hoopics

According to the signature line, jimsig sailed and did upsell in June of 2016. Upsells were much different a year ago than now.

I fail at reading comprehension. I also feel marginally better about not remembering having seem you in the hall. We sailed in 2017.

Wow, that's what I get for listening to the first person I spoke with when I called upsell rather than calling again a few days before sailing. I was specifically told by upsell about 30 days out that once the ship was enrolled in the bidding program, it was out of their hands. I'd have paid those amounts to get into a bigger cabin, but none of my bids were accepted. Really good to know, thanks.

What did you think about the cabin? Hope we didn't leave it too messy when you peaked in. We probably walked right by each other in the hallway and even said hi while passing.

 

Were you in 11526 or 11534? Who was your cabin steward? I can't remember who we had but I remember Cagy who was the cabin steward a few cabins away.

I couldn't really see in more than a few feet, but it looked nicer than our mini suite for sure. Our cabin steward was Mo, who looked a bit like Yule Brenner. He was great.

Don't remember walking past you guys, but if your daughter used Splash Academy there's a good chance she got to know one or both of our kids. They (and we) had so much fun on this sailing.

If I may be so bold, only because we're looking at doing it all again -- how far out did you book, and was your cruise fare above or below $10k? I really wanted a two bedroom, but by the time we booked in February it was about $11k for 2 adults 2 kids. We were able to get a minisuite for $6200 or so and couldn't justify paying almost double.

We were two doors down the hall from you on that sailing. I can neither confirm nor deny that I stuck my nose into your cabin at one point while they were making it up.

No more than my nose though, I swear.

Thanks for posting.

So if I've digested that right:

• They'll re-book you onto any cruise they currently have on calendar;
  
• They'll cover your change fees if you've bought airline tickets; and
  
• They'll give you $50 for the trouble of changing a reservation that's more than a year out, and that you'd still be free to cancel if you so choose.
  

But what you want is:

• A particular cruise that's more expensive at the same price; or
  
• To be booked onto a sailing that's not on calendar yet, and is just as likely to be rescheduled and leave you disappointed again?
  

Separately, why would you put thousands of extra dollars towards this sailing now, more than a year in advance, as opposed to parking them in a high yield savings account or other investment vehicle? You're using present dollars to pay a future expense that, next year, will cost comparatively less after inflation. And you're locking yourselves into something you might choose to reschedule if a different cruise line offers a better sailing during that period at a lower price.

What am I missing here?

We cruised on Pearl recently with younger kids, so I don't have direct experience, but I think an 11 year old would have a blast in the splash academy. They group the 10 through 12 year olds together, and from what I saw it was a raucous group. I have less insight into how the 14 year old would take it. There seemed to be a number of kids of that age roaming free on the boat, or using the pools or sports court, or the arcade or bowling alley. I think it depends on your 14 year old's interests and ability to make friends with strangers.

OP,

Was your medical insurance policy primary? I assume that from the quick check issue.

My claims were on policies where the medical was secondary to my "regular" medical insurance. In those claims I had to submit a denial letter from my insurer. That resulted in a bit of delay in a couple claims, and significant hassle for one claim. But the travel insurance adjusters did their job promptly in all the claims.

I assume the trip insurance was primary. They asked what other policies I had in place, and I disclosed my at-home medical insurance. But they didn't require me to make a claim, or even ask if I'd made one. Which I didn't.

FINAL UPDATE: the check from AIG arrived Friday, or five days after they said they'd be mailing it, and less than two weeks from the initial claim. Couldn't have asked for better service from them, and will definitely be using them again on future trips. Given that they offered more comprehensive coverage and better cancellation terms for less money in premiums, I can't see why I'd ever buy the cruise line's insurance [not just through NCL but any carrier].

