This was our first time on the Norwegian Joy ship and our first time to Bermuda! We had an amazing time despite all the hiccups and I would definitely recommend this sailing if you’re ever interested in cruising and visiting Bermuda.
That being said, I do want to note the small hiccups we experienced though to be totally transparent for those considering booking a trip. They were minor inconveniences in the realm of first world problems, but they are worth mentioning so that you’re aware.
Boarding
They offer online check-in weeks before your sailing to help expedite boarding check-in at the pier. I did everything as directed when it came to the online check-in but their system glitched for some reason and my husband’s account got caught in the system and didn’t go through all the way. When calling the Norwegian customer service line, they reassured me it was fine, just a computer system issue and that it would be fine at the pier check-in. It totally was when we got there, but the pier check-in line was a different story altogether.
We arrived at the pier check-in around 1. The lines were unfortunately poorly managed and felt very disorganized. It took us about almost 2 hours to get on the ship, which is pretty abnormal. I’ve cruised several times before, twice with Norwegian, and it’s never been this disorganized nor took this long. Usually I’m on board pretty quickly within 30 minutes but no more than an hour.
The security line went fast and smooth but the other two lines were not. I’m not exactly sure what the issue was, but they had one line checking paperwork (passports, covid testing requirements and Bermuda travel authorization paperwork) and another line after that to process check-ins and give you your room card before boarding. Both lines dragged despite having several stations open to check everyone’s documents. We had the most problem on the second line; at one point it didn’t move for a good 20 minutes and everyone on line was getting restless. The staff eventually intervened and split the line, alleviating half of us into the priority check-in line, but their methods was pretty unfair because it screwed over the people who were already on line and were already waiting longer.
When I finally got up to our turn, our agent handled it smoothly and we got our cards within a few minutes so I’m not sure why the line wasn’t moving faster, other than the line being full of boomers who didn’t fill everything out online beforehand so the staff had to manually do it. Was every guest on line this inefficient at getting their shit together?!
Afterwards, we were able to walk onboard no issue. We were able to skip the usual muster drill due to covid and them not wanting to sequester everyone in one spot too long. We went to our room and because we spent so much time waiting to get checked in in the pier, our luggage was ready for us right outside our room. It was easy to spot too because my luggage is so obnoxiously pink compared to everyone’s boring basic black. There was an issue with our room though; we had originally requested a private room NOT having a connecting door. My travel agent had did the room selection part for us so we were confused at the mix-up but upon talking to the guest relations desk, it seems their system does not currently have their rooms accurately in the system to reflect which rooms had connecting doors and which ones did not. It took about an hour for us to get this squared up and find an available room since they had to call each floor and have the floor stewards manually check the rooms to make sure there was no connecting door. While that was getting done, I noticed we had left the dock and the boat was already heading out of NYC. It was a mild inconvenience but all this time spent in the pier and then waiting for our room to get resolved was rather annoying because it delayed the start of our vacation. I had to finish up all my online activities quickly before losing cell service. We missed lunch because of all the time spent taking care of everything and had to wait a few hours before dinner would officially open up.
By 6pm, we were settled in to our new room assignment, all unpacked and headed off to our first meal on the ship, which made up a little for the start. The food on Norwegian is always pretty good and filling and I appreciate their portion sizes are always just right. Especially when you decide to order multiple items both off the appetizer and entrée menu. After dinner, we were able to freely explore the ship and all it had to offer and familiarize ourselves with the layout and where everything was.
On Board
It’s funny because in some ways the Norwegian Joy feels bigger than the Breakaway, the other Norwegian ship we’ve sailed, and in other ways it feels smaller. And in some ways, there was a lot of similarities. I enjoyed the layout of their buffet dining area on the Joy since everything was centrally located close to each other instead of having to walk a full circle on the Breakaway ship to see what the daily selections were. The Joy’s atrium area felt a little less impressive compared to the Breakaway and other ships I’ve been on, but it also felt like they were breaking away from the grand ballroom area to give more room to other things, like having more dining options and more entertainment, so that made sense.
