A Perfect Dream!
Written: Dec 26 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Beautiful ship
Cons: Poor entertainment
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| DrPepGirl's Full Review: Norwegian Dream |
We took the Scandinavian and Baltic Sea Capitals Cruise in July-August. It was a 12 night cruise. It was wonderful!
The restaurants were very nice. My favorite was the Sports Bar -- it was on the top deck of the ship with a sports theme. They served "All-American" food. The other restaurants served gourmet food. Each night had a different theme -- Italian, Presidents (with favorite recipes from the White House), Scandinavian, etc. The waiters and busboys were very nice and took good care of us. One night, my sister was sick, so she stayed in the room. They made up a plate of food and brought it up to her. The ship has the Bistro, a restaurant where you need to make reservations ahead of time should you wish to dine there. It is still free to eat there. The menu never changes. The food was okay, but I would only eat there once. I thought that the other restaurants onboard were better.
The staterooms are not too big. Our room was an outside stateroom, so we did have a window. We had an obstructed view though -- a lifeboat was in front of the window. I did not really mind though; we were not in our rooms too often. I was in an inside room on a previous cruise, so having some "natural" light in the room was nice. If you want a window, you could save quite a bit by getting an obstructed view window. There was a TV in the room, which was about 13 inches. There was not too much closet space. There were a few drawers. Overall, the storage space for a 12 day cruise was very little. I would recommend bring cheap wire hangers so that you can hang your clothes up. There was a safe in the room which was very easy to operate. Our room had no mini-fridge. I believe that penthouses and suites are the only rooms with mini-fridges. We had an ice box. Our steward stopped giving us ice after the first three days.
Our room steward was not the best. He stopped giving us shampoo after two days, and then stopped giving us ice after the first three days.
NCL would do Midnight Buffets which were awesome! There was a chocoholic buffet one night which was so good. :)
The ship has an internet cafe which was quite a hot spot! It was very expensive though. .75 cents per minute. I checked my AOL mail, and AOL took quite a while to load up WHILE I was being charged. I noticed that people who checked their web-mail accounts seemed to have faster load times. I would recommend setting up a Hotmail (or Yahoo Mail or Mail.com) account prior to the cruise and use that e-mail address for friends and family to write to.
The entertainment on board was poor. The shows were horrible. They had a comedian who had a show one night. His jokes were so bad that it made those "Why did the chicken cross the road" jokes look hilarious. It was pitiful. The broadway-"hooray for Hollywood" show wasn't much better. It was hard not to laugh. The performers were really bad. They had one "tribute" to Titanic where they had these horrible ballerinas come out and dance to Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On." I felt that the whole show mocked everything. The best performer was the singer -- he was like a Tony Bennett / Frank Sinatra. He was not the best, but certainly much better than the other shows. I would not recommend going to the shows on board unless you having nothing else to do.
There were several games that the ship offered though -- bingo, trivia, and "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire." There were some people during bingo would would get quite aggressive -- there was some yelling. ;-) The cruise directors made constant announcements before something was going to start.
The cruise director, Rich, was very dorky. He tried to be funny, but he really wasn't. He'd make lame jokes over the intercom. When he spoke, he could never just say what he wanted to say, very slurred and confusing speech.
According to a cruise staff member, the average age on the cruise was 57. There were some families though. There were about 25 teens, and about 24 kids. NCL has programs for the kids and teens. The teens seemed to enjoy their program; they had discos at night, Jacuzzi evenings, pizza parties, and scavenger hunts. The kids had a movie night, arts and crafts in the afternoon, and pancake breakfasts. They all looked like they were having fun.
The ports of call were awesome. We started in Dover, and we went to Berlin (we came into a different port in Germany and took a train to Berlin), St. Petersburg, Helsinki, Stockholm, Copenhagen, and Oslo.
The day in Berlin was very interesting, but it was a long day. We had to be at the train by 6 AM, and we returned to the ship around 7 PM.
St. Petersburg was incredible! We got in during the evening, so we saw a Russian Folk Dancers show. I would highly recommend seeing it. It was completely sold out when we saw it. The next day we had our own tour guide to take us around. We really saw a lot, such as St. Isaac's and the Hermitage. You cannot tour St. Petersburg on your own unless you arrange a visa with Russia ahead of time.
Helsinki was beautiful. The ship docks near an open air market which sells food and other goods. It was really neat. We took a boat over to the Summelina Fortress. The cruise excursion director did not recommend this excursion, but everyone on it really liked it. It was a lot of fun. Kids would enjoy running around the fortress. You can really take some neat pictures there. Our second excursion was a tour around Helsinki. The tour was nice, but I personally would have rather spent more time walking around Helsinki in the afternoon.
Stockholm was a really nice city. We only did one excursion; we saw the castle. The castle was beautiful! We walked around the city afterwards which was really nice. My parents found some nice antique stores, and ended up having some beautiful antiques shipped back to the US.
Copenhagen was pretty. We docked in the evening, and we went to the Tivoli Gardens. Tivoli was nice. I think kids would enjoy it more than adults. It was very crowded. There are many rides. The next day we took a tour of the city -- crown jewels and the Little Mermaid. If you like leather jackets, I would HIGHLY recommend looking at the leather in Copenhagen as they have great prices on leather. We all got beautiful leather jackets made in Italy for such great costs. We got 5 jackets for not even the cost of one jacket a Marshall Field's.
Oslo was awesome! We were there on a Sunday, so everything was closed. There were some stores by the dock were we could purchase items, though. We took a tour of the city. The ski lift was interesting to see. We also saw were the Nobel prizes are named. The Viking ships were so neat to see. It's amazing people went so far in these simple, yet beautiful ships.
We spent three days in London prior to the cruise, and one day after. London is an incredible city. There's so much to see there. I wrote an in-depth review on London, so you might wish to read that if you would like more detail on London.
Overall, this was an amazing trip. It was one of my favorite vacations. I think anyone would enjoy this cruise!
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
DrPepGirl
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Location: Rancho Mirage, California
Reviews written: 20
Trusted by: 34 members
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