Allison & David's Babymoon: Norwegian Pearl 11/3/15

[ucfalli]

Day: 2 Key West Continued

11/04/15

After dinner we stopped by the room and I saw we got a towel animal and we had the proper number of towels. Crisis averted! We didn't get a towel animal the first night and I was getting a little worried we wouldn't get any. Even better it was a dinosaur which I have been wanting to get :).

We headed to the theater to watch the evening show. Deal or No Deal was finishing up so we watched the end of it. It was very entertaining to watch. Lots of audience feedback.. :D

The show was: Comedy Magician Glen Gleason. The show consisted of him performing card tricks, so you had to mainly watch the screen as they were filming so you could see. Card tricks aren't my personal favorite... David highly enjoyed the show.

 

After the show we hit the hay...I was beat.

 

End of day 2!

 

[ucfalli]

Beautiful butterfly pictures! :) Thanks for sharing them with us.

Heather

 

Glad you enjoyed them! :D

[ucfalli]

Wow, thanks so much for the butterfly pictures. I spent time in the gift shop in the afternoon but I was melting at that point after 3 hours of walking so I skipped out on the tour. I'm thrilled to see your photos of the butterflies. My sticker is currently on my fridge.

 

I totally understand... the gift shop felt like a cool oasis. Good idea for the sticker!

[CoconutOne]

Loving the pics so far!

 

What times were the shows each night?

[ucfalli]

Loving the pics so far!

 

What times were the shows each night?

 

Showtimes were 7:30 and 9:30pm

 

The welcome aboard show was only one time at 8pm

[ucfalli]

Day: 3 Sea Day

11/05/15

 

[ucfalli]

Day: 3 Sea Day

11/05/15

 

[ucfalli]

Day: 3 Sea Day

11/05/15

 

I believe last night debarkation information was also left.... couldn't believe we were getting this information already!

 

[ucfalli]

Day: 3 Sea Day

11/05/15

 

Today was our only sea day. I didn't sleep well so I was pretty drowsy most of the morning. We decided to eat at the Summer Palace for breakfast. Food service was very quick. Quicker then I am use to for sit down breakfast. A bonus on Norwegian, they give you your own carafe of coffee. I thought it was a nice touch.

 

I got the salmon benedict and hash browns. Wanted to try something new. Was pretty good.

The rock climbing wall was open at select times during the day. The line was never too incredibly long. I of course couldn't do any rock climbing and David said his shoulder was bothering him, so neither of got to use the rock climbing wall.

Lots of people using the basketball court:

Of course the pool was packed:

After breakfast we headed to the promenade to find a quite spot. I took a nap on one of the loungers while David watched some stuff on his iPad. I wish they didn't have music playing in the background. I would of just preferred to only listen to waves while napping.

 

We explored some lunch options. They had a BBQ going on again which looked really yummy. I really just wanted a sandwich, but the options in the buffet were limited so we decided to head down to O'Sheehans since we had a good experience yesterday.

 

[ucfalli]

Day: 3 Sea Day

11/05/15

 

For lunch at O'Sheehan's......service was absolutely horrible. In all honestly, this was probably the worst service I have every received at any sit down restaurant in my life.

 

Our waiter couldn't appear any more disinterested. After some time waiting, we were handed a menu without any communication and no eye contact. Even while ordering the waiter appeared to distracted and wanting to be anywhere but there.

 

Today they had the salad bar area set up. There you could make a salad, make a simple sandwich, or grab soup. If you wanted the wings and chips, you had to get them as well at the salad bar.

Nothing tasted good. The mozzarella sticks were very cold. I ordered the tuna sandwich, which came with barely any tuna on it. The waiter was so quick to leave when we were ordering.... I didn't get to tell him I wanted fries instead of chips.

 

Completely different experience then yesterday.....

 

For desert we headed up the buffet for some ice cream and then headed to Spinnaker lounge for Greg Gleason's (magician the night prior) memory session.

 

Learned some interesting memory technique, But honestly I forgot a lot of it..... :eek:

 

After the show we did some walking around the promenade again, but I was still sleepy so we went back to cabin to nap before dinner.

 

After nap time, we got ready for dinner and headed up the buffet to check what was on the menu. They had really nice ice/fruit sculptures on display.

 

[ucfalli]

Day: 3 Sea Day

11/05/15

 

 

[CoconutOne]

Thanks! Looking forward to the continued review!

[ganggreen88]

Fantastic review. I'll be on the Pearl 12/31. Can't wait.

[ucfalli]

Day: 3 Sea Day

11/05/15

 

Once upstairs at the buffet I finally noticed the crepe station. I had read about it on other trip blogs so was aware that there may be one our ship.

 

I had noticed the area before but never noticed any crepes begin made. This time I saw all the fillings at the area, so just waited a bit till someone showed up to make me one.

 

Pretty yummy and would highly recommend one.

Another fruit display:

We soon after headed up to Moderno for our reservation. Was pretty chaotic at the check in desk and took me a little bit to figure out that check in on the left side of the desk was for Moderno and the right side was for Cagney's.