For dining we had a buffet area for people who wanted to dine without being on a schedule or needing reservations. You could freely grab and go whatever you wanted here. They had a decent selection during breakfast, lunch and dinner but I do have to note I prefer the variety offered on the Norwegian Breakaway was better. They had themed food nights which was nice while the Joy seemed to center around the same dishes but cooked in slightly different variations and flavors every day. It was still delicious, don't get me wrong, but I would love to see more variety. My husband was fine with this though being the picky eater that he is. That and the love affair he has with cruise lines and their soft serve machines. He had one at least 2-3x a day, sometimes 2 in the same meal period. But as my brother likes to say, “It's a cruise! You can do whatever you want!”
There were also 3 complimentary dining rooms where you could be seated and order off a menu if you prefered everything made to order. They rotated menus here daily and all 3 dining rooms had the same menu for the day in case one room got full, you could always go to another and still get the same dish if you were dying for it. There was also a few nice complimentary areas for late night snacks and quick bites. The ship also had plenty of bars located all around the ship.
There were several specialty dining restaurants on board too; these are not included/complimentary but an extra fee if you chose to dine here. We stayed with the complimentary dining for the most part to save money since these can be pricey add-ons to a vacation especially when the complimentary dining on board is already pretty good, but we did have a free offer to try one of these restaurants and we used it on the steakhouse which was 👌. The other specialty restaurants available on board were a Japanese restaurant, a wine cellar, an Italian restaurant, a French bistro restaurant, a seafood restaurant, a cute American burger diner with cute vintage car booths, a BBQ smokehouse, and a global restaurant with little plates from all over the world.
My ship had a lot of entertainment and activities for all ages and interests. There was a nice arcade with tons of VR games, a theater for live performances on the ship, a go-kart track on top of the ship, mini-golf, laser tag, of course a pool area with 2 water slides, a spa and salon, a casino area, art gallery, and of course a gym and jogging track which I took advantage of and worked out 3 days on the trip. I spent two mornings on the jogging track and one morning lifting weights in the gym. The jogging track I found to be nice if you ran it in the early mornings when it was more free but later on in the day, they did it away with it by laying down more lounge chairs for sunbathers so it’s a little disheartening it wasn’t a dedicated jogging track like I’ve experienced on other ships. The gym was really nice though with a decent weights area and not just treadmills and bikes. Towels and even massage guns were provided in the area, as well as a fitness expert if you needed someone to talk to about nutrition, goals, etc. They even had a scale to print out your stats like weight, body composition, etc. I noticed behind the free weights they had a dark room dedicated with stationary bikes so it looked like they had their own soulcycle type class setup going on. I'm not a fan of this type of workout but I know a lot of people who do love it so it's nice to see the ship offered this.
We chose to relax, take our time and take it easy this cruise so we didn’t do too many activities while on board. I promised my husband we wouldn’t be rushing from one thing to another like my Disney trips, so I can’t report back on a lot of what my ship had to offer. We chose to spend our time in Bermuda on excursions, mostly in the water each day, since that was the whole reason we wanted to take this vacation. We were missing those beautiful blue waters and Bermuda absolutely delivered.
Unfortunately on the last day sailing back, we were caught in a storm towards the later end of the day and it caused me to feel a little sick because the boat was rocking so much. I do want to note that this was the first time this has happened to me in all of my sailings, and storms are not a common thing to sail through usually, but it did suck because we were looking forward to trying out the VR arcade that day since it was an at sea day to browse more ship activities.
Luckily, we had already drove around on their go-kart tracks earlier in the week when we were docked so we got to experience that at least and it wasn’t dampered by seasickness. That was a pretty awesome experience that made me really miss my Maricar go-kart experience in Japan. I wish more experiences like this were offered in other cities I visit. We also played a round of mini golf on the ship which was really fun. On the last hole we were playing, some little girl picked up Dario’s golf ball and refused to return it til her dad saw and forced her to hand it back, lol. It was a nice time though. I’m thinking of looking for local mini golf places on the island for date nights with hubby now.
