Review of Panama Canal Cruise–14 Nights on NCL Sun October 14–28, 2016 (with photos)

[SeahawkSiren]

When we did our cruise, NCL gave us a certificate suitable for framing acknowledging that we crossed the Panama Canal. Is NCL still doing this?

 

Very cool picture of the Sting Rays. I love the photos you included of the sea turtles and the release of Timmy.

 

When we were on our Panama Canal cruise we were treated to the sight of a Frigate bird flying above the ship and then suddenly diving down to catch Flying Fish that would come out of the water when the bow of the ship passed near them. That bird stayed with us for a good half hour.

 

BTW, being from the St. Louis area, the NFL is dead to me. Two teams deserted us and a new one billion dollar stadium wasn’t good enough for the Rams to stay here.

 

Yes, NCL did give us a certificate suitable for framing. That's actually a good idea, I should frame them. We each got one with our name on it and the certificate was titled "Norwegians Take the Scenic Route." Congratulating us on transiting the canal and it was signed by the ship's captain, with the name of the ship, our cabin number and date of the transit. Very nice touch. We also purchased a DVD which we haven't viewed yet. But I think it is specific to our crossing.

 

Sorry about losing your Rams. I can see why the NFL would be dead to you. That team always had the Seahawks number though. We can never seem to beat them. And even though they've moved to LA they still have beat us once already this year :rolleyes: Some things never change!

[SeahawkSiren]

Tuesday, October 25. Another at sea day, another day of relaxation! Here are some other random photos I took from around the ship.

 

Sun Casino

 

 

 

 

 

[SeahawkSiren]

 

 

 

 

The Great Outdoors on Deck 11 aft was an awesome place to watch the world go by!

 

 

After a nice day at sea we came back to our cabin in the evening to find this:

 

 

Talk about a buzz-kill. Ugh! I don’t want to be leaving soon! But the time had come to start thinking about final details, settling our account, luggage tags, packing of suitcases, etc. But I couldn't bear to think about it at that moment as we had one more port of call the next day!

[SeahawkSiren]

Wednesday, October 26. Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. Loved, loved, loved Cabo! This was our first time to Cabo. We loved it so much we are trying to see if we can swing a long weekend down there early next year. Direct flights from Seattle only 4 short hours away! :cool:

 

One of the most beautiful and memorable sunrises I have ever witnessed was as we were arriving in Cabo.

 

 

 

 

 

[SeahawkSiren]

There is no cruise ship dock in Cabo so we had to tender which was fine. The tender ride was less than 10 minutes. We chose to do our own thing in Cabo and wanted one port where we didn’t have a ship excursion.

 

 

 

 

 

[SeahawkSiren]

Great shopping at the location where the tender dropped us off. I was on a mission to find a Seahawks poncho. On our Western Caribbean cruise a few years ago there were a couple ports in Mexico where they were selling these and I have been kicking myself ever since then for not buying one when I had the chance. Not going to make that mistake again. Mission accomplished! I found one in Cabo! So I will be sporting this beauty during many future Seahawks games to come!

 

 

We also shopped for souvenirs for our family members, got Cuban cigars for my dad, souvenirs for colleagues at our respective jobs, and also got a few other things for ourselves.

 

I bought this Seahawks backpack for a close friend who is also a diehard Seahawks fan

 

 

The businesses were ready for cruise ship passengers and had a great sense of humor!

 

 

 

[SeahawkSiren]

I had done a fair amount of research on Cabo before the trip and really fell in love with photos I’d seen of Medano Beach. Now that we were in Cabo I really wanted to see Medano Beach in person, just relax and put my toes in the sand, and drink margaritas on what would be our final port of call on this cruise.

 

Meet Joel. He wanted to be our “Mexican limo driver” as he called it and would drive us around Cabo and drop us off at Medano Beach. He pulled out a map and showed us the areas he would drive us around and would drop us off at Medano Beach but did not specify where on Medano Beach he would drop us off nor did we ask to be dropped off at a specific location at that beach.

 

 

During my research I had found Tabascos Bar/Restaurant which looked like our kind of place. We just wanted a place to chill, relax and reflect on our great vacation.

 

So guess where Joel ended up dropping us off at? He called it “his paradise.” It was quite humorous that he did drop us off right at Tabascos even though I never mentioned that specific location to him. So it was meant to be! He was a great driver and asked us how long we wanted to spend there so we asked if could come back for us in 2 hours, which he did.

