Solo on the Bliss 5/5/2019

[mapleleaves]

2 hours ago, browniegirl said:

I love this review!  I am considering taking a solo cruise also, have cruised many times with NCL but never solo!  What are the studio cabins like, can you get a balcony?  Sorry, just never looked into it and am curious!!!

 

Leah

 

you can also look on youtube for lots of video of the solo cabins.

[IrieBajan54]

I have sailed in a Studio twice (Epic & BA). Your Studio seems roomier with the twin bed instead of the larger one. Also, the live feed looks great.

 

[smplybcause]

I suppose it was roomier? Honestly it wasn't enough to notice and I would have greatly preferred a larger bed. I sit on the bed when I open the closets anyways and don't need that much room to walk to my bed!! It's probably only us taller folks that care, but my next two studios are on BA & Epic and I'm looking forward to my feet not hanging off again!

 

I'm hoping they're not still smaller on Encore, but I'm guessing they are. 👎

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Day 1

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Day 2

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Day 3

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Day 4

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Day 5

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Day 6

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Day 7 - note that we didn't get into Victoria until 830pm. The itinerary originally said 730pm. I don't remember any announcement regarding the change besides the daily but I could have missed it. 

[smplybcause]

Sorry I didn't save the disembarkation stuff. If you're eligible for Port Valet I recommend it. My bags arrived at my final destination and I didn't have to worry about taking them off the ship or picking them up in baggage claim and I was able to find my way to the airport without dragging my bags along. Since I already my boarding pass I got straight into the security line when I got to the airport. I have pre-check, but there's several security check points for non pre-check (there's one that's pre-check only). When I arrived around 10/1030 I heard them say each line besides the pre-check line was around a 30-45 minute wait. Not sure if that's always the case or not.

 

Oh, and I didn't go down when we first got the info about selecting your luggage tags, but when I was near guest services on Day 7 I noticed there were barely any tags left and only certain colors so I saw a decent amount of people getting in line for guest services to inquire about tags. So if you're not using Port Valet or an NCL transfer/excursion make sure you get your tags early!

[aubreyc1988]

thanks for the review, following along. Just booked for Aug 25th, eager to see all your experiences and tips and tricks 

[Gingercruiser]

Following the review ahead of my cruise in September. What time were you able to get off the ship in Skagway as I would like to get on the White Pass railway early. Also how long were you in Glacier Bay

[jimdee3636]

1 hour ago, smplybcause said:

Sorry I didn't save the disembarkation stuff. If you're eligible for Port Valet I recommend it. My bags arrived at my final destination and I didn't have to worry about taking them off the ship or picking them up in baggage claim and I was able to find my way to the airport without dragging my bags along. Since I already my boarding pass I got straight into the security line when I got to the airport. I have pre-check, but there's several security check points for non pre-check (there's one that's pre-check only). When I arrived around 10/1030 I heard them say each line besides the pre-check line was around a 30-45 minute wait. Not sure if that's always the case or not.

 

Oh, and I didn't go down when we first got the info about selecting your luggage tags, but when I was near guest services on Day 7 I noticed there were barely any tags left and only certain colors so I saw a decent amount of people getting in line for guest services to inquire about tags. So if you're not using Port Valet or an NCL transfer/excursion make sure you get your tags early!

Although on my recent Bliss cruise I didn't need to use the color-coded luggage tags (I carried everything off myself in the first group at 7:00AM), I can attest to the fact that they were rapidly running out a day or two before disembarkation. My guess is that Guest Services had more in reserve, but I wouldn't wait till the last minute. For what it's worth, every other cruise line I've been on has you fill out a disembarkation questionnaire well before the end of the cruise, and then delivers as many color-coded tags as you say you need to your cabin. That seems a little more orderly, although, as I said, the policy didn't affect me one way or the other.

[smplybcause]

38 minutes ago, Gingercruiser said:

Following the review ahead of my cruise in September. What time were you able to get off the ship in Skagway as I would like to get on the White Pass railway early. Also how long were you in Glacier Bay

 

We pretty much got released to go ashore at all ports at the posted time in the dailies (so 7am for Skagway). I don't think any were early and one or two might have been at most 15 minutes late. My earliest excursion for any port was 8am so I wasn't fighting to get off first. The railroad is literally right there though. We were docked on the railroad pier so once you stepped off the ship you could see the cars - the NCL excursion for it was maybe 50 feet from the gangplank? The independent ones might have been a bit further? It's the longest pier from what I could tell, so I'm guessing that's always where the Bliss is, but not a super long walk from the other piers. 