Itinerary
Our sailing had 2 ports of call; 1 day in Virginia Beach and 3 days in Bermuda. We chose not to go ashore for the first port of call, the day in Virginia Beach, due to the Bermuda travel regulations requiring a secondary covid testing before arriving if you go ashore anywhere else before arriving in Bermuda. There wasn’t much we cared to explore in Virginia anyway that we can’t just do on our own with a road trip one day. I wanted to spend my time and money in Bermuda instead, which we ended up really enjoying because of the itinerary for Bermuda. In the past, I’ve always been on cruises where the ship docks at a port for just a day and barely even a full day. It arrives in the morning and leaves that evening. This particular cruise, we had 3 days in Bermuda, which was really nice because it gave us ample time to try multiple excursions and even explore some shops near the dock. I picked up some souvenirs for my sister and even found something for myself. I’m absolutely in love with jasmine and found a local shop that made jasmine soaps, as well as oleander and passion flower and all 3 smelled amazing. I always find it hard to find jasmine scented body products by itself. It's always mixed in with another scent in my experience and usually overpowered by the accompanying scent, so this was really nice to find.
I would have explored more of the island inland but unfortunately the excursions we chose had time slots that didn’t work around a more flexible day schedule to take the ferry boat to a different part of the island and everything closes around 6pm. But alas, we had an amazing time with all our activities, more so than I’ve ever been able to experience on any other cruise simply because we were docked for a decent amount of time. I feel like this will be a big deciding factor in future cruises, as we enjoyed this itinerary aspect a lot.
Excursions
We did 3 excursions, one for each day in Bermuda. We went into this a little apprehensive because we weren’t sure what the temperature was going to be like. The forecast reported high 70s which we were at first hesitant about because we wanted it to be a little warmer for swimming. Admittedly the water was a little on the cold side at first when we dipped our feet in, but once we were in, it began to warm up and feel fine as we acclimated and we found it to be actually perfect. We lucked out and ended up with beautiful sunny skies all 3 days too! Perfect for all our excursions so nothing was canceled.
The first day was kayaking. This was the day my husband unfortunately lost his phone in the water while we were launching our kayaks. We ended up spending a decent amoutn of time trying to look for it in the water with no luck and then had to catch up with the kayaking tour at warp speed before the tour ended. Of course this put a bit of a damper on his day losing his phone but it was still overall a nice day as we had great weather and the water wasn’t too bad to swim in for a beach day. The tour operators were great and Hannah was fantastic, sympathetic to what happened and really helped my husband look for his phone, diving in the water with him.
The second day was supposed to be shipwreck and coral reef snorkeling but our tour operator reported that they found a lot of man o’wars (an animal closely related to the jellyfish and dangerous because of its stinging nature) in the water that morning around the sites we were supposed to visit and gave us the option of getting a refund or taking us on a glass bottom boat tour over the shipwreck area and then giving us snorkel time nearby a coral reef. One of the guests on my tour would later experience first hand what a man o’war sting felt like, as he got stung by a baby one near our coral reef site. Luckily that was the only one in our area and our tour group addressed his sting immediately with first aid and removed it effectively and treated his sting with antiseptic. They were pretty awesome guys taking care of everyone that day and making sure we had a safe but good time. If you ever go, I highly recommend them - our crew was Dylan, Jay and Zeke from Fantasea Diving and Watersports. They were so friendly and their energy was great.
The third day was an easy, relaxing beach day at Horseshoe Bay in the morning before our ship left port at 3pm. It was an early morning but really worth it. It was absolutely beautiful and perfect because there was barely anyone there at that time in the morning, except for a few families. We found a nice nook on the side of the beach to lounge in all morning. It was just really serene and nice. It was pretty much what we were looking for in this vacation, summed up in a perfect photo. I booked a shoot with a local photographer for a quick shoot on the beach that morning and he showed us how to climb up a cliff for some epic views and amazing photos. If you ever go, I highly recommend Dion. He was a pleasure to work with, friendly and accommodating on such short notice and and flexible with my last minute location changes. And as a local, he knows all the best spots!
