~ NCL Sun ~ Alaska ~ June 12-19 ~

[MandyGirl]

I have uploaded some pictures to our webpage. When clicking on a picture, it will enlarge/open in a new browser window with a caption at the very bottom.:) I tried to explain where each picture was taken. I have not started uploading group pics yet. Each healthy day we are given is truly a blessing, and we are so very thankful to have experienced such a wonderful opportunity last week.

 

Happy cruising to all of you who are looking forward to your embarkation day on the Sun!! :)

[icecreamfiend]

Thanks for the clarification and answering my questions. It makes perfect sense they would not want folks running on a treadmill when cabins below are sleeping! I hadn't thought of that-duh. Good to know the other machines are available, so we can work off a few calories between stuffing our faces. Ha Ha.

 

Of course, you're correct it's rude and a bit strange that anyone not eating would take a table from those trying to find a place to sit and have a meal. I was picturing someone reading & eating simultaniously, or maybe someone just finished eating and too engrossed in a good book to notice others waiting. I still think it's okay to ask if you may join a table, though, regardless of the circumstances.

 

Your pictures are great- thanks so much for sharing! I'd love to do Alaska sometime in the next few years. Just need to save our pennies!

 

Take care, Michele

[MandyGirl]

Michele - Definitely save those pennies! Having only been on Caribbean cruises, we were a little skeptical of a non-Caribbean cruise. A cruise with no steelpan drums?!? :confused: But it was absolutely incredible. We had originally wanted longer to save money, but we realized that nobody in our families was getting any younger... and a year later may not provide as good of health for everyone. We are glad we moved it up and just did it. Now if we can figure out how to pay my upcoming tuition!!:eek: Glad you liked the pictures!

[Chris]

Mandy- thank you for the pictures :) Showed my hubby that you guys were wearing shorts- so we threw a couple of extras in the suitcase. Loved your web page.

Chris

[Cruise_More_Often]

Your photos of the ship and Alaska are absolutely wonderful. Thank you so much for sharing with all of us.

 

DH and I are hoping the layout of our cabin (we're on 10) is the same as yours. It looks very large. We got so exited about our Alaska cruise that we just booked the short repo trip (San Francisco to Vancouver) that immediately precedes it. We didn't spring for the mini-suite (want to save for some wowser excursions). We'll be trying our first inside (on the same floor and right down the hall from our mini-suite).

 

Thanks again!

 

Adele

[MandyGirl]

Glad you liked the pictures! I had taken shorts to workout in, and my pajama shorts could pass as "real" shorts, so I really only took one pair of "real" shorts for port (khakis). The afternoons were our opportunities to wear them.

 

You'll enjoy an inside - definitely more cost efficient. We've never hadn an inside cabin that we disliked.:)

[cod]

Hi MandyGirl,

I'm glad you and your group enjoyed your cruise so much. I'm sorry, though, that your husbands NCL transfer back to Seattle was so different from our experience...I feel that I gave you a bum steer, however unintentional.

 

Our next cruise will be on the Sun in December, when she is back in NO and doing the Caribbean again. It's too darn far away! I read that Jane L Powell will be on our cruise. Her web site said that she will be hopping between the Sun and the Dream (every Wednesday) during the time we're going. We enjoyed her show(s) very much on our Alaskan Sky cruise so we look forward to seeing her again.

All this has nothing to do with the price of tea in China...just came to mind!

 

Thanks for your review and welcome back!

[MandyGirl]

Hi MandyGirl,

I'm glad you and your group enjoyed your cruise so much. I'm sorry, though, that your husbands NCL transfer back to Seattle was so different from our experience...I feel that I gave you a bum steer, however unintentional.

Hey cod! NO, no, no... don't worry about it! I'm hoping that this was one of those one-time-only cruiseline screwups. We had our hopes of hubby being bored at SEATAC waiting on a 3:05 flight, but he made the plane and home safely - so we're cool. :) NCL must have definitely had some sort of foul-up though because his group (yellow) was to disembark at 7:35, were called much later, and placed on QuickShuttle that departed 10:30. Definitely some big error with NCL somehwere. Surely they wouldn't really be in regular practice of charging $60 for a $41 QuickShuttle ticket and leaving 3 hours after scheduled disembarkation.:rolleyes:

We do have friends that got a terrific rate 2 weeks ago for a mid-July RCCL out of Vancouver (that we were able to watch leave and return to Vancouver - Ballyntine - however you spell it), and they are really appreciating learning from our experiences (they visit three of our same ports). Now that we're back, they're now in the toss-up of QuickShuttle vs Cruiseline Transfer delimna. He's on the same flight hubby took home to Dallas with limited wiggle-room for any transportation mishaps, so I'm curious what they'll decide.

