driver checked with us.

Puerto Vallarta:

We also docked in this port. We were thinking originally to do the pirate ship on our own, but we changed our minds. We did see the pirate ship docked nearby while eating at the buffet. We were going to snorkel at the beach nearby, but as we were asking directions to the beach, some of the guests from the hotels nearby said that the flag was red and it meant that we shouldn’t snorkel at that time. And they we needed to wait for a yellow flag which would probably be around 1PM. We spotted a stand that was advertising snorkeling trips. For $19 a person, we booked an excursion with Chico’s dive shop. http://www.chicos-diveshop.com/ We had to get our own transportation to Mismoloya, where Chico’s would then take us on a boat to snorkel near Los Arcos. The taxi ride is $14 each way. Or you can take the bus. We didn’t want to chance the bus system, as we had to be there in an hour. But for those who want to book Chico’s, I’m not sure how much it would be online, but Chico’s was charging $15 a person, if you bought it at Mismaloya. Another family we met had paid $23 a person for the same trip with us, and they bought it from the town center. The snorkel trip was great. We saw lots of fish, and we had a snorkel guide who would dive down and bring things up for us to see.

Mazatlan:

Once again, we docked in this port. This time, we decided to take a break from snorkeling. We were originally just going to get off the ship and wander in the flea market nearby. But as we were wandering, we saw an ad for a trolley tour. So we took that one for $30 a person. It was about 3-4 hours long. We were taken around old and new Mazatlan. We stopped to watch one of the divers, stopped so that we could look at the Old Cathedral and also stopped for shopping. The last stop we made before going back to the ship was to a restaurant. We went to El Capetan (the captain) or something like that, which was on the ocean front. There, we got free nachos and a margarita to go with the seafood soup that we ordered. My brother thought it was the best seafood soup he’d ever had.

Cabo San Lucas:

For this port, we had to tender. It only took us about 15 minutes to get from the ship to the pier. Since we didn’t have much time here, we booked the Snorkel and Sail Fiesta through NCL, because we needed to use our $50 credit from the itinerary change and we wanted to make sure we didn’t get left behind. This trip was also good.

Disembarkation:

As we had a flight at 12:55PM, we went to the reception desk and signed up for Express Walk off. They allow 150 guests to do this. For this one, you are the first off the ship and have to take care of your own luggage. You don’t leave it outside the door the night before. Anyway, our cruise ship came back into LA at around 7AM. We cleared around 8:30, I think, and we were off and through customs by 9AM. I had reserved a private XPress shuttle, but it wasn’t scheduled to come until 10:25AM. We called them, and they said that they would come at around 9:30-9:45AM. The shuttle did indeed come. However, the only bad experience we had was that, another family saw our shuttle and asked our driver for help, as they were also booked, but they needed to get into contact with the office to get their Disneyland shuttle. The bad part was that somehow, it got changed around so that the shuttle we had just gotten on was told to take the other party to Disneyland instead and we had to wait again for another shuttle to be dispatched. This was because this shuttle was allowed to go to Anaheim and the other one was not. So we ended up waiting another 15 min for another shuttle.

Once we got to the airport, it was around 10:45-11AM, and we checked in. Everything was fine going home from there on.

General comments about the trip:

- Weather was great at all ports. From high 70s to 96 degrees.

Entertainment:

- We weren’t that impressed with the Jean Ryan company productions. However, the best one was the last one, which was Cirque Pacific, and that was because we were impressed w/ the Chinese acrobats. They are only at this show. We’ve seen them before at Six Flags

- Fallon Magic was only so so for us. My dad normally loves watching magic shows and he didn’t think this one was very good.

- The best show that we liked was actually the Crew show, which they do on the last sea day. That is when crew who are not part of the Jean Ryan group come up and perform. Like Rusty the stage manager, who did some great magic tricks, and one of the girls had a very good singing voice.

- Movie theater & TV were playing: We watched a lot of the movies: Mr. & Mrs. Smith, The Librarian, Herbie Fully Loaded, War of the Worlds, Mystics, Transporter 2, Bewitched. The other movie channel was playing older movies, like Ice Age, Dirty Dancing, Batman 1966, etc.

