Believe me, I did read the boards. We chose the Dream because of the itinerary - it went to the places we wanted to see and it was round trip from Seattle, which was important to us because my husband is deathly afraid of flying and we could drive there. I had read good reviews and bad reviews about the Dream and decided to make our own decisions and go on the cruise with open minds.
Booking the excursions through the cruise line was a choice we made, since we were unsure of what the options were at each destination otherwise, and we wanted to play it safe. My husband has a very bad back, and he cannot take kayak trips, or go on long hikes, or anything else very demanding physically. We realize that this can sometimes require a trade-off. See the country by a bus ride or a train ride or see nothing at all. My point is that they are overpriced, and also that we were rushed too much, without enough time to really enjoy. While on the Resurrection Bay boat ride with lunch on Fox Island, the boat ride was great, but we had less than 45 minutes to have lunch on the island and if you were in the back of the line, it was woof your food and get back on the boat with no time to even look at the scenery or in the gift shop. There was another boat load of tourists cruising into the dock just as we were pulling out, so obviously it's a timing thing where they have to feed as many as they can as fast as they can before the next bunch is due to arrive. Why schedule it so tightly? The same thing happened when we went on the White Pass train ride with the side trip to the L:iarsville gold camp. We were delivered to Liarsville about 10 min. late, so we missed part of the show. We were rushed from the show to the water troughs to pan for gold, we did that for 10 min., then it was rush back on the bus to go up to the top of the pass to catch the train ride back down. You live and learn, it was our choice to book it that way, but we didn't realize it would be such a cattle herd mentality. We really thought we would have more time to enjoy.
As for the food, yeah, it's gotta be a challenge to cook for that many people, however, I don't think it's an excuse for not keeping buffet food hot. This was a free-style dining cruise, so we could eat wherever we wanted when we wanted and we did like that aspect very much.
An Alaska cruise is one of the more expensive cruises to go on, and an 11 day one made it more so, but it was what we wanted to do, it offered the ports we wanted to see, and we thought we were going to get to see more of Alaska than what we did. It didn't turn out that way, we are disappointed, and we learned that although cruising may be fun for a lot of people, and maybe it is a good deal sometimes, but overall it's not what we like.
A $400 shipboard credit was not compensation for ports missed. It was use it or lose it, and we didn't care if we had any souvenirs from the ship's shops or not, nor did we particularly want to drink it all up. I believe cruise lines ought to offer passengers a choice - an on-board credit or a refund to put in your pocket. I purchased the soda card for $57.50 (to try and use part of the on-board credit), but that really is not a good choice, unnless you are addicted to soda. If not for the credit, I would not have purchased a soda card. You can't drink your money's worth out of that either. At an average price of $5.00 a 12-pack of soda, you would have to drink about 11 twelve packs of soda in an 11 day period to make it pay. Maybe some cruises are "deals", but add up all the incidentals, and it's expensive enough. And top it off with a nice big fat tip for everyone automatically added onto your bill, whether or not they gave you good service. We like to reward good service, and feel we would rather tip those that deserve it rather than have the tip money put in a pool and divided among them all. NCL will adjust the $10 per person per day service charge, but you have to go through such an ordeal to have it taken off your bill that it just ends up making you frustrated and mad and you are made to feel like some kind of Scrooge/Tightwad for even asking. The lady at the credit office even tried to tell me that the 15% automatically added to bar bills (for our convenience - ha!) is like a "tax" that is charged in bars on shore. What a load of crap. Since when is the word "gratuity" defined as "a tax"? She was something else. Leave off your automatic 15% and allow me to do my own tipping, thank you very much, and don't insult my intelligience by trying to convince me it is a "tax".
When you travel independently, you have much more control over all of these items, which sometimes they are small but they do add up. Cruising just wasn't for us. I'm not trying to insult anyone that enjoys cruising - for those of you that love it, that's great.
