Personnel on the ship escorted us to our floor, picked up our room key card for us and escorted us to the cabin.

Stateroom:
The stateroom was pretty much as we had expected from comments we had read in reviews of the ship. There was a lack of drawer space, but we were able to find a place for everything. The space under the beds was adequate to store our huge jumbo luggage. The mattress on the bed was very hard when I first sat down on it, but I didn’t even notice it at night. It was actually very comfortable or I was just real tired every night. There was a settee that would seat one and a half people with a round table in front of it that was in our way quite a bit, but was very useful in the long run for trays, cameras, and other stuff. The bathroom was fairly small, but had good features in it such as ample shelves on either side of the mirror. The shower stall was round with a shower curtain that wrapped around in a half circle, really worked well.

Dining, Dressing & Tips:
We sailed on the second week of NCL’s “FreeStyle Cruising” on the Sky. I knew about the change in format due to participating in discussions in rec.travel.cruises, but I did not know many details. A vast majority of the passengers had no idea that the ship had changed anything, so this created a lot of confusion and frustration in the early days of the cruise for some passengers, especially those in groups.

Rather than giving passengers the information in cruise documents prior to the cruise, NCL decided to just leave a letter in each stateroom outlying the changes. “FreeStyle Cruising” on NCL Sky consistedof the following:

Open seating for Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner [(5:30pm - midnight*) * seated by 10pm]

More casual dressing. Per NCL letter, “We invite you to consider the popular “resort casual” as standard onboard rather than formal dress code of traditional cruising” The letter also said that there would be one formal evening in one of the main dining rooms during the cruise. However, the one formal night was designated in all dining rooms (Seven Seas, Four Seasons, and Horizons) on our cruise. Later in the cruise, almost everyone dressed formally again for the Captain’s dinner and for the formal pictures they were promoting, even though the recommended dress forthe evening was casual.

Suggested gratuities of $9.75 per person per day were automatically applied to your onboard account to be distributed to the staff. This included your room steward as well as dining staff. You had the opportunity to adjust any gratuity charges at the Reception Desk. Note: This did not include suggested gratuities for the alternative dining in LeBistro or in Ciao Chow.

Reservations were required in the alternative dining rooms. Reservations were to be made between 11:00am and 5:00pm. We tried several times before we were able to get reservations for anything other than after 9:00 pm. However, it was worth the effort. The food and service was wonderful in Le Bistro. We didn’t dine in Ciao Chow, so I can’t give anyinformation on it.

There was an Indoor/Outdoor Buffet for early morning coffee, breakfast, lunch, dinner, and late night snacks in the Garden Cafe’. This was open from6:00am -1:00am. There wasn’t much use of the Outdoor portion of the buffet, however because we had rain and cold weather everyday of our cruise to Alaska. (See my comments at the end for my opinion of the buffet.) Pizza was good and we never had to wait for it. There were lines for ice cream most of the time, but never more than 4 or 5 people and it moved fast.

We ate in all three dining rooms, Seven Seas, Four Seasons, and Horizons. We never experienced any lines or wait to get in, but noticed several times while we were dining, that there would be sometimes asizable line waiting outside the dining room. We ate both early and late, depending on what was going on and how hungry we were. At night, they tended to seat us at small tables for four, but at lunch and breakfast, we were normally seated at large tables of 12. Of course you had a different waiter and busboy for each and every meal and different tablemates as well. Our food was generally very good and with the exception of one soup, everything was appropriately hot and appetizing. Our service varied from meal to meal. Overall, the waiters were good, but the busboys were generally lacking in attitude and beverage service. The dinner meals did not take as long as I am used to with assigned dining. (Comments to follow).

My favorite dining experience was in the Horizons. We were seated at a table for two by the window and we got to enjoy the beautiful view of the water and mountains and were entertained through out the meal by numerous porpoises leaping in and out of the waterright next to the ship.

Entertainment/ Onboard activities
I normally don’t enjoy cruise ship entertainment all that much, but this was different. They really put on some very good entertainment and I looked forward to it each evening. They had two shows (early and late) and we never had a problem attending one even with the flexible dining. Even the passenger talentshow was really good.

We really didn’t participate much in on board activities, the cruise was really more about the scenery than that. They were available, but you could hardly drag me away from the windows. They of course had major bingo and casino gambling, but being from Las Vegas, we weren’t interested in that. I had to laugh each time we were sailing out from a beautiful Alaskan port with snowcapped mountains, smooth water, and mist twisting out and around the mountain tops......over the loud speaker would come the cruise director’s voice, “Welcome back on board, now lets get ready for some Super Jackpot Bingo!” Somehow, it always seemed so jarring with the magicof the scenery.