Sailed Pearl with a wretchedly picky five year old at the June; she loved breakfast, and the ability to get a hot dog at every other meal in every other restaurant. One word of warning: a number of the kid's menu choices are prepared in the main kitchen on deck 6, and not in the various specialty restaurants. The further you get from the main kitchen, and the closer you eat to peak mealtime, the longer it'll take to get the kids' meal delivered to wherever you are eating (and the colder it will be). We waited almost 30 minutes for chicken strips (for our son) to come to the pub. That taught us to always ask how long they thought the wait would be on kids food in that restaurant at that time.

On taking food off the ship, I'm certain they've adopted a blanket rule of no food anywhere ever period to avoid having to selectively enforce what foods can / can't come on board in various ports of call. As has been noted there are some foods that Ag. / customs rules do permit to cross the border. But they can be hard o interpret even for CBP agents. Now all that said, we may or may not have had boxes of Cheerios and other cereals from the buffet in our state room on every day of the voyage, as well as in our shore bag for every excursion. Some may or may not have also come back onto the ship, uneaten. I can say we were never asked once about anything in our bags, leaving or coming back.

UPDATE: Earlier today I received confirmation from AIG that they'd be mailing me a check for the full $973 I paid to NCL's medical center. Assuming that happens, I'll be singing the praises of their Travel Guard policy and insuremytrip.com to anyone who will listen.

I went back and checked, and found I paid $281 for their "Gold" plan, to cover myself, my wife, and my two rugrats. It covered as much as the NCL plan, for about 1/3rd the cost, but also offered 100% "cancel for work reasons" coverage -- given the unpredictability of what I do, that was huge.

For the claim described in such detail in my OP above, I went to their website, clicked submit a claim, and filled in all the blanks. I scanned and uploaded the four bits of paper I got at the medical center. Took me less than 15 minutes, total. I submitted that late afternoon last Wednesday. Before Noon Thursday, I received confirmation it had been sent to an adjuster. At day's end today (Monday) I received confirmation the payment was coming. Basically a three business day turn-around. I was not asked for any additional details, and I was not asked to submit the claim to my medical insurer first (and I did disclose when they asked that I have medical insurance).

Couldn't have asked for anything more, except maybe direct electronic payment rather than having to wait a week for a check. Well, that and not having had to have a guy stick medical pliers under my big toe in the first place.

NB: my toe is completely healed. I didn't even need to go see a local doc to have the last of it cleaned up. So another thanks to Dr. A for the great work.

Closed loop cruise = no passport needed for U.S. citizens no matter what age when sailing.

Just don't miss the boat in a foreign port of call, or need to be taken ashore and left there for medical care.

I have a question if evacuation for example was required , do you have to pay the 20,000.00 etc upfront and submit for reimbursement from travel ins.?

This is going to depend on your insurer and the details of the policy they send you -- NOT just the declarations page with the top line limits on it. I just looked at my AIG policy and it says that they'll pay for evacuation up to policy limits IF you contact them for approval first (or as soon after evacuation as you can if you're incapacitated). If you fail to contact them, they may only pay what they'd have paid had you contacted them. This implies to me that they'll make direct payment arrangements and receive some sort of discount. In other parts of the agreement, e.g. hospitalization, they do make reference to paying for charges directly if required. In the case of smaller things, the expectation is you pay the bills and seek reimbursement.

FWIW I can't remember the last time I printed a boarding pass. I mostly fly United, and at every major airport I find "Mr. Chicken." I enter my PNR, and Mr. Chicken lays me a boarding pass if I want paper. Also, UA and AA have great mobile apps. Yes, checking in a T-24 is a good idea, but then just email the link to the pass to yourself. I'm not offended by the pricing of the on board printing; it's the burning vacation time to do something more easily done at the aeropuerto.

I'm not a drinker of either alcohol or soda, so i went without the UBP. I found everything listed above, plus lemonade available in every restaurant. I had many, many arnold palmers (half iced tea / half lemonade) over the course of the week, plus water and orange juice at breakfast. My kids had lots of milk, apple juice, and lemonade. My wife, who does drink some, had mainly water and iced tea, with the occasional glass of wine or soda in the restaurants. For the meals where we hadn't generated a charge for anything else, I think they comped her the soda. They also comped her a glass of wine once. So four people, seven days, and our beverage charges came to ~$60, with most of that being specialty coffees at the java bar.