Special Offers
Because of covid, obviously cruises are not selling out like they normally would, so a lot of cruiselines are offering incentives to cruise. Our booking came with some nice offers, but I definitely recommend you looking into the fine print of the offers before booking to avoid getting surprised like I did. Our offers were still a good deal, I just had different expectations than what was given because the way they word it in the package is vague but makes you think you get more than you actually do.
Our offers were:
FREE open bar - this is their regular beverage package, not the top shelf stuff which is a different package. This didn’t affect us too much since we’re not big drinkers to begin with but since we got it for free, we did take advantage of it some days. It was nice to have, even for soda and coffee.
FREE wifi - this makes it sound like free unlimited but it’s actually just for 150 minutes, which isn’t a lot especially since they throttle their internet, making it slow. This is the fine print shit I’m talking about. And when you log in, it tries to upsell you their unlimited plan. Sneaky, sneaky.
FREE specialty dining - this was actually a good offer but also another fine print thing. It’s just for one specialty dining meal per person. We picked the steakhouse and it was a great offer covering $200 worth of food including appetizers, steaks, salads, dessert and drinks. The food was really great too here compared to the steaks on the main dining room.
FREE excursions - this is another fine print item. It’s just $50 off and not a lot of excursions are $50 besides the beach day transfer.
FREE on board credit - again, just $50 on board credit per person.
Overall, the offers were still a good value and great for our trip but again, the wording is just very poor to obviously entice you in to booking. I wish they wouldn’t do that because then you’re a little disappointed when you find out the stipulations/fine print. I’d rather them be transparent and upfront so my expectations are correctly aligned.
Overall we had a great time on this cruise and I would love to return to Bermuda the next time I’m itching for another getaway to crystal blue waters. I thought you had to go all the way to the Bahamas and be further South to see them but alas, Bermuda is just as amazing and beautiful. And bonus, it's closer than the Bahamas too! I really enjoyed how empty this cruise felt too, not being a full capacity. Although I do have to note that Norwegian has always been really good with their cleanliness and preventative healthcare/safety on board even before covid. I sailed with them for my honeymoon back in 2014 and going through old photos, back then they took care of everyone making sure health surveys were filled out prior to boarding, had hand washing stations everywhere and always encouraged you to wash your hands before entering a lot of areas singing the “washy washy” song. Honestly they are pretty damn good when it comes to cleanliness and customer service. Everyone makes you feel like they'll take care of every issue you have while on board. There’s nothing they won’t do to make sure you get what you need. Our cabin steward incessantly checked on us a million times every time we passed him in the hallway even though I kept telling him we didn’t need anything. It started making me feel bad, like are they flogging you back there if you don't ask me a million times?! But seriously it was nice to receive that level of service. We’re not extraordinarily needy people but I can imagine other guests can be more difficult and that's why they try to give 300% to make sure you're happy.
And also a big thank you and shout out to my travel agent Jill Kuritz of Never Grow Up Vacations. She booked this sailing for me 34 days out and took care of everything and even sent a nice fruit basket up to my room which was a nice surprise as well as provide additional cruise credit in addition to the special offers I received. Of course you can always book the same trip yourself but if it comes with extra perks and you don’t have to be on the phone booking it yourself and calling them every time there’s an issue, it’s a no brainer letting someone else take care of it. It makes for a much more stress-free vacation and it’s one less thing to worry about. I love booking all my trips with them because it gives me more peace of mind knowing everything will be the way I want and expect it to be.
I can’t wait till my next vacation but unfortunately I’ve run out of vacation days from work so we’re going to have to cool it for the next 4 months. Hopefully by fall, I’ll have accrued a decent amount of time again and I’ll be able to head to the West coast for Halloween this year! I’m looking forward to Oogie Boogie Bash if all goes well and living out more of my Malibu Barbie dreams as well. Until then, I’m going to try and have a fun summer on the island here at home. Cheers!