- Murder Mystery was not offered on our cruise. They stopped due to the holidays, and haven’t started again yet.

Cabin:

- We had 2 Interior Category I cabins on the 10th floor. While it seemed smaller then the rooms at Carnival, we did like the bathrooms here better. One of the reasons, is because they have shower doors instead of curtains. We have not been on a newer Carnival or RCCL ship lately, so I’m unsure if they’ve changed this yet. There is a bed that folds out from the wall over one of the beds and the other bed had a small trundle bed that comes out from the bottom. The bed spreads did look a little worn and ripped a little.

- We didn’t get any towel animals. We saw some of the room stewards making them, but ours didn’t. My brother ended up making me a towel animal, because he got tired of me complaining about it. He made me the monkey which hangs from the ceiling. Our room steward saw it and asked us how to make it. He didn’t know how to make towel animals, and that’s why we didn’t get any.

Food:

- We went to the Blue Lagoon. We tried the Fish and Chips. They were ok. I like the ones my brother makes better. My parents like the fried rice though.

- Service was a little slow in the main dining rooms. We didn’t try any of the specialty ones so I can’t comment on those. One of the waitresses at the Versalles was really nice. We had her twice for dinner. She remembered that I liked the cookies that came with the ice cream, and she brought me extra the next time we had her. On our last sea day, my mom said she wanted nothing for dessert. So it was funny when after she brought out the rest of our desserts, she brought out a plate with the word “Nothing” written in chocolate for her.

- Buffet wasn’t bad. We liked breakfast over there better then at the main restaurants. We loved the corn beef hash.

Thanks for taking the time to write a thorough review, I love reading every review I can find on the STAR...and a few other NCL ships.

:)

wonderful review! thanks for posting about the new ports :)

cheers,

mayfaire

Awesome review! Thanks so much, glad you have a nice time!

Thanks for posting I printed it out to read later.

Thanks for taking the time to post!

Thanks for the review. I'm like immargaret - I like to read every review of the Star. We were on her in June, 2004 and will be again in June this year. Can't wait!

Thanks for the great review! Our group leaves for the same cruise (Itinerary)

in 4 weeks. This was a big help.

Can someone le me know if they still do the 'buy 5 bottles get the 6th free' deal on wine........I have read some posts that hint that they have dumped this one too....:eek:

Hi,

Great review thanks. I was wondering what Shuttle co you used. You mentioned express, was that the name, and how much was it to prebook? We also have an early flight from LAX to go home. Thanks in advance.

Hi,

Great review thanks. I was wondering what Shuttle co you used. You mentioned express, was that the name, and how much was it to prebook? We also have an early flight from LAX to go home. Thanks in advance.

Going on the Star on March 1. Just booked shuttle with Prime Time Shuttle. Primetimeshuttle.com Seemed like best price.:)

Hi,

Great review thanks. I was wondering what Shuttle co you used. You mentioned express, was that the name, and how much was it to prebook? We also have an early flight from LAX to go home. Thanks in advance.

We booked for $63 for a private van, since we had an early flight, we didn't want to chance them picking up anyone else. I believe it is $55 if you didn't mind sharing. I booked online using the URL below.

http://www.xpressshuttle.com/home.htm

Thx,

Debbie

I see this on some of the freestyle dailes that have been scanned. What are these???

Krack Its are like lotto scratch cards.

Hi - I have read on reviews of the Jewel that they now stock the fridge in your room [in the hope that you will drink the contents and then pay NCL even more $$$$..] - can you let me know if this is the case on the Star? I have heard that you just tell the steward to "take it all away" and then put your own 'stuff' in the fridge...... Thanks!

Hi - I have read on reviews of the Jewel that they now stock the fridge in your room [in the hope that you will drink the contents and then pay NCL even more $$$$..] - can you let me know if this is the case on the Star? I have heard that you just tell the steward to "take it all away" and then put your own 'stuff' in the fridge...... Thanks!

Actually our fridge was empty when we got there and they never put anything out. My parents' room down the hall had water though. They just put it on the high shelf.

Thx,

Debbie