This is the first time my daughter and I have sailed on NCL in about 6 years. No real reason other than that price, timing and itinerary lined up better for us on other lines the past few years, but when we saw the price on this short cruise, we took advantage of it in order to refamiliarize ourselves with NCL and buy a future cruise certificate to use in booking a longer cruise for 2014.

Overall we were quite pleased with the cruise. There were some things that were really good and a few we didn't like as well. Embarkation was just okay - the agent didn't seem to really know what he was doing, somehow didn't manage to swipe my credit card even though I presented it to him not once, but twice, and while we were waiting, a family who had been through his line earlier had to come back to get their keys as he had not remembered to hand them over ... but the line wasn't too long, even at 12:30, and once we made it past this guy, the rest of the process was quick and easy. Total time from parking to stepping on the ship was less than an hour.

We did find it odd after the past few cruises on CCL that to board the Sky you walked along the outside of the vessel and then boarded into a rather nondescript area of the ship. Nobody handed us a Daily and we had to go find guest services to find out what was going on that day. We knew the dining room would be open for lunch, so opted to drop our bags in Captain Cook's lounge and go eat lunch - this is a very nice option that CCL and RCCL do not offer. It was wonderful not to have to lug our bags around until the rooms were ready. Read more