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Pearl Review Dec 11-18 with all menus and all 'Freestyle Daily's'

Jeebs

By Jeebs,
in Norwegian Cruise Line

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Jeebs

Jeebs

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Just arrived back home from a week on the Pearl. I will be posting a in depth, comprehensive review of the ship, our suite and the ports. I also have all of the Freestyle Daily documents and will be scanning them in as well.

 

Hit me up with any advanced questions if you would like!

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Jeebs

Jeebs

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A Little Intro

 

My wife and I are in our late 20's and from San Diego. This was our first cruise aboard the Pearl but not with NCL. This was our first cruise in a suite, however. We were in an aft penthouse on deck 10. Our stateroom was 10166.

 

Embarkation

 

The VIP embarkation was a nice change of pace from the gauntlet that you normally run when boarding an NCL ship. The flow of guests is stopped and you are walked up the gangway by a representative of NCL until you reach the ship. Instead of following the normal flow of traffic (in this case making a left) you go opposite. There, our concierge met us and we were escorted to Cagney's for lunch after a brief introduction. Our luggage was at our doorstep pretty quickly after the stateroom was made available.

 

The Ship and Crew

 

We fell in love with the Pearl pretty quickly. The layout of the ship is easy to figure out after a short period of time. The Pearl is clearly well maintained as she doesn't show 5 years of use. The pool deck never felt overly crowded and we never encountered any of the infamous "chair hogs". Our favorite after-hours hangout was the Spinnaker Lounge (when it wasn't being used for events). We took a tour of the spa and it looked really nice but we did not purchase the week long pass. It was $120 and we just didn't think that we would use it often enough to be worth it.

 

The crew is what really make the Pearl great. Everyone was excellent from the buffet staff to the room stewards. We were always greeted with smiles everywhere we went. As CC members, we had an opportunity to meet a large group of the officers during our M&G. They had some good info and were excellent hosts.

 

We utilized both the Summer Palace and Indigo Main Dining Rooms. We found the wait at Indigo to be longer, often greater than 30 mins around dinner time. The food was pretty good for the most part. One night they had blackened red snapper with seafood gumbo and it was delicious. The steak in the MDRs was fair to horrific bad depending on the night. I would advise people to simply steer clear of steak in general on the Pearl - Cagney's included.

 

Cagney's for breakfast and lunch was a nice little suite perk. The food wasn't necessarily better, just different options. The shrimp cocktail at lunch was pretty good as was the french dip. I have included the menus and they should be posted below.

 

I have posted a review of Cagney's HERE. It isn't good - for the most part.

 

We went to Teppenyaki one evening and it was your typical teppenyaki restaurant. If you have never been to a teppenyaki style restaurant than you already know what to expect and I wouldn't recommend the $25 per person coverage charge. If not, it is a good first experience. You can, however, find much better selections for a similar price at most restaurants on land.

 

We had some bumpy seas the first few days. Most people took it in stride. It was funny to see people using the walls to keep themselves upright when walking.

 

Our Stateroom

 

We were in 10166, an aft penthouse (SF category). The room was nothing short of excellent. It had more than enough space to move and store whatever you could need for 2. 3 adults might be much, however. My wife particularly loved the vanity that was in the room. The larger TV was also nice, we watched a couple movies during inclement weather. The view from our room was SPECTACULAR. We would definitely recommend the aft part of the ship for anyone.

 

Our butler was Roland and he was great. On our second day, our breakfast order didn't arrive at our requested time. About 30 minutes after it should have arrived, we called Roland to inquire as to what happened. He claimed he never received our order card (placed on our door the night before). He quickly corrected the situation. He had Cagney's prepare our breakfast even though they had already stopped serving breakfast and had it in our room as soon as possible. Every other breakfast we had ordered was there without issue, with scary time precision. By the way, we later found the card just inside the stateroom in a closet near the door. Our best guess was that it blew back in when we opened the door at some point. Anyway, Roland also brought cookies daily as soon as he found out my wife loved them. There were many other things that I would list but it would take forever. He was excellent.