 

 

 

What a gorgeous beach

 

 

 

We had a great view of the ship from here too

 

 

This was a great place! Very casual. Had lunch and drinks over our 2 hour visit there wishing our vacation wasn’t coming to an end.

[SeahawkSiren]

Time to head back to the ship on the tender, enjoying some viewing of wildlife along the way

 

 

 

 

[SeahawkSiren]

Goodbye Cabo. Thank you for a wonderful day!

 

 

 

 

 

After dinner we went back to the cabin. After being a little down the previous evening after seeing the “leaving us soon” flyer, I was smiling again after I found this critter peeking out from under the blankets!

 

[SeahawkSiren]

Thursday, October 27. Well, our final at sea day. The day had finally come where it was time to pack the suitcases so we could place them outside our cabin door that evening. Ugh!

 

Spent the day saying goodbye to some of our new friends and visiting some of our favorite places on the ship for one last time. We ate at La Cucina for our final night’s dinner.

 

After dinner we went back to our cabin and spent the rest of the evening there on our balcony.

 

We were sailing closer and closer back to reality and I was starting to get sad that our cruise was almost over and I just wanted our last night in the quiet and comfort of our own space that we’d grown to love during these 2 weeks!

[SeahawkSiren]

Friday, October 28. San Diego, California. Noooooooooooo, please tell me the cruise is not over!?! But sadly, it was.

 

Hello San Diego

 

 

 

 

Our flight back to Seattle was not until 3:00 p.m. (and that ended up leaving 45 minutes late – we definitely had airplane issues on this trip!) so we purposely chose to be in the last group getting off the ship.

 

Disembarking in San Diego was a real cluster. Don’t know what the delays were but we didn’t get off the ship until nearly 11:00 a.m. A lot of unhappy campers! A jumbled mess with no clear direction where to go. And because of the delays they were calling the different groups so close together that the lines to even get off the ship and outside just to get to the luggage areas were ridiculously long. And there were only 2 immigration officers looking at passports for 2,000 people! No wonder everything took so long! What a mess!

[SeahawkSiren]

Food on the Ship. OK, I guess you all have figured out I like to take a lot of pictures. I took nearly 1,000 photos on this trip. I had intended to take photos of the dinners we had in the specialty restaurants and other meals as well and add them to those specific days posts, but several times I either forgot entirely to take the photos or didn’t remember until after I had already started eating so that wouldn’t have made for very appealing photos. Ugh! So that is why I waited until near the end of my review to post about the food/restaurants in general as I only got some random food photos.

 

As I mentioned in the beginning of my review, we had the 6 night SDP. We ate at La Cucina twice, Teppanyaki, Moderno, Le Bistro and Cagney’s.

 

My favorite meals were La Cucina, Teppanyaki and Cagney’s. DH’s favorites were Moderno and Cagney’s.

 

I am not much of a beef eater and can count on one hand how many times in a year I would eat a steak but I will say what I did eat at Moderno was good and all the meats were so tender that you didn’t need a knife to cut any of them! And that Brazilian cheese bread that everyone raves about on CC? Yum! It was sooooo good! We asked for a second order of it and had to wait awhile as they ran out of it and had to make more! And the roasted pineapple was also delicious!

 

The first night at La Cucina I had the pasta. One cannot go wrong with Spaghetti Carbonara

 

 

The second time at La Cucina I had Chicken Parmesan

 

 

Here are some photos from Teppanyaki. That is always a fun place. We had a great chef who was very engaging with the group

 

 

 

[SeahawkSiren]

At Le Bistro I had the Napoleon De Legumes which is a vegetarian dish (and I’m not a vegetarian). It contained various vegetables and portobello mushrooms in a puff pastry with goat cheese and red peppers. It was very good. Very rich, but very tasty.

 

 

The other parts of my meal were not so great. Lukewarm, at best, French onion soup and rolls that were very hard, think hockey puck. I would say Le Bistro was my least favorite meal.

 

Cagney’s was really great! Outstanding service and meal.

 

We ordered the famous Cagney’s Parmesan Truffle Fries as an appetizer to share instead of as a side dish for our meals. So good!

 

 

My entrée was a chicken dish

 

 

DH had Filet Mignon

 

 

My dessert was a Macadamia Nut Ice Cream Sandwich

 

 

DH had a Decadent Chocolate Fudge Brownie

 

 

We had excellent service at all of the speciality restaurants. Prompt and efficient servers who were engaging and wanted to make conversation with us. We also prefer later dining times (most of our meals were around 8:00 p.m.) so the specialty restaurants did not have many people in them at that time.