Anyone do a speed test?

Thanks for the responses BTW.

Last week on Pearl I was heavily dependent on the internet. And it wasn't always pretty. I think I tried to run one speed test, but had the server time out due to a serious latency issue. When it was working -- and for almost two days it was completely down -- the speed seemed to spike up and down. I attempted and completed a single 25 minute Skype voice call, from my cabin while tied to the pier in Victoria. For I'd say 80% of the call, the quality was serviceable, but for one stretch it got broken up to the point of having to repeat things. I didn't even bother with video. I watched a few news video clips / youtube videos over the week, and had a number of buffering issues.

During the two days data was down, I had about 500 MB of e-mail back up in my outlook in box. When the internet came back on line, I let my computer start synching and went to dinner. It was still going after dinner. Took about 2.5 hours to clear the queue. If we say 2.5 hours is 9000 seconds, and 500 megabytes = 4 gigabits, then the back of napkin average download speed was 444 Kbps, or about 1/5th max DSL speed. I'd guess latency was on the order of 500 ms (as compared to connecting via aircraft wifi, which seems to have latency of +/- 800 ms). It seemed more responsive than that.

How's that for wild-a** speculation and guestimation?

Just had it the three meal package free as one of my two free at sea choices, along with the internet. I don't drink enough for the UDP, and we only went on one NCL shore excursion so the $50 a port value wasn't interesting. Wish 3rd and 4th sail free had been a thing on our sailing, but it wasn't. I liked the package enough that if we sailed again, I'd pick it again despite having to pay the gratuities. I wouldn't pay a dollar more than that. We might do one night at one specialty restaurant, but otherwise we'd try and find food on shore if we want a change from the free dining.

The specialty food was a little bit better than Appleby's quality, but only a little bit, and I didn't see a meaningful distinction between the lower end specialty choices and the upper end choices in Indigo.

insuremytrip.com will provide LOTS of information on coverages and options.

I second this, as I used them for my policy. Only I reason I didn't put the URL up in my original post is I thought that sort of thing was frowned upon. The purchasing process was super easy, and the plan I picked offered better coverage at a fraction of Norwegian's rate.

Brief update on the claim itself. -- put my claim into AIG yesterday via their handy web portal, and was assigned a claims handler today. Waiting on a decision. No ETA on that.

And thanks to everyone for the sympathy and the kind words about my story. I swore to the doc on the ship that his memorable greeting to me would go front and center in my review. I felt I had to follow-through on that, but in a way that gave the right context. The insurance stuff is just icing.

So the 250 minute free perk can be upgraded to the unlimited minus the full value of 250 minute package? I ask as I will be on the BA this coming September and have the 250 minute wifi pan as a perk but would prefer the unlimited package.

Yes, this is exactly what they let me do last week. Your mileage may vary.

It's worth about $40 towards something better. They, obviously, won't give you the full retail value of the "free" package.

Not sure where you get this. We selected the internet plan for our Alaska sailing on Pearl last week. I went to buy an unlimited plan ($209, if memory serves), and planned to use the 250 minutes for a second device. The internet manager volunteered that I could apply the $125 value of the minutes to the unlimited plan, and pay only $84 for that. And I subsequently had $58 refunded for two days with significant outage periods. So my out of pocket expense for the unlimited plan was $26. Granted, I'd have rather had those days without interruption and paid the $84, but I was still happy to have the $125 applied.

I "winced" at your description of your ordeal. Thank you for sharing and I hope things are much better now.

 

I am guessing many would agree on getting the insurance, and some of us would still point out that paying out of pocket for the RARE incident is cheaper than buying insurance on every cruise. (we take many - see signature).

 

We often take out insurance but not for travel delays, etc. We take it out for medical, but even then not because we are worried about a bill for $1,000, but instead for bigger issues. If that is all that happened every 3 or so cruises, it would still be cheaper to NOT take insurance.