YOU enjoy your Sun cruise out of NO!!! Seems like NO is a growing port - heard Princess is adding cruises there. We really did enjoy sailing on a sister of the Sky - it just brought back those wonderful memories of our very first cruise. No matter how terrific each cruise is, there's just something special about your first cruise.;)

[Cruise_More_Often]

MandyGirl, we took QuickShuttle last year after staying in Vancouver for 3 days following a repo on the Sun. We had reservations for an early departure with plenty of time to kill at the airport. However, three ships arrived in Vancouver that morning. I guess QuickShuttle didn't anticipate the crowd, and they had to put on two extra buses and call in drivers. They took the cruise passengers first, and we stood around in the rain waiting for our bus. We made it to our plane with about 20 minutes to spare!

 

Adele

[MandyGirl]

MandyGirl, we took QuickShuttle last year after staying in Vancouver for 3 days following a repo on the Sun. We had reservations for an early departure with plenty of time to kill at the airport. However, three ships arrived in Vancouver that morning. I guess QuickShuttle didn't anticipate the crowd, and they had to put on two extra buses and call in drivers. They took the cruise passengers first, and we stood around in the rain waiting for our bus. We made it to our plane with about 20 minutes to spare!

 

Adele

Hey Adele! We had originally considered booking QuickShuttle, but did not. Instead we went with the NCL transfer that we purchased on the ship on Monday (for Sunday disembarkation). Had tickets for the five in our group going and everything - NCL $60 each. The other 9 of us had other transportation plans. CruiseCritic was great in researching our options in the months leading up to the cruise.

From what Curt gathered from the NCL reps that were helping the chaos (past Customs), whatever buses NCL had ordered had been on the wrong day. Gray Line or something like that. NCL placed their cruiseline transfers on QuickShuttle on a standby basis, with the first group getting to leave at 10:30. The other group left later. We knew four ships would be in port from the port calendar, so that's why we decided to go "earlier" and stick with NCL since they would supposedly leave about two hours before QuickShuttle and supposedly used different (newer/nicer) buses from what we read here online. Instead, with the mess-up, QuickShuttle basically saved this group by having availability at 10:30 and later.

But hopefully this was a one-time foul-up with NCL and future cruisers who book cruiseline transfers from Vancouver to Seattle will have a much better experience. :)

[albertiger]

great review, enjoyable reading-glad you enjoyed MY cabin! ;) 9278 has been my downfall since. im hopelessly addicted now and was lucky to snag one on RCI Serenade next year! :D in the meantime im going to have to suffer through concierge class on Constellation and a plain old balcony on Golden Princess :( oh, the suffering..oh the pain! ;)

[MandyGirl]

great review, enjoyable reading-glad you enjoyed MY cabin! ;) 9278 has been my downfall since. im hopelessly addicted now

You know, I think I tried reading every post of your's before cruising! :) We, too, think 9278 is our downfall. I told Curt that I'm fine with inside cabins when there's no neat scenery and just wide ocean (like Caribbean) but for the cool cruises that are on our "list" - those will definitely need to be awesome cabins like we had on the Sun! Even when comparing two schools I was looking at for grad school, one was about half the price of the other... and as he put it, that's a few more cruises we could squeeze in for the same price.:D

[Cruise_More_Often]

MandyGirl: Where are the Alaska/Sun photos on your web page? I just went to show them to my DH, and they're not there.

 

Adele

[albertiger]

just a postscript, i recently returned from an obstructed view on Empress of the Seas; great cruise, very nice ship but i SWEAR the bathroom of 9278 on the Sun was bigger! :eek:

[MandyGirl]

MandyGirl: Where are the Alaska/Sun photos on your web page? I just went to show them to my DH, and they're not there.

 

Adele

I just checked and they're still showing up for me... click on the date of the cruise in my signature or here:) Hubby wants more of the scenery pics posted, so as soon as he shows me which ones, I'll be adding some. (He claims none of the photographs HE ever takes make it to the webpage)

[Cruise_More_Often]

MandyGirl:

 

For me, it starts with the Zuiderdam cruise. Yesterday the Sun got me to Alaska. Clicking on the Sun link today takes me to your other thread about the cruise.

