Leaving LA and our Norwegian Bliss experience.
I am having a difficult time with these posts. I have lost what I have written several times and now I am struggling to upload photos. I am not sure what is happening but I have enjoyed this format for both to allow others to view, but I find that I have enjoyed returning to old posts myself. missing the pictures will be a large disappointment. BUT...….
I have had several cruise posts and they have all been on Norwegian Cruise lines, so I thought it made the most sense to post all and everything we did while on the ship in one post rather then break things up into days so here goes EVERYTHING. The good, the bad and the ugly!
Early morning of day 1: Having learned that cabs are EXPENSIVE, we decided to try a Lyft. Mark downloaded the app onto this phone and the experience began. If you have not tried either an Uber or a Lyft then you might not understand. The whole process if truly an experience.
After some coaxing from me about calling to arrange pick up we had a message that our driver was on her way expected in 5 minutes. Wow that was quick. We were not even all packed up to go. Taxi's are much slower.
Mark and I learn all about using Lyft, we are in LOVE. We made it to the ship on time and were able to get our baggage's checked and board the ship right away. This was one of the easiest and fastest boarding ever.
The Norwegian Bliss is the newest and the largest of the Norwegian ship lines. I am deciding that it was perhaps to big. It is great to have all those fun things aboard, but I was not enjoying the crowds. We were very early in our arrival, and the ship was already packed with people. We couldn't get to our rooms, so we decided to go to lunch and sit by the pool after.
The buffet was so crowded we couldn't even find a seat.
Once we finally sat down at a vacant place we enjoyed lunch and then a stroll around the ship, finally spending the rest of the afternoon poolside.
We had a few issues. Shortly after our ship sailed we were told that our intended port of calls in Mexico would not be happening. There was a HURRICANE!!!!! Our new destination would include heading north to San Francisco then South to San Diego, we would see Mexico as our last port in Ensenada. As you can imagine there were several disappointed faces on the ship that day. Many aboard lived in these areas and were not all to excited to go on vacation to return home. Mark and I were less then excited, we were anticipating warm beaches and Mexican sun. We were however excited to be heading to places in California that we had never been, and grateful our captain was not planning on heading into the storm just to meet the intended destination. This was one of our "bummers" on the ship, but an even bigger bummer was that we were sailing with a conference. We had been seeing several logo shirts throughout the day and asked as well as overheard, about the Travel Agent conference that was taking place.
1. Generally there are more things to do. Agreed. This ship had several things to do no doubt. However, things like the water slides are really not my thing, the mini golf was limited, it cost extra and reservations were difficult to do the race cars, events were great, but we struggled to get in.
On previous trips we had reserved out show tickets, but on this cruise we were not offered this option. (We were able to secure The Jersey Boys in advance). Each and every event we attempted to book on the corner kiosk's were full. I was so saddened to see that several of the activities offered were FULL. (We did find that if we checked again later or closer to the event that we could secure a place. Despite my initial disappointment with missing shows etc. we would have liked to avoid this anxiety in the process.)
On the other hand, one of the better shows we saw was the Beatles tribute, which did not have reservations. This made the small venue a nightmare of confusion and irritation of people standing in front of people who had been sitting and had to wait for a good spot. People loomed along walls, crevices and squatted making any attempts to move about extremely difficult and klasterphopic. Mark had to leave it was so uncomfortable for him.
Every thing points to CROWDS CROWDS and MORE CROWDS. There never seemed to be a place where people were not at. The halls were crowded. the restaurants were crowded, the bars were crowded. Some of Mark and my tricks to beat the crowds (like getting off the ship early at port, or being up early to enjoy the sunrise) were CROWDED. The number of Bliss passengers can hold something like 4,000,00 people. That is A TON of people.
The number of people has definitely made me think that my best cruise option is a mid-sized ship in the future.
BUT like all of Norwegian lines; there is always the FOOD! And boy did we eat.
We ate A WHOLE LOT.
Also very enjoyable were the views from the ship's decks. Like the 5am trip UNDER the Gate Bridge.
The FULL Autumn moon.
The amazing views pulling into port.
Always fun are the towel animals waiting on your bed after a full day.
The entertainment is always Amazing.
As was the dancing in this performance. Havana Nights. (no pictures allowed)
Lounge singers who played all those tune you can't help but sign along to.
Of course there was the comedy club. This retired LA police officer had me laughing so hard.
The Beatle's tribute band was INSANE. They look almost identical to the real guys.
This country band was Mark's favorite. They played at least twice and after hearing them play on the pool deck on the one nice day, we found them at one of the clubs/restaurants on our last evening.
and the alcohol....we consumed a ton of alcohol.
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