Review of the NCL Sky

[@Ddrews-nf4gq]

Sailed on the sky a few months back. I was skeptical at first but I was pleasantly surprised. Service was excellent and the Great Outdoors cafe was a game changer. You really can't beat the outdoor dinning in my opinion. I enjoyed the food at the fine dinning restaurants and at the Main dinning room. It turned into a good first NCL experience.

[@janandtraceytravels]

Great to hear! Our cruise was in 2022 and things industry wide weren’t quite where they need to be. Love the size of the ship. We have two more NCL cruises booked and are looking forward to them. Thanks for watching.

[@kirareed1865]

🎉I enjoyed my 11 nights on the Sky a couple years ago as well. Will be back on there in Nov for 51 days, solo. I've also been on Escape, Bliss and Jewel.

[@janandtraceytravels]

@@kirareed1865 We are so glad you enjoyed your time on the NCL Sky! Thanks for giving us an update!

[@skycaptain3344]

Thank you for a thoughtful, honest review. So many other reviews on this ship are obnoxious or trying to sell you a voyage and making everything unrealistically positive.

[@janandtraceytravels]

Thanks for watching and the kind words. We try to be objective--it's the only way that I think we can really provide any value to our viewers. Thanks again!

[@Jess-xn9xq]

Going on the Sky later in April. Ive only sailed on Holland America, so I'm ok with a smaller ship. Just hope the food is edible for my picky pallette.

[@janandtraceytravels]

We liked the size of the ship. We have also noticed that since we sailed on the Sky, food industry-wide has seemed to rebound. We also hope this applies to NCL as we still have two more cruises booked on the line. Enjoy your sailing on the Sky and thanks for watching!

[@curlintrenchfield13]

My husband and I I is going on on sky for 17 days leaving from Mauritius. What I have noticed is that the older ships have better ports. I hope the food and entertainment will improve.

[@janandtraceytravels]

There are certainly some benefits of sailing older ships including what you said and less guests. Especially as the mass-market lines continue to be on a quest for bigger and bigger. Thanks for watching!

[@kaciea8589]

I’m going on that same cruise! Dec 2024?

[@martinaliebiger5752]

Where did you book the cruise?

[@curlintrenchfield13]

@@martinaliebiger5752 I booked directly with NCL. I also booked my flight my flight with NCL.

[@Makingwaves_123]

Thanks for this awesome review! I’m going with Sky for a 9 day cruise this May as my graduation celebration from college. I do hope the food gets better. I normally go with CARNIVAL or Royal Caribbean and this my first time going with NCL since they had a better pricing for 9 days versus Royal Caribbean or Carnival.

[@janandtraceytravels]

Thank you for the kind words. We also hope that NCL’s food improves as we also have cruises booked on the line in the next few months. Congratulations on your degree!

[@kayla_ivy]

Wow I think we're going on the exact same trip

[@barbarahallowell2613]

Thank you for this, it was very helpful. I really love the smaller size. I've been on the Gem which is just a bit bigger.

[@janandtraceytravels]

You are so welcome!

[@PR-fr6ko]

Very well presented. I am heading on the Sky in 4 weeks and i appreciate your honesty. In the past few years i traveled in the Haven so this will be a change. Some years back i traveled on the NCL Norway and Dawn.

[@janandtraceytravels]

Have fun!

[@spawnsmama]

I was on the Sky last month and sadly have to agree about the food. The temperature was tepid in both MDs and buffets. Only LaCucina had hot food that was hot. I filled out every table card at each meal and as part of my end of cruise survey. I loved the smaller adult geared ship and loved everything about it other than the food temp issues.

[@janandtraceytravels]

Thanks for commenting. NCL is the line that we have most cruised with and this cruise was so different than what we had experienced before. Thanks for watching.

[@van8810]

May I ask whether there were many kids onboard?

[@janandtraceytravels]

@@van8810 We were on the ship during the school year, so while there were kids on board, not the mass of kids we've seen on other NCL ships. Unlike many of the newer NCL ships, the Sky doesn't have a lot of the attractions that cater to kids.

