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It's actually more challenging than one would imagine to find good cruise ship deck tour videos. This is by far one of the best I've seen yet. Your video shots were clean, crisp, and showcased perfectly what each area had to offer. No sped up video shots walking up and down the decks. Great background music, and clear commentary. I love the slow pan/zoom efforts you put into each shot. Well done, and THANK YOU because I will be on the Joy for the first time this June.
Thank you so much for the kind comment! I try to make videos that I want to see. 🙃 I agree with you - I’ve found most ship tours to be a little chaotic, so I wanted to film in a way that was a bit more matter-of-fact. Enjoy your cruise!
I just watched the documentary about the ship leaving where she was built in Germany to the North Sea...I came here to see the end product! So beautiful. Even more neat bc I just saw where shes been and how carefully she was transported and given life.
Thank you for a great tour! We are going on the Joy in October, '24 to the Caribbean . Looking forward to it all the more now! The cavern Club sounds great.
I sail on September 2nd Still confused about gratuities, drink package, and meals. It is my first cruise. You have been very helpful. Thank you. Much appreciated! Kevin
I had a few questions about those things, as well. I called NCL and they were very helpful and able to clarify. :) Give them a ring, if you haven’t already!
We were on the NCL Dawn in 2020 just before covid got crazy, we loved that ship. We were on the NCL Encore in Sep. (2022) and had a Haven room, while somewhat pricey it was REAL NICE. We are going to be on the NCL Joy soon in another Haven room. Point is, for us, the Haven while pricey, as noted before, it suits us VERY WELL. We are both retired and in our early 60s, but NCL, in general; and the Haven, in particular works for us, in addition to NCL's Freestyle cruising.
You may have heard by now that the Joy is going into drydock in February where they are expanding the Mandarin Spa to be a full thermal spa. They are getting rid of the galaxy pavillion, the laser tag, and some of the Observation lounge to accommodate. They are also adding more balcony cabins and renovating some of the higher end cabins in the Haven.
Thanks for a great review. We have sailed NCL many times on their smaller ships. I it will be June 2024 before school lets out.We hope we will enjoy the larger ship.
We were on the Carnival Triumph (now Sunrise) in 1999 and had a good cruise. We tried NCL just before covid in 2020 on the Dawn and loved it, especially Freestyle. If I'm on vacation I really don't want to have to dress up or be at a dining location at at certain time. On NCL while certain restaurants offer reservations, we were normally able to get seated within 15 minutes, and usually a lot less.
The Joy is a great ship. The food is fabulous. You didn't miss much at Ocean Blue. First they charge you to eat there and then there is another up charge for lobster. Q was excellent and we visited La Cocina daily for breakfast.
We were on the 10 day cruise out of New York , August 20----30. Sadly, our port of call to Bermuda was canceled due to a threat of a hurricane, and we were diverted to Miami. This was my first cruise on a mega-ship, and I enjoyed it more than I thought that I would. Most of our NCL cruises were aboard the Jewel Class ships. The service and entertainment were very good.
We're going end Feb 2024...just got notified they are expanding the Vibe Beach club, Spa and adding suites...taking away the Laser Tag area and a chunk of that Observation deck we were excited to experience. I hope it's not too small now. Looking forward to the food you raved about.
Oh that’s really interesting! Thanks for the update. Laser tag makes sense, but I’m curious to know what they plan to do with the already small observation deck.
Thanks so much for this video. My husband and I are cruising for the first time on the Joy to Bermuda. It’s my birthday and we’re excited. I failed to complete the on line check in and we’re embarking on 5/14 so the system won’t let me complete it 😀. The adventure has begun and we will use your video as a guide! I felt like I was listening to a friend’s review!❤
Great review....the Joy is going in for dry dock in January and it is speculated that they are adding to the "spa".... that likely means a "thermal spa" upgrade.....just so ya know in case you want to ever go on the Joy again.
Thank you for this very concise and easy listening review of the NCL Joy. We are heading out on Joy end of March, spring break with all the kids! I'm expecting it to be a crazy time with full capacity. Not my favorite way to spend vacation, but we are first timer's on NCL and trying the Haven. I hope it is everything everyone keeps saying it is!
Thank you for this review. We have been on other NCL cruise ships and will be on the Joy next November. Just as a FYI,,, if you go on the Getaway, they do have the rock climbing wall as well as the ropes course and they are NO extra charge. My first time watching your video's. Looking forward to seeing your other reviews.
Typically any cruises 8 days or more will have WAY less children no matter the cruise line. You get up to 10+ days and there will nearly always be very few children unless it's over a holiday like Christmas/New Years.
Good review. I'm between taking Joy or Bliss for a last minute Mexican Riviera cruise but Bliss is a lot more expensive. They have a real spa though which like you, I love. You mentioned Joy charged $80 if you wanted to come in to use the steam room and sauna. Was that offer for anyone or only those who booked a treatment? On CruiseCritic people said that there you could only use it if you had a treatment during that time. I was on the Sun which has a similar set up to Joy and they allowed us for free to use the steam room and dry sauna. Also did Spice H20 only have 1 hot tub? I'm not willing to pay for other adult area.
Thanks for the questions! The $80 for steam/sauna use was for guests without treatments. If you book a massage or something similar, you get access to steam/sauna only around the time of your appointment without an extra charge. Spice H20 only had one hot tub, but it was enormous. Have fun on your cruise!
My family and I are avid cruisers - have been going on cruises yearly for about 15 years. Typically we go on the monster RC ships. How would you compare this ship? Would you think we notice the size difference? This has about 1500 less passengers than the larger ships. Thanks!!
