Just returned from Alaskan cruise on the Joy - ask me anything

[Blm03]

After reading a ton of reviews, I’ll admit - I was a little nervous.  However, we had a great trip even though we had a few hiccups.

 

Room - 8720 - large balcony.  My only complaint is that it is lacking storage for 4 people which all cruise rooms do. 🙂  Beds were comfy.  We didn’t hear anything.  Balcony kicked ass and was huge.

 

Key cards - first hiccup. My son and husband have the same name.  One is a Jr, the other III.  They messed up the cards and gave my son speciality dining and the drink package.  We found out when we went to register my son for Splash Academy.  That was my first hour wait with Guest Services.  We then bought the soda package for the kids and the computers did it again.  Spent another hour getting the key cards fixed yet again.  

 

We also were charged for drinks even though we had a drink package.  Another wait at guest services when I realized it.  At this point, they started recognizing me. 🙂. I’m going to say this though — everything that went wrong was small and we didn’t let it affect our trip.  NCL always fixed the problem.  

 

Then we had an issue with Teppanyaki.  I was advised by my TA that my 12 year old son would qualify for a kids menu at all restaurants.  They would not give him one there (which was a huge issue because I knew he wouldn’t eat anything there).  They ended up charging me for an adult for him.  We ended up at the Garden Cafe afterwards, so he could eat.  The next day I went to guest services and they confirmed I should have been given a kids menu but then was advised to talk to the head of Teppanyaki.  He told me that kids over 3 were not offered kids menus there.  So just as a warning — don’t expect a kids menu there.  I’m still not 100% sure what their policy is since the place tells you one thing and guest services said something else. 

 

Garden Cafe - its buffet food.  DOn’t expect anything better.  Seating is very hard to get.

 

Service in the restaurants is slow.  It took us anywhere from 1.5 hrs to 2 hrs to eat every night.  Cagneys was delicious!  We never had a bad meal though my son did not care for the Mac and cheese.  

 

My kids loved Entourage and Splash Academy.

 

Oh, another small beef I had.  The go karts.  My son and other kids his age were kicked off the track because they were having issues with the turns.  They need to up the age or something.  I didn’t appreciate paying full price to have my son not even get half the time on there. 

 

The other weird thing - to sign the kids up for Galaxy Pavilion, Laser Tag, or Go Karts, I had to give them free reign of the credit card.  Obviously, we didn’t tell the kids that. 

 

So that was the bad.  The good?  The food was awesome.  The people we met were awesome.  The shore excursions were awesome. It never felt like we were on a ship with 3000 other people. My family and I had an amazing time.  I’d recommend the Joy and Alaska to anyone.  

 

Feel free to pick my brain!

 

 

[drumming cruisers]

What excursions did you go on at each port? How was the weather?

[cmecruise1962]

How was getting off at the ports?  Did you book Norwegian excursions at any of the ports?

[puppycanducruise]

Thanks for taking the time to tell us about your cruise.

 

[MyPortofBaltimore]

What do you recommend in terms of clothing for an Alaskan cruise?

[lcookie]

I too wiuld like to know what excursion you did.

[Weluv2cruise2gether]

Yes, please tell us about your excursions. On the Joy on 7/27 and very interested in everyone's experiences! Thanks for sharing!

[samzing]

Are you able to sign up for the Go Karts and Laser Tag on the touchscreens in the hallways and/or the room tv?

Thank you.

[PortFees45]

Any pics of people sleeping in the observation lounge?

[RedwingHockeyFan]

Have you ever been on the Bliss?  If so, Which of the two do you prefer?  Anyone else can answer this as well.

[lucy30196]

Go Karts and Laser Tag, which one would be more interesting for a 13-year-old boy? Do you think that the weekly pass for Go Karts is worth to buy? Thank you for sharing. 

[jfbbarry]

Do you happen to have any of the Splash Academy schedules- will be traveling with 14 and 9 year olds. Can you please post?

Edited July 22, 2019 by jfbbarry
addition

[BEAV]

On 7/12/2019 at 7:55 PM, Blm03 said:

Then we had an issue with Teppanyaki.  I was advised by my TA that my 12 year old son would qualify for a kids menu at all restaurants.  They would not give him one there (which was a huge issue because I knew he wouldn’t eat anything there).  They ended up charging me for an adult for him.  We ended up at the Garden Cafe afterwards, so he could eat.  The next day I went to guest services and they confirmed I should have been given a kids menu but then was advised to talk to the head of Teppanyaki.  He told me that kids over 3 were not offered kids menus there.  So just as a warning — don’t expect a kids menu there.  I’m still not 100% sure what their policy is since the place tells you one thing and guest services said something else. 