[@karynphilibotte4311]

Kind of disappointed with the limited buffet

[@michaelgore115]

Norwegian sky was originally commissioned for European Costa cruises there of the European plugs in the cabin ;)

[@janandtraceytravels]

True. However, unless I'm (Jan) mistaken, the Sky has always operated under NCL and had previously been refurbished at least once. Additionally, as we noted, we've sailed on MSC which, like Costa, is an European cruise line largely focused until recently on the European market and our European cruises on the line had more 110 outlets. It's not a deal breaker or even a hard negative--just an observation. Thanks for watching!

[@michaelgore115]

@@janandtraceytravels so what did you think of MSC beyond the yacht club is it too crowded and pushy on the nickel & dimei

[@janandtraceytravels]

We actually just got home from a cruise on the MSC Seashore which was at 118% capacity. Still putting together our thoughts for our review, but our initial thoughts were that while parts of the ship can get very crowded at certain times, overall we found it no worse than the other mass market cruises we’ve been on and more tame than a few

[@michaelgore115]

@@janandtraceytravels GREAT i will wait for that then ;) keep up the good work !

[@lawrencelewis5800]

After seeing this I'm actually looking forward to my cruise in May. I think I'm going to like the smaller size of the ship.

[@janandtraceytravels]

That's great. There is something to be said about the size and while we were not altogether wowed by the food, we still had a great time. I hope you have a wonderful journey! Thanks for watching.

[@lawrencelewis5800]

Thank, I'm looking forward to it. I'm not much of a foodie usually just breakfast and dinner. @@janandtraceytravels

[@TheKennedysTravelChannel]

I have cruised with NCL a number of times and have noticed that our american friends often pronounce the name of the irish pub as O'Shee-Hans. If you pronounce it the english/irish way, it is O'Shee-ans, which allows you to get the joke in the name. O'Sheehans = Oceans. I have just booked an aft suite (deck 9) for next year and have enjoyed the information in your video. Thank you.

[@janandtraceytravels]

Wow. If we would have know that from the beginning we would have never mispronounced it. We now wonder how we should be pronouncing The Local 😎. While we didn’t like the forward suite, we did love the aft suite. Have a great trip. Thanks for watching and great information.

[@TheKennedysTravelChannel]

@@janandtraceytravels speaking as a Brit, I would call The Local - Pub! ;) :)

[@janandtraceytravels]

Ha!

[@christopherandkarencobb2821]

We will be going on a 9-day cruise on sky thank you for your reviews even though we have been on royals big ships and also their small ships I think it'll be enjoying for us I hope the food gets better though

[@janandtraceytravels]

Hope you enjoy it! Thanks for watching!

[@kirareed1865]

I enjoyed the Sky Feb 2022. Looking at doing 77 days on 5 b2b later this year.

[@janandtraceytravels]

Wow! Are your B2B's on the Sky or what other ship is it? In September 2026 we are nearly doing 5 S2Ss. We'll have a night between the 3rd and 4th cruise and 4 days between the 4th and the 5th. Cruises 1-3 will literally be getting off at one terminal and having Uber pick us up and taking us to another terminal. 77 days sounds fun. We assume you've done something like this before? If not, we'll tell you from our experience of being on the same ship for 118 days straight--it truly is the first 30 days that are the hardest. Enjoy and thanks for watching!

[@kirareed1865]

@@janandtraceytravels same ship. I have done b2b before on same ship and on different ships. When it was different ships I got off in Barcelona HAL and got onto Costa, Costa was right behind us so I was able to walk in about 5 mins and that was easy. I don't book far out, I'm solo and watch for the $0 or low single supplements. Plus I don't want to book that far out too many opportunities or appts could come up.

[@janandtraceytravels]

@@kirareed1865 Well, have fun! We suffer--should we even be allowed to use that word?--from filling up our calendar. We made a mistake though, our 5 cruises are in September-October 2025, not 2026. However, we have 1/2 of 2026 already scheduled.

[@iangill8984]

We have cruised a lot on older, refurbished ships. We want comfort and decent food, not unduly bothered about balconies but like a window. We tend to find that we want to be on an upper deck because the law of sod says that the best views are the other side of the ship. As we are in our 70's we dont need flow riders, water slides, climbing frames etc. We are looking at booking a cruise on Norwegian Sky in January 2025 so the review was useful.

[@janandtraceytravels]

We have found that some of the older ships have a more intimate experience. Have a great time on your cruise and thanks for the kind words!