 

We do sometimes get the medical insurance - not for small items - but for a major medical evac. We are doing a 10 day Canada cruise this fall. We are doing any kind of insurance. We use the money for other things. Could something still happen? Sure can, but likely - nope.

I do understand this line of thinking, and follow it in many situations where others might insure something. Here, the thing that motivated me to buy our policy was actually the "cancel for work reasons" provision -- I have an unpredictable job, and there was a risk of having to pull the plug on $x,xxx in non-refundable cruise investments at the last minute.

I will say this -- between myself, my wife, my Mom, and my kids, we have sometime like 12 individual cruises (e.g. 4 people x 1 cruise = 4 individual person cruises). Those trips have featured 3 medical center visits and one recoverable trip interruption that applied to three travelers. Fortunately none worse than what I described above. Bad luck? Obviously. But at ~$1200 to get the third party insurance in place to cover all those voyages, we're ahead relative to self insurance. If we went without insurance and suffered one major event to anyone in our party over the next 30 to 50 cruises as a group -- anything that requires extraction from the boat, for example -- we'd likely lose the bet on self insuring. We'd also have to deal with the large lump sum out of pocket obligation vs. relatively smaller incremental costs we spend on insurance with each trip.

Overall, I'm not a guy who buys the extended service plan on a $500 television, and maybe not even on my car if it's a reliable brand. But if a $300 travel policy ensures me against a non-trivial chance of losing my $x,xxx investment in the vacation and a remote but non-zero chance of a $xx,xxx medical bill, that's a fair gamble. But I do see how others may crunch the numbers differently.

We did Teppanyaki with both our rugrats (8 and 5) on Pearl last week. Both sat around the table with the grown-ups. My wife and I had our dinners covered under the SDP. We paid the full adult cover price for our son, as he ordered from the adult menu [$35 for a few bites of steak. But we sort of knew that's how that was going to go]. Our daughter got the kids menu, which is the same in every restaurant on the ship. Hot dogs, chicken fingers, pizza (I think -- we never got past either hot dogs or chicken fingers), and maybe one other dish. On Pearl the kids food is brought to wherever you are from the main kitchen on Deck 6. That meant it could take awhile, and they wanted the kids orders put in early.

So I'd say go ahead and reserve however many seats you want for people to sit there, and when you check in with the host just indicate your little will be eating off the kids menu. It's quite seamless in practice.

Preface: This ultimately is a very positive review. I'm happy with the outcome. And even the process. But man, the process.

Trigger warning: if you don't do medical grossness well, stop reading here. I've toned it way down, but a few facts are unavoidable as they are material to the story.

The scene: NCL Pearl, a blustery June Saturday morning on the Pacific Coast of Canada, en route from Ketchikan to Victoria. Our author, well fed and rested after the first six days of his seven day Alaskan voyage, woke much earlier than planned in his mini-suite. He awoke not due to the dulcet tones of his children snoring, or due to the light Pacific swell rocking Pearl's 93,530 Gross Tons too and fro, but due to the throbbing pain in his big toe. The pain, which had first appeared with an inflamed ingrown toenail following Monday's shore excursion in Juneau, had grown familiar over the course of the week. But each day it grew a little worse than the day before. And each day the inflammation spread. Our author walked with annoyance through Skagway. Limped his way around the deck while taking in the sights of Glacier Bay. Then hobbled his way along the incredible shore of Nooya Lake in the Misty Fjords after the float plane ride of a lifetime (thanks Island Wings!). But it was still cruising as normal.

Then came Saturday morning. Let's just say that healthy toes aren't supposed to seep anything. And they're supposed to bend at the major joints. And not be bigger on one foot than the other. Over night, however, this one had turned the color of red wine, become unbendable, and had gone all...icky -- in ways best not posted on a genteel forum such as Cruise Critic. So, at 8:30 AM, our author left a note for his sleeping family, hopped down the hall to the elevator, and headed down to the uncharted reaches of the medical center on Deck 4 in search of antibiotics and perhaps a bottle of whiskey and a bone saw to cut the darned thing off, Battle of Trafalgar style (non-English naval history types, go look it up).

