Cruising on the Norwegian Sun – a review
From September 16-23, 2013, I sailed on the Norwegian Sun from Vancouver to Los Angeles with my 90-year-old father. To give you some background about us for perspective on this review, this was my 14th cruise, and my father’s 3rd. I’ve sailed on Royal Caribbean, Celebrity, Holland America, Princess, Costa and Uniworld, while Dad has only sailed on Royal Caribbean. Alaska has been my main and Dad’s only destination – I’ve also sailed in the Caribbean (3 sailings) and European rivers (1 sailing).
Ours was a last-minute booking that came about when the 9-night West Coast cruise that we had booked on the Celebrity Millennium was cancelled due to propulsion problems that required a month-long drydock. The Norwegian Sun itinerary, though 2 nights shorter, was the only one that allowed us to keep the flights we had booked, and our post-cruise vacation, intact. The initial cost of the Norwegian cruise was just over half what the Celebrity one had been – $1,827 for the two of us, vs $3,573 – though with Celebrity the fare included a Premium Beverage package (unlimited drinks of any kind) which would have cost $700 with Norwegian. We booked similar Verandah cabins on both.
I’ll first give you a look at the ship with comments about some of the features, and at the end of the review will give a summary of my impressions.
The Norwegian Sun is a beautiful ship with a striking paint scheme. She’s a mid-sized ship by today’s standards, at 848 feet long, a maximum beam of 105 and a gross tonnage of 78,309. She has 12 passenger decks, carries 1,936 passengers at double occupancy, and 953 crew members. She went into service in November 2001 and was refurbished in March 2011. This photo shows her in Nanaimo, British Columbia.
Boarding the ship at Vancouver’s Canada Place was accomplished efficiently. Although it’s never a quick process, we arrived a half hour before the gates opened at 12:00, and didn’t feel unduly delayed overall. Dad walks with a cane and was given some priority, though I think that the time difference that gained was minimal
We spent most of the time between boarding and when our cabin was ready in the Observation Lounge on Deck 12. We got into our cabin at 2:15 pm. This is a Category BA Balcony cabin, #9231 midship on Deck 9, which is a quiet deck with no public spaces above or below.
The bathroom is a bit smaller than others I’ve had, and the shower is of the type that is so small that the joke is that you just rub soap on the shower walls and spin 🙂
The balcony, seen here on our rainy San Francisco morning, is a decent size and totally private.
Our cabin’s position on the starboard side gave us the afternoon sun to enjoy the sea days in peaceful solitude.
The towel animals that all room stewards create each night may be silly, but I really enjoy them. The Freestyle Daily gives all the activities for the next day, and has 1 or 2 advertising inserts from onboard shops, the spa, or shore excursions (that link goes to a pdf of the issue from our second sea day).
I really like to know where the ship is at all times, and the Norwegian Sun does the poorest job of any ship I’ve been on at helping me with that. A GPS screen comes up on the TV occasionally, but it’s a coarse image – there are no GPS screens in public areas.
I really love big atriums on ships, and the one on the Sun is excellent, 7 stories high and colourful. This is the view down from Deck 11.
A look at Decks 5, 6 and 7 in the atrium. You can see the Java Café on 5, a sales table on 6 that was often open with clothing and jewelry mostly, and some art auction pieces on 7.
At the bottom of the atrium on Deck 5, as is normal, are the Customer Service and Shore Excursion desks. One some itineraries, the Shore Excursion desk is very busy, but it got little use on this sailing.
The Internet Café on Deck 6. As normal on cruise ships, Internet access is very expensive and very slow. A 270-minute package (250 plus a 20-minute bonus) cost $100. On our morning in Victoria, after trying unsuccessfully for 35 minutes to load some small photos for a blog post while docked, I gave up, went ashore to the Visitor Centre, and uploaded them for free in less than 3 minutes.
Let’s go outside for a bit. On Deck 6, a promenade goes around the entire ship for walkers and joggers. Arrows keep joggers and walkers separated and going in the same direction. Very colourful paintings brighten it up, but it got very little use during our sailing.
The Sailaway Party is a noisy big deal on some ships, but though the staff tried hard to engage people, it was pretty quiet up on Deck 11.
The 2 pools and 4 hot tubs (not very hot at 100.5°) got a bit of use, but Topsiders Bar, where I took this photo from, was often a good place to have a quiet beer.
Decks 11 and 12 around the pools is a nice place for a short stroll in the evening.
High plexiglass walls may keep the wind off the upper decks, but they make the very small unshielded sections very crowded for photographers. At least the shields aren’t tinted blue like on the Coral and Island Princesses!
The Great Outdoors CafĂ© aft on Deck 11 was a popular place to watch ports disappear – in this photo, Astoria, Oregon.
This is the Great Outdoors Café on one of my early-morning explorations of the ship.
Every ship seems to have a small, “secret” viewing deck that offers both great views and solitude. On the Norwegian Sun it’s forward on Deck 11, accessed by 2 discrete doors off the Observation Lounge.
This is the back part of the large Observation Lounge, seen as we sailed into Los Angles on the final morning.
