Just back from the 8/8 sailing of the Star...

[Jeannette]

Awesome!!!! Thanks to everyone going before me who provided reviews....Extremely helpful!

 

We had great weather and service aboard the Star was fabulous in my humble opinion.

 

Any questions from future cruisers??

 

J.

[didan]

Jeanette,

So glad you had a great time. We are leaving on the Star on 8/29. What time did you get into Juneau? Curious if it's getting in any closer to the 9:00 scheduled time. How was the food in your opinion?

[lesharona]

Thanks Jenette

We will be doing the repositioning cruise on the Star in September.

I am happy to hear you had a great vacation and found the ship to

be wonderful. I can't wait. We are going 5 weeks.

[pcann]

Jeannette, will you be posting a more extensive review of your trip on the star? How were the restaurants, shows, port arrivals etc. We will be leaving on the Star 9/5/04 :)

[Jeannette]

Didan/picann: I'll check w/ my husband on our arrival time in Juneau. I'm totally drawing a blank on the time frame of our arrival. The food was what it was...We ate breakfast every day in the Market Cafe--Definitely buffet food but edible and we are not bif fans of buffet style dining. We had a wonderful meal in Le Bistro. Great service. We only had dinner once in the Versaille restaurant but we preferred the Aqua Restaurant but only ate dinner there twice. We were not very hungry once and grabbed a quick bite at the the Blue Lagoon eatery. For lunch we did either the BBQs or the Market Cafe and once ordered room service. Keep in mind that we had our 20 month old w/ us and still received great service every where we went.

 

We rarely had to wait long in any line anywhere...We had great timing along w/ the great weather. :-)

 

We had adequate time in all the ports in my opinion except for Victoria...Most of the shops and excursions were closed by the time we reached the downtown area around 8pm. We chose to eat dinner on the ship before heading into town. One tip here: the best value for getting to downtown was a taxi..$6 one way PER TAXI. The bus was $5 per person round trip.

 

The first Jean Ryan show was great...the rest were only so so for me...

Jane Powell is a talented and funny performer and I'm sorry that I missed her second matinee show on Saturday afternoon.

 

Not a big gambler (my limit is $20 bucks for the whole week in the casino) but won about $60 at one of the machines. :-)

 

Our room steards Dalia and Levi did an excellent job cleaning our room and picking up the babies toys when we forgot to. We left them an extra $20 tip.

 

I did one excursion in Juneau...The Taku Glacier Lodge floatplane and salmon dinner. Excellent and well worth the money.

 

Let me know what else I can tell you about. Not planning on doing a formal review.

 

J.

[pcann]

Jeannette, thanks for the info. What did you do in Ketchikan? We were hoping to do some shopping in Victoria and check out the Empress. I hope we can get to the shops.

[Jeannette]

We walked around the historical district when we first arrived. One street w/ various jewelry and t-shirt type shops. I took the baby back to the ship for a nap and my husband did an excursion. After the nap, babe and I went for another walk into town but this time, I went down the street parallel to the historic downtown district and saw a little place where some of the crew were doing laundry and then a block or so further down, found a little grocery store where the locals where shopping, picked up some juice and diet Pepsi. and just kind of looped around and back through the historic district. There was a great walking tour brochure at the information center in town. Later when my husband returned we went back into town and picked up a diamond pendant for me. :-)

[Jeannette]

We did the horse drawn wagon tour of the city. Very informative. We also walked around a bit on our own.

[CindyAlaska04]

pcann,

 

I also just got back from the 8/8 sailing on the Star. We did the Great Alaskan Lumberjack show in Ketchikan. It was really fun. Since you are only in Ketchikan for a short time, this show was fun and gave us enough time to get in some shopping.

 

In Victoria we were going to take the taxi, but noticed an old time car (I think it was a 1926 Model T, but I might be off) offering tours. We spoke with the driver (Larry) and seconds later we were on our way. NO LINES to wait in and total personal service. HE WAS AWESOME!! We took a 2 hour tour of Victoria and he would even stop the car and take pictures of us with the different sites behind us. His website is classiccartours.com.

