Sun Review March 1 -8

[firstlady05]

First, let me give you a little background. We were a group of four. My husband and I are in our our mid to late 20's and my parents are are in their mid 50's. This was our third cruise, but first one with Norwegian. The other two were with RCI. We decided to try Norwegian based on price and the "freestyle" concept.

 

EMBARKATION

Took longer than expected. We got to the port around 11:30 AM on Saturday. That is the earliest I have ever gotten to any port. Check-in was really quick, but once we went upstairs to actually board the ship, the line was VERY long and we waited over 20 minutes. Once on board (approx 12 Noon) we headed to the buffet to eat lunch. Staterooms weren't ready until 1 PM. We had our luggage delivered by 2:30 PM.

 

 

SHIP AND STATEROOM ENVIRONMENT

The ship's decor was pretty, but the layout is pretty confusing. We often found ourselves lost trying to find the dining room, etc.

 

My husband and I were in a port side balcony room on deck ten. My parents were in an oceanview on deck seven. Our room was very spacious. The balcony was bigger than our previous one on RCI. My parents' oceanview room seemed pretty big also.

 

ROATAN, HONDURAS

Beautiful port. We took a private tour with Victor Bodden tours. Theris was our guide. She was WONDERFUL!!! Best tour I have ever taken. She was very informative, very funny, and she took us all over the island. We are seriously considering buying property there.

 

BELIZE CITY, BELIZE

We had already visited this port on our last cruise, so we were familiar with the small shopping area. We bought a few souvenirs, but were only off the ship about an hour. If you don't do any excursion here, there is not much else to do. My parents did the Altun Ha excursion through the ship. They said they had an excellent time even though it was VERY HOT that day. Their tour lasted about 4 hours.

 

COZUMEL, MEXICO

We have visited this port on a previous cruise also. I booked this cruise based on Costa Maya, but as many of you know, the alternate port was Cozumel. We love to shop here and we did plenty of it.

 

GREAT STIRRUP CAY

My husband did not even get off the ship this day based on the fact that he had already did the "private island" thing on Royal Caribbean during or Bahamas cruise. I went ashore with my parents who did a little shopping. We enjoyed the luch buffet which was your basic hamburgers, hot dogs, pizza, etc.

 

DISEMBARKATION

This is where Norwegian had our last cruise beat by a mile. According to the paper we were given, our "time" to get off the ship was supposed to be 9 AM (our disembarkation tags were light blue). But apparently, they were running ahead of schedule and our color was called at 8:30 AM. We were through customs and had our luggage by 8:40 AM. On our previous cruise, the lines were long through customs, and locating your luggage was the equivalent of finding Easter eggs in a jungle.

 

FOOD OVERALL

Pretty good for the most part. Buffet was similar to previous cruises. My husband did enjoy the waffles in Pacific Heights and I liked the made-to-order omelets in the Outdoor Cafe (even though the line was pretty long at times). The setup of the buffet could be improved, there were "traffic jams" many times. We loved the food in Pacific Heights, but I didn't really care for the dinner in LeBistro (included in our Romance Package).

 

SERVICE

Our stateroom attendants were excellent and deserved every bit of the automatic gratuity. Customer service in the dining rooms and the specialty restaurant were fair. That is where freestyle kind of falls short. I do like the aspect of getting to know your dining room staff throughout the cruise and vice versa. But, I do like the idea of not having to rush to dinner at a certain time. We ate anywhere from 6:30 PM on some nights to 7:45 PM on other nights.

 

Overall, we really enjoyed ourselves. Seven days was the perfect amount of time to be away from home for us. We will cruise Norwgian again. We even signed up for the future cruise rewards, so our deposit is already taken care of for our next cruise!

 

Feel free to ask me questions. My hands are getting pretty tired, so I'm wrapping up this review.

[Lib0007]

Hi, and thanks for your informative review. Glad you had a great time. My last cruise was also on the Enchantment of the Seas!

 

My only question is actually for your parents . . . how did they like the location of their cabin, and was their much motion and noise (like the anchor dropping). We will be on the Sun next month and also have an OV on deck 7.

 

The thing I'm looking forward to the most is our Victor Bodden tour . . . I keep reading so many wonderful things. I've never visited Roatan, and like you, booked this cruise mostly because of Roatan (and Costa Maya).

 

Thanks again.

[wibeachbum]

Thanks for your review.

 

We are sailing on the Sun March 22. We have a balcony on deck 8. Was the balcony furniture comfortable?

 

Did you tender in Cozumel? I'm kind of concerned about the number of ships that will be in port.

 

We also love Roatan. We were first there in 2002 and I don't believe the big airlines were flying to Roatan at that time. It's really starting to become more popular and build up.

 

How was the weather on your trip? I've read about some rough seas in February and I'm a little worried about DD getting seasick.

 

Thanks.

[firstlady05]

Lib0007 - My parents said they really enjoyed their room. They did not hear any noise or obstractions. My mom really liked being on deck 7 because they were centrally located on the ship. Not too far from dining rooms, very close to gifts shops and casino (my stepfather's favorite place):) .

 

wibeachbum- We docked in Cozumel, but there were some ships who had to tender. We counted 5 ships in port that day- including another NCL ship. We were blessed with excellent weather the whole week. Plenty of sunshine, and very warm temps (high 80's and some 90's). There were 2 nights on board when my husband had to take some medicine for motion sickness. The captain speeds up at night and the water was a little choppy those nights. I was ok, but my husband is a little bit more susceptible to the rocking. Also, you feel the motion the most in the aft most dining room - 7 Seas, so we ate mostly in the 4 Seasons, which is great because they allow you to wear jeans if you don't feel like dressing up.

[newmexicoNita]

i am glad you enjoyed your cruise enough to book NCL again. Of course most everyone knows I am an NCL loyalist, but I have to agree the dining room service sometimes is hit or miss. We have always had great service in the speicalty dining or mostly anyway. The worst we had was on Princess a few months ago. I don't really care if I get to know my food servers or not as we have had both good and bad, but I do know, for many this is the main reason they prefer traditional dining.

 

Again, thanks for taking the time to write an objective review. Most can understand the negatives when the positives are also mentiond. Nothing is perfect.

 

Nita