Review: NCL Gem - June 7-14 - Bermuda/Bar Harbor

[NothingBeatsBaseball]

Who: Family of five, ages ranging from 4 to 72. Had two rooms. One obstructed view on 8 with two kids and two parents. One balcony on deck 9 for grandma.

Thursday, June 6th
We took the Amtrak to South Station in Boston and arrived at 8 PM. We stayed at the Homewood Suites right near the dock. Getting a suite allowed us five to have just one room the night before. We ordered some food to be delivered around 9 PM ish. The room was very nice and worked well for us.

Friday, June 7th
Free breakfast was good at the hotel… but woo boy, very busy. Not surprising since it is two hotels together. Checked out of the hotel at 11 AM. Walked to cruise terminal. Very convenient. I had read stories of taking hours to check in, we had none of that. We were on the ship before noon. Very easy process.

Did muster drill. Had lunch in the dining room. 7 & 8 decks were busy, but the dining room was not. A very good choice for lunch. I found the recommendation to have lunch at the main dining room on these boards, so thank you for that. All guest rooms were ready at 2:30 PM.

Some of us watched sail away, some didn’t. It was nice and sunny! We checked out the ship. Very similar size to the Sapphire Princess we were on last year in Alaska.

Saw the piano show that night. It was fine.

Saturday, June 8th

Nice day at sea. I liked that the Freestyle Daily paper mentioned a few quiet places on the ship available during the day. It suggested Orchard Garden and we took the suggestion to play cards there for an hour or so before seeing the Deal or No Deal show. Watching the contestant play was fine to do once. Buying the card to match and play along wasn’t much fun.

Played bingo later. Expensive, but our 9 year old had fun and liked the drama. He said almost winning the jackpot was his favorite part of the trip. It was crowded in the lounge on 12 for bingo.

Played a few games in the arcade, also not cheap, but fine for once or twice for the kiddos.

Had dinner at Cagney’s. It was fine, but wouldn’t have gone if it wasn’t free in the promotion. The cheesecake was the big winner.

Afterwards, we dropped the kids off at Splash Academy and worked out in the gym. It was our first and only time using a kids club on a ship. Folks running it seemed nice.

Sunday, June 9th
Bermuda! Did a tour with Bermuda Byways based on recommendations on these boards. It was well worth it. The six plus hours went quickly. Provided lunch was good. Lots of information and interesting stops. Would recommend. Kiddos stayed engaged and quoted information we learned later. Deployed some tricks like letting them bring one hot wheels car in the bus to fiddle with.

 

Had dinner at the buffet. Overall, we had a good experience with the buffet. The opinion of our group was we thought NCL’s food was better than Princess’ last year.

We took the kids to play Fun Golf in the port in the evening. It was challenging. The course is starting to show some age with some damaged signage, worn greens and some lightning not fixed. But fun to do with the kiddos. Very scenic at sunset.

Monday, June 10th
Went to Horseshoe Bay. Did the beach thing. Used the $7 shuttle. Bermuda really has the tourist thing down. Very easy to understand how to get places. Horseshoe Bay was great but got busy later in the afternoon when a second ship came in. But that is why we went in the morning on Monday.

We ate at the buffet and then walked around the dockyards a bit. The sun from the beach kinda got me, so I was out of it in the evening. The kids and wife then went duck hunting. This proved to be how we’d end the rest of our evenings. Thanks to those who hid ducks. It was a big hit with the kiddos.

Tuesday, June 11th
Took the free NCL ferry to Saint George. This was a nice free bonus! Shopped a bit and then ate. Had a good lunch at White Horse Pub. We all liked our food. The staff suggested we throw our leftover pizza crust in the water off the deck to feed the fish. Kids liked that.

Took the ferry back. Played AC/DC pinball at the Frog & Onion Pub at the Dockyards. The only pinball game in Bermuda listed on the Pinball Map app. We have a kid trying to play pinball in as many states/countries as he can. Arcade is in rough shape overall. Restaurant was busy.

Then the wife took the kids to the pool. It was really warm they said. Played some Uno later on as a family. Uno was a big activity for us all on this trip.

Wednesday, June 12th
Sea day. Lunch at main dining room then more Uno and more swimming. Saw the show “Get Down Tonight”. We all liked it. More duck hunting. By now the kids were constantly quoting “Washy, washy. Happy, happy. Smiley, smiley” by the hand sanitizer worker at the buffet. Also, by this time the kids had tried pretty much every ice cream flavor.

Thursday, June 13th

I knew the process of getting to Bar Harbor was going to be tough from reading these boards. My mother struggled with the long line for immigration and tender. I can’t believe they didn’t have another line option for folks with limited mobility.

I should have anticipated this… but I didn’t realize most people would ignore the times for specific decks to go through immigration and just get in line immediately. This meant we didn’t get on a tender until 12:30. I wish they just listed port time at noon or even 11 AM instead of 10 AM because unless you buy an excursion through NCL, it is a long line going the length of the ship to get off the ship.