 

Outside of the specialty restaurants we ate several times in the main dining rooms. The food and service was always very nice. Pleasant workers with good attitudes. Only one breakfast meal was the service unusually slow.

[SeahawkSiren]

The Good for Food. As previously mentioned, all of our specialty dinners were really excellent with the small exceptions of little issues at Le Bistro. The service was still top notch there though too. The main dining rooms were also very good food and prompt and efficient service. We never felt rushed nor did the meals take too long. A leisurely, relaxing pace for the most part.

 

If you want smaller bites and “ready to go” food for lunch, try Moderno which was a pizza/pasta station for lunch. We ate there several times if we were going to miss lunch times in the dining room or didn’t want to deal with the crowds and rude people at the buffet. Pizza, pasta, small sandwiches, salads, fruits, etc. A nice alternative.

 

I ate plenty of pepperoni pizza for lunches

 

 

Also, the Great Outdoors had snacks/foods too, not just for lunch but late in the evening also. Burgers, hot dogs, fries, etc.

[SeahawkSiren]

The Bad for Food. I don’t know what it is about buffets that seem to bring out the worst in some people. I know this is not isolated to the Sun but more than likely on many cruise ships in general and I’ve certainly witnessed some of these behaviors on other cruises.

 

I really dislike buffets for the most part and this trip was no different. Many rude, pushy people, cutting in lines, who behaved as if they hadn’t eaten in days or weeks. Others completely ignored the signs in front of them about not filling your water bottles at the water stations but instead to get clean glasses every time. Nope! They couldn’t do that. Put their bottles and germs right up in there to get their ice, water and iced tea!

 

I also saw people who apparently couldn’t even wait to get back to their tables before starting to eat, but were actually eating off their plates and putting food into their mouths without utensils while still in line at the buffet and then proceed to put their dirty hands onto serving utensils at the buffet. Yuck! So pack your patience at the buffets. The “it’s all about me” crowd is out in full force!

[SeahawkSiren]

The Good Overall. This was an outstanding cruise for the most part! My second favorite cruise ever (nothing has beat the Mediterranean for me so far)! Friendly, helpful staff. Always greeted with a smile, hello, how are you doing, etc. NCL staff on the ship were all doing their best to make our vacations special.

 

We absolutely loved our aft mini suite! Such a nice cabin with plenty of space, storage and a very large bathroom/closet area. Our balcony was splendid! Very nice size with 2 lounger chairs, 2 regular chairs and 2 tables. So worth the extra money! The incredible views from the balcony! I really miss it. Our mini also had several electrical outlets. Five 110 volt outlets and two 220 volt outlets so plenty of plug-ins for various things. We would book that cabin again without hesitation.

 

We love the smaller ships for less crowds and we don’t need all the bells and whistles of the larger ships and do not want the crowds that come with the larger ships.

 

A special thank you to our room steward, Tedi, from Indonesia, who was the best room steward we’ve had on any of our cruises. He had a very nice blend of being professional and personable. Always greeting us by name, prompt and efficient service, and very meticulous with his work. The people staying in the aft mini next door to us also commented how awesome he was! You rock, Tedi.

 

We had a great turnout for our CC meet and mingle, gift exchange and cabin crawl. It was a lot of fun meeting so many new people from all over the world.

 

We purchased a CruiseNext Certificate as we know we will be going on another NCL cruise within the next 4 years (in addition to next year’s cruise which we couldn’t use the certificate on unless we cancelled and rebooked). We received a $100 onboard credit for this cruise with the purchase of that certificate.

[SeahawkSiren]

The Bad Overall. The only bad issue we had were some problems with the toilets. On both day 2 and day 3 there were several hours each of those days where the toilet in our cabin was not working (and all of the toilets in the aft part of the ship were not working on part of day 2 as they had put “out of order” signs on all of the aft area public restrooms). The toilets would not flush. So it was an issue to have to go to mid ship or forward to use the restrooms! Thankfully these issues were resolved and did not reappear at any other times during the cruise.

 

The issues about soot on the aft balconies that others have raised here on CC are definitely true. I hesitated to even put it under the “bad” category as it was more of a minor inconvenience/annoyance than a major issue. It was not every day all day, but rather at random days and times. So be prepared to have to wipe down the chairs and tables on your balcony at times. Tedi also did his best to keep on top of this issue as well. This certainly was not a big enough issue to hesitate to book on the aft again. We would book there again in a heartbeat!