Pearl's medical center had all the charm of your typical suburban doctor's office. Without the fish tank or old magazines. But with watertight doors. It was small, impeccably clean, and smelled like...comforting antiseptic things that you use to kill things that make you sick. It was staffed by an incredibly friendly nurse / receptionist, who seemed to understand that most of her clientele tends to freak the heck out when they see the bill at the end of their visit. So she made clear that the visit itself would be $149, in addition to any procedures performed and supplies used, and provided an itemized sheet of all the potential charges. The same sheet is posted on their door. While a person might not be in the best position to do the math at the time they come in, or realize just how many of those boxes might get checked for a single procedure, the pricing was basically transparent [except for the medicine; more on that in a bit].

Enter Dr. A [name protected for privacy, although the dude is a hard core practical skills physician to whom your author owe great thanks and appreciation]. Dr. A took one look at the offending toe -- and yes, it was offending in every sense of the word -- and asked in a Spanish accent that was somehow fitting to the whole triage medicine-on-the-high-seas situation, "So, are you ready for some pain?" Now, those words can be asked in a couple different ways. And not all of those ways come through in print. The way he said it? It was conveyed with warmth and sincerity, and with honesty. It was a subtle message of "I know my business. I know I will fix you. But to fix you, first I must seek out and destroy that which offends you. With cold sharp things. And some pinchy / proddy / yank-y things too."

We went back into the examination room / operating theater / medical storage space. Again clean, well organized, and more like small hospital ER than anything else. A portable X-ray machine stood in one corner. A reclining table stood to the side. Shelves and drawers contained most all of the implements of basic emergency medicine. There was even a drawer labeled with what seemed to be intubation supplies. Not that anyone wants to be intubated at sea, but hey sometimes there's no choosing these things.

Dr. A went to work. Bigly. He communicated well about what was to occur next. He tried less invasive things, before going to more invasive. He tried without having to numb the toe first, because that was a separate line item on the bill [more on that later too]. He delivered on the pain. And he dug out the infection. Your author was not, in any respect, ready. As the people on Deck 7 likely heard. Anyone on the June 25 sailing of Pearl who heard shrieks on the last day at sea? Yeah, my bad.

Within 24 hours, though, and after some hard core oral antibiotics and an antibiotic topical creme, the offending toe, partially nail-less, no longer offended. It only whimpered softly under its band-aid. Its removal was no longer contemplated. Nor was death at sea from sepsis. Thanks again, Dr. A!

The following morning, and as promised, an itemized invoice arrived on our stateroom door. For $973. The breakdown:

• Office visit during posted hours -- $149
  
• Peripheral Nerve Block [read, lidocaine shot] -- $175
  
• Removal of Nail -- $369 [and man, did Dr. A earn every penny of this. Gross and challenging work, right there]
  
• Dressing Supplies for Medium to Major Wound Care -- $25 [curiously this was checked but not added to the total on the bill]
  

Medical total: $693

• Levaquin, 500 mg, 8 tablets -- $280 [this price is in line for the branded drug; but it's available on land for much, much less in generic form]
  
• Topical antibiotic ointment [didn't show up on the bill either. Yay, freebies!]
  

Pharma total: $280

Total bill: $973

Fortunately, before the sailing, we went with an AIG Travel Guard plan that included $25k in medical coverage. The total premium on that plan, purchased through a major website with a name that rhymes with inuremytrip, was under $300 total for everyone in our family. While AIG hasn't indicated how much they'll pay on the service yet, it'd be surprising if it isn't a significant amount.

And if you're still reading the longest post in the history of the internet about a single toenail removal: I return to my title question why should you buy travel insurance? Because fixing an infected toenail on an NCL boat was a nearly $1,000 undertaking. During our voyage, we heard over the PA that two patients had medical events which triggered "code alpha" major medical interventions. It would seem bills for those kinds of events can easily hit five figures, and that's before the patient gets carted up to the helipad on the deck 10 sports court for a coast guard Dolphin ride to shore. Please, if you're going to spend a week or longer on a vessel away from land, and if you can afford to drop $x,xxx for the privilege, plan to invest the extra $xxx to insure it properly. You don't have to go through the cruise line, but please make sure you have a dedicated policy in place and that you understand what it covers.

