The bf and I chose to sail with Norwegian for our second cruise. Our first one we took with Celebrity in May of 2013. We definitely took that for granted as it was a quieter ship with less things to do. We sailed on the Gem this past week August 16-23 2014. The ship definitely has a lot of activities for young people, both of us in our 20's. I did not, however, care for the amount of children on board. They were overwhelming and everything on the ship seemed disorganized.

The buffet and pool were a nightmare to try and enjoy. If you didn't get to the pool by 9 am, forget it. We tried to have breakfast that first morning there, Sunday and we could not find any tables at 10 am. There are two main dining rooms, which are complimentary, a buffet, and then several other specialty restaurants that charge an additional fee to dine. We dined at the main dining room most of the nights and the service is horribly slow. We literally had to set aside 2 hours for dinner every night. I decided to try the italian restaurant and then the chinese one later in the week hoping the service would be better in the restaurants that you actually have to pay for, but I was wrong. The service in those was just as slow. Wait staff took at least 20 minutes each time to just come over to take your order and several things I ordered were wrong. We even ate lunch in the main dining room twice during that week where we were the first people in the dining room and it was still a two hour ordeal. For the price we paid, $1400+ per person, I expected a lot more.

Aside from dining, the entertainment was mediocre at best. Some comedian/magician who put me to sleep followed by another older comedian I've never heard of. The theatre is nice, however groups of people would come in 15 minutes into show time and have to walk in front of you to sit down, so annoying. Another problem we had was that our on board credit never came through, not Norwegian's fault, I will never be booking with again as they refused to assist me when I had to call from the ship. Finally, my poor bf suffered from some horrible allergic reactions all week and we realized it was from the dust coming through the vent in our cabin. All of our stuff, ie shoes, bags, shelving, was coated with a white dust that made him congested and irritated his eyes. I don't recommend this ship. I also don't think I will ever leave out of the Manhattan cruise terminal again because when you get off the ship, you are put right out onto the streets of NYC, not even in a terminal. We had to wait on a street corner for an hour for our ride.