Just completed the repositioning cruise from Vancouver to L.A. with my Wife and Daughter (age 20). We have been on three previous cruises, all with Carnival, but liked the itinerary and thought we should give Norwegian a try. Not because we were disappointed with Carnival, on the contrary we were very pleased with those cruises, just though we should try another to have something to compare to. We really enjoyed to ports, but found NCL to disappoint us. I will tell you the good and bad about NCL, and then talk about our shore excursions.
First, the items we liked about NCL:
Embarkation went very smoothly. We were concerned that it might take longer because we were not using the normal port in Vancouver (Canada Place), we were instead leaving from Ballantyne. No problems.
We have had balcony cabins on every cruise we have gone on. The one on NCL was by far the smallest cabin we have been in. We had a choice of a fold out bed for our daughter which made it impossible to go on the balcony without climbing over the bed, or use the drop-down bed which caused you to hunch down and virtually crawl to make it to the balcony. She opted for the drop-down bed but said both were much less comfortable than Carnival’s. Also, there was much less closet and drawer space on NCL