 

Our concierge was Anoop. He was also excellent. We only utilized his service for one dinner reservation at a "cover charge" restaurant. There was no issue and he stopped by at the start of dinner to check in on us and ensure everything was going well. It was the extras that Anoop did that made the difference with us. For example, we had a considerable wait at the Indigo Main Dining Room one night. So I called Anoop to see about a reservation there - he made it happen. We asked about the behind the scenes tour and were told that it had already filled up (a paid event). Anoop called later that night to let us know that he had arranged a private tour for free. It was wonderful, particularly touring the bridge.

 

Disembarking

 

The not so fun time. Not because of NCL, just because it means it all comes to an end. We utilized our priority embarkation suite perk and jumped off fairly quickly. Then of course, customs happened....

 

 

 

I won't get into the individual stops unless there are some specific questions.

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NJGeorge

NJGeorge

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Just arrived back home from a week on the Pearl. I will be posting a in depth, comprehensive review of the ship, our suite and the ports. I also have all of the Freestyle Daily documents and will be scanning them in as well.

 

Hit me up with any advanced questions if you would like!

We are sailing the Pearl in Jan. 2012 in an aft penthouse as well.

My question is how long was the wait to get through customs?

There seems to be many accounts of long customs lines:eek:

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DinsdalePiranha

DinsdalePiranha

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We were on the same sailing. From the time we stepped off the ship and wound our way around the dank luggage warehouse, to the time we finished at US Customs was 2 hours. Our conversation with Customs took 20 seconds. We were literally the last passengers to go through the line. 2 hours...yes, I said 2 hours in a line on a concrete floor with no chairs, water or washrooms.

 

I don't know if there was some problem with the Customs officers, or if the passengers were particularly dim this trip...it seemed as though there were an awful lot of passengers filling out new paperwork at the front of the lines while everyone behind just waited. I watched one group in particular at the front of the line talking to the officer and filling out paperwork again and again for 30 minutes. Didn't see anyone pulled over for "secondary" inspection, it all just seemed like an exercise in bureaucracy.

 

One thing we hadn't realized is that they hold all the ship's staff in the warehouse and don't allow them to enter the Customs "booth" until all passengers have cleared.

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Jeebs

Jeebs

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Sorry these are coming up so slowly. I am still going through all of my stuff from the trip. I'll post more pics of the room for those who are staying in this exact suite.

 

Here is the Cagney's lunch menu for suite passengers.

 

SAM_0892.jpg

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mahalbella

mahalbella

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We were on the same sailing. From the time we stepped off the ship and wound our way around the dank luggage warehouse, to the time we finished at US Customs was 2 hours. Our conversation with Customs took 20 seconds. We were literally the last passengers to go through the line. 2 hours...yes, I said 2 hours in a line on a concrete floor with no chairs, water or washrooms.

 

I don't know if there was some problem with the Customs officers, or if the passengers were particularly dim this trip...it seemed as though there were an awful lot of passengers filling out new paperwork at the front of the lines while everyone behind just waited. I watched one group in particular at the front of the line talking to the officer and filling out paperwork again and again for 30 minutes. Didn't see anyone pulled over for "secondary" inspection, it all just seemed like an exercise in bureaucracy.

 

One thing we hadn't realized is that they hold all the ship's staff in the warehouse and don't allow them to enter the Customs "booth" until all passengers have cleared.

 

I was on this same ship too, and disembarking was a total breeze for my husband and I... only took about 20 minutes to get out. We chose to do the 'easy' option and not seek out bag tags, so we just jumped off and dragged all our luggage with us when we decided it was best to leave on the day. (Ended up being around 8:30am I believe)

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Jeebs

Jeebs

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We are staying in the same suite in Jan! Glad to hear its great! Did you attend any shows? How were they? Did you do any excursions?

 

Thanks for the dailies!

 

Will you be in this suite? If so, you won't be disappointed. Deck 10, specifically the two interior of the four suites, have the biggest balconies. I'll be sure to find some pictures of the balcony and suite.

 

This will be your view

 

IMG_2142.jpg

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Jeebs

Jeebs

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Thanks for posting the dailies. It will help us have an idea of what we might like to participate in. We're sailing March 4th.

 

You are very welcome. I have some more stuff to post but have slowed on the uploads. Hopefully I'll have it finished by the end of the week.

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