PurpleKa

I was, frankly, just relieved to get home alive and dry with everything intact.

Yeah, it is hard to really convey how it felt being there on the ship. I also would’ve appreciated some communication from the staff, or at least reassurance that this was normal and/or what was going on and that they had it under control when things got really bad. But when we went out looking for some information, it was really eerily quiet as far as the crew (besides the noise from the ship, storm, etc) and very few people around. We were told the ship had to dock at a different pier because there were repairs being done to the other pier, I thought. But it’s possible that I misunderstood and it was something about repairs to the ship, I suppose? I would not be at all surprised. Even my family members on the fifth floor were awakened in the middle of the night with a huge crash and jolt, and initially thought there had been some sort of accident or damage to the ship.

If you do this, I would encourage you to leave an extra tip for that person. We did. I overheard someone who had talked to several of the staff saying that since the ship is docked overseas, they don’t have to follow first-world labor laws or pay scales and a lot of the staff don’t get any days off for months at a time and don’t get scheduled breaks. Reportedly a lot of the staff were up all night without any sleep or breaks the nights we had the worst weather. This person said the housekeeping staff have to work until their allotted number of rooms are done and then if there is time, they might get a chance to rest before they have to start the next round of tasks. But if the cleaning takes longer than usual, or people aren’t out of their rooms when they need to clean, they might not get time to themselves.

Also, I don’t know if this is standard for cruises or not, but we had someone in our party got sick during the cruise and when we called the health center we were told it would cost about $350 for an exam and testing, and there was no way to get a Covid test or even Over-the-counter medication different than what was carried in the main ship store without doing that. And they don’t accept or bill any health insurance and couldn’t tell us whether our travel insurance would cover it or not. So our only option would be to pay out-of-pocket and then hope either our health insurance or travel insurance might reimburse us. There was no way to get any sort of testing or treatment other than that. We at least self-isolated as much as possible and took precautions to try to avoid infecting others. But there were so many people all over the ship and excursions that were very obviously sick and coughing and taking no precautions. We all tested as soon as we got home and three of the four of us tested positive for Covid. On the bright side we thought the food was amazing, the staff were kind and friendly and generally mostly helpful, and our housekeeping staff made daily towel animals for the child in our party, which was greatly appreciated.

Thank you. Yeah, we were only on the one cruise and we were given zero communication about it. And we were not the only ones wandering randomly around the pier trying to figure out what we were supposed to be doing and where we were supposed to be going. Then people had to stand in line about 30 minutes to an hour for the shuttle once we finally figured out what line we were supposed to be standing in.

please tell them to read my post. Several people at the ports told us that landings and excursions get canceled regularly this time of year because of the weather and most cruise lines are already done for the year by now. We were told this current week (the next cruise after ours) is the last week of the season and there are no more Alaska cruises after this. A lot of the attractions and stores were already closed for the season or open only short hours on certain days. On the bright side, a lot of the ones that were still open were having clearance sales.

Also, the communication from Norwegian cruise lines to the passengers was not great. For example, we departed from and left our vehicles at Pier 66, but when we arrived back in Seattle, they just dropped us off at Pier 96 without even telling us we were at a separate pier, or giving us information about where to go or how to get back to our vehicles. There was no mention of the fact that we were arriving at a separate pier than we had departed from at all. And I listened carefully to all the announcements and read everything we were given. it was a 15 to 20 minute drive from where we were to where our cars were, and we spent a long time trying to figure out how to find our vehicle before we finally asked around among people milling around and found out there was a shuttle from where we were back to Pier 66. It was a couple of hours ordeal in cold, rainy, windy weather with my grandmother in her 90s to get to our car from where the Norwegian Sun dropped us off with no information or instructions about how to get back where we started.

This was a first cruise for 3 of the 4 people in our group and all 4 of us never want to cruise NCL again (the 3 for whom it was our only cruise experience may never set foot on any cruise ship ever again, and the experienced cruiser says never Norwegian again). I talked to several experienced cruisers who had been on 5-20 cruises and all said they had never experienced anything like the level of ship movement we had on this cruise. The amount of tossing and rocking and banging and the level of both sound and motion was extreme, and just went on and on. We had very rough seas and weather several days and nights of the trip. The first night at sea was very rough, Monday-Tuesday Oct. 2-3 and so was much of the rest of the trip; but the worst was Sunday-Monday Oct. 8-9. Our landing in Skagway was delayed until afternoon, our tram excursion in Juneau was canceled, and the stop in Icy Strait was completely canceled, but instead of staying docked or landing somewhere else we spent an extra day at sea in stormy weather. The worst night (Sunday-Monday 8-9) it felt like the ship would completely lift off and fly through the air before slamming down with a crash on the next wave. Those few seconds of feeling like we were flying were kind of amazing though. The Gs were similar to being on a roller coaster. At times it was almost impossible for anyone to walk, and the halls were almost empty except for people clinging to walls and railings and I saw several people falling or almost falling. We really thought at several points that the ship had crashed or was breaking apart. You’d literally take air and get lifted off the floor or bed and then get slammed down, over and over. The banging and slamming noises combined with shuddering impact motion were so loud people were wandering the ship asking if we had hit something. Something was hitting the back of the wall where the head of my bed was so hard that it felt like it might break through or knock me off the bed, and the noise was deafening. I don’t know if it was lifeboats or service carts or what, but something large and heavy was not secured and was hitting the wall behind my head very hard, and this continued intermittently all night long. Other passengers were commenting about it too as we were getting off the ship and lining up for the departure shuttles. I was on the 10th floor and heard from passengers on the 8th floor they experienced the same thing. Sunday night/Monday morning the ship was whipping back and forth so hard I felt like I was getting whiplash in my neck sitting/lying on my bed. We were losing TV reception. Around 3am Monday morning Oct 9 I heard an announcement saying something like, “all travel teams proceed to deck three zone three bunker”. At several points we really thought the ship might completely tip over or that it might be breaking apart and about to sink. When we left the room to see if we could find any information I literally took our most important papers and medication along in case we were about to be evacuated. There were a couple of nights they were running out of seasickness bags on the banisters. Sunday evening/Monday morning there was vomit on the floor multiple places in the hallways and outside the elevators, and it took about an hour after calling guest services to get anyone to clean up vomit on carpet in a room (we even called again and offered to clean it ourselves if we could just get cleaning supplies), and then it wasn’t throughly cleaned so the room didn’t still smell like vomit until a couple of days later. They stopped even answering the guest services phones at some point Sunday night. It was intense!