A few clients have asked me about Norwegian Bliss in Alaska this summer, after seeing notes about changed itineraries. Here is my read, and it is a read, not a verdict.

Bliss has been sailing with one propulsion system down since late spring. Speed, not safety: the ship runs fine, it just cannot make up time, so it gives a little back at the ports. Time ashore has been cut by up to three hours at some stops, and Victoria is now a late-night call where the ship docks but guests stay aboard. NCL is giving affected guests a flat $100 non-refundable onboard credit per stateroom and refunding shore excursions booked through the line.

Small stuff on its own. The pattern is what interests me. In the deployment schedule, the last three Bliss sailings of the 2026 season, September 19, September 26, and October 3, drop Sitka and Icy Strait Point for Skagway. The same dates in 2027 keep the full Sitka run. Sitka sits on the open coast and asks the most of a ship's engines of any stop on that route, so it is the first thing a speed-limited ship would cut. Three sailings is not proof, but it is the kind of edit I look for. The fall repositioning, meanwhile, is untouched.

NCL Chooses to Live with The Issue

I read it as NCL choosing to live with this rather than pull the ship. Given the future itineraries, it's the lesser impact. After Alaska, Bliss moves to a New York Caribbean schedule for the winter, all long open-ocean legs with sea days on either end, where a ship down a knot has room to spare. The squeeze is an Alaska problem, and Bliss is leaving Alaska.

We saw the same thing with Norwegian Escape last year: months of adjusted itineraries, then an off-cycle drydock. This fall Escape crosses to Barcelona, sits for about 16 days, and crosses back. For a ship that runs week after week, that is a yard visit in all but name. That is how living with it tends to end, at a shipyard, months later.

What I Tell Clients

If you are booked on a fall Bliss sailing, go, and make sure you actually receive the onboard credit and the excursion refunds.

If you are only now looking at Bliss for Alaska, I recommend Norwegian Encore instead: same class of ship, one I have sailed, without the question mark hanging over the ports.

Encore skips Sitka, so if that stop is what you're after, that is a Norwegian Joy itinerary this season, and I would send you there instead. For someone flying in from the middle of the country for the one big trip of the year, that is not a close call.

I will watch the schedule. The day an off-cycle gap appears on Bliss is the day NCL has decided to stop living with it.