NCL Pearl - Panama Cruise April 2010

This will be my third cruise (actually my 5th - 2 were free transoceanic
courtesy of the U.S. Navy). It's a cruise I've always wanted
to do and we have finally booked it. Not cheap by any means, but it's a
once in a lifetime for us. I'm looking for any comments, good or bad about
the Pearl. We've cruised NCL before on the Dream (Dreamward) to Bermuda and
loved it. This is a much larger
ship. Our last cruise was on the Carnival Victory in the Western Caribbean
for seven days. We never did see the entire ship. The Panama adventure
will be for 14 days - I think there's 4 or 5 sea days in there somewhere.
Hopefully by then the Mexican ports will be open to us. When we anchor at
Cabo, we will go check on our timeshare. When we were in our timeshare, it
was fun watching the cruise ships pull in and then pull out later on. Now
WE will be one of those damn touristas. We know our way around Cabo, just
drop us off on the dock and away we go. Our cabin # is 8040 - a balcony so
I can lay out on sea days in private.

Cheers everyone.

--
**Old Sarge - Co-founder alt.military.retired**
**U.S. Army Retired and USPS Retired**
**DAV, American Legion, & VFW Member**

"Old Sarge" wrote:

This will be my third cruise (actually my 5th - 2 were free transoceanic
courtesy of the U.S. Navy). It's a cruise I've always wanted
to do and we have finally booked it. Not cheap by any means, but it's a
once in a lifetime for us. I'm looking for any comments, good or bad about
the Pearl. We've cruised NCL before on the Dream (Dreamward) to Bermuda and
loved it. This is a much larger
ship. Our last cruise was on the Carnival Victory in the Western Caribbean
for seven days. We never did see the entire ship. The Panama adventure
will be for 14 days - I think there's 4 or 5 sea days in there somewhere.
Hopefully by then the Mexican ports will be open to us. When we anchor at
Cabo, we will go check on our timeshare. When we were in our timeshare, it
was fun watching the cruise ships pull in and then pull out later on. Now
WE will be one of those damn touristas. We know our way around Cabo, just
drop us off on the dock and away we go. Our cabin # is 8040 - a balcony so
I can lay out on sea days in private.

Cheers everyone.

I really liked the Pearl. There were nice touches like the fish in
carpets on the lower decks are swimming towards the bow. So you can
look down at your feet and tell which way you are walking. The
theatre is nice and comfortable with theatre seats that have
individual vents in the back of each one and you can see the stage
from the seats without a lot of railings in the way. We made a
reservation for the non-fee specialty restaurant when we embarked.

I found the location of the Summer Palace dining room very unhandy but
when I got there, I liked it much better than the Indigo. If you are
on Deck 8, you won't have a problem because you can just take the
stern elevator down. From deck 6 or lower, you have to go up to deck
7 to walk back because on deck 6, the kitchen is in the way (so you
can't walk back), and the stern elevators don't go down to deck 5.
Indigo is easier to get to, but is a more interior restaurant whereas
the Summer Palace looks out over the ship's wake. We ate at the
Summer Palace at the time of embarkation because I thought it would be
less crowded than the buffet, and I was right although it was a pain
to carry all our luggage up and down the steps as we had not been to
our room yet.

This is what I wrote about the restaurants at the time:

On the Pearl, there are about 6 NON-extra price restaurants, and I think we ate in most of them.

We did not eat in any of the extra price restaurants. There was Cagney's (steak $20 - seats 160), La Bistro (French $15 seats 129), Teppanyaki (Japanese - seats 32), Sushi Bar (seats 50 - sushi, sashimi and Shabu-Shabu) and Lotus Garden (Asian - seats 100) We did not eat there because we didn't want to pay $30 or $40 extra (for two of us for the steak house or French restaurant, and Bob doesn't like Japanese or sushi.

There were two main dining rooms - Indigo (seats 304) and Winter Palace (seats 558). We ate most of the time in those restaurants and I thought the food was good. No need for reservations. They did repeat the menus on about a 9 day cycle.

The Indigo was much easier to get to - it was on deck 6 right next to the midship elevators. The disadvantage was that they had velvet type benches in the tables for four, and it was almost impossible for women to slide across to the inside seat in a dress because your clothes stick to the seat. Even men had problems. Also the ceiling was lower and as a result it was noisier. The Winter Palace was a beautiful room, BUT it was extremely difficult to get there from lower levels of cabins. It was a beautiful restaurant, and we liked to eat early enough that we could watch the wake of the ship as we were leaving port, but they were even less likely to set up sharing than they were in the Indigo. The food in the two places was identical.

There was one main buffet - Garden Cafe - seats 390. We ate there, but I found it difficult to manage the food and drink without a tray. I can't speak to the quality of the food as we didn't eat there that often. Bob preferred breakfast there, but there was no cranberry juice or V8 juice and we don't care for orange juice.

The Blue Lagoon was an extremely under-utilized 24 hour restaurant which did have a breakfast menu (with cranberry juice) in addition to the regular lunch and dinner food. We ate there a couple of times. Set menu - no variation - same every day. No reservations necessary. Seats 94

I ate breakfast once at the buffet out by the pool after I went for an early swim. It was a continental breakfast with fruit, cereal and rolls but no butter. One of the waiters went across to the Garden Cafe and brought butter back for me.

We ate at the Italian restaurant (La Cucina - seats 92) once, and I wasn't that impressed with the food. Possibly it was too authentic for me. They wouldn't do pizza unless there were several people ordering it, and that's what I really wanted. You had to have a reservation for that restaurant although you didn't pay extra. The service was pretty good, and the waiter took our picture with my camera - he also took the camera out on the back deck to take a picture of the moon for me and one of the pictures came out heart shaped. Don't know how he did that exactly.

The Italian restaurant was changed to extra price the next time I was
on an NCL ship.

We ate at Mambo, the Tex-Mex restaurant - reservation also required. Seats 96 I really liked the food here. Bob had the Nachos Grande which was an appetizer, but he said it would be enough for a whole meal, and it was.

We didn't eat at the The Great Outdoors - an outdoor restaurant behind the LaCucina and the Blue Lagoon restaurant


For some reason, NCL makes you sign your life away for towels to take
to the beach but that probably won't be a problem going through the
canal. The rooms had a clever little gadget outside the room which
said either Do Not Disturb, or Make up the Room, or Turn Down. The
internet cafe was efficiently managed and the directions for use were
excellent. They had free washers and dryers (and irons) right down
the hall from us, but you had to buy soap if you hadn't brought any.

Dis-embarkation was very easy even though it was Miami. We were
allowed to wait in our cabins until it was time to leave.

This is a small album of pictures of the food.
http://www.cruisemates.com/gallery/view.php?id=4315

This has some photos of the ship
http://www.cruisemates.com/gallery/view.php?id=5090
Unfortunately I stopped adding photos before I was finished, and now
can't get back to finish the album, but this is all of the photos on
another site

http://www.photoworks.com/photo-shar... lb_pml&cb=PW