[@Krypto64]

Thanks for a useful, fun video - we’re looking to try the Sky for an early 2025 itinerary to Japan; hopefully any food problems will be sorted by then - we’ve never had problems with taste but the NCL dining room food is generally pretty tepid. That balcony with no view looked pretty poor, and I feel for you about being under the Great Outdoors…. we once found ourselves under the theatre, ouch! Lesson learned. Anyway, I’m glad you had a great time overall, you’re pretty brave jumping into that gully! For us, the lack of racetracks, slides etc are a positive, they take up so much space, and things like the upcoming Aqua pipe slide are very ugly. Anyway, thanks again, enjoyed the blooper (also spotted a BULTER in a caption). Maybe catch you on a cruise sometime!

[@janandtraceytravels]

D'oh! Darn spell-check! As we said, we usually rave about the food on NCL, this was a surprise which we hope was an anomaly--we now have 3 NCL cruises booked in the future--fingers crossed. Thanks for the kind words and hopefully we will meet on a deck somewhere in the future.

[@Krypto64]

@@janandtraceytravels That’d be great, we’ve just booked the Aqua, London-Boston for March 28 2025, and before that are heading to Alaska on the Sun on May10 next year. You never know!

[@lindaandrew6768]

We were on the Escape with all the bells and whistles a few weeks ago. We found that the escape was dirty disorganized and the worst cruise ship that we've ever been on. I have to say that the Sky may be small but absolutely had the best crew on board and clean. We would definitely do another cruise on the Sky.

[@janandtraceytravels]

We actually would agree with your description of the Sky being clean and a great crew. We are not wary of our upcoming Escape cruise in 2024. She will be the first ship that we've come back to cruising again (vs a BTB) and we so enjoyed our first time we cruised on her. Fingers crossed that we have a different experience than what you had. Thanks for watching and taking time to comment!

[@loumanlapas5930]

Thanks for the review, I booked a cruise from Manila to Taiwan in early 2025. The only reason I booked is because it starts in Manila and I have a reason to visit family before ship. I hope I don't get disappointed. I am cruising next month with Princess newest ship so well see.

[@janandtraceytravels]

Thanks for the kind words. We visited both Manila and Taiwan during our world cruise. We have three Shorts of the experience-spoiler alert-we loved it. Still working through content to get the long-form videos of this trip out. We too will be trying Princess later this year. Have a great cruise.

[@terrypoole6138]

We are sailing mid January 2025 sounds like we are on the same cruise

[@kimgarrproperties6798]

Good video!

[@benjaminsmith2287]

Well, thank you. I sailed this ship when it was fairly new I guess around 2004 or so. I don't quite remember the exact year. And I remember it looking somewhat different. The thing is you call this ship "small" several times and it wasn't thought of at all as small at that time. Nor do I think of it as small now. True enough, it is smaller than most ships but I think most ships are huge, gigantic and gargantuan in size, so I feel this is a largish ship still. What do I think is small? The lux ships that carry a few hundred passengers or a thousand or a bit over and are in the 35,000 or so ton range, not 78,000 . As for the newer ships, I don't really like them better. I don't see a need to put so much activity in the atria (or plaza or foyer or whatever you want to call it). I much prefer that be done in lounges scattered throughout the ship). I sailed the Dawn with my family and my sister's teenage children and they didn't need the slides and other things. They just found other teenagers on the ship and made friends with them. Sorry to hear the food was bad. That's just one of those things. Any ship can have bad food or good food. The mass market lines seem to vary on the same ship with different sailings. Good to hear the musicians were good. I think the problem with cruising is theee are too many new ships and people keep wanting to go on the latest and "greatest" class. But I think theye're running out of ideas and the newer ships, like the Prima class, aren't that great. There are a lot of design errors in that ship class. And because they prioritize those ships, crews are being taken away from existing ships and the lines are spreading themselves thin. While the ship sounds well maintained the crew sounds overworked to give the service they're capable of.

[@janandtraceytravels]

I'm guilty as charged! We should have called this a mid-size ship. We thought that compared to most of the newer ships, it was a smaller ship--which still does not make the NCL Sky a "small" ship. Thanks for watching and contributing in such a meaningful way!