Hope that some portion of this was helpful to someone out there. Stay tuned for an update here on the insurance denouement, hopefully within 24 to 72 hours.

The End.

sjl, we were on the same sailing as you -- the opposite end of the hall on Deck 11, in fact. We also had a fantastic voyage, and are sold on NCL after this our first cruise with the line. I'd rate it a sold 4.3 out of 5, which is about where the reviews seem to be trending for Pearl. It was an amazing cruise, trailing very slightly the 13 days we did through the Med on QM2 for our honeymoon. But we went all-in for that one.

I've been too busy to post a full trip report, so I may just piggy-back off yours here for a couple observations / thoughts on yours if that's not frowned upon:

• Cleanliness -- Not at all surprised you led with this in your review. This was our fourth cruise (one prior on Cunard, two on RCL), and I was affirmatively impressed by how neat and tidy everything was on the Pearl. Granted, she'd just come through a refurb, and a bit of exterior rust is inevitable on anything that floats, but the cabin attendants, hallway cleaning staff, and the like were working hard to keep every shiny surface polished and the floors well vacuumed. I even saw an exterior painting crew while we were in Skagway. Overall she was in better shape than the QM2 when we sailed on her in her second year in service, or either of the RCL boats [by far].
  

• Common spaces -- Agreed the decor and furniture were quite appealing. Loved the Spinnaker Lounge, as well as the Great Outdoors during non-meal times. Two gripes here: as someone noted in another review, there are a number of broken seats in the main theater (I was stuck on one during lifeboat drill) that really need fixing, and the air handling in the casino was terrible. As a non-smoker, it was bad enough to limit my time there, which cut into my gambling spend [hope you're reading this, NCL].
  

• Kid's club / Activities -- we had our two rugrats (8 and 5) with us. You likely heard them running past your door more than once as we headed to the Summer Palace, and / or our shushing them and telling them to slow down. My apologies for that. In any event, they LOVED splash academy. They even begged us to leave them on board in Juneau when we went on our shore excursion [win / win for them and us, as it would have been boring for them]. We found the staff to be attentive, friendly, but good at marshaling lots of cooped up high energy kids. They also loved the scooped ice cream in the buffet, the arcade (expensive, a bit limited), the bowling alley (hard to get a lane -- they should have a sign-up system rather than first come, first served), the sports court, climbing wall, shuffle board, and "big chess / checkers" out on deck. We weren't able to check the last must-do off their list until our final night in Victoria.
  

• Cabin / Cabin Attendant -- we loved our mini suite (11526) which was right under the room where they store and mix the pool chemicals for the forward pool. I know this because we'd periodically hear these gurgling sounds like the world's largest toilet flushing. One day I went up to 12 and pieced it together. They only did the pool work during daylight hours, so the noises weren't bothersome. We found the cabin overall to be incredibly quiet, and well shielded from the wind and rain by the deck 12 overhang above [we were a few cabins aft of where that started]. Unlike your experience, we were able to sit outside virtually every day of the cruise, albeit wearing sweatshirts, gloves and shoes some days. The beds were quite comfortable, and the kids loved the "cave" that was created by the blackout curtains. Everyone slept well all cruise long, and we found it to be enough space for us. I was very impressed by the functionality of the store design. Less so by the two broken drawers that fell off their tracks, which we couldn't get fixed by maintenance until Day 2. Delayed our packing a bit, but our wonderful cabin attendant Ray just worked around our luggage until they fixed it. Our kids' biggest complaint about the cruise -- maybe their only complaint -- was that the TV in the cabin did not have dedicated childrens' programming 24 / 7. We told them to get over it and look out the window at the glaciers and the whales and the eagles and the seals.
  

• Bingo -- way too expensive for what it is. Yeah, it's a cash cow. And yeah, it draws. But $40 minimum entry for an hour session? Please.
  