 

As for Glacier Bay, they brought Park Rangers on board and I believe the ship-wide announcements started at 8am. I didn't realize it was that early, so I think I missed a glacier or two. But from 9-10 (or maybe 930-1030) the ship stopped and circled by one of the larger glaciers. Then we moved on to another arm where two more glaciers were and did a 180* turn at the end. The ranger stopped the ship-wide announcements between noon and 1pm, but I think it was still a bit until we were officially out of the entire bay. Possibly a couple hours because we went all the way back there to the glaciers and it was a slow cruise out of the bay. I got in the hot tub after 5 (because the slides close at 5pm and I wasn't paying attention) so around 6 we were still sailing with land on either side of us - not sure if that was still the bay or not.

Edited May 17, 2019 by smplybcause

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4 minutes ago, jimdee3636 said:

Although on my recent Bliss cruise I didn't need to use the color-coded luggage tags (I carried everything off myself in the first group at 7:00AM), I can attest to the fact that they were rapidly running out a day or two before disembarkation. My guess is that Guest Services had more in reserve, but I wouldn't wait till the last minute. For what it's worth, every other cruise line I've been on has you fill out a disembarkation questionnaire well before the end of the cruise, and then delivers as many color-coded tags as you say you need to your cabin. That seems a little more orderly, although, as I said, the policy didn't affect me one way or the other.

 

I've done NCL out of Miami and there was never a lack of tags like there was on the Bliss. It is a smaller terminal in Seattle, so maybe they have to control how many of each color are dispersed more? I prefer NCL's way as I can then pick when I want to get off -- but all my other cruises have been out of Florida and Royal cared less about giving those of us that drove low numbers so we'd be stuck on the ship late when we all preferred to get off early to just drive home ASAP and take a nap!

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Onto Skagway!

 

As I said above we were docked on the Railroad Pier. Which is, unsurprisingly, right next to the railroad. It's also closest to the mountain, which is kind of cool because every ship that comes to Skagway gets painted up on the mountain. I couldn't find Bliss' on the mountain, but I didn't have binocs and didn't spend too much time looking for it.

 

I had two excursions here - we were docked for 12 hours after all! The first was a coach tour - it was by Southeast Tours which operates out of the popcorn store here. (My mom wasn't super impressed with the train ride when she was here so I skipped it.) I liked our guide a lot - lots of info and stories. However, clouds were still around in the morning, so when we were up at the summit we were in a cloud! Definitely curtailed the view. The coach/bus tours more or less parallel the train. If you take the train you actually go along this road on the way back/there (depending on train direction you take) but you're in the large motor coaches with lots of people - I'm not sure if those stop on the lookouts. I will say that if I ever make it to Skagway again I would go the route of just renting a car and taking off - there's only one road out of the town so it's not hard to get lost and I had cell phone reception except for at the top of the summit so your phone's GPS would help.

 

 

There's a shuttle that will take you from the ship into town. I didn't use it as it wasn't that far of a walk on a nice day (and it drove away before I could get there and I didn't want to wait). I forget whether it was $2 a ride or $2 for the whole day. 

 

My second excursion was the Ocean Raft Adventure. I booked this through a shore excursion website, but here's the company that I took it with https://www.oceanraftalaska.com/ This was my favorite excursion on this cruise and definitely a top of any that I have done. If there's any waves in the water it is truly an adventure (and the waves were 5+ ft when I did it). I'm the type who loves white water rafting and have fun zipping around in boats over waves. They give you exposure suits though so even this Florida girl didn't get cold. They provide gloves, ski goggles, and balaclava (ski mask) but you can wear your own hat/gloves if you prefer or even just (sun)glasses instead but you'll want something to stop the wind from blowing directly on your eyes. You sit on saddle seats that have a bar for you to hold on to (which you need!!), it was a really comfortable seat given all the waves we were going over. I got to see a lot of water falls, a mountain goat, seals, bald eagles. They stopped several times so you could walk around the boat to stretch your legs, take photos, watch the wildlife. Recommend 11/10 as long as my description didn't scare you off. I would do this again if I ended up in Skagway again.

 

After this I walked around looking for a souvenir that was actually Alaskan. The tourist industry is strong in these Alaskan ports with a lot of the stores you find in Caribbean ports -- I was not expecting that at all (anyone need more bamboo sheets or an Effy pendant?). I found myself having to check everything that caught my eye to see if it was made in China or somewhere else (some places loved to slap a sticker that read "A gift from Alaska" on items that were definitely not made in Alaska). A bit further back from the water is where I found a few stores that stocked things made by Alaskan artists. I ended up buying a really nice necklace made out of red glass beads made by an artist from Skagway. 

 

Oh if I haven't mentioned it before - Alaskan Tshirt Co is at all 3 Alaska ports we stopped at. The one in Juneau has a mail dropoff box if you're wanting to mail postcards or something. They looked to have about the same thing at every stop, but I admittedly didn't spend much time in them. 

 

I got back on ship decently early - probably around 4pm. I had pretty much walked the entire town by then (it's not that big!) so I chose to head on board and then hang out in the Observation Lounge. It was nice as the bow was pointing towards town so it was a great view and not that crowded. 

Edited May 17, 2019 by smplybcause