 

Color me confused. :confused:

 

Adele

[MandyGirl]

Adele - Interesting... all of our cruise pics are located on one page since our website only has five pages (on that page the cruises go in order from most recent at top to first cruise at bottom). I don't know why you can see Zuiderdam but not Sun (I added Sun pics very late Thurs night) In the CruiseCritic signature, I set the date 06/05 to link to the pictures and the ship name to link to my review here on CC. I have no clue what's going on. I'm so sorry you can't view them! :(

[MandyGirl]

Adele - it just dawned on me - maybe it is taking you to the page before I updated, and you might now need to click shift+refresh to see the updated page because of the way computers save things in the memory cache? Just a thought... all I did was insert the pictures at the top of the existing page, which is what makes me think of suggesting typing shift And the refresh button.:confused:

[Cruise_More_Often]

MandyGirl: That was exactly it!! I've never had that problem before. I had even gone to my husband's Outlook message that I sent from work yesterday (with your link in it), but I got the same result.

 

Thanks very much! (P.S., I liked your linking so much that I changed my signature.)

 

Adele

[Mabers]

Mandygirl.....Without reviewing all your posts this morning, I think I remember that you did not take the 5 hour boat trip to Tracy Arm. Do you feel from what you heard, that you really missed a good trip, or are you satisfied that you saw enough on the ship?

 

It is really expensive ($160x4!), so am wondering if I should rethink this tour....haven't booked it yet.

 

Your pics are terrific!

M.

[Jacquelyn11]

Are you on the SUN 7/24? We are on this sailing! Been looking for another CC member on the ship!

 

Mandygirl, thanks for all the info and photos, they are great!!

 

We have also prebooked Quickshuttle round trip SEATAC to vancouver. We should have about 2 hrs leaway to get to our return flight.

 

Jacquelyn :D

[MandyGirl]

Mandygirl.....Without reviewing all your posts this morning, I think I remember that you did not take the 5 hour boat trip to Tracy Arm. Do you feel from what you heard, that you really missed a good trip, or are you satisfied that you saw enough on the ship?

 

It is really expensive ($160x4!), so am wondering if I should rethink this tour....haven't booked it yet.

 

Your pics are terrific!

M.

Mabers - We did not do it, but also did not talk to anyone who did. Sorry I can't help there. One thing we did notice... watching from our balcony on 9 or up on 11 outside the Garden Cafe area, the glaciers looked really awesome, but when we went down to deck 6 outside, they looked even better. I can't imagine what they looked like being right on water level with them! Booking dinner in il Adagio so you KNOW you have a great window seat would be a good idea for this evening - like 6:30 or 7:00 after you have had the full turnaround in front of Sawyer glacier. I just asked hubby his thoughts on not doing the catamaran - he was glad we saved the money (we had spent enough on the cruise part alone).

Thanks for the kind remarks on the pics! :)

[MandyGirl]

MandyGirl: That was exactly it!! I've never had that problem before. I had even gone to my husband's Outlook message that I sent from work yesterday (with your link in it), but I got the same result.

 

Thanks very much! (P.S., I liked your linking so much that I changed my signature.)

 

Adele

Yea!! Glad it worked! We started our online album a few years ago because all of our family members live in various places around the US or even out of the country right now. We've had more than our share of health concerns, and realize every single day is a blessing, so we definitely try to get the "most per mile out of life".:) I actually glanced at our webpage stats the other day and noticed that we had over 5,000 hits in 2004, which just totally shocked us! Hopefully others are learning/benefitting from our experiences.

[Mabers]

Are you on the SUN 7/24? We are on this sailing! Been looking for another CC member on the ship!

 

 

Jacquelyn :D

 

No, darn! We are the week after you! I haven't seen anyone other than us on either the 24th or the 31st.

 

M.

[Mabers]

Mabers - We did not do it, but also did not talk to anyone who did. Sorry I can't help there. One thing we did notice... watching from our balcony on 9 or up on 11 outside the Garden Cafe area, the glaciers looked really awesome, but when we went down to deck 6 outside, they looked even better. I can't imagine what they looked like being right on water level with them! Booking dinner in il Adagio so you KNOW you have a great window seat would be a good idea for this evening - like 6:30 or 7:00 after you have had the full turnaround in front of Sawyer glacier. I just asked hubby his thoughts on not doing the catamaran - he was glad we saved the money (we had spent enough on the cruise part alone).

Thanks for the kind remarks on the pics! :)

 

Yeah, it's a lot of money (I'm paying for all 4!) and am second guessing myself on this one. I don't think the others care because they don't have the time to research it (and see what they might be missing!), so they've more or less left it up to me.

 

I know Budget Queen highly recommended taking that trip...hey BQ, if you're around.....could you elaborate on just how worth the money it is....puhleeeeese?

 

(Hope I'm not hijacking here!)

 

Thanks,

M.