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Norwegian Cruise Line

SS Norway

Your Rating:
Reviewed by: Jeffrey Piter
# previous cruises: 10+
Date of Trip: September 9, 2000
Itinerary: Caribbean - Eastern

The Norway is far and away our favorite cruise ship. It will discontinue it's 7 day cruising after Spring of next year and will do 2 and 5 day trips. It is unclear what will happen in 2002. If you haven't been on the Norway now is the time to do it.

The Club Internationale remains a warm and very classy room, but mute TV walls of the Sports Illustrated Cafe was a change for the worse from Checkers. There are good sized dnce floors in both rooms. The North Cape Lounge also has a large dance floor, that acts as a stage for some of the shows. The pool is adequate and the Casino seems to grow larger every year.

We did the lions share of eating in the dinning rooms, Windward was assigned this trip. Our cabin was in the bow, so I didn't ask for a change to the Leeward,at stearn, which I prefer. The Leeward is quieter and seems less crowded. The food on the ship was very good, if anything needed attention the waiters were very quick to fix it.

The Great Outdoor had a more extensive menu than it did in 1997, last time we were on the Norway. There wes also lunch in Sports Illistrated on some days. Japanese soup buffet and a few Indian dishes were a real treat.

Midnight buffets were cut from 7, last year on Sky, to 5. The buffets were almost too good, great variety of interesting foods. As usual we didn't go to the Chocolate buffet, NCL makes a big deal of it, but a room FULL of chocolate is hard to deal with at Midnight. The two nights without buffets they served "snacks" in Casino and Sports Illistrated and had a Sushi Bar in International. This combo was more than enough for a midnight meal.

They will be starting to do open seating at all meals soon, it's on the Sky already, don't know when it will start on Norway.

We were "upgraded" from a small inside in middle of ship to a smaller outside cabin in the bow one deck below. We've been in most sizes of cheap cabins on the ship, but this was the smallest. We just thought of it as a large closet with bathroom, TV and beds:) She is the last of the steamships for cruising and that makes the cabins pretty quiet and vibration free everwhere in the ship. I would not select this cabin if I had a choice since it was under one of the two tenders carried. Chains and stuff make a lot of noise when they are lowered a 5AM for the stop at St. Johns.

Nine of our ten trips on the Norway were for the 50/60's rock and roll theme cruise. For some reason they didn't start the cruise with the Broadway Show as in the past, this was our only dissapointment. The Saga Theater is a two level room with NO bad seats and would have been a great setting for "Guys and Dolls". The ships performers are in a class all by themselves in the cruise industry.

The Rock shows were wonderful. There were four shows, Paul Revere and the Raiders, was the first. Freddy Cannon/Brian Hyland/Frankie Ford, Johnny Tilloson/Johnny Preston/Chris Montez, and Bobby Vee/Little Eva made up the rest. Barry Newman &Carl Mignano of the Crests and an Elvis impersonator did more shows in smaller rooms. There was also aoldies rock band doing 3 hour dance sets each night. The ship was rocking! Now for the bad news. Seems the new owners want to discontinue Theme cruises. If they read the comment cards, they will get 2000+ reasons not to. A country theme cruise is going on now, and I think there are two jazz cruises and some big band themes still to go this year, book one while you can on the Norway.

They have a lively and entertaining cruise director and it was a breath of fresh air. In the past Norway CD's were all without personality.

BINGO, Art auctions, games, pool games, cabin TV movies, and throwing money away in slots should keep just about everyone busy between meals:)

Called on St Martin. They have a new tour that includes a trip to The Butterfly Farm, best tour we had done on NCL. Other tours are available there and in St Thomas and St Johns. Have very nice dive-in program, where we started to snorkle about 10 years ago.

Private island is a great beack day with a good assortment of fish if you snorkle.

We see many of the same faces on all the 50/60's cruises and that's the average age. You can tell the passengers that got on the cruise by accident, hands over ears for Paul Revere:) Everybody on the ship was having a great time.