 

We did not go to any shows! That is bad! In fact, we have never been to any shows on any of our cruises! I vowed to go to one on this cruise and it did not happen. Partly because of our late dining times, but I guess maybe because we are just not “show” people. Also, the heat and humidity really got to us on this cruise. Nearly every day was 90+ degree temperatures and 90+ percent humidity. Very tough to acclimate to (we never did) and we were so drained at the end of each day and were in bed very early on many nights. Too early to stay up and enjoy shows or music.

[SeahawkSiren]

Favorite Moments Not Caught On My Camera. There was a small songbird, not sure what it was, possibly a warbler, who was hanging out on our balcony on one of our “at sea” days. Cutest little thing. Just taking a rest during his long migration journey somewhere.

 

Same with a very large butterfly one day just resting on our balcony. Moved on to his migration as well after a little down time.

 

One night during dinner in one of the main dining rooms the lights started flickering! My first thought was we were going to have a power outage! Nope! It was the NCL dining staff members doing a flash mob routine for us as we dined. Fun times!

[SeahawkSiren]

In Closing. Well, it’s always tough coming back to reality after a cruise, but after 16 days of not seeing my kittens, I have to say it was really great coming home to see them. I did miss them and they really missed me! We just adopted them from the Humane Society earlier this year as very young kittens and this was the longest we have been separated them. In fact, this was the longest vacation we have ever taken. These cuties were rescued by the Humane Society from a hoarding situation in an old RV so it has been wonderful giving them a nice, loving home!

 

Welcome home Mom, where the heck have you been the last 2 weeks? But more importantly, where's our dinner?

 

 

Now, as many of us know, the only cure for depression when a cruise is over is to have another cruise to look forward to. We are sailing on the NCL Spirit in the Mediterranean in 6 months for our 10 year wedding anniversary so it won’t be too long before our next cruise adventure! And it’s back to a side balcony cabin for that cruise. We loved our experience on the aft and hope to one day sail on the aft again. We are thankful for this opportunity and for our experiences on this trip. This was a wonderful bucket list cruise, we met a lot of very nice people from all over the world, saw incredible sites, ate wonderful food, definitely got our money’s worth with the UBP (I will miss those Daydreamer’s Daiquiris!) and this cruise is something we will always treasure.

 

Happy cruising everyone!

 

THE END.

[quillwercruisers]

Awesome review!! Thank you for taking the time to do it. LOVE your pictures!!

[Turtles06]

Really terrific review and photos! Thanks again for taking the time to do it, and thanks also for answering questions along the way (including mine).

 

I've been very excited about our upcoming Panama Canal cruise, and you've helped make me even more so.

[heffy2]

Great review! Thank you so much!

[Oakman58]

That was a great review, I hated seeing come to an end. Thanks again for taking the time and effort to share all those great photos. I’m a cat person so I loved the photo of your two beautiful kitties.

 

Your post about the buffet touched on a major pet peeve of mine, people eating food with their fingers at the buffet line. It makes me want to scream.

[easyboy]

Great review. Thank you for taking time to share with us.

[TLCOhio]

Yes, and it sounds like most cruise ships will continue to use the old locks. We couldn't really get any good looks at the new locks since they were blocked by trees and vegetation. But it sounds like periodically cruise ships will use the new locks. But mostly the new locks will be for the post-panamax ships that cannot fit into the old locks and the new locks are really going to be used more for commercial/shipping vessels rather than recreational vessels. I think Princess and Disney cruise lines have plans for cruises through the new locks next year.

 

Appreciate so much the many fine pictures and details from your great reporting. This includes these key comments on the Panama Canal and how things will work with the new versus old canal.

 

We will be doing a Fort Lauderdale to San Francisco cruise through the Panama Canal in late February-early March 2017 on a Princess ship. This includes stops in Aruba (that we did in early 2015), Cartagena/Colombia, Puntarenas/Costa Rica, San Juan del Sur/Nicaragua and Cabo San Lucas/Mexico. This would be our first time for visiting Columbia, Panama Canal, Central America, etc. It’s eight sea days, which is a little high for us, but it is a little “get-away” from the Midwest winter.

 

Any added tips, suggestions, secrets from you or others?

 

Congrats to your Seahawks winning a thriller last night!!

 

THANKS! Enjoy! Terry in Ohio

 

From our Jan. 25-Feb. 20, 2015, Amazon River-Caribbean combo sailing over 26 days that started in Barbados, here is the link below to that live/blog. Lots of great visuals from this amazing Brazil river and these various Caribbean Islands (Dutch ABC's, St. Barts, Dominica, Grenada, etc.) that we experienced. Check it out at:

http://www.boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2157696

Now at 45,400 views for these postings.