NCL Sun Review 2/4 Eastern Caribbean

[terkov]

We sailed on the Sun 2/4. I am just now finding time to write my review. We sailed on carnival and hated it, then found NCL and fell in love with freestyle. We have been on the Spirit, and now the Sun. I am just going to comment on a few things, keep in mind they are just my opinion, everyone has their own. NONE of these things would EVER deter us from NCL or even the Sun (in fact, we are looking at booking the star this summer to Alaska), just a few things I noticed since last on the Spirit. I graded this trip a 4 out of 5!!!

*Food- there were several posts on this before we left in regards to NCL changing their menu. I remember (as does my husband) that there were always at least 2 things I wanted during every meal under each course (apitizers, soup/salad, meal and dessert) I found the selection seemed to have gone down. (in main restaurants) We only ate in the seven seas (never had a wait!) because we personally do not want to pay extra for other places. Now, every item I ever ordered tasted good to great, I just did not see the selection I saw on the spirit. This includes my favorite chilled soup.

*Ship layout: I found it a bit annoying (again, only a personal opinion) they way the ship was laid out. You often had to walk through several bars or the casino to get where you wanted to go. Since these are smoking venues (see below) this was not too pleasant.

*Towel animals: Again, these are NOT things that would ever make me complain, I just missed these!! We only got one, and I love them so much, I missed this evening fun. On the Spirit we got 4-5.

*Smoking- now again, just my personal opinion, and also as a side note in WA we passed the law of no-smoking, so NO public places (includings bars, restaurants, night clubs) have smoking permitted. I found the smoke in the bars, lobby, atrium was unbearable. Even outside, they had smoking tables next to non smoking, and nothing is worse (in my opinion) then laying out in the hot sun smelling smoke one chair away from you.

Cayo Lavento DR Port- This is a new stop for NCL, and we were not impressed, Our whale watching tour was $$, and it said it was for 3 hours. We were back on our boat in 2 hours, and this included taking 20-30 min to switch tender boats because the one they put us on was full. So take that, plus the 20 min ride out to the whale zone and back, we were “watching” for about 1 hour. Also, the boat was not good for whale watching the way the seats were. We saw whales and LOVED it, but again, felt is was overpriced for 2 hours. I did speak to ncl about the time, they said they would look into it, but never did. There was nothing in the town at all, and we found it not a place we would ever go back too. I am sure NCL got a lot of feedback along this same lines and will look at making changes next year as everyone on the boat seemed a bit disappointed in this stop.

*Deck chairs- on our balcony are really cheap plastic ones, kinda uncomfortable if you are out there all day like me. I think for the price, they could upgrade these…I also liked the sliding door on our spirit room better then the single opening door. We like to keep it open at night to listen to the waves, but with this type of door it was difficult to do.

We had a FANTASTIC vacation! It was so relaxing, and I did not want to leave. Some great things:

*Some people said the ship was getting worn out, we did not feel that way at all. It is clean, and very nice (other then layout in my opinion)

We never had a problem finding a chair to lay out in the sun. Plenty of room and also tables outside to eat! (sometimes I found they were slow to clean them, and there is no place to bus your own stuff, so often there were empty tables with plates. Lots of workers selling drinks, not pushy at all, but there non the less, but none to bus the tables which is did find a bit odd)

* Embarkation/Disembarkation: NCL does this SO well. We were on the boat within 20 min of arriving at the pier. We waited until the LAST call (me kicking and screaming the whole time) to get off the boat, and it was a snap. The cab process was a bit crazy, but that is not NCL and nothing to stress about. Just a note Miami could make it better.

*Nassau vs Private island: We did not go to the island due to a bad storm that went through. I was thrilled that we went to Nassau instead of a day at Sea. Kudos to the captain for making this happen!

*Never a wait in the restaurant. Everyone was SO friendly! We found the service to be super everywhere we went. This went for all workers on the ship.

*We had Edocs, so no luggage tags. This made me a bit nervous, but once we got to the pier, the porter gave us luggage tags and we filled them out. Easy, and our bags arrived within 2 hours.

*We had a BB cabin on deck 9 and it had a tone of storage. We did not even use it all. We did bring a surge protector for our game boy, camera, ipods, laptop etc and are glad we did since there was only one outlet.

We took my inlaws, who have never cruised and always find something to complain about. J They LOVED IT!!!!! Bad news is they want to go with us again and I am not sure I can handle that. Good thing the boat is big! J

Some other info: We did not see any shows (we really just like to relax on our balcony) so no info there. We also are not big drinkers, so no comment on drinks.