We rented an electric vehicle to get to Acadia. Good experience. The view at the top of Cadillac Mountain was worth the wait to get off the ship. It wasn’t too busy either. The stop in Bar Harbor is so short (I knew that going in) but spending an hour or so at the top of Cadillac Mountain and then driving around the park was worth it. Got in a pinball game at Pizzeria 131, the only game listed on Pinball Map in Bar Harbor. We took the last tender at 6 PM back to the ship. I was surprised there wasn’t a big line for the last tender. I figured most people would make the most of their time and take the last tender. But, nope, we had empty seats on it.

More searching for ducks back on the ship at night.

Friday, June 14th
We waited until the absolute latest, 9:30 AM ish, when they were calling last call to leave and it was still a bit of wait to walk off the ship. I had read getting off the ship wasn’t the quickest, so we were prepared. It wasn’t bad, but if you were trying to get off at a certain time I could see the line being frustrating.

We walked to Boston Seaport Hotel. They had our rooms ready at 10:45 AM when we arrived. Fantastic. It was great.

We rested and then did the WNDR museum in Boston, Tony C’s for big meal of the day and saw Inside Out 2 at night as a family. Dodged young people out and about anticipating a Celtics title. They would have to wait until Monday.

Saturday, June 15th

Walked to Trader Joe’s for breakfast items.

Early morning trip to State Park restaurant in Cambridge to play pinball. Boston Duck Tour at 1:30 PM. Neat to do once. Don’t need to do it again. Cheesecake Factory for lunch. You have to join their rewards club to get a reservation. I didn’t want to do that so we ended up waiting 40 minutes for a table. Good meal since it was our one big meal of the day.

Red Sox game at night for some of us. Swimming and a walk to ice cream for kiddos for others. A very touristy day in Boston. 

Sunday, June 16th
Concluded a nice stay at Boston Seaport hotel. Would recommend! They had gift bags for the kiddos and it had a scavenger hunt for them too that they got very excited for. Amtrak back home.

Cabin review:
I had done my research and knew the four-person setup for the cabin had one Pullman bed and one mini bed. The mini bed was fine for our four-year old. But yeah, we could probably only do it for another year or two space wise with the four of us. But for this trip it was fine for a week.

The obstructed window view cabin has been a good choice for us the last two cruises. Saves a few bucks and can still see out enough to get light and view where we are.

The other cabin in our party, a balcony, was nice. Except for other people who kept smoking outside on their balconies.
 

Random thought on water bottle filling.

NCL has accepted that folks will take their beach towels to the beaches so they have a tub to take them back when you get back on the ship on Bermuda port days. So… with that in mind, it’s probably time to just accept people are going to fill their water bottles up in the buffet and have a dedicated spot for it. Yes, there is money to be made there in selling bottled water, but in the mornings it was a long wait for drinks due to so many people filling water bottles.

 

Random thoughts comparing NCL to Princess.

We did an Alaska Princess cruise last year. I knew NCL didn’t have some features we had included on Princess last year. We did miss the no-fee room service that Princess had. Though I guess Princess has gotten rid of that too. I kinda missed the medallions too. Princess’ tech wasn’t perfect (far from it) but being able to use the app to find where folks were on the ship was really nice for us. This time the NCL app was pretty useless. I was the only one in our group able to figure out the free 250 wifi minutes. But I thought it was really helpful. 250 was more than enough to check in a few times. So that was a plus.

 

I had read NCL tries to sell you lots of things. I didn’t really think it was more than Princess did.

 

Oh, one thing we did miss on Princess was the larger TVs and the free on-demand movies. We had kiddos get sick last time, so those movies were clutch. NCL’s movie channels had some kids movies sometimes but you never knew when they’d come up.

 

One mistake I made was assuming NCL also had self service laundry. Whoops! I was wrong. So we had to pay for laundry once.

 

Final Thoughts

Overall we enjoyed the trip and the cruise. We aren’t a group looking for nice restaurants or bars or lots of activities on a cruise. It’s about the ease of traveling to multiple places and having space to move and walk around or play cards, etc. A nice library is a big plus too. And the ease of always having food handy whenever. Plus, just the fun on being a big ship, listening to the waves, waking up to fog, sunsets or whatever the weather brings.

 

Bermuda was about as warm as we’d go do. We really aren’t super beach people. So, I don’t know where we’d cruise to next after doing Alaska already. Canada perhaps? We'll see. 

 

[Cruising Lynne]

Thank you doing such a thorough review. Sounds like a mostly great family trip. The Boston to Bermuda cruise is one of my favorites. The additional comments about Princess were good to read. We are trying them for the first time in August. Hope we like it.

[warb]

Great Report. We sailed Princess a lot. Enjoyed it.

 

Later Years we did a few Canadian or Bermuda Cruises

 

on NCL. No Complaints about NCL.

[Snowysmom]

Thank you for the review.  I will be heading out in August with DS and family.  I have been twice before but he has not.  This will be first time on the Gem.  I appreciate your honesty and well written review.