Things I Wish I Knew Before We Cruised on Norwegian Bliss

Hey loves. Have you been on a cruise? Our family took our first cruise together a few months ago. Brian along with our neighbor husband sat down and did all the research, compared prices, destinations, cruises lines etc. They narrowed dates and itineraries based on price, availability, and room selection. We ended up booking a 7 night Mexican Riviera cruise out of Los Angeles California on the Norwegian Bliss.

Our cruise was the first week in March. We took our kids out of school, flew from Cleveland Ohio to Los Angeles California the day before the cruise, then ended up staying an extra day and flying home on Monday afternoon. It was cheaper airfare to fly to California than it was to fly to Orlando Florida. It was also cheaper to fly out on Monday compared to Sunday (and I mean a few thousand dollars).

Our cruise stopped at Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlan, and Cabo San Lucas.

The cruise was not sold out, and there weren't a whole lot of kids on board.

A few things worth noting:

As a family of 5 we were limited to availability especially since we booked 3 months out. Next time we will need to book further out or book two rooms.
For a Mexican closed tour cruise, passports are not required but recommended. We never pulled ours out of the safe once. Even when boarding and security we just used our IDs and state room cards.
We booked our trip through a travel agent through Norwegian. Anytime we had an issue or question we called him and got answers right away.
Our cruise stopped at Puerto Vallarta the week after the cartel bombings. Not many people, including ourselves got off the ship. We docked right outside a military housing and there were armed guards outside the boat the whole time we were there.
Just because it is Mexico doesn't mean it will be warm.

I Wish I Knew Before We Cruised:

Chairs by the pool are going to be hard to come by. Norwegian claims if you are not at your chair for 30 minutes they move your stuff, we never saw that. We were always also to find one, if not two random chairs and we put all our stuff there and since Ella wasn't swimming she sat there. They were also never in the sun.
My teen did not want to go to the teen club. It felt like every other teen had a friend with them and she isn't social. She was always with us or in the room.
My younger two loved the kids club. They were sad when it was time for us to pick them up. They were not open during the day if we were at port, only in the evening. Hours were broken up so you couldn't leave them all day. (which was fine with us)
The ship had mini golf that was very outdated, and only had a few balls and clubs to use. We ended up not even playing.
The ship had go karts, which we loved. They are by the stacks of the ship while waiting in life we ended up with black dots all over our clothes from the sut and it has stained some of our clothes.
There were not many family friendly activities for everyone to do. Even a lot of the evening activities was frowned upon to have any children, including our teenager.
The struggle to find chicken tenders/nuggets. Yes we are on a cruise with unlimited food and we had our kids try new things. But the huge struggle to find something we knew they would eat without complaining. The buffet NEVER had chicken tenders. The menus didn't have chicken tenders. We ended up asking and were able to get some off the menu. Then we would go back to the same restaurant and they would say we don't have those and have to get the manager. It was aggravating.
Our friend is a vegetarian (not by choice she is allergic to something in meat). One speciality restaurant we went to only offered her a Cesar salad with no dressing, aka just lettuce because everything else had some sort of meat or fish. We ended up having to speak with a manager to get her another option.
We had an ocean view room that sleeps 5. Our room had a bathtub. Our friends had a balcony room that sleeps 4 and only had a small shower. Our room also had more floor space and storage.
Communication throughout the ship was ehh. You could use free wifi for their app, but to do anything else you had to pay. If you didn't have an iPhone to do iMessages you had to download a certain app and pay $12.99 a day.
Norwegian has flexible dining in their main dining rooms, which means you don't have a specific time. This doesn't mean you don't have to make a reservation. We had no issues with reservations the day of.

Final Notes

We had a great time with lots of memories. Our package included specialty dining where we had the best meals. My younger kids loved the kids club and all the activities and it helped they were together. Even with the negatives of the cruise we are already planning another cruise, probably a different cruise line, and bringing a friend for my oldest.

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1 comment

Joanne August 13, 2026 at 5:55 AM
We've only been on 2 cruises so we are definitely not experts by any means and our boys have never wanted to go (I mean trip 1 was our honeymoon so they didn't even exist).. but I had talked a few times about pricing out a cruise and even with a Disney cruise my boys were quite apathetic about it so we never took them. I can't handle more than a day at sea as I get antsy and bored since other than lay by the pool and read a book I rarely find anything else to do. I mean I know they have tons of activities but most weren't ever something we wanted to join. I think my husband and I played 1 trivia game all week our last cruise. I enjoy them though and have been eyeing an Alaskan cruise for our next go round.

Thanks for leaving some comment love.

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