Review: First ever cruise, Star, Mexican Riviera, Deluxe Owners Suite, Toddler

[cadien]

Our group was myself, DH, 3-year old DS (he turned 4 two weeks after our return), and DMIL/DFIL (DILs).

 

This was the first-ever cruise for the three of us. It was a gift from DILs, who have done about a dozen in the last six years or so, almost all on NCL. This was the third cruise they'd attempted to bring us on but the first time life cooperated. It was also the first visit to Mexico for all three of us, although DH and I have each traveled overseas several times. Not everyone considers it necessary for Mexico but we got DS a passport for the trip to simplify life.

 

DILs chose the itinerary, dates, and ship. They also gave us two cabins (same price) to choose between. Because this was our first trip, I was happy to have all the decisions (and second-guessing) out of my hands.

 

I should amend my earlier sentence to say the trip was a *very* generous gift from DILs. Our cabin choices were a 2-bedroom family suite with balcony (SC) on deck 11 or one of the infamous deluxe owner suites (SA) on 12 that used to be the Spinnaker Lounge. We've both been very ambivalent about cruising and they'd clearly like to see us hooked. We ended up choosing the DOS because we booked this 14 months out and thus DS was only 2 and very climby. We just weren't comfortable with balconies. The three bottles of alcohol were kind of wasted on us. We didn't get through half of any of them. Again, traveling with a 3-year old.

 

Booking 14 months out gave me plenty of time to plan and obsess. Mostly on Cruise Critic. By the time we left, I felt like I’d already been and come back.

 

The flights etc aren't very relevant because we didn't need hotels or transportation or to eat out. DILs live near the port. Embarkation went smoothly. Of course it's supposed to be smoother for those in suites (DILs were in an owners suite with two balconies on 10) but DILs said that this was a better than usual embarkation for this port even so. Staff was chipper. It was odd that the suite waiting area had the chairs lined up facing out, like on display to everyone. Same hard plastic chairs as the regular waiting area. The snacks and beverages arrived right before they let us on.

 

Apparently they didn't yet have the embarkation photo station set up. We definitely didn't see one and no one said anything. It's a revenue stream and many passengers are on their first NCL cruise, so I doubt they'd try to be subtle about it. And then I just forgot. Busy day.

 

My first stop was the restaurant desk. The thing I was most looking forward to was the Chef's Table. After waiting for the clerk to finish a personal conversation (no other passengers around yet), she rolled her eyes when I asked (oh really) and huffed that this was a seven day cruise and those are too short for the Chef's Table. I'm now told that was bad information. It was probably related to the post-drydock chaos. We were the second cruise and there were problems. Shortages. Also because of that cargo strike. We saw an endless line of container ships on the horizon when leaving. That was one of a couple bad service experiences on the first day but it was really only that day. Maybe they had a bad turnaround. I passed staff snipping at each other a couple times too. Everyone was fine by morning.

 

MIL tried to get their usual dinner reservations at the concierge station -- it was staffed by an assistant at the time -- but almost everything was already full. We’d been warned about this on Cruise Critic by someone on the previous cruise, and they had offered to take our reservations in the boarding area, but everything moved too quickly. They ended up with the two restaurants they wanted but not the dates/times. One did come through later due to a cancellation.

 

Lunch was in Cagney's of course. We were satisfied with all our meals there but I wouldn't call either the decor or the service exceptional like some reviews imply. It was fine, and certainly one of the quieter venues on the ship, but felt like a mid-range business lunch place rather than a special occasion one. More relaxing as a result though. Not a complaint. The swordfish sandwich wasn't dry and wasn't overwhelmed by the sesame crust. Try the wasabi mayo before slathering it on. The fries (regular, not truffle) were mediocre and that was consistent in every venue, even for the sweet potato kind. I never finished even half an order and I'm sure that's one reason I didn't gain any weight on the cruise, so that's also not really a complaint. Amazing sweet ginger sauce, which was probably also mostly mayo.

 

The muster drill and the Splash Academy registration were quick and painless. I frankly can't remember where we were at sailaway. Probably unpacking. It's been two months now, due to photo issues, scanner issues, and several hours' worth of drafts being somehow deleted. More than once. Any lack of enthusiasm you detect is mostly due to multiple rewrites rather than the experience itself.