[@benjaminsmith2287]

@@janandtraceytravels Everything's relative and in today's world, what was large is medium! I'm not sure how much bigger ships can get, though. We'll see.

[@rodneyscales2648]

My problem is not that they only have one cleaning but they raise the tips. I don’t have any problems with raising them but I don’t like reducing the service.

[@janandtraceytravels]

Unfortunately, we think this is something we'll see all of the mass-market lines do. We know that Royal Caribbean also raised their gratuities in 2022 and have now gone to one cleaning. As we noted, we have observed that cruising is different than prior to the pandemic across the industry. Thanks for caring enough to comment and watching!

[@rodneyscales2648]

I shouldn’t complain too much . I got two long cruises on the NCL Jewel and Sun in October for a very reasonable price.

[@diamonddx95]

Thank you for the reviews. We're looking for the best ship to do an Asian cruise in 2025

[@janandtraceytravels]

We loved sailing through Asia. Enjoy and thanks for watching. A review of our Oceania Regatta from Singapore to Sydney comes out tomorrow!

[@diamonddx95]

@@janandtraceytravels wonderful I can't wait to see it!!!

[@olivertorres5201]

Hi for the spa is there only a men and only women area ?

[@janandtraceytravels]

Please see our reply on the ship tour video for the Sky.

[@goldenblooms6672]

have you ever cruised on NCL Gem? how was the buffet and main dining room food on there if you have cruised?

[@janandtraceytravels]

Unfortunately we haven't (yet). We sailed on the Jade in 2018. But wouldn't be able to extrapolate from that experience what it might be on the Gem. Thanks for watching though.

[@TheWanderlees]

Excellent video you two!! Are you living on cruise ships? Erik and I are interested in what we’ve read about Victoria Cruise lines “residential” cruise ship.

[@janandtraceytravels]

Ha! It seems like it. We fully retired in August and between August 1 and May 6, we were only home for 54 days. We have a bunch of material from those 9 cruises that we are still working to get edited and released. We are going to try to release two a week for the upcoming future. Sundays will be a long-form video of our World Cruise and then Wednesdays will be the cruises we did working up to the world Cruise. As far as the Victoria Cruise Lines, can't say we've heard of them. Although I don't think that it would suite us very well. We like all sorts of travel modes and cruise lines, I think it would take a bit of the fun out of it. Have you guys recovered from your World Cruise?

[@brentpayne4215]

I like the Norwegian sky

[@janandtraceytravels]

Thanks for watching!

[@erp7427]

What was your room for the aft facing suite? We will be in 0064 on the 10th deck.

[@janandtraceytravels]

We had room room 10264. It really was a nice suite. Be advised that you will have the Great Outdoors above you. Hopefully you will not have the scrapping at 2:30 in the morning like we did. Enjoy and thanks for watching! kzbin.info/www/bejne/qV7Oh2ppm6-DrZY

[@markcormier3669]

We just got off the Sky... I agree it gets a C at Best.

[@janandtraceytravels]

Is that a C at sea? ;-)

[@fecesd5g]

more like a D-

[@garyyoung3367]

Our food was disgusting, my partner got food poisoning. The free pizza in the Italian restaurant was literally 99 cent frozen pizza from Walmart. The Local was not serving food at all, only bar food at night, like pretzels and such.

[@Kozette007]

Thanks. Now I know why 14 day cruise was under 1k.

[@janandtraceytravels]

Thanks for watching. We haven't given up on NCL. We have a trip on the Prima and back onto the Escape coming up in the year ahead.

[@shanawentzell476]

We leave in two days on the Sky. We will give you an update when we return. After watching this, wish us luck. Lol.

[@janandtraceytravels]

Have a great cruise. We’re interested in hearing how it goes. We have generally noticed that in 2024 that things tend to be gradually returning to how we remember cruising. Take care and thanks for watching.

[@anthonyr7208]

This is why I don’t book NCLs older ships…. Many things outdated…But I’ve noticed that these ships have the best Itineraries….and sail to many amazing parts of the world..

[@janandtraceytravels]

And that's part of the balancing act of booking these type of ships. Many ports (especially in Europe and Asia) simply cannot support a much larger ship which seems to define the newer, mass-market cruise ships. Love your comment and thanks for watching!

[@garyyoung3367]

We were on there two weeks ago, we had a terrible experience.

