Continued from part 1.
Upon entering our cabin we immediately noticed that the cabin was significantly smaller than similar cabins on other ships that we have been on. The balcony cabin we had on the Pearl is 187 square feet, including the baclony. As a comparisson, on Carnival ships, a balcony cabin is 180 square feet plus the balcony of about another 42 square feet. That being said, there still is plenty of room in the NCL balcony cabin. The closet had plenty of hangers for all of clothes. There are several drawers and also some shelves for additional storage. The suitcases fit out of the way under the bed. The bathroom is the typical tiny bathroom. In addition to the two twin beds (combined to form a double, as opposed to a Queen on Carnival), there is a small couch to sit on, plus the furniture on the balcony. There are only two electrical outlets that I saw, so it is a good thing that we brought a power strip with us to keep our electronics charged.
There is a very small flat-screen TV in the room, maybe 17 inch diagonal measurment. It is not easy to see if you are watching from the bed. That's the bad news. The worse news is that there is not much to watch anyway. The onboard TV did not have any basic network programming. The few channels that were carried (besides the many ship advertising channels) were ESPN International, CNN International, BBC, FoxNews, CNBC, and some movie channels. We were told there was a problem with the TV signals that week, but I heard through the grapevine of the crew that it normally is not that much different. Along the same lines, there is no sports bar on this ship. If you want to see a football game on Sunday, you have the choice of the oen game that happens to be on ESPN International. They did show a triple header on Sunday, and also showed Monday Night Football, but those were the only sports available all week. The good news is that the big screen in the Crystal Atrium carried all the football games. Watching them on that screen was pretty amazing.
NCL is known for its "Freestyle Cruising". The main feature of Freestyle Cruising is that you do not have an assigned tabel or time for eating. There are two main dining rooms that you can dine at without surcharge, as well as the buffet and a couple of other smaller locations. There are also a number of specialty restaurants which carry of surcharge of between $10 and $35 per person for dinner. All of the food that we had on board ranged from pretty good to excellent. We only tried one of the specialty restaurants, the Teppanyaki. This is a Japanese Samuari style restaurant. The chef put on a nice show while cooking our dinner right in front of us. Reservations are suggested for the specialty restaurants, and almost required for Teppanyaki. We went there on the first night of the cruise, but noticed later on that Teppanyaki was full almost every night. There are display boards throughout the ship to show you the status of each restaurant so you know which are full, which are getting crowded, and which have no wait. This allows you to make a smart choice of where to go to eat without having to walk all over the ship.
Continued in Part 3.
For more info: Please write to me, Steve Mencik at Steve@thevacationstop.com.
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