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Edited June 23, 2015 by cadien

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Thoroughly prepared.

 

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The cabin was just as nice as in the YouTube videos. And better lighting. It was awkward for them to design around the tilted walls and beams of course, but it works. The only real issue was that the couch was amazingly uncomfortable. Between that and no ottomans, the only place to lounge was on the bed. There are no closets in the master bedroom, and not much in the way of drawers. However, there are two large closets with drawers in the living area. And plenty of storage in the smaller bedroom. This worked for us, but may be an issue with a larger group, especially with more adults. The suite sleeps up to six. Bathroom counter space (no drawers) would be an issue with that many adults as well, but they'd have to expect it.

 

Very quiet, up there at the front of the ship. We did have window washers once, but late enough in the morning that everyone was up and decent. Strangely there were no pens or pads of paper, although there was a laptop. There was also originally only powdered creamer for the famous Lavazza coffee rather than the little cups of real stuff, but that turned out to be an oversight by our butler. Our tub didn't have a card for those insane $500 baths but DIL's did.

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DIL's suite had a much newer model of Lavazza. All digital instead of physical buttons.

 

 

 

Somehow these never seemed to wilt all week. DILs had the same arrangement but in a more lavender color scheme.

 

 

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Note two different kinds of reading lights on each side.

 

 

 

That laptop on the desk comes with the cabin.

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One of only 4 televisions in the cabin.

 

 

 

Twinkly lights.

 

 

 

 

 

Sadists!

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Edited June 23, 2015 by cadien

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DVD menu:

 

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The suite service. One of DH's takeaways from the cruise is that he does not want a butler again. He doesn't really want a suite again. Special treatment makes him uncomfortable for several reasons. I was ambivalent. Our butler was mediocre and I'm sure that made a difference. Remember, DILs have 10+ suite experiences and they thought so too. Their own butler on this cruise was great, however. We noticed many differences in both attitude and performance. One of our special requests made on the first day was no sweet snacks -- the typical M&Ms and gummy bears you hear about suites with children, cookies, pound cake, chocolates, etc. He wrote it down. He brought them anyway. Repeatedly. We sent them back. They also bring too much food in general, especially when you can't put anything in the fridge. We had to ask for no more fruit plates (that was successful) because we couldn't get through more than a third. Ditto the veggie cheese trays. Very wasteful. He did bring a little carton of milk every day for DS's bedtime, and a glass of grapefruit juice covered with plastic wrap for me. (You'd think they'd have canned or bottled juice.) Those were our only recurring requests. (I tried the pre-concierge letter but it wasn't passed along.) We had two room service breakfasts and one DS-only room service dinner when we were cutting it close for the kids club.

 

It just occurred to me while writing this review that we could have ordered a blender and mixers. That would have helped. I had put that on our pre-concierge letter but then forgot once on board.

 

We really liked our room steward, Cyrus. He was much friendlier. And very fast. He found a really nice stool for DS to use in his bathroom to reach the sink. Once we asked, he put the towel animals on DS's bed instead of ours and came up with some really fun ones. We had him leave DS's bed always out, rather than made back into a couch each morning, because you never know when they'll fall asleep mid-day at this age. I do wish there were ice machines in the hallways. We weren't comfortable always calling for ice when it would be such an easy thing to do ourselves. Speaking of hallways, yes there were plates, but it didn't occur to me to mind. You see the same thing at hotels. I spent much more time dodging cleaning carts.

 

I also liked the concierge, Roel. It was an unusual situation. He’s actually a butler but the regular concierge had to leave unexpectedly for just that cruise due to some kind of emergency. I expect he’s an excellent butler. He had a good balance of service and friendliness. He could not work miracles with dinner reservations on our very overcrowded, over-UDP’d cruise, but managed to find things that worked well enough. Most of the suites were maxed out as well. We spoke to a couple different families on the elevators who had the full six people squeezed in. We did not see the concierge at every meal, let alone have him drop by the table to chat, and for that I was grateful. I know some people love that but I’ve also seen that I’m not the only one who wouldn’t. We also weren’t greeted by name by really anyone, so that’s not as guaranteed as some people say. (Again, fine with us, but a warning for those who want it to come with the price paid.) That may require a certain number of cruises as well. Or just not as many people on board. He did find us in the buffet one morning and asked us why in the world we were eating there instead of in Cagney’s. When we pointed to DS, he waved a dismissive hand and said oh that’s fine! There were plenty of loud adults in Cagney’s when I did have breakfast there. And people coming from their workouts without changing. Again, just less refined than it’s made to sound.