Public rooms:
I’ve never seen a cruise ship jam so many chairs into its public rooms. The showroom was difficult to move around in especially in the balcony. The railing in the balcony made viewing the shows difficult. The Checkers Cabaret was also packed with chairs and tables. This is where they had quite a few of activities such as art auctions, some nightly entertainment. The atrium area was nice, but seating on any of the levels was generally full do to the bad weather and the fact that it was one of the few public areas that had both seating and windows to enjoy the view. My favorite room of all was the Observation Lounge where you got a 180 degree view of oncoming scenery. The workout room had floor to ceiling windows and quite a bit of equipment. I used the Internet cafe a couple of times to send messages to family and friends instead of postcards. (Postcards would have been cheaper) They charged $.75 a minute. There was also a chargeto have them setup an email account, but I had already set one up at home on deja.com and had loaded my addresses there, so that saved time and cost. However, the systems were down more than they were up. Not sure what the problem was.

Ports:
Sawyer Glacier. Too beautiful for words. The weather was very rough for this day. Fog, rain, and even some sleet as we traveled through Tracy Arm to the Glacier. Somehow, though, it seemed fitting. As we got closer to the beautiful blue glacier, the weather settled down a bit and allowed us to enjoy it. We were wet and cold, but it was just part of the adventure. The fog and mist lifted as we sailed back out the way we came and so we got to enjoy a wholenew view then. Delightful!

Haines was a beautiful tranquil port and one of my favorites. It was very quiet and serene. We were the only ship in port. We hadn’t opted for an excursion here and opted to walk all around and enjoy our surroundings. We were there early in the morning and out of there by 10:30 am. I later learned that the Sky will not be going there after this season. Pity. I am glad we got to enjoy it. We then sailed to Skagway.

There were many things to do in Skagway and I think that most people had a really good time there, but for us, it was just too commercial. There were three other ships there with us and the town was packed. The noise of the helicopters and planes keep the place buzzing constantly. We had canceled our bike ride down the White Pass, because of the weather. Had we been able to do that excursion or had booked one of the others, we might have enjoyed this port more. Most people really like it. Just a bit commercial...but I confess I did stop in Starbucks for a latte.

Juneau was gorgeous and the Mendenhall tour was good. We didn’t do the helicopter tours, but every one said that were great. We enjoyed the tram up Mt. Roberts. Would have like to hike up there, but again the weather prevented it because the trails were very muddy and slick. As I sat in the Observation Lounge before sailing, we watched two eagles sitting in the trees close by . My heart stopped from the beauty as one took flight as we were watching. We saw many others during the trip, but these appeared to putting on a show for us. Vancouver was very interesting and beautiful. We enjoyed the botanical gardens and were there just long enough to decide that we would like to go back some day and do it right.

Disembarking:
Easy. We were the second to last group to disembark and we were off the ship by about 10:00. The process started at 8:00, thus by the time we finished breakfast, many people were already off and it wasn’t crowded in the public areas.

Comments: aka the good the bad and the ugly.

We really enjoyed the freedom of selecting the time we dined. We also enjoyed sitting with such a wide variety of people. You really got to know a large number of people that you continued to see and talk to throughout the cruise. Service, did suffer in my opinion. We had a hard time getting beverages such as coffee and tea at our meals. Repeated requests would often not yield the beverages. Pancakes served without syrup, so you had to ask...that sort of thing.

Cleanliness was sometimes an issue i.e.: trash overflowing in public bathrooms, badly stained seat cushions in the Garden Cafe and even an apparent blood stain on a cushion in the atrium. In the dining room, there were always hand prints, some food stains, and what appear to be general smears on glass partitions next to dinners. I saw this in both maindining rooms.

As I had read in others reviews of this ship, the Garden Cafe was just basically inadequate in everyway. Limited food selection, long lines, crowded, and absolutely no where to sit for breakfast and lunch. We gave up on the second day and saved ourselves aggravation by just using the dining room. The seating and crowding problem was in a large part, caused by the weather and the fact that you couldn’t use any of the outdoor seating. (Not the ship’s fault....but the food made it not worth the effort.)

On a good note, we ordered our shore excursions at home prior to sailing and they were in our room the first night. Our luggage was in our room by 2:00. Our room was clean and serviced promptly. Food in the dining room was good. Bar service was good also.
We would sail again on the NCL Sky, but not to Alaska. To do it over again, I wouldchoose my ship to Alaska based on the amount of window and seating space in public areas and on public deck floors. There were large segments of the ship levels 6 & 7 that didn’t have many or any windows. This wouldn’t really come in to play as much in a warm weather cruise as you wouldn’t be as dependent to viewing the outside from within in the case of bad weather. The view was everything on this cruise.