My wife and I took a 7-day Western Carribean cruise from New Orleans on the Norwegian Star beginning Feb. 24th. We enjoyed staying in New Orleans a day before the cruise and spending time in the French Quarter. We got to the ship around 11:30a.m. and the embarkation process was a breeze. We have been on seven cruises and this embarkation process was the quickest we have had. The staff handled everything quite well.

We ate lunch in the Versailles Dining room instead of going up to the buffet restaurant and it was not busy at all - I definitely recommend this and you don't fight the lines in the buffet. When we got the okay to go to our balcony room I would say that even though the room was okay - we both found it a smaller balcony room than on both the Celebrity & Holland balcony rooms we previously had. Not much elbow room in the toilet & showers. The bed was very comfortable. The stateroom steward we had was exceptional and probably the best we've ever had. I will say the staff on the entire ship were extremely personable and nice. One complaint on the ship is that they allow smoking in more areas than any ship we've been on(we don't smoke), and the casino was very smokey. Even though we liked the food we both found they didn't change their menu as much in the dining rooms as did both Celebrity and Holland does. The nightly entertainment on the ship was very good, and the last night's show "Elements", was probably the best show we've ever seen on a cruise ship. They also had the comedy group "Second City" who very very good, and couple of guys called "Shark Bait" who were good also. One thing we enjoyed in our room was that they had coffee pots which is a nice feature.

The four ports of call were Costa Maya, Belize, Roaatan Honduras, and Cozomel. We enjoyed the first three as weather was nice but in Cozomel it was cold & rainy and our shore excursion was cancelled due to the weather. We would recommend the Mayan ruins in Costa Maya as a must see. I would say we enjoyed the cruise but that we probably would rate both Celebrity & Holland both a little higher than Norwegian.