 

Back to day one:

Dinner was at 8:30 in Aqua, the less formal dining room. The biggest difference between the two really just seemed to be ceiling height. I think most of the time before dinner was visiting with DILs in their cabin. It had more space and amenities than ours, of course, but I preferred our more neutral color scheme. We live 1,600 miles apart, so a lot of the ship time was just family time. Conversation and playing cards. With no cooking or cleaning! Back to dinner, we strongly prefer inconspicuous children in restaurants, so eating out is stressful. We're not so much stern disciplinarians as major introverts who hate drawing attention. DS is actually very well-behaved for his age; it's the what-if. Fortunately, the dining room was so loud (conversation, not music) that *I* couldn't even hear DS and I was sitting next to him. I appreciated how the staff always took his order immediately. Easy to do when the kids menu never changes. He had the fanciest peanut butter sandwich of his life (no crusts, three layers of bread) and fell asleep with his head on the table. It was about 11:00 for us thanks to time zones. Fortunately I'd just finished my nice roast lamb and given up on my crunchy boiled potatoes, so I took him immediately back to the room.

 

Overall, DS was very happy with the food except for the carrot sticks that came with items on both the kids menu and room service. They were carrot matchsticks. Cut for stir-fry. He found them annoyingly small and pointless. But this is a kid who prefers you just peel the carrot and hand it to him whole.

 

We all slept well. Amazing bed. DH's favorite part of the trip, or at least the first thing he mentions. Both the comfortable mattress and the fact it was a king versus our queen. The default pillows were perfect too, and plenty of them. Nevertheless, I was awake by 4:30.

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The first day was a sea day and the weather cooperated. People aren't kidding about chair hogs. We gave DS a quick buffet breakfast, dropped him at the kids' club, and joined MIL in Cagney's for our own breakfast. Now those were good potatoes, if often cold. (Generally, I didn't notice the food's temperature one way or the other, but of course with a baby I've spent the last few years with all my meals getting cold before I could eat them.) The crab cakes had more filler than I'd hoped, but I'm from a commercial fishing family in Alaska, so a little spoiled.

 

 

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The Meet and Greet was helpful. I'm a terrible mingler but I really enjoyed the travel stories of the people who happened to share my table. Half a dozen ship officials came, although only a couple spoke. The rest were available for questions but there weren't many. They explained the cancellation of the Panama Canal cruise due to the azipod issue. Another drydock issue was that neither O'Sheehan's nor Five O'Clock Somewhere had received all their furniture and decor in time. There was a big dock strike. We saw a long line of container ships waiting on the horizon when leaving port. There was a sign-up sheet for dinner with the officers. They also provided another nice benefit to attendees but I've never seen it mentioned in other reviews and don't want to create false expectations.

 

Lunch was our only visit to the Venetian, the more formal dining room. It was funny: I asked the hostess for a table by those amazing aft windows but she said they were already all taken. Oh well. But then we were seated just one table away, which was certainly close enough. The overall room wasn't even 1/4 full at 12:30, despite the cruise being packed. I had a tasty grilled salmon sandwich and a delicious key lime mousse. The view was beautiful. The windows also let in so much natural light.

 

I really don't know why I didn't take photos of the menus or most of the food. I regret it now. The specialty menus are unnecessary of course because they're online but the others would have been nice. It's not like you need to worry about looking like a tourist while on a cruise ship.

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Tangent about the kids club to give some context to the rest of our days. It was K-12 spring break in California and of the 2,400+ passengers, a full 1,000 were under 18. Crew regularly mentioned this, sounding a little stunned. The kids club holds fewer than 100 kids. 75 or 80, I think. They put the 10-12 age group in a conference room next to the library. I felt a little bad for the library people because they were LOUD. Sounded fun though.

