I consider myself an experienced cruiser and this was my first (and definitely not last) cruise with NCL. My cruise history includes Carnival (x9), Princess (x4), Celebrity (x1), and RC (x1). I was originally booked on the infamous Carnival Glory Drag Stars at Sea cruise but cancelled it over the summer when I found out such a huge group would be onboard. I had already bought plane tickets and my vacation time was set in stone, so I looked at cruises leaving on Dec 2 out of Miami or Ft Lauderdale and we decided to give NCL a try. In fact, my cruise choices were limited to either Carnival or NCL as they were the only two cruise lines who accepted 2 year-olds into their kids club-this was definitely a deal breaker for me. Unfortunately, NCL is eliminating 2 year-olds from their kids club starting in 2013, so I am stuck with Carnival until my son turns 3.

We flew down to FLL on Dec 1 and visited some family in the area. We stayed at the Hyatt House near the FLL airport, which was great-I highly recommend this hotel. We had a rental car and I priced out dropping off the car in Miami or taking a shuttle to the port from FLL. It was cheaper to take the shuttle and we would not have to worry about our luggage or catching a rental car shuttle to the POM. I booked SAS as I had a previous decent experience with them. After my experience with this trip, I'm not sure I would book SAS anymore. Larry from SAS picked us up at the airport and was very rude to my family commenting on how much luggage we had. We were a party of 3 adults and one child, what did he expect?? For some reason my child did not make it on the roster (even though I had email confirmation) and he was grumbling about my child taking up a space with his car seat....hey buddy it's the law he needs to be in a car seat-did he expect my 2 year-old to sit on a lap?? He was rough with our luggage and he broke part of my stroller clip off. He was just a miserable person in general. We did use SAS on the return trip and luckily did not encounter Larry again! On our return trip to FLL, the van was towing a trailer for our luggage, which was not the case on our initial trip to the POM. We did stop at a hotel in FLL to drop some people off, so if you are in a hurry to get to the airport I would not recommend using a shared shuttle service.

Embarkation was a breeze and there were hardly any lines-I was very impressed. I'm not sure how we avoided the huge crowd waiting for their embarkation photos to be taken, but we were in a totally separate area-I'm not sure if there was a different line from the elevator vs. escalator. My most recent embarkation was in Oct 2012 in Miami on Carnival and it was a nightmare with long lines and a very long wait to get your picture taken for your sail & sign cards, etc. We were onboard by 11:45 and in our rooms around noon. It was nice to be welcomed by a red carpet, steel drum guy playing, and dancers, etc. welcoming us onboard. NCL beats Carnival hands down on embarkation! I also liked how our rooms were ready immediately when we boarded. Read more