This ship was spotlessly clean. While I expect an extremely high level of cleanliness on any ship, the Norwegian Sun was notably so. This is the roof of the atrium being cleaned after a night of rain.
Shore excursion offerings are almost identical on all ships, as they use the same large operators. With rare exceptions, I use small independent operators, but on this cruise, Dad’s mobility limitations made excursions a very low priority – in fact, not a priority except for a couple of bus shuttles into Nanaimo and Astoria. Where the walk to shore is lengthy, as in Nanaimo (seen here), golf carts are used to shuttle anyone who needs assistance.
Norwegian does a great job of welcoming guests back after a day ashore, with drinks, cookies, ice cream, warm towels, and crew members often dancing to bouncy music 🙂
Let’s go get something to eat! When Dad was with me, we used the elevators…
…but when I was by myself, I used the stairs, an experience that is made more enjoyable when the stairwells are decorated like they are on the Sun.
At many places on the ship, these boards tell you which dining venues have space at the time you want. There are 12 options, 5 of which are included in your cruise fare, 7 of which have extra charges, ranging from $5-30 per person.
The Four Seasons and Seven Seas are the 2 main dining rooms – each will seat just over 500 guests. On Norwegian, dining is “Freestyle” with no assigned times or seats – you go whenever you want, and state at the door whether you want to share a table or have your own (we always shared, and always enjoyed our tablemates). This photo shows the artwork outside the Seven Seas dining room.
The Garden CafĂ© on Deck 11 is the main buffet – it seats 194 people.
A closer look at the hot breakfast section of the Garden Cafe buffet. After a couple of days, Dad and I both settled on having custom omelettes made for us here, and were happy with them.
As a treat on our final night, we went to one of the specialty restaurants, Il Adagio. With Italian food and a $15 cover charge, it seats 74, and was almost empty when we were there. While the pasta was good and the atmosphere was very nice, neither the food nor the overall service were at the standard I’ve come to expect from specialty restaurants at sea.
After all that eating, you might want some exercise, and a good range of options was offered, either in the equipment room, or in this large room where special classes are held.
The busiest places on the ship in general were the lounges (except for the Observation Lounge, which never was). I never did get a seat in the Sports Bar on Deck 11, seen here, though I probably could have if I didn’t mind crowds (it seats 66 people).
The Windjammer Bar was another one that was always packed. The piano music at night was excellent.
Dazzles Nightclub is the most active entertainment venue on the Sun. It seats 292, and was the scene of many events during the day (including dance lessons), with dance music at night.
One of the events held in Dazzles Nightclub was an art auction, always well attended.
The Sun Club Casino.
The casino was Dad’s favourite spot on the ship. He plays slots, but the casino also has roulette, blackjack, craps, 3-card poker and Texas Hold’em.
The main theatre is called the Stardust Lounge. Seating 982 people, it takes up 2 floors aft on Decks 5 and 6. The acts we saw were of varying quality – some mediocre, some extremely good, with “Soul Duo”, acrobat/dancers from the Ukraine, being notable at the high end of that range.
Corrie Sachs is another of the artists that I could have seen much more of. She’s most famous as a Reba McEntire tribute artist, apparently.
The East Indies Library has a decent stock of books, but you need to take the books somewhere else for comfortable reading – the Observation Lounge seemed to be popular for that.
The final space I’ll show you is the little chapel up on Deck 12.
With the vast range of options available in the way of cruise ships today, there is an equally vast range of passenger types. Each has their own likes and dislikes, and their own priorities when it comes to deciding what makes a good cruise holiday. For me in particular, but for Dad as well, the Norwegian Sun was not a good fit. We both found the food in particular to be lacking. Most of it ranged from mediocre to inedible, and as I mentioned above, even the specialty restaurant we went to was nothing special. After several poor meals, I thought that a clubhouse sandwich and corn chowder was safe for lunch, but they were both very poor. The only really good meals we had during the cruise were the 3 that we went ashore for, to neighbourhood pubs.
The onboard activities were also a disappointment, but as many people got really excited by the bean bag toss, I was clearly just on the wrong ship 🙂 I’ve tried to imagine if any of the activities would have been of interest if I’d been with my wife instead of my father, and the answer is still “no”. You can see for yourself with the issue of Freestyle Daily from our second sea day (without the advertising inserts), which are especially activity-busy days.
The positive aspects of the cruise were:
- the Norwegian Sun is a truly beautiful ship, both inside and out;
- the ship was spotlessly clean, and staff were at the door of every eating venue offering hand sanitizer;
- service was almost universally excellent (there were 2 minor exceptions, but everyone can have a bad day);
- the itinerary was very good (Astoria was high on my list of places to see);
- we were on a cruise ship – how bad can that be?? 🙂
To get as close as I can to an apples-to-apples comparison, the per-person, per-day cost of the Celebrity Millennium, which I’ve sailed on and really enjoyed, was going to be just over $198 with a drink package. The same cabin, same drink package cost of the Norwegian Sun was just over $180. While a substantial price difference will help some people with their decision of which ship to sail on, I doubt that that difference would influence anyone.
So there you have it. It was my first and last cruise with Norwegian, but I hope that what you’ve seen and heard in this review will help you decide whether or not a Norwegian could be your next ship.
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