 

Even so, kids in the other two age groups were turned away from the club every day. Three times a day, because they close for lunch and dinner. So this meant getting into long lines 15-20 minutes before opening, three times a day. We spent a LOT of time watching the clock for either picking him up or dropping him off. But he had so much fun. Also, he's in his first year of preschool so maintaining some daily structure seemed wise. Except for those three hours a day of school, he's home with either DH or I, and prior to September had always been home, so together time wasn't a big deal. On the other hand, with DH and I working opposite shifts, including weekends, it was nice to see each other.

 

They regularly took the 6-9 group to the outdoor basketball court. This didn't change the club capacity but did require the kids have closed toe shoes. They'd repeatedly call that down the line. If your kid was in sandals or flip flops, you could stay in line, check them in, and then return with the right shoes. Something to think about when packing. Also, plan on a lot of teachers tip-wise. We had to make a last night trip to the casino ATM because it turned out DS's age group had five caregivers.

 

We had to go through the buffet and back every time we went to the kids club. Those floors are slippery. Even in sports sandals. And the ambiance really is high school cafeteria. Sadly, that cute scaled down kids buffet in the corner wasn't ever operational.

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We got all dressed up for Le Bistro. Just the adults again. A photographer came through but skipped our table for whatever reason. We ended up buying the dinner photos that did get taken. The room was maybe 1/3 occupied. Our reservation was probably for 8:00. The duck two ways: the confit was perfect; the breast was chewy. I ordered a side of the green olive sauce that comes with the lamb and it worked well. The kids club called as we were looking at the dessert menus. DS wanted to go to bed and the nap mats there would not do. DH went to fetch him while I ordered our dessert to go. They put room service type domes on top of regular plates. The profiteroles tasted stale but the chocolate napoleon was good.

 

I basically took no photos that day but here's a nice sunset. It moved fast. You could actually see the sun going down. I think that was a first for me.

 

 

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First port was Cabo San Lucas. We woke up in plenty of time to watch it approach. We did room service breakfast because it’s a tender port and we had an excursion. Just wrote whatever sounded good in the margins of the card, like smoked salmon eggs benedict, and it all appeared on schedule.

 

Somehow we never made it to an MDR for breakfast or saw a menu. I wish I had. No idea what they serve.

 

 

We made mimosas with the sail away sparkling wine.

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I don’t remember whether the concierge spirited us to the tender via secret tunnels and elevators. We were the last people getting onto that particular tender and we were also the only ones sitting up on the deck, with the two crew members, instead of down below.

 

We started taking pictures of each other, of course, and the sailor who wasn’t at the wheel offered to take a group shot. Then they suggested we let DS take the wheel and take photos of that. So great. It was on some kind of autopilot because he stood there turning the thing back and forth and the boat’s course never changed. We tipped them.

 

The concierge’s eyes totally bugged when we mentioned this later. It was a local tender rather than a ship one. Apparently the ship crew would not be allowed to consider such a thing.

 

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Backtracking to the approach photos.

 

 

 

 

Edited June 23, 2015 by cadien

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Door to empty space on the bridge. Straight down to the water.

 

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Trained seal taking fish from the tourists' hands.

 

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We didn’t get our photos taken at the dock either. They were just sort of snapping them in the aisle and I didn’t realize until I visited the photo shop on the very last evening that they add the backdrop by computer. I thought you posed in front of something. Two crew were in serapes and sombreros to pose with the passengers. One frowned terribly the entire time. In a way that was comical but I don’t think deliberately so. It was sunny and low 80s, which is already too hot for me, believe it or not. (Again, Alaska.)

 

There was a cage of lion cubs you could take your photo with. That was horrifying. (Yes, this seems hypocritical with what comes next.)

 

We had time for lunch before the excursion. We picked the first dockside restaurant that didn’t seem margarita-focused. We missed the sign about free tequila shot with each beer, so that was a surprise. The people at the next table were thrilled to get them though. It was a very nice place. Peaceful, open air. Tasty fresh fish and fried shrimp tacos with a shared platter of assorted toppings.

 

Up the street, they were setting up for an Indian ritual that involved four men climbing to the top of a telephone pole and then hanging upside down from a hoop and playing music while rotating all the way down. But they weren’t ready by the time we had to leave.