[@janandtraceytravels]

Sorry to hear about your experience.

[@debbiefinney-x9i]

We are going with sky hope

[@janandtraceytravels]

Have a great trip!

[@vazaruspaytonas7017]

Aw man this ship is coming to Baltimore harbor. I just want to not have to drive or fly my brood to Florida for a decent cruise.

[@janandtraceytravels]

We feel the same way when there is a ship we want to sail on that comes to Galveston, Texas. Thanks for watching!

[@PriscillaWolinski]

I'm excited to go out of Baltimore especially with the cost and customer service going down the tubes.

[@janinejanine6075]

Recently went on NCL sky for the first time with NCL. Food was not good at all. Room was fine, but quality not impressed compaired to other ships.

[@janandtraceytravels]

Sorry that you had this experience. We sailed as the cruise industry was getting back on its feet We we’re hoping the food would improve. However, thanks for watching.

[@brentpayne4215]

It is cool

[@brentpayne4215]

It is good

[@welcome8791]

Very old cabin, things creaking, cold bf and meals at restaurants etc...pricey for service

[@katiavandam8435]

Did either of you research your cruise before you cruised or were you winging it? One of the biggest no-nos is opening the balcony doors while cruising while in a front forward facing suite. How did experienced cruisers like yourselves did not know this? I am surprised you did not read that somewhere in the stateroom or the crew did not inform you of this. Initially, you are only to open these forward-facing balcony doors while in port, not while at sea. Stateroom locations are a necessary evil we all draw upon. However, staterooms are a valid concern when considering placement and pointing out the disadvantages of them is important. Additionally, I am wondering why you thought by complaining you could alter the necessary duties that are performed by the crew at night, or was that all about your stateroom status? Comparing a newer ship to an older ship is another no-no, please stop. This type of reporting only confuses newbies. Also, be extremely sensitive when comparing cruise lines; this is a bit unfair, as well as to newbies and loyal cruisers. Not all cruise lines are identical, and neither are most of their ships. When comparing cruise lines, it is important to stick with those that are in the same category. Just as no one in their right mind would compare Queen Mary II with a Carnival ship; at least I hope not. If you give a report of your adventure on a certain ship, don't give confusing details about another ship you have recently sailed. In other words, do not compare apples to oranges and stay on topic. And please, don't get me started on individuals who place a film camera into a crew staff's face and state they had great service. Note, the information you gave on stateroom outlets (plugs) in your suites sounded baffling to you both when this information is clearly made available online before you cruise. All cruise lines do a great job in providing this information online, as well as other cruising websites. Once again, you cannot easily compare cruise lines, or older ships to newer ships. Obviously, you are both capable, mature travelers, but reporting your adventure like a rushed Sunday night newscast is a bit much. In other words, try relaxing and having fun with it instead of being all stiff and down to business. Great job reporting on back to backs! Sorry, from where I sit it came off more like a job than a vacation. Overall, I am still rooting for you both!

[@janandtraceytravels]

