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No farewell show on our sailing. The final night was Legends. Here’s the daily program from day 7

Forgot to comment on this. We were able to get a good number of cruisers on our sailing to join Cruise Critic. I can’t tell you how many of them had never heard of it but were asking “what is a cruise critic meet and mingle?” I do have one small criticism of CC. I know they don’t want us to post about other social media sites, however they do have a page and post regularly on this one other platform I’m referring to and if it would help get new members here I think relaxing that rule a bit would be very useful.

Yes last year we arrived in Bermuda at 10:30 am Bermuda time but this year they’re arriving a couple of hours later…not sure why. We spent a lot of evenings in the Spinnaker lounge. Funky Roots band was really good (they were on last year along with Seaside Duo) and we enjoyed the game shows in Spinnaker. We were one of 3 couples picked for The Perfect Couple game show. All I can say about that is we’re glad our grandson was in Splash Academy that night. 🤦🏻‍♀️😎 If you want to laugh don’t miss it! I can tell you that none of it is staged. We placed our names in a box and were randomly chosen Sometimes I wonder if those things are prearranged but this one was not. lol We love the size of Pearl and even though we sailed completely sold out sans one room with a few hundred + kids it never felt overwhelming. For those of us that sail on this cruise every year it would be nice to see different entertainment but it’s not a deal breaker for us. For us being 45 min from ship to our house is priceless.

RI goes back Sept 5. MA goes back Aug 30

We overall enjoyed our cruise on Pearl 04/07/2023 but the entertainment was pretty much the same that we saw last year on the same cruise. Legends was the “big” show of the week with one difference from last year they added Elvis and took away Madonna. The “welcome aboard” show was a comedian in Stardust the first night and he reappeared later in the cruise with an adult comedy show that those of us traveling with children couldn’t attend because Splash Academy was closed while in Bermuda. Two other nights they had a great entertaining female vocalist as the main show in Stardust. Pearl singers and dancers performed a pure variety show one evening and then were part of the Legends show another evening. One night they showed a movie as the main show in the theater. It is my understanding that Pearl class ships don’t ever have the large production shows (someone will correct me if I’m wrong). We personally liked the cruise director. She was energetic and funny and we actually got to know her because she was at a lot of the events we went to. Her name is Carol. We never saw the captain. The hotel manager was awesome. He came to our CC meet and mingle which was very well attended in Bliss Lounge on the first sea day. NCL had a nice spread set up for us and the senior officers in attendance spoke and answered questions from some of us willing to ask. Later throughout the cruise the hotel manager remembered us and spoke to us each time we ran into him. Mike (but German spelling) from Germany was his name. Great guy. All senior officers were very visible and approachable throughout our sailing and they did seem to recognize us from being part of the CC meet & mingle group. We live in RI and cruise to Bermuda regularly from Boston. We cruise for Bermuda not the ship. Many on our roll call expressed disappointment as their expectations were not met. They felt the ship was too small, not enough to do for the children, and lacking production shows. I’m always surprised at how little research some folks do before booking a ship. We had quite a few first time cruisers on our sailing who were scared off and said they won’t cruise again because the seas were very rough. To us they were Bermuda cruise “normal seas” but I would never recommend a Bermuda cruise to a first time cruiser because the seas are usually a lot higher than a cruise in the Bahamas or Caribbean. We were in a Club balcony with our 9 yr old grandson and our room steward closed the sofa bed each day and returned while we were at dinner to open it again. We didn’t ask him to do this he just did it. He was great and we made sure to compensate him for all of the extras that he did for us. One thing that stood out to us was the crew seemed genuinely happy.

Completely agree.

Considering the base fare hasn’t changed much over the years they need to make up the cost somewhere. Personally I’m a big fan of usage fees. We don’t want or need a drink package, we pay as we go and prefer it that way. If you want an “all inclusive cruise line” without those add on fees be prepared to pay triple or more of what your NCL or even RCCL cruise costs.

I was one who tried to get Info from them on the other social media site and they ignored every one of the questions I asked on their ads. Some CC’ers can brush it off as “you were worried for nothing” but I guarantee you some of them will be on here posting the same concerns if they find out their cruise has a large group/charter that could impact their vacation. Those of us with empathy completely understand your concern prior to cruising. So happy for you that it worked out in your favor!

I don’t understand. Were you told you couldn’t leave the YC area before 8a.m? I was only in YC one time but can’t remember…are the ship wide announcements concerning the ship being cleared not heard in the YC area?

Simple way to avoid this is to book your own air. I would never allow any cruise line to have control of my air arrangements. Especially going to Europe. I don’t care how much money it supposedly saves me. Not worth the stress that you’re now experiencing. Money isn’t as important as my sanity. I think it’s unfair to judge a cruise line by the experience you’re having with your flights. Their on board experience is why we cruise with them. I don’t expect them to make my flight arrangements. I understand you’re upset but there are so many similar stories to yours concerning NCL booked flights that have taught me to never use them for that.

I know how concerned you were before your cruise about the Soca group but it sounds like it was a non issue. So happy to hear that you had a great cruise! We were lucky to see Prima in Bermuda a couple of weeks ago while on Pearl and we both decided our next NCL cruise will be on her! Did you see the Soca group at all?

The chocolate lava cake in the MDR was our favorite last week on Pearl!