Questions, let me know!!

[iancal]

We were on Sun at the same time. I agree with your comments. We did eat in Adagio and Pacific Heights (the latter is free) and the food/service were excellent. I found the staff exceptionally friendly and helpful, the entertainment was very good for a cruise ship and was certainly streets ahead of that on our last cruise on another line. We like edocs...not so much paper salvage to carry around. Not sure why they send out so much bumph in the first place.

[Abbotsford]

Hi Terkov, sounds like you had an excellent cruise.

 

I will be on the April 15 cruise and was wondering if you may have heard or know what beach resort was used for the 'Downtown shopping & Beach Trip' excursion in St. Thomas?

[BeeGee]

(I posted this on our roll call messaage board but wanted to comment here as well)

 

I'm getting a bit frustrated with NCL and these excursions. In DR-Samana for instance they need to tender. If they tender you to the Samana mainland where there is nothing to do it is free I guess. If they tender you to the "cayo" island it costs $58/cpl. Why this is frustrating is that they advertise this stop as Cayo Levantado or something... the island! Per other postings "opinions"... the Whale Watch is a ripoff and there is absolutley nothing to do on shore except bargain for trinkets. So in essence they are charging us $58 just to stop where they say they stop?

 

No one has gone to the NCL Stirrup Cay private island in 6-8 weeks. The last cruise which just came back also missed the island. (due to "weather" and a lot of other excuses) Instead Nassau is the stop. Why this is frustrating is that there are no excursions listed or any times or any information that this may or may not happen? So we can't pre-book anything there and just have to wait and see?

 

We love cruisin but half the fun is visiting the locations and ports to visit other landscapes and cultures. NCL seems to have forgotten this. We'll have fun in the sun despite these problems but NCL needs to rethink and review these stops and excursions.

[Michaelw5]

:D We are on the Sun in Apri land can not wait!

[Amicruzer]

We are on the 3-18 Sun and booked the whale watching at $336 for the four of us before we read your comments. Considering the trip was one hour less than you expected, which makes it extremely pricey, but one might never travel there again, was the actual whale watching part good enough that you would recommend we go? I might be able to cancel if necessary. In addition, how close did you get to the whales and were there a lot of them?

 

I read in another board that in one particular trip the ship was not able to tender into Cayo Levantado but instead had to go the Samana Pier which was very quiet because another cruiseline had rented the entire island and only their passengers were allowed to go there. Since the whale watching was over in the morning was there an opportunity to go the the Cayo Levantado beach or did this happen to you?

[macfamily]

We just got off the sun yesterday (2/25) and I posted a review but here is an excerpt on the Cayo/Samana stop:

 

In Samana we did the whale watching expedition which my husband dubbed the "hurl watching expedition with occasional whale sightings". The mode of operation of the captain of the boat we were on seemed to be to drive as fast and far as possible away from the Sun while still keeping it in sight. Then we bobbed about in the ocean forever seeming to wait for whales to come and find us! All the bobbing about was very unpleasant for a number of people who were vomiting overboard. It was a double deck boat so those on top really felt the motion and whoever was vomiting from that deck really doused the lower deck. The smell of that may have set those on the lower deck off. The staff let it stay there for almost an hour before they got around to cleaning it up. There were several people begging to go back as they had had enough. The crew barely spoke or understood English and stuck to the time they had been told to give us. In retrospect I wondered why an NCL rep wasn't sent out with us to oversee this operation. There were several other boats chartered to do this "expedition" that were not double deck boats. They seemed to be more aggressively searching for whales and then following them once spotted. So beware this excursion! Take your Bonine and try not to get on a double deck boat! We did see a few whales but nothing as dramatic as you can see in Alaska. Pulling out of Samana we saw quite a few whales and spouts, so if you watch pulling in and out you will probably see more than we saw on the “expedition” although not as “up close and personal”! We did tender over to Samana after the “expedition” and walked around a bit, but there really wasn’t much to see or do.

 

Amicruzer, there were 3 of us and for the $$ we thought it wasn't worth it. We have been to Alaska and done whale watching there and it was much better. However, as there is nothing much else to do in Samana and if you don't want to pay to go to the beach which I can't imagine is worth what they charge, your choices are limited. We talked to some folks on the tender to Samana who had done the ATV expedition in the morning and they really liked it but commented that they were going up and down steep hills and it sounded dangerous to me if you weren't used to ATVs.

 

All this is just my opinion and experience--your mileage may vary! Enjoy your trip!