My wife and I (36 and 40) have just returned from a weeks Eastern Caribbean cruise on Norwegian Jewel. We live just outside London, England.
We flew on American Airlines from Heathrow to Miami, which was comfortable and arrived mid-afternoon. Our first night was spent at the Radisson Downtown in Miami. This is quite a good hotel, but in an area that is very quite on a weekend and looks like it is being re-developed. We checked in quickly and headed for Bayside Marketplace, which was $6 each way in a taxi. A very pleasant place to spend an evening (Shops, Hard Rock Cafe, Bubba Gump Shrimp and plenty of bars with outdoor entertainment)
We transferred to Norwegian Jewel on Sunday morning. This went OK. I had already filled out the pre-registration forms on the NCL website, but still had to do it all again in the air-conditioned "aircraft hanger", before proceeding to the check-in desks. Here, it pays to be a US citizen (16 desks) or a members of Latitudes (10 desks). Everyone else has to make do with 8 desks, only 6 of which were manned and were processing slowly due to each member of staff on these desks being trained, as they went along. However, we were still comfortably on board by 1pm. We did have 3 bottles of wine confiscated, but managed to get another 2 through, in another bag. Why they picked up some, but not all, I do not now. Anyway, we got it back on our final night, so nothing was really lost.