 

Please let me know if you have any other questions I can answer for you.

 

Cindy

[didan]

Hi Cindy,

Do you happen to remember what time you got into Juneau? We're trying to figure out how much time we'll have. Just got my docs that say we'll be arriving at 9, but past cruisers have said they arrived around noon. Just seeing if anything has changed.

 

Sounds like you had a great time and thanks for the tip on the tour in Victoria.

[TamaLee]

Jeannette -

 

I've been asking everyone the same question in the hopes of finding an answer. Do you recall if the aft rooms on the corner in the back had balconies that wrapped around? I really want to know about the rooms on deck 8 and 9. Maybe you saw people standing on the balconies for these rooms......

[didan]

TamaLee,

We are going on the 8/29 cruise on the Star and we are on the ninth floor, aft section. I will try to remember to check out the corner balconies for you.

[TamaLee]

didan -

 

That would be great!

 

Tamara

[Jeannette]

I did not notice if the balconies were wrap around..Sorry.

[brunolvr]

Jeannette -

 

I've been asking everyone the same question in the hopes of finding an answer. Do you recall if the aft rooms on the corner in the back had balconies that wrapped around? I really want to know about the rooms on deck 8 and 9. Maybe you saw people standing on the balconies for these rooms......

TamaLee, I was on the Spirit and took some pictures of the Star. One of them does show the back of the Star. Just go to http://community.webshots.com/user/brunolvr

the Star album and click "normal" size" on the one picture showing the back. From that, it doesn't look like the balconies wrap round on the back side. Take a look and see what you think.

[TamaLee]

brunolvr -

 

I had actually seen your pictures before. In fact you should be honored...I'm using one of them for my background picture on my computer at work! I does look like to me that the balconies on 8 and 9 wrap but not on 10. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

 

We were on the Spirit earlier this year and had one of the Cat. 11 wrap around balconies. It was a great room.

[brunolvr]

brunolvr -

 

I had actually seen your pictures before. In fact you should be honored...I'm using one of them for my background picture on my computer at work! I does look like to me that the balconies on 8 and 9 wrap but not on 10. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

 

We were on the Spirit earlier this year and had one of the Cat. 11 wrap around balconies. It was a great room.

It appears that you are correct - I found this picture of the Star that someone else had posted - it does look like there's no barrier on the 2 lower decks preventing you from going around on the side -http://community.webshots.com/photo/148536476/148541574lloeBp

[gtaylor]

Thanks so much for that Webshots link, but I found an even better shot in that same album: Check this one out! Use the 'view full size' link at the bottom.

 

We're in 10730 (across the back) in November.

[seahorse]

Great shot,

 

I will be in that same cabin in March. Love the deck 10 aft, sailed it 2x, one on Dawn and one on Sky. You do know that the balcony is much larger on this deck? I also booked it on the Jewel in Oct. 2005.

 

Keep it nice for me:D

[crewsin250]

HI Jeannette I was wondering did the room stewards have any towel animals made for you at night. Thanks Paul

[brunolvr]

Don't you get a lot of noise from the wake of the ship in the aft cabins? or is it a "soothing" sound?

[seahorse]

On deck 10 it is a very soothing sound. Am not sure about the lower decks. We had a CD player and listened to soft jazz without a problem.

[Casshew]

We had great weather and service aboard the Star was fabulous in my humble opinion.

 

Hi Jeanette, I was on the 8/8 Sun and what weather we had.. incredible hot sunny days.. glad you had a great time too

 

Cassie

[Jeannette]

HI Jeannette I was wondering did the room stewards have any towel animals made for you at night. Thanks Paul

 

A couple times during the week there was some sort of towel animal. One definitely looked like an elephant. :-)

 

J.

[Jeannette]

Don't you get a lot of noise from the wake of the ship in the aft cabins? or is it a "soothing" sound?

 

 

We were in Cabin# 5572 and really didn't notice any noise.