Just off Pearl on Friday. I was able to make reservations for the MDR before our cruise on the NCL app and I had the email confirmation and I took a screenshot just to be sure. Once on board the ship when the App changed to the on board status my MDR reservations did not show up. My specialty dining reservations did. I went to guest services and was told they don’t accept reservations for the MDR. I showed her the email confirmation and screen shots and she was speechless lol There was nothing she could do. She kept repeating to me that they don’t take reservations for the MSR despite me having proof that I made them. Others in line with me were there for the same reason. Even though the ship was sold out we only had to wait maybe 10 min a couple of times to get a table. They gave us a beeper and a voucher for a glass of sparkling wine or soda each time we had a wait.

No internet needed to use the message feature in the NCL app. You put the phones in airplane mode and use the Pearl internet that is designed to work with the app. I’ve heard some complaints about the message feature but we didn’t have one problem with it. It really was a great thing to have so we could communicate with each other when he was at Splash Academy. He also felt very grown up having the cell phone for the week since he doesn’t actually have one in “real life” lol

So stressful for him. I’m glad he was able to make it in time!

Forgot to mention We ordered a plate of steamed vegetables to share each night in the main dining room. The servers were very accommodating and always asked if the sides that came with the entree were to our liking or if we wanted something else.

Thank you! We had 1 cabin attendant and he was a joy! He always had a smile on his face and he learned our names and greeted us by name every day! For the Easter basket I filled it with the usual Easter candy and included an extra cash tip for the week. We also hid some cruise ducks which he was very interested in because he has 2 small children back home, so we gave him some Easter ducks for his kids. Thank you so much! We did not play Deal or No Deal. We did play Bingo once it was $49 for 3 cards/3 games. We had fun but didn’t win lol We didn’t do the behind the scenes ship tour this time, sorry I can’t comment on that. We thought the MDR had very good choices. On the left of the menu they have “Classic entrees” that are available every night and they don’t change. They included NY Strip, Rotisserie Chicken, Pork Loin, Shrimp Alfredo over Fettuccini and Flounder. The right side of the menu had different entrees every night and they weren’t repeated the 4 times we dined there. There were at least 10 entree choices between the two sides of the menu each night.

Completely agree it’s the luck of the draw. Over 40 cruises under our belts and we never had the experience we had on Divina in January. Had it been a 3-4 day cruise we probably would have chalked it up to the “booze cruise” type sailing but we did 10 days and 4 days back to back. The 10 day was the problem. All things considered we’ve had great luck. This cruise on Pearl had great passengers especially considering it was cold and windy going to and coming back from Bermuda we were inside a lot yet zero problems. Pearl didn’t seem to be understaffed which makes a huge difference also. Unfortunately still reading some of the same complaints about Divina on other social media sites. I think they need a change of management. I feel so bad for the crew on that ship.

We used the ParkWhiz app and parked in the lot right next to the ship. It was a very easy in and out lot and a very short walk to the terminal. It was $185 for the week and I reserved and paid for it a few weeks before our cruise.

Definitely don’t consider them to be a premium line I should have said higher priced than MSC. To me NCL and MSC aren’t that far apart yet NCL is more expensive. (At least for us it was in comparison to our last MSC cruise)

We definitely will cruise MSC again but only in YC if we’re leaving from Miami and never during a holiday again.

We’ve found a great travel agency that gives a very generous OBC and pays the service charge so that helps with the higher priced cruise lines. You really do get what you pay for. We realize that now. We enjoy the MSC product and ships but after our experience in January we won’t cruise outside of the YC with them in the future. The issue I have with that is we limit ourselves to a small area on a huge ship. We may as well pay for a more premium cruise line where we can enjoy the entire ship.

Oh sorry about that! I thought you meant the NCL ferry to St George. We didn’t go to Bar Harbor this cruise. I believe they don’t begin going there until late April/early May.

Thank you! I’m happy to hear that my reviews have been helpful. I really do enjoy doing them! We will definitely cruise with NCL again, we had a great time! I think we’ll book Prima and take our grandson again. He’s only cruised on Pearl so he was pretty excited when he saw Prima in port. People were lined up ahead of time for SA on our cruise too. The line went all the way to the entrance of the buffet. We were turned away a few times because it was at capacity. SA on Pearl isn’t very large. I’m wondering if anything will be done during the dry dock to expand it. I think the sports court on deck 13 is a waste of space and isn’t utilized much. It would make a great area for kids and teens. Evan is definitely an adventurous eater so he ate off the adult menu at every meal. The servers got a kick out of him! He was able to eat the entire meal at Teppanyaki…I couldn’t even finish mine! I don’t know where he puts it, he’s so thin but he also never stops moving and kept us going the entire week! We love taking him with us and he’s also a big help as we allowed him to go to the Great Escape to grab snacks etc. One tip for cruising with kids that helped us a lot is we brought one of our old iPhones with us and downloaded the NCL app on it. We paid the $9.95 per phone so we could message each other. It worked out great as he could message us if he wanted us to pick him up at SA or if he wanted to negotiate a later pick up time. (More often that was the case lol) I highly recommend that if you have an old phone that you no longer use.

Finished our cruise yesterday. We can cruise on a sold out ship with 400 kids during school vacation and have a very positive experience without having to book The Haven or Yacht Club. Very apparent that this ship is not understaffed. Our faith in cruising is restored. This was our second NCL cruise, we are not loyal to any one cruise company. We cruise with all of them. HAL next.