We were seated right away after checking in. The waiter came by soon after and explained how everything worked. We then headed to the salad bar to check out the offerings.

 

These is what I got at the salad bar:

There was a good variety and the food was pretty good...... But I don't think anything can live up the hype that you read on some people's reviews.

[ucfalli]

Day: 3 Sea Day

11/05/15

 

Quick look at the salad bar:

Once your done at the salad bar, you flip your card to green.

The waiter brought us new plates and then the meat feast begun!

 

They also brought out several sides (rice, beans, mash potato's, & plantains):

The only real food aversion I have been having is to beef. The weird thing it's not to all beef.... and only at certain times. Tonight the beef tasted odd to me and I wasn't interested in it. Plus some of the meat was a bit to pink for us. The waitstaff actually brought us out some that was cooked a bit more after asking.

 

The only meat I liked was the non bacon wrapped chicken (I don't eat pork). David enjoyed the beef and pork, so I think it was just me.

 

I still had plenty to eat between the salad bar, sides, and chicken. I filled up in no time. Non of the deserts interested us, so we skipped desert.

 

 

The wait staff was very understaffed. I don't know if this is typical for Moderno. I could see they weren't ignoring us, just that they were super busy. It was hard to even get refills for our water and it took probably over 20 min to get our check. Was getting a little frustrated as we wanted to head to the evening show.

 

Once again the service at a specialty restaurant was not what I was expecting.

[ucfalli]

Thanks! Looking forward to the continued review!

 

 

Thanks! :D

[ucfalli]

Fantastic review. I'll be on the Pearl 12/31. Can't wait.

 

 

Are you on one of the charter cruises, or is it just a new years cruise? should be fun either way!

[ganggreen88]

Are you on one of the charter cruises, or is it just a new years cruise? should be fun either way!

 

It's an 11 day Panama Cruise. Should be fun.

[ucfalli]

Day: 3 Sea Day

11/05/15

 

After dinner we headed to the headliner show. Tonight was the comedy of Cory Kahaney. We both enjoyed the show. Was nice having the comedy in the main theater so you didn't have to fight for a seat in a small lounge like on Carnival.

After dinner we killed sometime walking around the ship and dropping back into the room before the White Hot Party.

 

Towel animal tonight was an elephant....looks like he's had better days....

Nice and quiet on the promenade...

 

 

Honestly..... the White Hot Party was a little bit of a disappointment. Was just a basic deck party with people in white. The band was playing before the DJ started.

I guess we were just expecting more for something that Norwegian is known for. The best part of the party was the DJ. By far this was the best DJ we have every had a cruise ship. The DJ was very good at reading the crowd (which never happens on Carnival) and was just a good overall DJ. He eventually got the party started.

They handed out a few glow necklaces probably about 45 min after the start of the party.

 

I just saw a lost opportunity to make money. Why on earth there weren't any specialty drinks in lit up glasses sold is beyond me......

[ucfalli]

Day: 3 Sea Day

11/05/15

 

They also had some free face painting for the kiddos which I thought was a nice touch.

 

But I couldn't help but wonder why there wasn't a some sort of special late night buffet that coincided with the party (if there was I didn't know about it)....

 

Where were all the hungry late night party folks going to eat? The only thing I was aware of being open was O'Sheehans.

The second half of the party, the DJ started playing a lot of merengue and latin dance which David enjoyed.

 

David squeezed a little dancing out of me (the irony since it's typically the girl trying to get the guy to dance)... but soon after I was tired so we headed to bed...... zzzzzzzzzz

[ucfalli]

Day: 4 Great Stirrup Cay

11/06/15

 

Today was our last day on the ship and was also my birthday!

 

[ucfalli]

Day: 4 Great Stirrup Cay Continued

11/06/15

 

[ucfalli]

Day: 4 Great Stirrup Cay Continued

11/06/15

 

We were originally planning on trying breakfast at O'Sheehan's, but after yesterday's lunch we decided to just return to the Summer Palace.

 

Ahhhhh.... nice and quiet.....

 

Breakfast came out pretty quick....but nothing to rave about...

Went back to the room to get ready and saw the first tender with the crew heading out.

[ucfalli]

Day: 4 Great Stirrup Cay Continued

11/06/15

 

There was an announcement to go the Spinnaker Lounge to get a tender ticket, so we headed that way. When we got there it was empty expect for one Norwegian employee who told us there was no wait and to just head down to the tender. Wasn't expecting that....

 

We got down just in time to grab one of the first two passenger tenders.

 

 

We actually haven't tendered since our very first cruise when we visited Grand Cayman. This was also our first experience with a cruise line private island.

Norwegian has their own tender boats.

 

 

 

Approaching the island...

 

 

[ucfalli]

Day: 4 Great Stirrup Cay Continued

11/06/15

 

 

Everyone made a mad dash to claim their spot.

 

 

 

 

The area towards the front: