Norwegian Bliss Review
10/27/18 7 night Mexican Riviera, Round Trip Los Angeles
Before I begin, everyone reading this needs to know that this review is not at all about Mexico, where I physically went on my cruise. The cruise was ALL about trying out the Norwegian Bliss, experiencing as much as possibly could in 7 days, and then telling everyone about it.
Remember that if you find this review helpful, please book your NCL cruise with me, Suzy. I will be happy to help you plan the perfect vacation. Suzy@SuzyCruisy.com
Onboard Activities –
Let’s begin with what Bliss has that other Breakaway-class ships do not – the go kart track and the laser tag venue.
The first thing of importance you need to know is that both of these activities are something you can pre-reserve / prepay before you get onboard. For optimal times, I do suggest that. At the time we sailed, the charge for both of these was $9.99 per person, each time. If you think you want to do EITHER one over and over, then I suggest you get an ‘all day’ pass or a ‘full cruise’ pass. At least on the race track, these are ONLY available for purchase pre-cruise and on the first day of sailing. I thought we’d try the go-cart first, and then buy the unlimited after if we liked it, but that was not an option.
Go Kart Racing - The track itself is really well designed. Its two levels, starting in the lower part on Deck 18, going up onto Deck 19 for the twists and turns, and then sweeping back down to Deck 18 for the straightway on the start/finish. The cars go about 20mph max, which actually would be fast enough on such a small course, if you could just go without obstructions.
The primary purpose of this activity is for everyone to have fun, but if you’re a good driver, it can be frustrating. We tried it twice. The first time there was a VERY slow driver in our group and every time I went to pass her she cut me off. She had no concept of staying to the right if she was slow or looking to see if there was someone on her left before she turned. The second time we had a pair of very aggressive drivers that proactively crashed us out of their way, even if they weren’t faster than us. The side bad thing too is that the NCL crew that are the operators can cut your power down and make you go slower at their whim. In a professionally run go kart facility on land, the operators know to sap only the ones doing the crashing and not the victims. On NCL if you are in a crash at all, they’ll sap everyone in the wreck’s power, regardless of whom was at fault. Also, their go karts have a boost button, that makes you go faster for a short time, but you will pay for that by lugging slowly as it recharges. The first time we ran I never did the boost and I went reasonably fast the whole time when I had no obstructions. The second time I boosted and lugged, but got a better lap time. We liked the racing in the daylight better than the late night under-the-lights version.
Lastly, doing the go karts is a long process. Allocate at least a half hour of your time, even though you spend only about 5 minutes on the track. They try to give the slowest person 8 laps, so if you are super fast you may get more than that. It takes a long time to check in, wait on one area, wait in another area and watch a safety video as they enter your key cards and assign you a car number, wait in a third area with your racing helmet head socks on, and then finally get into the cars.
They also have 2-person go karts for parents and kids at certain times, normally in the afternoon. We did not try that version, but wanted to let you know it was an option.
Laser tag - I had never played before, so it was interesting. It is definitely a workout. And it is suggested you do this in the dark, as you can see the lasers better then, as this is at the very top of the ship in the center of Deck 20. Keep that in mind when making your reservations, either pre-cruise or on the first day of the cruise when they have a signup desk. This activity is again $9.99 per person each time at 10/27/18 when I cruised, but the price could adjust based upon supply and demand of the activity.
They set up the game with up to 10 per red or blue team (we had 8 each when we played), and each team has a crew member professional assigned to their team. You get instructions on how the gun works (no harness or vest or anything… just the gun), and then you set out to shoot your way thru the other team. You spend A LOT of time running back to your recharge station. So, run out, run back, run out, run back, etc. And we played two ‘games’ of laser tag, the two teams splitting the scoring.
I am most definitely not skilled at this activity, but it was fun to try it once.
The Norwegian Joy will also have the go-cart track, so probably the same commentary will apply.
Water Slides - All of the Breakaway class ships have water slides, but they are unique in design on each ship. This one had something called Aqua Racer, a wide slide you do on an inner tube, and a drop slide called ocean loops. Both slides have clear sections that go out over the ocean. So, they are fun to look at and fun to do. If you want to look about on the clear sections, consider wearing goggles so you don’t have your eyes closed from the water the whole time.
We enjoyed both slides, but the Aqua Racer is more popular because anyone can do it. There are single tubes for adults, smaller single tubes for kids, and double tubes that two kids could do together. There are weight restrictions of 300+ pounds (forgot the exact amount) per tube, which makes me say two kids on the double one. They also have a limited number of tubes, so you could be in line a while simply waiting for the tubes, and then in line on the stairs again waiting your turn to go down. We did this on a port day when there were less crowds, which was fun.