We want to thank you for watching (apparently the entire video which is impressive) and for giving such a detailed, thought-out set of constructive comments to help us become better. The line that struck us was that our was like "a rushed Sunday night newscast." Guilty as charged! We recognize that our biggest weakness is the two yaywho's we have as on-screen talent. They rarely get their lines right and (between us) they can be a bit difficult to work with. But--they work cheap! As a relatively young channel, we are working hard to improve our craft and the product that we are putting on the channel. We still have a ways to go to figure out how best to do this. However, please trust us that we are absolutely loving what we are doing. Since fully retiring in August, we have thoroughly enjoyed the 9 cruises and over 200 days at sea that we have been so fortunate to experience since retiring. Likewise, we enjoy the challenge (and it is a challenge) that attempting to bring these experiences to others on this medium presents. After a combined 46 years in the Army, we are never ones to back down from a challenge. But yours is an important point that we need to communicate this joy to our viewers. Thanks for pointing this out. You did proffer a few questions which we'll attempt to address so you understand the context for our decisions. Yes, we do attempt to research as much as we can about our upcoming travel--not only about the ship and other transportation methods we use but also about the wonderful places we are so fortunate to visit. Certainly there are things that we can miss. We were very aware of the issue that while in a forward cabin you should not have the balcony and cabin door open at the same time. The only issue we had with this was when one person was coming back in from the balcony without realizing that the other was at the door talking to a crewmember. This only happened a couple of times, but as you noted we felt it is important for future travelers to understand the unique difficulty that this presents for forward-facing cabins. While we research the cabins we are looking to book, we had not ran into the ubiquitous postings on cruise line websites describing the number of different outlets (110 vs 220) that each cabin in their fleet offered. In fact, while websites such as NCL's note that both 110 and 220 outlets are available, we don't think we have ever seen the number of outlets and their positions within the cabin ever enumerated. If you could let us know of where we can find such guidance it would be of great help in our future travel research. Thus, with our ignorance of such a resource, we felt it might be something that future travelers in these suites might find helpful so we included it in our review (and cabin tours). Additionally, we have been fortunate to sail on multiple cruise lines from Regent all the way to Carnival and concur with your advice that comparing a luxury cruise line with a premium cruise line with a mass market line is a fool's errand. Nor do we think we did this--we might have errored, however. We did mention the premium line Viking in our review--but this was only to acknowledge that understaffing and training was something that the entire industry seems to be struggling with after the pandemic. Yet, this was not meant to directly compare NCL with Viking. In fact, we only made two direct comparisons in our review. The first was our surprise that our earlier MSC cruise had far more 110 outlets than the NCL Sky. If we did not clarify our reason for doing so, we apologize. We just felt it odd that an European cruise line catering to Europeans on a cruise from Europe where the standard was 220 outlets, had far more 110 outlets than the NCL Sky which is an American cruise line catering to Americans operating in North America and the Caribbean where the standard is 110 outlets. Our comparison was done for no other reason than this--nothing more, nothing less. The second cruise line we directly compared the NCL Sky to was--well--NCL itself. As we noted we have sailed on NCL more than any other line--and will continue to sail on NCL with two future cruises already booked with the line. But, the NCL Sky simply didn't measure up with the pre-pandemic NCL that we had fallen in love with--especially the food. As such, we saw this more like comparing a Macintosh Apple with a Red Delicious Apple. Thus, should someone had previously cruised with NCL--like we had done many times before--they might be disappointed with the food on the NCL Sky based upon our own personal observations. Lastly, no. Our decision regarding being awoken at 2:30 in the morning to contact our guest services representative--which as a suite guest was our concierge--was not due to some sort of entitlement as suite guests. Rather, I think you would agree (not to put words in your mouth) that a basic expectation of any guest would be that they should be able to sleep through the night without undue noise that would awaken them. We are both sound sleepers. Yet, the maintenance was loud enough to wake both of us from our slumber. We would like to think that whether one is a veteran cruiser with scores of cruises under their belt or the "newby," any passenger would be within their rights to contact the ship staff to report this issue. This would be true whether they have booked the most exclusive suite or the cheapest of inside cabins. As for our review, the real issue was that we violated standard cruise ship advice of ensuring that we always (when possible) select cabins with cabins below and above to alleviate this from being an issue. This is something that we overlooked in our research for this cruise. We hope that we have helped to put the decisions we made in context. We do sincerely appreciate that you had so much passion to point out how we might do better in the future. We are thrilled to have you rooting for us as we go forward in our travels and this channel. Thanks once again. Jan and Tracey

[@kevinl7426]

I did not like my NCL Sky cruise at all. The buffet was a joke.

[@janandtraceytravels]

So sorry to hear this.

[@Whybeajackass]

Very disappointed in the Sky and with Norwegian in general. Multiple issues caused by NCL both before and during the cruise with absolutely no customer service, just "sorry about your luck." The entertainment is a complete afterthought and there is nothing at all for teens and kids to do. It's basically a place for everyone to sleep and shower in between ports. Never again with the Sky or with NCL.

[@janandtraceytravels]

We haven't given up on NCL quite yet. We have two cruises booked on the Prima and Escape in the next 12 months. Thanks for watching and commenting.

[@steelee300]

The Sky is literally their smallest and oldest ship

[@Whybeajackass]

@@steelee300 Then retire it. And that does not excuse the lack of customer service.

[@SaltH2oAssassin]

Worse cruise ship. Food was terrible

[@janandtraceytravels]

Sorry to hear about that.