Alaska Aboard the Norwegian Joy: A In-Depth Review – Part 1 of 3

4,622 Passengers, One Spectacular Coastline, and a Few Honest Truths About Sailing Alaska on NCL

Written By: Tom Ogg, Co-Founder and Co-Owner – Travel Professional NEWS

Part 1 of 3

Alaska cruises are a favorite among travelers for all kinds of reasons, the wildlife, the jaw-dropping scenery, the shopping, the dining, and the chance to soak up a culture unlike any other. Cruise lines have taken notice, and today you can find an Alaska itinerary to match almost any taste: luxury or budget, adventure-packed or culturally focused, and everything in between. Itineraries themselves vary just as widely.

This article covers an Alaska cruise aboard NCL’s Norwegian Joy, a 9-day round-trip sailing out of Seattle. This itinerary broke from NCL’s usual Inside Passage route by adding stops in Icy Strait Point and Sitka.

Selling Alaska cruises well means knowing each line’s personality and value proposition inside and out, then matching that to what your client actually wants. The differences between lines are significant, and this review will walk through what makes NCL’s version of Alaska distinct, for better and for occasionally-worse.

About the Norwegian Joy

The Norwegian Joy underwent a refurbishment in 2024, and it had been a few years since cruising on this ship. The Joy is a Breakaway Plus-class vessel with a passenger capacity of 4,622, weighing in at 167,725 gross tons. That works out to a passenger space ratio of 36.3 and a crew-to-passenger ratio of 0.39. If that sounds like a lot of people sharing not much room, serviced by a comparatively modest crew, you’ve done the math correctly.

Most passengers aboard were on their first Alaska cruise, and for many, their very first cruise of any kind. There was also a healthy contingent of NCL loyalists, drawn back by a loyalty program that generously dangles free specialty dining, free internet, shore excursion discounts, free laundry, and more.

The overall vibe skewed casual, with plenty of kids running the halls, and the ship felt crowded pretty much everywhere, pretty much always. Snagging a seat in the buffet on a sea day required the reflexes of a competitive musical-chairs champion. The Horizon Lounge on a scenic cruising day was no easier. And the elevators, well, let’s just say they saw more traffic than a Seattle onramp at rush hour. In short, it was a very consistent NCL experience: reliably social, reliably busy, reliably NCL.

 

The Norwegian Joy Itinerary

 

Alaska’s ports are a huge part of the draw, and rightly so. Shore excursions here are genuinely spectacular, watching salmon fight their way upstream to spawn, landing on a glacier by helicopter, whale watching, fishing, hiking, dog sledding, and more make Alaska a bucket-list destination in its own right. Since a typical port day runs only 6 to 10 hours, time management becomes everything. Most cruise lines dock right in the heart of town, letting passengers simply stroll off the ship and into the action.

That is not how it works for NCL Holdings’ family of brands, NCL, Oceania, and Regent Seven Seas. Here’s how the ports played out on this particular sailing.

 

Ketchikan (Ward Cove)

 

Ketchikan itself is wonderful: Creek Street, the salmon hatchery, seaplane tours to Misty Fjords, great restaurants, and plenty of shopping. The catch is that NCL doesn’t actually dock in Ketchikan. Instead, the line built its own destination at Ward Cove, about 7 miles outside town, on the site of a decommissioned sawmill, so yes, there’s plenty of room to work with. NCL has transformed the old mill into a sprawling shopping complex where you can buy virtually anything with “Alaska” stamped on it. A free shuttle does run into Ketchikan proper, but here’s the twist.

 

The Joy arrives at 7 a.m., clears immigration fairly quickly, and releases passengers to go ashore, which in practice means nearly 5,000 people converging on 16 elevators at once. It’s less “disembarkation” and more “controlled stampede.”

 

 

Once off the ship, passengers face a steep ramp (steepness varies with the tide) leading up to the shopping complex entrance. A small tram is available for anyone who’d rather not tackle the incline, and if you have any mobility concerns, take the tram, don’t be a hero. From there, anyone heading into Ketchikan joins a long line for the shuttle buses. And it’s a genuinely long line: the Ward Cove pier accommodates two ships at once, and on this particular day the Norwegian Jade was docked alongside the Norwegian Joy, bringing the total crowd at Ward Cove to roughly 7,000 people.

 

Walking into the shopping complex, it was startling to see just how far the shuttle line stretched, winding aisle by aisle through the retail space like a theme-park queue, minus the theme park. (here’s a short video documenting this, in case you’d like to witness the spectacle for yourself.) The line inches forward only when a motor coach is loading, then stalls completely once it’s full, waiting for the next one to roll up. The round trip into Ketchikan takes 40 to 60 minutes of driving and loading/unloading combined, and the last shuttle back typically departs about two hours before the ship sails.

 

Add it all up, disembarking, walking to the shopping center, waiting in line, riding the shuttle in, and riding it back, and that generous 10-hour port day shrinks considerably.

 

This matters for clients booking third-party tours and activities. If a tour operator’s pickup point isn’t at Ward Cove itself, there’s a real chance guests will miss their connection entirely. NCL does offer its own shore excursions departing directly from Ward Cove, with a separate waiting area for those guests. Bottom line: this is a “must-disclose” detail for any client whose main reason for cruising Alaska is Ketchikan. First-time Alaska cruisers, blissfully unaware of what they’re missing, tend to be perfectly happy with the setup. Repeat cruisers who remember docking in town may feel a bit shortchanged.

Part 2 and Part 3 of this review will cover the rest of the itinerary and the dining options aboard the Norwegian Joy, coming soon on Travel Professional NEWS.