This is 4th cruise for me. One each on Celebrity, Carnival, Princess and now NCL. Embarkation was fine. If you arrive too early, you get to sit in a room with a bunch of other people, but who cares, you arrived early. Inside cabin 5195 was larger than we expected, very quiet, and the bathroom was way larger than we expected. Room steward from Croatia, Aleksander was great, did a good job, but only there for 4 more weeks. Said his contract was over and he wasn't invited back. Here is the good and not so good on the cruise.

1st day at sea, very very rough. Gale force winds, all personnel we talked to said roughest day at sea in a year. Cannot be helped. Felt like we were on Deadliest Catch. Waves breaking over bow. Food was above average, but pretty salty. O'Sheehan's was good. Regular dining rooms were good. Found the swordfish to be disappointing, but service was good. Noodle bar was good. Word to the wise, don't start drinking right away, they'll nail you on port taxes (seriously folks?), while you are in US waters. We felt the drinks to be okay, but we found the service from the bartenders and other service personnel to be somewhat lacking. I think (but don't know) that this is from the UBP. You see since so many have it, there is no motivation to provide exceptional service because you've already paid the tips. Anyway, nice that you can get two beverages per person instead of some cruise lines that limit per minute and then getting only 1. Almost all beverages fall within the $15 limit and we definitely drained some Hendricks bottles while we were there. Probably had a waiter bring us drinks like 3 times during the cruise. Pretty lame, but I guess we escaped them asking us? We had to go to bars for the remainder of the drinks. Not all bars were open at all times. Port days, outside bars did not open until just about leaving port. We did leave late at Cozumel because two people did not make it back on the ship. 4 others were over 30 minutes late. Should have left without them too. I could have spent another 30 minutes on the island.

I now DO NOT care for free-style dining. What you will find is that if you don't want to meet anyone, make friends, establish relationships then choose NCL for the freestyle dining. We literally met one Canadian couple on board during the entire cruise for one hour in an outside bar area. She was from Green Bay, WI and he was from Toronto. (Thanks for being our one friend this cruise). This format sucks if you like people. If, however, you are from the east coast (especially New York) or from Europe and you don't give a rats-rear end whether or not you speak to another human during your cruise, then chose NCL. We will stick to formal dining nights from now on because you actually get to know people when you dine with them. This is not the case when you are on NCL. If you are a party of 2 and want to be seated with a party of 2, you will not meet a single soul on your cruise. This sucks. Read more