I have to admit…I was worried I’d feel underwhelmed on a smaller ship, but to be honest, it really didn’t feel small! It is still a very large ship and there’s lot of little nooks and crannies to get lost in. I will say that it probably helped that it was also a quieter sailing in general and the ship was not fully maxed out. I’m not sure how it would feel if it were to capacity.
Just returned from a Bermuda cruise on the Joy Sunday. Ship is great, service personnel great, entertainment less than expected other than the two main theatre shows Footloose and Elements. Atrium area and open area above on deck 7 terrible. Audio cannot be heard if above on deck 7 and view along sides not good either. Audio on main Atrium area lousy as well. Caver Club venue for Beatles Revolution shows less than adequate. Only fits about 100 people and half of those are standing. We were really disappointed in daily entertainment compared to style of music and frequency we experienced on Breakaway we cruised pre-pandemic. We never did get in to see the Cavern show, only at the main theatre. 15th Observation deck was our favorite. Plenty of comfortable seating in bow and along both Starboard and Port sides with plenty of sequestered areas to sit and read or just converse in a quiet setting. Complimentary food stations mid area of observation area that change food selections from breakfast pastries to lunch style food in afternoons. Bar and Starbucks at bow area. Very relaxing deck of ship. Room cabins excellent. Ours was a balcony cabin on 14th deck. Very quite floor. Plenty of room both in cabin and bath with more than enough storage compartments. Bath was adequate and hot water a plenty. Didn’t get to use deck 16 pool areas because a bit windy and cool. Also, very crowded. Disembarkation in NYC port was worst than a disaster. Ship docked late, but they didn’t change times for disembarkation which are color coded. Hallways and stairs became totally filled with people and luggage and we stood on stairway for over an hour hardly moving. To make matters worst, PA system was inadequate and people could not hear color codes signifying when you should leave to disembark. To make matters even worst, since they had another cruise leaving at 5 that same afternoon, they did not change their maintenance and crew safety drills getting ready for that next cruise. As a result, we had a tour group with bus transportation taking us back to PA. 8 people never heard the color code announcement and were prevented from exiting the ship since the crew safety drills started before everyone was left off the ship and they locked down all the elevators and closed the stairways. Those of us that did get off and made our way to our bus had to wait with the bus driver for almost two hours while we waited for the missing passengers to get off the ship. Norwegian needs to send some of their senior people on a cruise on Royal Caribbean to learn how to disembark a ship. Not sure we will cruise Norwegian again.
Thank you for the super thorough review and sorry to hear about that disembarkation. That does sound awful. We experienced a similar stairwell jam at one of our ports, which was rather unpleasant.
@@akfasso Forgot to mention best restaurant we ate at was Ocean Blue. We had complimentary eating at two upscale restaurants and we selected Cagney’s and Ocean Blue. Cagney’s was way overrated and service was less than expected. Ocean Blue on the other hand was much nicer and service was above par not to mention the meal we received. One in our party paid the extra $25 and got the 1 1/2 pound lobster. She couldn’t eat it all so I helped her. Was delicious.
Just returned from a 14-day cruise from Miami a to LAX on Norwegian Joy and based on a myriad of reasons we will never cruise this cruise line again. To start with a pro (one of very few): the staff and bartenders in Sugarcane were amazing. They made our trip enjoyable while most everything else was not. On embarkation day, Joy was late in getting passengers on board. Crew directed us to one of the complimentary restaurants Taste; however, when we arrived they notified us they were no longer seating anyone . They directed us to go to the Garden Cafe which took an extremely long time as the elevators were completely full with passengers boarding. After about 45 minutes, we were able to catch an elevator and made it to the Garden Cafe. The food was good I'll admit, but as a vegetarian (for health reasons) I was surprised that nothing was noted as vegetarian, so for suspicious dishes I had to ask if it was vegetarian. This was the ordeal throughout the 14-days--trying to figure out what was vegetarian. If you are not vegetarian, I'm sure you will not understand how difficult this is. Freestyle Dining: while most reviewers talk this up, it was a horrible experience. We were never able to get into Taste even though reservations are not required, however, they take reservations first and they fill up and stop seating passengers. We did get into Savor one night so instead of the headache of waiting we opted for the main dining room, The Manhattan, most other nights. If you do not make a reservation at The Manhattan, you have to wait and wait and wait. So after the first couple of nights, we made a reservation. How is this freestyle dining? Might as well have scheduled seating like on other cruise lines. Theater productions: for the big productions, you have to make a reservation. By the time we got on the boat, those shows were completely booked so no reservations were available. Once we picked the night we wanted to go, we had to stand in a "Standby" line. We never saw "Footloose" and after waiting for 30 minutes got in to see Element. Lastly, disembarkation in LA was horrific. It took us 2 hours to get out of the terminal after receiving our luggage due to the disorganization of Customs, which may not necessarily be on Norwegian, but we complained to a rep and they did not seem to care. There are no bathroom accommodations in the LA terminal to boot, so you have to wait to get outside to use a porta-potty on the side of the terminal, which was traumatic at best. This information about lack of bathroom accommodations should have been told to us before disembarkation so we could have used the facilities before disembarkation. These are just a few dislikes out of my long list, which outweigh the positives drastically. Sufficed to say, goodbye Norwegian.
Sorry to hear about your disappointing experience, but thank you for leaving a comment so others can see! While I had no problem making dining reservations (likely due to our low capacity sailing) I actually did have trouble booking the shows. They were filled up almost as soon as they were eligible to be booked. I was not able to see Elements at all and I managed to get Footloose very last minute.
@@akfasso Yes. I'm glad you were able to see Footloose. We had friends that were able to see both and said Footloose was better so you were fortunate. :)
