{"id":1246,"date":"2026-08-12T18:37:00","date_gmt":"2026-08-12T18:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/soulcat-travel.com\/home\/?p=1246"},"modified":"2026-08-31T20:22:18","modified_gmt":"2026-08-31T20:22:18","slug":"ncl-star-august-2026-sailing-from-southampton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/soulcat-travel.com\/home\/ncl-star-august-2026-sailing-from-southampton\/","title":{"rendered":"NCL Star – August 2026 sailing from Southampton"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Ports:<\/span><\/strong> Kirkwall, Bergen, Akureryi, Isafjordur<\/s><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sailed<\/span>:<\/strong> Solo, Cabin 5579<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Exceptional staff<\/span>:<\/strong> Norena@Cagneys, Crissa@Restaurant Reservations<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Pros:<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Embarkation<\/strong> – Check in at Southampton was very quick. I was supposed to board between 11.30 and noon, however the Uber in Southampton was almost non-existent. Three tries at ordering a ride and 30 minutes later – no luck. Switched over to a taxi, so I ended up getting to the port about an hour later than anticipated. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luggage check-in was a little different than other cruises I’ve been on. If you needed your bags tagged on site, you had to go to a different area to get the tags. The longest wait was to go through the security scanners, which took about 15 minutes. Everything else was super smooth. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had booked under a casino deal via (add referral link) MGM slots ($1k off), so I got a free bottle of Prosecco and chocolate dipped pineapple in the room. I also got invited to a VIP cocktail hour. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Le Bistro –<\/strong> First night\u2019s dinner was at this specialty restaurant (part of my Free at Sea package); I’ve eaten at this restaurant concept on other NCL ships. It did not disappoint. French onion soup is always delicious. The goat cheese croquette salad had a different type of cheese than goat cheese but was still tasty. The pork chop was good, but I would’ve preferred a bit more sauce and veg, a little less meat. Dessert was divine – the Ile Flottante! A meringue afloat vanilla anglaise. I was disappointed there was no creme brulee on the menu, until this turned up. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cagney\u2019s<\/strong> – The only other meal I thought was notable was another specialty restaurant (again, part of Free at Sea). Steak and baked potato (with all the fixins) were tasty. Crab cake was good. Lobster bisque was gross. It had a cinnamon flavor. I don’t know if someone used the wrong seasoning that night or if it is the regular recipe, but it shouldn’t have been called lobster bisque. The creme brulee was raspberry flavored, and initially tasted good, but was too sweet for the large portion it was. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cons:<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I got on board about 1.15, but cabins weren’t ready until after 2.30, which is probably the latest I’ve had to wait on any cruise line.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Main Dining Room<\/strong> – Food was hit or miss. Appetizers were usually decent, mains so-so, but I’ve found this on most cruise lines. I ate there 3 times. I only ordered dessert once. On one occasion, I ended up topping up at the buffet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Buffet –<\/strong> Didn’t have a ton of variety day to day. Breakfast was almost always identical, apart from the pastries on offer. Occasionally they changed the eggs from scrambled to fried. Dinner was much the same, with a small section that rotated themes every night. But it had some decent staples, including a pasta station, burgers, etc. The crepe station had weird toppings on offer, and it was impossible to find nuts in most places on the ship, although they did have peanut sauce for the satay. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cabin<\/strong> – 5579 was a convenient location midship, but was noisy. It was under the Italian restaurant, so every night around 11pm they’d start sliding tables and chairs around (for cleaning I presume). The final night, around midnight, was the noisiest of all. They really should be a bit more courteous due to the cabins below them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Entertainment –<\/strong> Minimal during the day, almost too full at night. Sadly, it was hard to plan dining times. I tried to book earlier times with the specialty restaurants, to be finished by 7 when the shows began. It was hard getting a seat in Bliss lounge if you went to a 7pm theater show though. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had booked two of my specialty reservations before boarding, and Cagney\u2019s when I got on board. I had to change my times more than once due to cocktail parties I got invited to; invites only happened the day of. So if you are a Gold Latitudes or above, or a casino player, figure you’ll get invited to 6.30pm parties the first few nights. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tenders –<\/strong> The tender situation in Kirkwall was abysmal trying to get back on the ship. I had an NCL excursion, with a little time after to walk into town. Last tender back was at 2pm, I got into the line at about 1.15pm, and it was already wrapped around once. By the time I got on the tender, nearly 45 minutes later, the line wrapped around 3 times. We ended up departing Kirkwall 2 hours late because it took so long to tender everyone back, which in turn cut off our time in Bergen by two hours. I read part of the issue was one of the tenders had lost its steering, so they couldn’t use it, but the efficiency at loading the tenders was also terrible. To top it off, it was chilly and raining, which made the experience all the worse. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our other tender port, Isafjordur, was canceled due to weather. They said the wind and water conditions were too dangerous to run the tender. I was fortunate that my (add link) Viator excursion thru Valkyrie tours was refunded, but many others were not. Check with your tour providers ahead about their cancelation policy in these instances and make sure you have travel insurance (I recommend an annual policy if you travel more than once a year (contact me for a quote). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think I’m going to avoid itineraries with tender ports in the future, especially if it\u2019s a port I really want to explore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Disembarkation –<\/strong> They offered a late checkout for $49, but you still had to vacate your cabin by 8. If it was 9 or later, I might’ve paid for it. It would’ve saved me from hanging out in public areas, waiting for the long immigration lines. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Exiting the ship took almost 90 minutes from tag color being called through grabbing luggage in the terminal. Each color took 30+ minutes before the next one. I left the ship just after 9am (priority, but I had nowhere to be until after 10), and only 2 colors had been called by that point. While this is more an issue with Iceland\u2019s immigration, Norwegian should\u2019ve communicated these issues to guests prior to sailing them. I learned about them in a Facebook group, however staff on board acted like this was unusual. I\u2019ve found if you warn people of delays, and they can plan accordingly, people are much less likely to become irate. This is an unusual circumstance that rarely happens with cruises, so it should have been communicated in advance of sailing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Ports: Kirkwall, Bergen, Akureryi, Isafjordur Sailed: Solo, Cabin 5579 Exceptional staff: Norena@Cagneys, Crissa@Restaurant Reservations Pros: Embarkation – Check in at Southampton was very quick. I was supposed to board between 11.30 and noon, however the Uber in Southampton was almost non-existent. Three tries at ordering a ride and 30 minutes later – no luck. Switched […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1252,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-container-style":"default","site-container-layout":"default","site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-transparent-header":"default","disable-article-header":"default","disable-site-header":"default","disable-site-footer":"default","disable-content-area-spacing":"default","footnotes":""},"categories":[34,47],"tags":[59,31,30,53,55,51,57,52,54,56,39,58],"class_list":["post-1246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cruises","category-europe-cruises","tag-casino","tag-cruiselife","tag-cruises","tag-iceland","tag-kirkwall","tag-ncl","tag-norway","tag-norwegian","tag-southampton","tag-tenders","tag-travel","tag-uber"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/soulcat-travel.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/soulcat-travel.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/soulcat-travel.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soulcat-travel.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soulcat-travel.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1246"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/soulcat-travel.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1246\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1256,"href":"https:\/\/soulcat-travel.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1246\/revisions\/1256"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soulcat-travel.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/soulcat-travel.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soulcat-travel.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soulcat-travel.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}