The ocean loops drop slide is interesting. I’ve got nothing against drop slides, as I’ve done some of the longest and highest ones in the world at Volcano Bay. HOWEVER, this one is definitely an odd design to be built in a figure 8 where you actually go up a bit after you go downwards. If you keep yourself in a torpedo shape and keep your speed up, you will have no problems going thru the whole slide. If you flail about, you could get ‘stuck’ in one of the uphill parts. They have crew manning the escape hatches in two areas to assist people that get stuck, so it is not all terrible. We did see it happen though. It is not UNcommon though, so be prepared. You also can not do this with ANY jewelry on, so be sure to leave those in your safe before you head out to the pool deck for sliding.
Bowling – NCL has bowling on many of their ships, so this is not Bliss specific, but they did have two small lanes in The Local. This is not full-sized bowling, but using a smaller ball that is bigger than your hand but not anywhere close to a normal sized ball. It costs $6.00 per person for one game. I couldn’t get the hang of palming the ball, but it was still fun to try once.
Dining -
Bliss has quite a few complimentary dining options, and MANY specialty / pay-extra dining facilities. Complimentary always are the buffet, The Local, and three main dining rooms – Taste, Savor and Manhattan. We tried Taste & Savor for lunch twice, and they were good. We tried Manhattan for dinner once, and it was also good. You cannot make a reservation for any of the complimentary dining rooms. The Local was fine. Since I’m diabetic and on a restricted diet, it was harder for me to eat there than anywhere else, because they have a limited menu / kitchen facility.
The buffet was exceptional, the best design ever on a ship, and we went there for Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner and late-night snacks throughout the cruise. NCL encourages you to go to the buffet for dinner by advertising what the ‘featured’ theme or dish is in the buffet at all dining venues on the ship throughout the day. The chefs in the buffet also were happy to assist with special requests if you needed it, so great points for food AND service there. The only drawback was the crush of the crowd for Breakfast and Lunch. Know that there is extended buffet seating out the doors on the pool deck, and that was often available when you could not find something inside.
Another hidden gem is breakfast or lunch in the Conservatory Lounge Deck 15 forward. This area might be overly popular on an Alaska cruise, but underutilized in a warmer climate area. They had a limited buffet for breakfast and lunch, but certainly enough to have a peaceful meal in peace and quiet with the buffet is overcrowded at peak hours. Margaritaville up on Deck 17 also has a limited and complimentary buffet breakfast.
Most people want to try the specialty dining while onboard, at least for some nights. If you want any of these, try to pre-reserve them before you leave home to get the best days and times. If you miss that, you CAN go to a designated area that the daily program lists on the first day to make dining reservations for your whole week. I will give you a rundown of what my husband and I paid extra for in case you want to duplicate some of our things. We had the 3 meal dining package as part of our Free@Sea promotion, but actually tried four.
Teppanyaki (think Benihana) is always good on NCL. La Cucina Italian was eye-rollingly exceptional, so if you did only one pay-extra, I would suggest that one. Ocean Blue was very UNDERwhelming and I would not suggest it unless you have a thing for oysters. Apparently, that is their specialty, but my husband and I don’t like them. The dish we ordered, the marquee thing on the menu that is a seafood platter of many different fishes was bland and uninteresting, AND it was the most expensive specialty restaurant there was! Apparently, NCL advertises that they do not have lobster at all on their menus on any day. However, the halibut combo platter we had at Ocean Blue DOES have a small piece of lobster meat on it. We had to pay a $12 per person fee ON TOP of our dining package for Ocean Blue.
Something we really liked was Q, the Texas Smokehouse BBQ restaurant. The food here was good. It is ONLY open for dinner, which is disappointing, as I think a lot of us would love to have Bar-B-Que for lunch, and it would lessen the crush on the buffet at lunch. The prices were kind of high, around $15 per person for an entrée, but I still enjoyed it. As I planned for my cruise, the online planner said this was not part of the dining package, but the people at Q said I COULD have used it as one of my three restaurants, even though I could not make a reservation for it in advance. So, if that is what you want to do, pre-reserve only two things with your dining package and reserve that for one of your nights after you get onboard.
The problem with Q, physically, and why it isn’t open for lunch, is because it is a very large venue that NCL uses for a lot of different activities throughout the day. They did not design themselves enough public venues to have this space on the ship be a BBQ restaurant 100% of the time. They are constantly having to take the dining tables in and out for various dancing and kids shows and a myriad of other things. I would suggest they forget the dinner here, as it was not that busy, and open this for lunch ONLY and then use the space for other activities at night. They have not figured that out though, so don’t expect to ever see it listed as a lunch option.
And as a side note to that, La Cucina , Cagney’s Steakhouse, Los Lobos, The District, Food Republic and Ocean Blue are on Deck 8 “The Waterfront”. You can choose to eat inside or ‘on the waterfront’ outdoors with ocean breezes and views at these. I loved eating “on the waterfront” on NCL Escape, but I stupidly made reservations on this cruise right at sunset on the wrong side of the ship TWICE. So, instead of roasting outside in the blistering sun, we ate inside every night. So, “note to self” if you want to do ‘on the waterfront’ make your reservations late enough that it will be after sunset, or give thought to which direction the ship will be sailing so you can eat outside on the shady side. I mean, who cares if you go to La Cucina on the first day or the last day, as long as you get to try it, right?
I do not have anything to say about the bars, because I do not drink. However, note that Norwegian Cruise Line has a new environmentally friendly policy that has discontinued straws. If you like straws in your drinks, then bring a washable one, or some paper ones with you, or some kind of washable drinking cup that you wish to carry around with you and pour your drinks into.
Entertainment –
NCL gets high marks on lots of different entertainment options. The main entertainment in the theatre are a broadway like show called Havana for the first few nights and Jersey Boys on a few others. We did enjoy Havana, we skipped Jersey Boys since we had seen it before. However, we heard good comments from other passengers. Both of those shows in the main showroom require reservation, which you can do in advance in the Planner online, or on the first night of the cruise. They also had a comedy show in Social Comedy and Nightclub, which required a reservation. The comedians performed some nights here, and at least one night in the main showroom. They were fine, but do not go twice as we heard the same material from one of the guys twice.
By far the stars of our cruise though were Beatemania Live, the Beatles tribute band. NCL has a permanent venue on Deck 8 called The Cavern Club, which is meant to replicate a famous venue in Liverpool, England. MANY famous artists performed there over the years, but the Beatles were by far the biggest and best. NCL has rotating Beatles tribute bands performing in The Cavern Club each cruise. Ours just happened to be Beatlmania Live. They did three shows in The Cavern Club, each a different era or album of Beatles music. And then on the last evening they did a combination show with some early Beatles songs, some Sergeant Pepper, and some later material.
The key with The Cavern Club is you must arrive early. I would suggest 45 minutes before the show, even if you have to sit through some horrible Karaoke if that happens to be what NCL has in the venue before the Beatles come. The seating is very limited and it gets packed in there. We arrived too late the first night to get a seat, but saw the second and third shows in The Cavern Club, and the final show in the showroom. Our particular band was definitely good enough to see twice.
Cabin –
NCL is known for small cabins. We had a mini-suite, which is supposed to be larger, but we still felt cramped. The mini-suites have an extraordinarily large bathroom, with a fabulous 7 head shower, which is where you get additional space over a regular balcony room. The cabin seemed just a touch too narrow side to side though, as you could not easily pass in the narrow walkway between the foot of the bed and the wall. Maybe if they just did not have a big clunky piece of artwork there it would have been better. I am not sure. I felt like I just needed one extra foot of space to feel more comfortable moving around though.
Also, the closet configuration is terrible. The closet is crammed onto the backside of the bathroom, basically along the wall to the right hand side of the bed. So, every time you wanted to get in and out of the closet, you had to squeeze yourself in the narrow space the width of a small nightstand table.
And even though this ship is new this year, the couch was really uncomfortable. It was very deep and flat with no armrests. So, no armrests to sit straight, and no arm rests to sit lengthwise.
The only thing I can advise to get a cabin as large as you can afford if you want to spend any time at all in it. If you know you will spend every waking hour out and about in the public areas, then this is probably fine for you. The beds were comfortable, which is always the most important thing. And we did enjoy the fact that there were USB charging ports on both nightstand lights on the wall, as well as three outlets at the desk / vanity.
Consider also taking less clothes, and sending out a bag of laundry halfway through your cruise. We did not have enough storage for our clothes for 7 days. However, even though the per-piece laundry price was high, they offered a deal a few days into the cruise where you could send a whole paper bag full of clothes out for one $20 flat fee. This actually was a great deal and something I will consider next time. We did not wear quite a bit of our evening resort casual clothes we had packed because we ended up eating in the buffet or in the BBQ where changing for dinner was not required.