• Internet service -- BOOOOOO. We went almost 36 hours spanning Glacier Bay and the sail towards Ketchikan without wifi. Granted, they were great about crediting me back two days worth of fee against my unlimited plan, but what I really needed was connectivity with my office. This was a huge disruption -- after I got back onto land. During the period it was down, I just had to deal with seeing glaciers and whales and the inside of my eyelids during quality nap time.
  

• Food / Service -- Summer Palace for lunch was our favorite, mainly for the view out the back as we were sailing. The wait staff there were generally the best, although that's a relative term. I whole-heartedly agree with your assessment of all the dining locations feeling dramatically under-staffed. We were particularly unimpressed by the difficulty finding a table in the buffet in the morning, mainly due to them being slow to clear tables. It also took a glacial amount of time to get a kid's meal delivered from Deck 6 up to O'Sheehan's. Unlike your experience, we had our single best meal experience at Cagney's -- we went for my "birthday" meal, with cake and song, and found the staff particularly attentive. Our worst meal was at the Bistro. So bad I had to complain -- despite it being half empty, the waiter rushed us through every course, to the point that he twice took my plate while I was still chewing my last bite, including once when I pointed out my wife was still eating her meal. Poor showing. At least they comped us the wine for my wife after we complained. We all found the breakfasts in the buffet to be quite tasty, but ate every lunch and dinner after day one elsewhere as we didn't care for the non-breakfast buffet options. Of the non-paid restaurants, Indigo was my favorite for dinner although the service was spotty. Best dish I had on the boat was probably the mixed BBQ at Indigo. Worst was the turkey sausage links at the buffet, which were cardboard-inedible. My kids ate many, many hot dogs. They described them as the best hot dogs they've ever had somewhere other than at a baseball stadium. This is high praise.
  

• Bartenders -- I'm not a drinker, and my wife only had a few glasses of wine at dinner. But I did try and hit the java bar every morning (I'm not as charitable on their buffet coffee as you). The service there was almost surreal in its lack of responsiveness. The effort in trying to get their attention, and then the amount of time it took to make a basic latte, would never fly on land. The coffee was fine, but not even up to Starbucks quality.
  

• Embarkation / Disembarkation -- we'd had some really bad experience with this on both Cunard (initial check-in at the port in Southampton, and at some tender ports) and RCL (worst being disembarking in FLL), so we were apprehensive about how that would run. We were affirmatively impressed by how well NCL had their crowd control together. We flew into Seattle the night prior to the sailing at stayed at the Marriott across the street (average by major Marriott standards, but wow the location), so we were able to arrive around 11:30 after a leisurely morning at the hotel. We encountered zero lines or waits until the post check-in / pre-embarkation area. We were given a tag for group 15; they were in the process of boarding group 12. The wait was maybe 10 minutes, and another 5 minutes in a queue before we were on board. No lines at all for any port disembarkations, except Juneau where we had to be off the boat as soon as we were cleared and the early line took 30 minutes. No meaningful lines at any port to get back on. We chose walk-off for disembarkation on return to Seattle, ate a full breakfast, and headed down around 8:45 AM. Took us about five minutes to clear the checkout line, and another five minutes for Customs. Then back to the Marriott. Couldn't have been easier, better organized, or better explained by the NCL staff. Big win here.
  

• Medical Center -- I can provide informed feedback on this too. But that's going to get its own stand-alone review in a little bit...
  

The best value is the package / packages you'll actually use. We just returned from four days on Pearl in Alaska. We chose the Internet and dining, as 3rd / 4th guests free wasn't offered on our cruise. We didn't choose UBP because over 7 days my wife had three glasses of wine and I had zero paid drinks other than morning iced coffee, which wouldn't have been included, and our kids hate soda so they drank the free juices and lemonade. We didn't choose the excursion credit because none of the Victoria excursions interested us and we had private excursions in two of our other three ports. We did get full value out of the dining and Internet packages. So for us they were the biggest value.

We were there two days ago. We went here: