Norwegian Star 1/14/16 Sailing with kids!

[leo1017]

My family just arrived back from our time on the Star from 2/14/16 to 2/21/16 so I thought I'd offer a brief review. My husband (40), myself (39), our daughter (6) and our son (4.5) booked the sailing originally and my sister and her husband and two teenage daughters as well as my parents (in their 70's) booked after.

 

We arrived to the port at about 11:30am on Sunday after spending a few days in Florida (and after driving in from Western New York). We parked at the Parking Doctors, very close to the port. Easy and convenient and fairly inexpensive. Car remained secure and never worried about leaving it there. Embarkation was easy. We never waited for more than a few minutes in each line and were quickly on the ship. We walked on the ship with my parents and my sister's family were already on board. My husband and I quickly made our way to the kids club to enroll our kids in case they wanted to participate - I had read to do this right away and we had anticipated lots of kids because of many Northeast schools being on winter break. That turned out not to be the case and there weren't many kids at all. They were training new kids club staff which turned out to not be great as my son's wristband too tight. They acknowledged it but weren't willing to redo it and I sort of let it go - my fault. He ended up with a wicked rash under it. Still looks terrible since I removed it on Saturday.

 

Headed up to eat lunch at the buffet....pretty much the same menu all week...breakfast, lunch, and dinner. There was a good variety but it didn't really change that much. As a vegetarian, things got pretty stale for me. Not that I lacked for things to eat but it was redundant. In fact, O'Sheehans was awful if you're a vegetarian....or a picky kid. The only vegetarian option was a salad. No chicken fingers, grilled cheese, etc. They did have a burger or hot dog for pickier kids. My husband loved his reuben there, and my son had a scaled down Mexican "burger" that he liked.

 

We dined at Versailles (with our entire party of 10) almost every night. Again, the menu was pretty stale. My family of four ate at Aqua once and, again, same menu. I'm really not picky...other than being a vegetarian and I pretty much took whatever the vegetarian selection was....the spinach beignet and the eggplant parm were the highlights. The mushroom stroganoff was a definite low point. My son ate spaghetti bolognese every night. I don't know if they cared that he ate of the adult menu but it almost seemed like they did.

As we opted for the beverage package and didn't take the dining package, we stuck to the restaurants that were included. My kids wouldn't have been happy at Ginza although it looked good when we walked by! My husband did get turned away at Versaille for wearing dress shorts and then we watched a woman wearing a bikini and a mesh cover up pass right on in. We laughed all week about it. No one at Versaille, Aqua seemed overly friendly and we did have the same waiter 3 nights. We ate early - 5:30, and had reservations each night since we were such a big party. By 6:30 the restaurants filled up. At first I was bummed to have such an early reservation (my mom booked them) since we were tight getting ready after visiting a port but it gave us JUST enough time to get to the 7pm show at Stardust each night, which was better than the 9pm for my young kids.

 

As for entertainment, the 7pm show was the more tamer of the two shows each evening, but still points during each were sometimes questionable. We're pretty liberal but we do have a daughter that asks lots of questions. It was all fine but a couple times I wiggled in my seat at the appropriateness. My kids thought the hypnotist was hysterical and kept telling us to "go to sleep!" all week. The comedian was funny but way over their heads most of the time. I didn't love the "Love" show by the ships dancers (and they talk about strip clubs...had to explain that away :) ) and liked Paradiso much better (lots could be explained but my kids didn't notice the adult themes). We also enjoyed the staff talent show. Some of it was laugh out loud funny. We saw "Deal or No Deal" once, and my husband and daughter saw "Who wants to be..." My daughter loved both but probably because she got to hang out with her teenage cousins. My son was always ready for bed by 9 so we didn't partake in much after that time. My sister, mother, and teen nieces (17 and 15) seemed to like the other shows, game shows, and white party.

 

Our favorite bar was 5 O'Clock Somewhere....never busy and quite tame so there were kids occasionally sitting with their parents. We didn't really take advantage of the drink package but when we did there weren't lines except for the first day. We did go to the Casino but never for long.

 

The kids club was not a hit at first with my kids...my daughter is an insightful kid and noticed discrepancies in what they said vs. what they did. There were seemingly favorites. We would go at times the schedule said the kids could play together but they changed those times based on attendance. My kids did decide that they wanted to be in the circus show and they spent lots of our Saturday at sea at the kids club rehearsing. My son was in the 3-5 year old group - was a tiger for the show and liked it. My daughter was in the 6-9 (but often 6-12) and was a juggler. She was told she could dance in the show and then wasn't allowed which upset her. I explained they did things their own way and there wasn't room for changes. Looking back she just likes that she was in the show but we had tears immediately after she got off stage. I should say that I told Guest Relations about my son's arm rash just as an FYI for training and the woman there called the nurse and made me talk to her. The nurse told me that they would get the doctor for $184 dollar fee plus medications. I declined, again reiterated that I was just telling them for training and just to have it documented (my husband didn't see the point and I was wavering....I just decided to since I was in the Grand Atrium but I guess I shouldn't have.) They then called the kids club manager and she remembered it was on too tight but told me it wasn't her fault because she didn't put it on and was only watching. Her demeanor bugged me....a simple, "we'll make sure next time" would have had me walking away happy. I have to stifle my issue though because i can't let that taint a good cruise. And yes, I should have noticed the wristband was not sliding around too.

 

My kids enjoyed walking deck 7 and the kids pool. Only complaint was that there is only one bench to sit to watch your kids in the pools/waterslides/kiddie hot tub. Made for lots of standing around but there really is no room for it.

 

As far as ports - we enjoyed them all.

 

In Roatan we booked the Fun and Sun tour through Victor Bodden. It turned out to be a private tour for the 10 of us. I wouldn't have expected it but the Monkey Park was actually a highlight. We all laughed quite a bit. Lionel was our driver and took us to a hilltop to look down at the bay and our ship, do some shopping, tour the island and we ended at West Bay Beach. My family got a reasonably priced pizza and enjoyed the time at the beach.

 

In Belize we booked a tour with Experience Belize. I can't say enough about Allen and his knowledge! We ended up with a private tour and I can't figure out why more people don't book with him. He has a van/bus to take people in but since it was just the four of us, he took us in his car. He was born and raised in Belize City and lives about 35/40 minutes outside now. He told us all about the history including about the Mayans at Altun Ha, the government, schools and churches, the plants. And he was really, really reasonable! He was so good to my kids and made sure they understood things and saw things. If my son missed something we drove by, he's back up. I can't say enough about him! It was a great day in port and yes, we even had my kids climb the ruins.

 

In Costa Maya, we went to the Tropicante in Mahahual. It's owned by an ex-pat from Texas. The beach was wonderful, the staff was amazing, and the food and drink were super reasonable. You can email to arrange for lounge chairs to be reserved for you and you just pay for your food and drinks. I would totally book Tropicante again. After we were finished we just walked up the street and shopped.

 

In Cozumel we took the ferry to Playa del Carmen since my husband and I honeymooned there 9 years ago. Amazing to see how built up it is now. The kids enjoyed the shopping and ice cream we stopped to get. It was a laid back day where we just walked around and enjoyed the sights. The ferry was really, really rocky that day but had a band playing (all their equipment was tied up!) so it went much faster. It's about a 35 minute ferry ride and cost us about $50 for round trip. Playa has more shops than Cozumel but not much different shopping so if you're looking just to walk around, you're probably just as well to stay in Cozumel for the day.

 

Oh, and our first and last sea days were rocky - the first quite rocky. I get motion sick easy so I opted for patches (and sea bands and pills at times - ha!). I never knew that the patches could make eye sight blurry! I couldn't read the menus at times but had perfect long distance vision. Just as FYI. I would totally get them again if I were going on another cruise though!

 

Let me know if you have any specific questions and I can try to answer them.

[Clarea]

Thanks for the report!:)

[marathonrunner123]

Great report. Thanks!

[PyrHeaven]

Thanks for your review! Will be on the Star this weekend. Hoping the kids club lives up to our expectations. My son is 5, and thoroughly enjoyed the Kids Club on the Breakaway last year (even more so than the Disney Kids Club on the DCL cruise we took in Oct).

[Keith1010]

Great review.

 

Keith

[GUT2407]

Thanks for the information.