 

Sorry you had to endure all of this. Reading of your experience with Guest Relations agreeing with you but then directing you back to the Manager of Teppanyaki raised a HUGE red flag in my book. They should have taken ownership of the issue and dealt with the Manager themselves on your behalf. As a guest on vacation, you should never have to traipse all over the ship trying to resolve an issue once it's been reported to Guest Relations as you did. Hospitality training 101!

 

Glad to hear you and your family made lemonade out of lemons. We were on Bliss a few weeks ago and just booked Joy yesterday for a spin on her in August.  Time for some comparison shopping!

Edited July 24, 2019 by BEAV

[Blm03]

Double posted

Edited July 24, 2019 by Blm03
Double posted

[Blm03]

On 7/12/2019 at 10:43 PM, drumming cruisers said:

What excursions did you go on at each port? How was the weather?

Weather was is the 80s. No rain. We totally lucked out!

 

excursions — Bering sea boat one (don’t remember what it’s called exactly), zip lining, helicopter and glacier walk, Juneau sports fishing, dogsledding, and glassblowing. 

[Blm03]

On 7/13/2019 at 2:43 PM, cmecruise1962 said:

How was getting off at the ports?  Did you book Norwegian excursions at any of the ports?

We booked everything Ahead of time. 

[Blm03]

On 7/13/2019 at 7:37 PM, MyPortofBaltimore said:

What do you recommend in terms of clothing for an Alaskan cruise?

We had a little of everything. I wore shorts some days and sweatshirts and jeans others.   We didn’t use the raincoats we packed but I was still glad we had them. 

 

Plan on layering though.  

[Blm03]

On 7/15/2019 at 12:35 PM, samzing said:

Are you able to sign up for the Go Karts and Laser Tag on the touchscreens in the hallways and/or the room tv?

Thank you.

We did it from the touchscreens. Guest services can also book it for you. 

[Blm03]

On 7/15/2019 at 1:34 PM, PortFees45 said:

Any pics of people sleeping in the observation lounge?

I don’t lol. To be honest, I didn’t see many people in there sleeping at all but we didn’t spend a lot of time there.  

[Blm03]

On 7/16/2019 at 10:58 AM, lucy30196 said:

Go Karts and Laser Tag, which one would be more interesting for a 13-year-old boy? Do you think that the weekly pass for Go Karts is worth to buy? Thank you for sharing. 

Honestly, no. After out experience with the go karts, I’d make sure that he a. Can navigate the track and not get kicked off and b. He likes it.  My 15 year old (tomboy) only wanted to do it once.  She was content meeting up with other kids from entourage and hanging out.  

[phissy]

On 7/2/2019 at 6:08 PM, Cruz3r4life said:

 Deleted

 

On 7/6/2019 at 8:46 AM, FredZiffle said:

Deleted  

 

On 7/13/2019 at 6:00 PM, sid_9169 said:

Not the waterfront, but here are a few pictures of observation lounge nappers on the Bliss...

 

 

On 7/14/2019 at 5:01 AM, 1specialfruit said:

Deleted          

 

 

On 7/17/2019 at 11:20 AM, mlpetrozelli said:

Deleted

 

Edited July 24, 2019 by phissy
Cruise critic has frizzed out .

[Blm03]

1 hour ago, BEAV said:

 

Sorry you had to endure all of this. Reading of your experience with Guest Relations agreeing with you but then directing you back to the Manager of Teppanyaki raised a HUGE red flag in my book. They should have taken ownership of the issue and dealt with the Manager themselves on your behalf. As a guest on vacation, you should never have to traipse all over the ship trying to resolve an issue once it's been reported to Guest Relations as you did. Hospitality training 101!

 

Glad to hear you and your family made lemonade out of lemons. We were on Bliss a few weeks ago and just booked Joy yesterday for a spin on her in August.  Time for some comparison shopping!

To be honest, I was annoyed that I had to go search out the manager but they did make it right. 

 

Unless it was something huge, we had decided that nothing was going to ruin our vacation. I’ve seen to many posts on here where things go wrong and it wrecks everything. 

[Blm03]

3 minutes ago, phissy said:

 

 

 

 

 

Well I can say I definitely didn’t see that at all!