Dress code – NCL is truly freestyle. They did have an optional dress up night, that we did not participate in. On that night, you probably had to be dressed nice to eat in the Manhattan room. On other nights though, anything except swimsuits was probably ok. T-shirts and shorts in the dining room were common.
Norwegian Cruise Line App –
Before you leave home, be sure everyone in your party downloads the new Norwegian Cruise Line app. This is NOT the old iConcierge app, but a brand new one that works only one a few ships so far. I am sure it will be fleetwide soon. Norwegian Bliss, being the newest ship, for sure had it. It has the NCL logo in blue as the app symbol.
The reason you want to have it is to communicate with others in your party while onboard, or new friends you might make. Once you are onboard, you can use it to search through the current activities schedule, reserve dining and activities, and other helpful features. To use the communicating features, you have to pay a set fee for each person/phone in your group. So, as my husband and I logged into it for the first time onboard, we were prompted to buy the texting package for $9.95 for the cruise. I am not sure if this is the price always, or is the price for a 7-night cruise, but that is what we had to pay. You can text or make voice calls within the app.
Be forewarned that they only load the tomorrow schedule piecemeal throughout the day, and even at the end of the day, you might not have ALL of the next day’s info loaded in the app. It seemed to load the following day’s activities slowly, supposedly 24 hours out, but in reality they must push a bunch of stuff to it overnight to fill in the schedule, per se. So, for next day planning I still suggest you use the Freestyle Daily paper the steward leaves in your cabin each evening.
As with all cruise line apps, you want to set your phone or device into airplane mode once you are onboard, and then turn the WiFi on to connect to the ship WiFi for free. This will not give you connection to the outside world, but will allow you to use the app.
For accessing the outside world, you need to pay per minute for Internet, or have an Internet package you prepaid for as you planned, got through a booking perk like Free@Sea, or bought once you were onboard. My husband and I had 250 minutes free for our CABIN as part of our Free@Sea, and we took turns accessing the Internet with our one Web login to post a few pics on Facebook and check email. That number of minutes seemed to work for us well, and we did not need to buy more. BE CAREFUL though that each time you log into the Internet that you proactively log out so your minute counter stops. Just closing your browser or your phone or even turning your WiFi off will not stop your minutes from counting down. You can access the Internet through the NCL app, or simply by going to the Internet and attempting to load a page the NCL login page should pop up. Be sure you go to a new browser and type logout.com to log out, or log out with the button in the app.
And just to be clear. Each person will have individual access to the app logging in with their booking details. That is how the system does the on ship texting. For the Internet, we created a login and password that was for the cabin as a whole, which we could both use as long as we only did one device at a time. The NCL app knew when I switched from using my phone and my iPad, so that was easy. I stayed logged in to one or the other so I could get texts from my husband. And the app DOES have a push feature so you should be notified of texts (which other cruise line apps do not do, or do not do well).
Wyland – The ‘hull art’ of the Norwegian Bliss is the noted marine wildlife artist Wyland. Not only is his art on the outside of the ship, but there is a lot of Wyland merchandise in the gift shop, and his art is way more prevalent in the art auctions. Since I am a fan of Wyland, I loved this about the Bliss.
Smoking – The Norwegian Bliss is the most non-smoker friendly ship I have ever been on. Conversely, if you are a smoker, this is one of the unfriendly ships you can sail on.
Whereas other ships, even in the same class (Breakaway, Getaway, Escape), allow smoking in the casino by players, the Norwegian Bliss is different. They have a glassed-in gambling area, quite large, for smokers. So, you can play slots or table games in there and smoke, but you would not be able to smoke in the open areas of the casino that connect to 678 Place and other ship decks and smoke.
There is a smoking room for cigars and cigarettes on Deck 8 amidships, near the Whisky Bar, that allows smoking.
There is no smoking pretty much on the rest of the ship, including none in your cabin nor on your balcony, and this includes e-cigarettes. I never saw the official smoking policy, but I honestly didn’t see smoking anywhere else on the ship just in passing. One guy was smoking on the Waterfront right outside the smoking room, and that may or may not be allowed.
If it is important for you to know, you should check the rules as soon as you board, as it is a ship to ship different policy, rather than fleet-wide.
Disembarking the ship – If you do not want to carry your own luggage off the ship, then you can get your OWN luggage tags down by the guest services desk with the color or time you prefer the day before disembarkation.
If you found this review helpful, please book your NCL cruise with me, Suzy Cruisy. I will be happy to help you plan the perfect Freestyle vacation.
Thank you!